{"id":75086,"date":"2016-06-13T12:55:06","date_gmt":"2016-06-13T11:55:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=75086"},"modified":"2016-06-13T12:55:06","modified_gmt":"2016-06-13T11:55:06","slug":"the-paris-peace-gambit-everyone-gains-except-the-palestinians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/06\/the-paris-peace-gambit-everyone-gains-except-the-palestinians\/","title":{"rendered":"The Paris Peace Gambit: Everyone Gains Except the Palestinians"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ramzy<\/a>8 Jun 2016 – <\/em>In their defense, the Israelis seem to have figured out the whole thing and opted out. But the hapless Palestinian leadership, along with their Arab League partners, joined by the French, EU and UN representatives, and even US Secretary of State, John Kerry, decided to play along.<\/p>\n

However, the French peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is nothing but a charade, and they all know it, Palestinians included.<\/p>\n

So, why the colossal waste of time?<\/p>\n

If you have been following the Middle East \u2018peace process\u2019 business in the last quarter of a century, you are certainly aware that the \u2018negotiations table\u2019 is nothing but a metaphor for buying time and obtaining political capital. The Israelis want time to finalize their colonial projects in building up illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land; and the Palestinian leadership uses the \u2018talks\u2019 to acquire political validations from the so-called \u2018peace-brokers\u2019, namely the United States.<\/p>\n

The US, in turn, uses the futile \u2018negotiations\u2019 to further assert itself as the caretaker of the Middle East, overthrowing regimes while simultaneously brokering peace.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, every other relevant political entity is included or excluded based on its own worth to, or relationship with the United States. Thus, the honor of invitation is bestowed upon \u2018friendly regimes\u2019. Others, namely, \u2018enemies of peace\u2019 are rejected for their failure to accommodate or adhere to US foreign policies in the region.<\/p>\n

While the \u2018peace process\u2019 has failed to deliver neither peace to the region nor justice to the Palestinians, the \u2018peace process\u2019 industry has been an unenviable success, at least until 2014 when Kerry and the US administration decided to tend to more urgent regional affairs, for example, the war on Syria.<\/p>\n

By then, Israel\u2019s rightwing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was too empowered by the anti-peace sentiment in his own society to even partake in the charade. There was little capital for him to be seen with aging Mahmoud Abbas, shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries. His rightwing constituency, which dominates Israeli society, could not have cared less. They were \u2013 and are \u2013 still busy confiscating Palestinian land, issuing more racist laws in the Knesset and fighting dissent among their own ranks.<\/p>\n

Prior to that date, and since the very first peace conference in Madrid in 1991, the \u2018peace process\u2019 has splendidly paid dividends. The Israelis were finally accepted as a \u2018peace partner\u2019 and Israel slowly made its way from the margins of the Middle East to the center, without having to concede an inch.<\/p>\n

Even Saeb Erekat, the Chief Palestinian Negotiator, has no qualms with this assertion. \u201cIn fact, the number of Israeli settlers transferred into Occupied Palestine has nearly quadrupled since the beginning of the \u2018peace process,\u2019\u201d he recently wrote in the Israeli daily \u2018Haaretz\u2019; \u201cyet Israel continues to enjoy impunity and is not held accountable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering his \u2018chief\u2019 position in the travesty, why did Erekat agree to help maintain the misapprehension of peace considering the price that was paid in lost land, time and lives?<\/p>\n

Well, because the Palestinian leadership itself was at the forefront of raking in the benefits of the spurious peace. The \u2018peace process\u2019 meant money, and plenty of it; billions of dollars invested in the Palestinian Authority \u2013 feeding a dead-end political system that existed with no real authority, and almost always remained on the sidelines as Israel used extreme violence to sustain its colonial enterprise in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The PA even stayed aside as Israel battled the Resistance in Gaza, killing thousands of civilians and besieging an already highly-populated and economically-devastated region. Alas, in the last ten years, it seems that Palestinian leadership and factions invested more energy to nurse their own internal strife than to confront the Israeli Occupation.<\/p>\n

The French government has its own reasons for taking the lead on reviving the dormant peace talks and, no, those reasons have nothing to do with French desire to create a more equitable platform for talks, as Palestinian officials conveniently allege.<\/p>\n

Writing in Israel\u2019s \u2018Arutz Sheva\u2019, Eran Lerman, explained the French endeavor in more practical terms. \u201cBroad regional security considerations\u201d are driving the French diplomatic initiatives, he contented.<\/p>\n

In fact, the logic behind this is discernable. French President Francois Hollande\u2019s approval ratings are at an all-time low. As of March, he broke his own record of low approval, sinking to 17 percent. (In October of last year it stood at 18 percent). His country is embattled by violence, massive strikes, terrible foreign policy decisions that resulted in French military involvement in Libya, Mali and Syria.<\/p>\n

Leading world leaders in another peace gambit that is helping distract from the US failure on that front is a clever political calculation from the French perspective. It might even help Hollande appear stately and in charge.<\/p>\n

The Israelis rejected the initiative right away, without even bothering with a public diplomacy campaign to defend their position, as they often do. Dora Gold, director general of Israel\u2019s Foreign Ministry repeated on the eve of the conference what Netanyahu and others have parroted for weeks. The conference will \u201ccompletely fail\u201d, she said, calling on Abbas to engage in direct talks with no prior conditions instead.<\/p>\n

The nonchalant Israeli position can be partly explained in Tel Aviv\u2019s trust in the French government, the very government that is taking the lead in the fight against the pro-Palestine Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).<\/p>\n

\u201cOn more than one occasion, French positions and actions on this subject have been more reassuring from an Israeli point of view than those of our American ally,\u201d wrote Lerman. \u201cFor example, France served as the hardline anchor of the P5+1 [in the Iran nuclear talks]. It was France that raised questions about reliability and implementation (even as it was French business interests that were among the first to bang on Tehran\u2019s doors).\u201d<\/p>\n

The conceited Israeli response to the French conference was paralleled with euphoria among the embattled Palestinian leadership. That, too, is understandable. The PA subsists on this sort of international attention, and since the last major meeting between Abbas and the former, now jailed Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, in 2008, Abbas is left on his own, disowned by the Americans and neglected by Arab governments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe French Initiative is the flicker of hope Palestine has been waiting for,\u201d wrote Erekat. \u201cWe are confident that it will provide a clear framework with defined parameters for the resumption of negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even if \u2013 and when \u2013 the long-awaited \u2018resumption of negotiations\u2019 arrive, nothing good is likely to come out from it, except for political dividends for those who have participated in the 25-year gambit: buying time and acquiring more funds. There is nothing to celebrate about this.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________<\/p>\n

Ramzy Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. He has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books, and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include <\/em>Searching Jenin, <\/em>The Second Palestinian Intifada, and his latest, <\/em>My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza\u2019s Untold Story.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

8 Jun 2016 – In their defense, the Israelis seem to have figured out the whole thing and opted out. But the hapless Palestinian leadership, along with their Arab League partners, joined by the French, EU and UN representatives, and even US Secretary of State, John Kerry, decided to play along. However, the French peace initiative-turned-conference in Paris on June 3 is nothing but a charade, and they all know it, Palestinians included.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}