World Focus: A quandary for any new US president
Friday, 25 July 2008
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It's perhaps lucky for Barack Obama that he was safely on his way to Berlin by the time the Israeli daily Maariv reported that the military had approved construction of a new settlement in the Jordan Valley. For had he been asked about it Mr Obama, on a mission to convince Israel of his unequivocal friendship, could hardly have conformed with existing US policy without criticising the plan.
The news helps to illustrate why the Palestinian public remains deeply sceptical about the Israeli government's ability to deliver the West Bank settlement withdrawals that any peace deal would require. Whether Ehud Olmert finally confirms the plan or not – and he has not yet been asked to – the approval by those in day-to-day charge of the occupied West Bank underlines the settlers' influence.
Palestinians see the repeated international calls to halt all settlement activity as largely ineffective. Mr Olmert's own interpretation of these calls – one not shared by the international community – is that they have left him free to authorise hundreds of new Jewish homes both in Arab East Jerusalem and those settlement blocs which President George Bush told his predecessor would remain in a future Israel.
But Maskiot is neither of these. Even if the government can argue it is not a new settlement – and that is highly debatable – the envisaged construction there does not even conform to Israel's unique reading of Quartet policy.
Moreover, the widespread view in Israel that the Defence Minister Ehud Barak is holding out Maskiot as a quid pro quo for voluntary evacuation of small settlement outposts elsewhere in the West Bank is instructive. Those calling for such outposts –which are illegal under Israeli law – to be dismantled, range from President Bush himself to Talia Sasson, the eminent Israeli lawyer entrusted by Ariel Sharon with reviewing the outposts issue three years ago. Yet except for a mere nine structures taken down in Amona in January 2006, they have gone unheeded.
Since the withdrawal of 8,500 settlers from Gaza in 2005, the numbers in the West Bank have continued to grow. One question for a new US President will be whether he contents himself, as President Bush has largely done, with ritual complaints that are then ignored.
