Annapolis |

May 20

Peace Process: Has Annapolis Lost Its Appeal?

They are a rare breed, but you can still find them, in positions of political power and newspaper opinion pages. Their motives are mixed, but they have one thing in common; they are optimistic about the Israeli-Palestinian Annapolis peace process. For some, their job requires them to paint a rosy picture about the international community’s ‘peace process’. For others, there is a blind naivety that perhaps this time, the speeches and announcements might actually amount to a positive change. Some of these optimists, desperate to protect Israel from critique and sanction, are compelled to suggest the ‘two sides’ are on the verge of a ‘breakthrough compromise’. Read more

Nov 20

The Peace Paradigm

At the core of much of the discussions scheduled to take place in Annapolis later this month will be ‘rights’: human rights, refugee rights, the right to access holy sites, the right to live in peace and security. But when it comes to negotiating peace in Palestine/Israel there is a significant problem with the framework embraced by the majority of statesmen and analysts.

From the United Nations to the UK government, from the EU to Washington, everyone is agreed that some rights are not just sacrosanct in theory, but also in practice. While lip service is paid to Palestinian ‘rights’ of self-determination, three core Israeli rights are always assumed. Read more

Nov 15

A real peace process?

US support for Israel is public knowledge. The enormous military and economic aid figures are well known, as are the dozens of vetoed UN security council resolutions and “No” votes in the general assembly. The regular votes on Capitol Hill in solidarity with Israel and condemning “Palestinian terrorism” are not secret.

Somehow, however, journalists and analysts continue to maintain the fiction that the US-driven “peace process” is a sincere attempt at securing a just solution to the conflict in Palestine/Israel. The most that is ever acknowledged is that in the “Arab world” the US has a problem in perception as an “honest broker”; the weightiest criticism, incredibly, is that Washington is not doing enough. Read more