peace process |

Oct 15

Will Fatah – as much as Israel – be the target of the next intifada?

For the best part of half a century, Fatah dominated Palestinian politics. Israeli attempts to extinguish the movement failed; rivals were co-opted or sidelined. But gradually, as the Oslo years gave way to the Second Intifada, the peace process went up in smoke and Hamas emerged as a genuine contender for Palestinian political loyalties, serious and critical divisions within the movement have come to the surface. This piece examines the current crisis facing the Fatah movement, and possibilities for the future: critical issues facing the movement — internal divisions, differences over strategy often sharply focused on the question of resistance and/or negotiations, the relationship with Hamas, as well as some of the different options facing Fatah in terms of a way out of the crisis, and approaches being suggested as solutions to the crisis. Read more

Oct 3

Fatah and Hamas set for surface unity

After half a dozen unsuccessful attempts, there is now a strong sense that Egypt has managed to negotiate a national unity deal between Hamas and Fatah. Reports indicate that at the end of October, Palestinian factions will gather in Cairo to finalise an agreement, the result of a breakthrough in recent weeks. Next week, Mahmoud Abbas is expected to support the plan after meeting with senior Egyptian officials. Read more

Sep 15

Peace propaganda and the Israeli consensus

George Mitchell is in Israel/Palestine as the White House’s special envoy, in a visit described as “a final push to revive Middle East peace talks”. The focus remains on Israel’s so –called settlement ‘freeze’, with Mitchell reported as saying that there was still work to be done on the “Israeli-American dispute over construction in the West Bank”. Ahead of his meeting with Mitchell today, Netanyahu has confirmed that there will not be a “complete halt to building” in the settlements, telling a Knesset committee that “a reduction on building in Judea and Samaria will only be for a limited period”. Read more

Jun 15

Killing Israel’s peace process

Following on from Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo, this weekend it was the turn of Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu to stake out his vision for a way forward in the peace process with the Palestinians.

Ever since Netanyahu announced that he would be making an important speech, there had been plenty of speculation about its content. Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition allies desperately lobbied the PM to stick to his “principles” and some of them expressed confidence that the address would end up being satisfactory to their constituencies. The typical build-up spin was that Netanyahu was feeling “the heat” from both Washington and his rightwing government. Read more

Jun 2

Obama Needs To Tell It Like It Is

Ever since Barack Obama’s election, many have been eagerly awaiting the “new” approach they hope he will bring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in contrast to his predecessor. Yet rather than revealing change, my most recent visit to the region in April brought home to me how much of the Bush approach has been maintained under Obama and the Madrid Quartet with its special envoy Tony Blair.

That similarity is most clearly demonstrated by the huge contradiction that exists between the rhetoric of these major players when they talk about a “peace process” and the reality on the ground in Palestine/Israel. Read more

May 9

Peace in our time?

Recently, and in the last week in particular, there has been a flurry of speculation in the Arab and western media about changes afoot in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and in particular, how the US intends to engage with the conflict and the region as a whole. If the reports and analysis are to be believed, something is shifting, and the various players are staking out their positions in the changing landscape.

One of the main questions being asked is whether the US and Israeli administrations are heading for a conflict. Many answer in the affirmative, including the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall, who yesterday wrote that Israel is “under siege” as PM Netanyahu heads for “showdown talks” with Obama on 18 May. Other commentators have also perceived a “widening rift between the U.S. and Israeli governments”. Read more

May 1

The Palestinian Authority’s authoritarian turn

Last week, less than two weeks after I had talked with him in his an-Najah University faculty office, Abdel Sattar Qassem was arrested by the Palestinian Preventive Security forces in Nablus, occupied West Bank.

Qassem is a 60-year-old professor of political science, and has been at an-Najah University since 1980. Imprisoned several times by the Israeli occupation, he is the author of dozens of books and papers, as well as hundreds of articles, on Palestinian politics and Islamic thought. But Qassem is also an eloquent and prominent critic of the Palestinian Authority (PA), and he has been arrested, and targeted by politically-motivated attacks, on a number of previous occasions. Read more

Apr 28

Fatah is turning into a footnote

The future of Fatah is up in the air. Internal divisions and a confused political programme – problems that arguably date back decades – have led this historic Palestinian party to a moment of truth. It is no exaggeration to say that the crisis is of sufficient proportions that Fatah’s continued existence as a political force to be reckoned with is under threat.

This can be best illustrated by a non-event, namely the sixth Fatah general conference, which some 20 years on since the last such meeting, continues to be bereft of a firm date or location. Rumours come and go about when – or even if – the conference will be held; in public, the official line is that the inordinate delay is a result of the necessary preparations. Read more

Mar 31

What it means to talk with Hamas

March 2009 may come to be seen as a critical month in the ending of the international community’s isolation of Hamas. Finally engaging Hamas would spell the end of hypocritical Western policy and bring the peace process in line with the realities of the Middle East.

First, a group of high-level US foreign policy officials, past and present, went public with their recommendation that the Obama administration talk to Hamas. Coincidentally, European politicians who visited Hamas officials in Syria about the same time echoed that view. Read more

Feb 20

The real Israel-Palestine story is in the West Bank

It is quite likely that you have not heard of the most important developments this week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the West Bank, while it has been “occupation as normal”, there have been some events that together should be overshadowing Gaza, Gilad Shalit and Avigdor Lieberman.

First, there have been a large number of Israeli raids on Palestinian villages, with dozens of Palestinians abducted. These kinds of raids are, of course, commonplace for the occupied West Bank, but in recent days it appears the Israeli military has targeted sites of particularly strong Palestinian civil resistance to the separation wall. Read more