Palestine - ending the pretending, facing the facts

1. recognize Israel as the Jewish State; and

2. outlaw any political party that calls for the destruction of Israel.

Ms DiCarlo offered little comfort to the Palestinian Arabs when she stated: “Let me also reiterate that, like every U.S. administration for decades, we do not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity. “

This was a far cry from the misleading claim often made by the Palestinian Arabs and other countries that the settlements are illegal in international law.

International law - in particular article 6 of the Mandate for Palestine and article 80 of the United Nations Charter - is very clear on recognizing the right of the Jewish people to close settlement on the land comprising the West Bank and Gaza - including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes. These vested rights continue uninterrupted and inviolate in 2011.

Pursuing such rights whilst negotiations are ongoing is certainly a legitimate area for concern.

However Israel did place a ten month moratorium on settlement activity - which expired on 26 September 2010 - to induce the Palestinian Authority to return to the negotiating table - but they waited till the death knell to respond.

Additionally Israel’s offers to cede its legal claim to more than 90% of the West Bank and Gaza in 2001 and 2008 fell on deaf ears. Any suggestion that ongoing settlement activity is an obstacle to peace - in just 1.7% of the West Bank or 5-8% if you count the area encompassed by the security barrier - is risible.

Perhaps ominously for the Palestinian negotiators Ms DiCarlo issued this warning: “The fate of existing settlements must be dealt with by the parties, along with other permanent, status issues.”

The Palestinian Authority has made it clear that any Palestinian State to be created must be exclusively Arab and a Jew free zone. Its call for such a State to be recognized within the 1967 armistice lines means 500 000 Jews will have to pack up and leave their homes and businesses established over the last four decades. This is not going to happen as the result of any negotiated peace agreement.

Indeed what can only happen is the scenario contained in the letter from President Bush to Israel’s then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on 14 April 2004. 

“As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC Resolutions 242 and 338. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion.

It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.”

Like it or not the Palestinian Arabs - and those who support their quest for an independent State - will have no option but to accept the division of the West Bank between Israel and any Palestinian State. The longer they dither the more likely new realities will emerge on the ground to make that division less attractive.

The Palestinian Arabs could have had their State in all of the West Bank and Gaza at any time between 1948-1967, when Jews were banned from living there for the first time in the recorded history of the West Bank and Gaza. One can only shake one’s head in disbelief at the opportunity then missed during those 19 years.

Returning to that unique situation is never going to happen again. Believing it will only prolongs the conflict between Jews and Arabs and ensures further needless death, pain, suffering and trauma on both sides.