Palestinians know Jewish settlements are illegal. What is needed are not words but action to enforce on Israel the rule of law, reports Khalid Amayreh from the West Bank Palestinian leaders have again warned that the unrestrained expansion of Jewish colonies on Arab land is killing all reasonable hopes for peace in the region. The latest warnings, angrier and more frustrated than usual, coincided with fresh statements by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other government officials that his government would carry out plans to build as many as 3500 new settler units on confiscated Palestinian land in Arab East Jerusalem. The implementation of the plan, dubbed "E-1", would completely strangle East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. Moreover, the phenomenal expansion would cut off the Hebron and Bethlehem regions in the south from the central and northern regions of the West Bank, effectively putting an end to whatever hopes the Palestinians still harbor for a "viable" and "contiguous" state within the 1967 Green Line. "We don't want to hear words about the illegality of the settlements," said an angry Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei this week. "We want action by the US and the international community and we want it now." Qurei, in uncompromising language, warned that unless Israel is forced to stop settlement expansion in the West Bank, therefore allowing the creation of a real and viable Palestinian state, "the entire peace process, as well as peace, security and stability in the region and in the world at large, will go to hell." "If Israel thinks that we will eventually accept the Israeli fait accompli, they are mistaken. We will not and the Palestinian people won't," Qurei said. Qurei's angry statements came as Israel continued to impose "facts" on the ground. The aggrandisement of settlements, along with an unprecedented wave of harassment and pogrom-like attacks by fundamentalist Jewish settlers against unprotected Palestinian civilians, is convincing most Palestinians that Israel remains insincere about the American-backed roadmap and, for that matter, the entire idea of peace with the Palestinians. Ariel Sharon, for his part, has never hid his "doubts" about the road map. Israeli "acceptance" of the plan last year was accompanied by 14 reservations, each of which, say observers, is sufficient to corrode the entire plan. "Of course we are frustrated, of course we are losing faith and hope in the peace process," said Majdi Al- Khalidi, a high-ranking Palestinian Foreign Ministry official. Khalidi told Al-Ahram Weekly that, "unless the United States and the rest of the international community adopt a decisive stance vis-à-vis Israel, the entire peace process will lose its relevance entirely." Increasingly, Palestinian leaders are beginning to doubt the sincerity of the Bush administration's commitment to a viable Palestinian state. Until now, US officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have failed to go beyond the same old verbal "reservations" about Israeli settlement expansion and other unilateral Israeli measures against the Palestinians. This failure -- or more accurately refusal -- is prompting many in the Palestinian leadership to suspect that there is a tacit Israeli-American understanding, probably amounting to connivance, whereby Israel keeps shredding up the West Bank, building settlements and completing the gigantic "separation wall", while the US keeps reiterating the same platitudes for public relations consumption. Needless to say, the Bush's administration failure to force Israel to stop building the separation wall deep into the West Bank just reinforces Palestinian suspicions in this regard. After all, it was Bush who criticised the wall for snaking through the West Bank and prejudicing Palestinian rights, including the creation of a Palestinian state, which the US president projected would live in peace alongside Israel. A real test of the Bush administration's credibility will take place next week when Sharon is due to meet Bush at the US president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. According to Israeli and American sources, Bush will take the opportunity to publicly laud Sharon for his "disengagement plan" in Gaza as well as recent successes in neutralising right-wing opposition to it. However, it is highly expected that Bush will also ask Sharon to at least "suspend" the Ma'ali Adomim expansion plan until after the implementation of the planned Israeli withdrawal from Gaza this summer. In this case, Sharon is likely to demand something in return in order to strengthen his hand vis-à-vis right-wing opposition, both within his own Likud Party and the settler camp. A possible "compensation package" might include an American green light to Israel including the large settlement of Ariel that lies in Palestinian territory on the western side of the separation wall, as well provision to build a smaller number of settler units elsewhere around Jerusalem. Any such "compromise" between Sharon and Bush is certain to be angrily rejected by Palestinians who already feel that the US last year went beyond the role of broker and into that of directly ceding to Israel basic Palestinian rights. Indeed, there are growing signs that the stability -- even survival -- of the Abbas presidency will be in jeopardy if Israel continues to collect written agreements in Washington or Texas while the world looks on. The resumption of violence would be a foregone conclusion. If the tone and language coming from official Palestinian circles is indicative, such a prospect could materialise sooner than many think.
