With Israel pushing a hardline stance while settlement expansion is ongoing, pressure is mounting on Ramallah to ditch US sponsored peace talks with Tel Aviv, writes Saleh Al-Naami Aisha was shocked when she received a call from a hospital in Nablus, in the heart of the West Bank, informing her that her husband Asaad had been hospitalised that morning. Asaad had left the house that morning heading to an olive grove on the outskirts of his village of Kakar Kedum, west of Nablus, to inspect the trees before picking them. He felt fine when he left the house, but Asaad told Aisha when she arrived in a panic at the hospital that he collapsed when he reached the top of the hill to find all the trees uprooted. The bulldozers building the Jewish Kedumim settlement on village land had destroyed the olive grove. Asaad, who had anxiously been waiting for the olive harvest to sell and repay his debts, which had accumulated over the year, broke down because revenue from the olive groves is the only source of income for his family. "Is it enough that the Israeli army confiscated 80 per cent of the land my sisters and brothers inherited from our father for this damned settlement," Asaad exploded when the doctor asked him why he had collapsed. "And now the settlers are usurping the last thing I possess." Asaad did not know that what happened at the grove is only the beginning of the end of all the land he owns. Kedumim settlers announced that they will be building a new district in the southern section of the settlement, and hence would need to expand the parameter and swallow up Asaad's entire inheritance. They commenced to flatten the land to begin construction on residential units. No sooner had Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the end of the freeze on settlement building in the West Bank than settlers in most settlements in the West Bank began laying out new districts by grabbing Palestinian farmlands by force. Meanwhile, the Israeli army has done nothing to stop them. This new reality has stirred political change in the positions of prominent Palestinian figures that are known for supporting a political settlement to the conflict, including senior figures in Fatah headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Mahmoud Al-Alul, member of Fatah's Central Committee, has had enough and can no longer "hold onto the illusion". It is time, he said, "to admit the ugly truth". In interview with Al-Ahram Weekly, Al-Alul asserted: "It's not rational to insist on a two-state solution in light of Israel's intransigent position and the inability of the US administration to change it. As long as Israel controls Palestinian land and continues to change facts on the ground, anyone who talks about a two- state solution is fooling himself and the Palestinian people. This is a recipe to destroy the Palestinian national cause." Al-Alul believes that the "announcement by the US State Department last week that unequivocally adopts Israel's precondition that the Palestinian Authority must recognise Israel as a Jewish state in order for the settlement building to temporarily stop" clearly indicates the "futility of waiting for Washington to play a positive role in reaching a political settlement to the conflict." He added: "it is obvious that the Israeli and American positions are identical, since the Obama administration has chosen to put pressure on the weaker party, which are the Palestinians. Unfortunately, the outcome of long months of US diplomatic efforts has only encouraged Israel to continue its extremist posture, as demonstrated by Netanyahu's hard line positions." According to Al-Alul, the US's new position allows Netanyahu to blame the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the failure of talks if the latter does not recognise Israel as a Jewish state. Not one single Palestinian would agree to the Israeli-US demand, he stated, calling on the PA and Arab League to meet and discuss alternative strategies as well as current international political conditions under which there is no hope for a two-state solution. Yehia Moussa, deputy leader of Hamas's parliamentary bloc, asserted that since it has adopted Israel's position, the US administration must meet a clear and firm response by the PA and the Arab League. Moussa told the Weekly that Fatah should read the writing on wall and abandon negotiations and instead agree with Palestinian factions that embrace resistance as the only option for confronting Israel. Moussa believes the first test of the PA and Fatah's sincerity is the issue of security coordination with Israel. Moussa argues there is no reason for the PA to continue security coordination at a time when Israel is taking hard line positions and continuing hostilities against the Palestinian people. Hani Al-Masri, a prominent Palestinian intellectual, sent a letter to Abbas calling on him abandon hope of a political settlement under present conditions. Al-Masri continued that Abbas could no longer threaten Israel with anything because the US strongly supports Tel Aviv. "Now, Mr President, you are at a loss. You find it difficult to continue on the same path which has been trodden for 20 years without success," he told Abbas in the message. "But it is difficult to abandon this path, so you have chosen to stand and wait until something happens." "The real problem lies in the fact that waiting serves the interests of Israel, because every day it imposes new realities on the ground through settlements." Al-Masri added that as it stands, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) "no longer truly represents a wide range of political and popular sections. It serves the PA, and is almost completely paralysed." Al-Masri warned Abbas that, "The most that negotiations could achieve is a solution you cannot agree to. It is either a final solution that erases the Palestinian cause in all aspects, or a long term multi-phased interim solution that will result in the same thing, albeit gradually." According to Al-Masri, "the catastrophe will be when the US and Israel reach an agreement about the content of the [final] solution, when we will find ourselves confronted by an imposed solution that will be hard to resist or overcome." He believes the alternative lies in organising a comprehensive national dialogue with everyone's participation, "which will rise above individual and factional differences with the aim of serving higher national interests, by arriving at a broad strategic alternative to direct bilateral negotiations according to American and Israeli conditions." Al-Masri concluded that, "conciliation is a necessity not a choice, and must be given priority because only that would enable the Palestinians to think and work together to reach and follow options and alternatives that would ascertain Palestinian goals and rights." But if national conciliation is the solution, according to Al-Masri, all signs in reality indicate that this goal is beyond reach because of gaping differences between the two sides. While the venue of the second round of talks remains a secret, the positions of Fatah and Hamas on the issue of security remain at odds (this is the issue that will be discussed during the next round of talks). Fatah has stated that restructuring the Palestinian security forces must be done according to the laws of the PA and not the opinions of factions, while Hamas insists that the nature of restructuring must be negotiated during talks. Ismail Radwan, a leading Hamas figure, said that his group will insist that the security forces are restructured according to "proper national" basis, in order to play a role in serving the national project and defending the Palestinian people. Radwan emphasised the importance of deliberating security issues at length. He expected that in the next round of talks an inter-Palestinian agreement will be struck, which would pave the way to signing the Egyptian reconciliation plan. Radwan stated that inter-Palestinian understandings and the Egyptian proposal would form the framework of the conciliation process, which should serve as the basis for a comprehensive political and security partnership. Radwan, however, was sceptical about the chances of success in the next round after US Security Coordinator Keith Dayton was replaced by General Michael Moeller. "This casts a long shadow on security issues and achieving conciliation, because Washington continues to pressure for continued security cooperation with the occupation and its control of the Palestinian decision-making process in Ramallah," he said. Azzam Al-Ahmed, member of Fatah's Central Committee, believes that the future and structure of Palestinian security bodies should be decided according to Palestinian law and the Egyptian reconciliation proposal, and not according to the desires of the various Palestinian factions. Al-Ahmed noted that Fatah's delegation would listen to the opinions of Hamas representatives regarding security issues, denying that the movement has demanded that it lead any of the security forces.
