Doaa El-Bey looks at Israel's manoeuvres and manoeuvring When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert concluded their latest meeting on Monday, agreeing to continue to meet regularly, Israel launched a large-scale military exercise on its northern front. Israeli officials reiterated that Tel Aviv has no intention of attacking Syria or Lebanon following the drills. Meanwhile, Syria indicated that it had no intention of attacking Israel. Nevertheless, there are signs that the two sides are getting ready for war. The Qatari political daily Al-Watan questioned why Abbas and Olmert keep meeting when such fruitless negotiations have failed to achieve any progress on the core issues including the right of return and the future of Jerusalem, four months after the Annapolis meeting. Although Annapolis was aimed at reaching a final agreement to establish a Palestinian state by the end of this year, the Israeli leadership is talking about reaching a general political framework for peace. "Israel is taking the peace negotiations from one mirage to another," the editorial read. Ibrahim Abrash tried to find the reasons behind Abbas's optimism about a possible solution to the Palestinian issue by the end of this year. He wrote that all the factors on the ground -- the Israeli military escalation, its practices in the West Bank and Gaza, and the Palestinian state of fragmentation -- leave no room for optimism for reaching any form of understanding on the core issues, let alone establishing a Palestinian state. However, Abrash described Abbas's optimism in the London-based political daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi as tactical. That is, it is optimism that keeps the momentum of the slow political move towards peace going and evades the worse option should the interest of the international community in the Palestinian issue wanes. Mohamed Kaoush described the latest Israeli exercise as a military manoeuvre accompanied by political procrastination. Although Israel is currently conducting the biggest war games in its history, Olmert sent a reassuring message to Beirut and Damascus that these large-scale manoeuvres do not aim at escalating tension and that Tel Aviv is still interested in peace negotiations with Syria. Apparently, as Kaoush wrote in the Jordanian political independent daily Al-Arab Al-Yom Israel aims at restoring public trust in the Israeli army as being invincible. That is the slogan that the army generals propagated before they were defeated in the 1973 War and later in July 2006. Meanwhile, Olmert and his generals are delivering a warning to Damascus and the Lebanese resistance because Tel Aviv is still worried about a possible retaliatory measure from Hizbullah at a time when the 60th anniversary of Israel is being celebrated. "Israel is performing a simultaneous act of military manoeuvres and political procrastination in order to maintain a truce until the end of May. Then it could wage an all-out attack on southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip," Kaoush said. It is preparing the Israeli community and the army, starting from now, for an attack that could be brief or could last long since we all know that Israel "is serious when it talks about war and it lies when it discusses peace". Ahmed Dawa wrote that the Israeli manoeuvres raise a number of questions, perhaps the most important of which being: how can the US prepare for Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations when Israel behaves as if it is preparing for a new war in the region? And is the Bush administration capable of persuading Israel to make peace? The widescale Israeli manoeuvres are a clear camouflage for what can be interpreted as preparation for a new aggression that the Winograd report had recommended. Perhaps the only thing stopping Israel from a new assault is the fear of repeating the July 2006 defeat. However, "the Arabs should properly and clearly assess the dangers of the Israeli manoeuvres and alert the international community to their impact on the security and stability of the region," Dawa wrote in the Syrian political daily Al-Thawra. He confirmed that at present a unified Arab stand is needed. But time passes and that stand is still absent. Abdullah Iskandar wrote about the state of no war no peace between Syria and Israel and in the region. Both Syria and Israel declared that they do not intend to attack each other, but are nevertheless on alert to respond to any attack. Meanwhile, talk about Israeli-Syrian negotiations as well as holding a peace conference in Russia has subsided. In addition, the staunchest believers in Palestinian-Israeli peace are reconsidering their expectations because there are no signs that an establishment of a Palestinian state is coming by the end of the year. The most that can be achieved is more data on Palestinian-Israeli peace. Iskandar added in the London-based independent political daily Al-Hayat that Israel focussed on the northern front to compensate for its recent failure on the southern front after failing to stop Hamas missiles from striking the north of Israel. The other factor that controls war and peace calculations with Syria is the fate of the US-Iranian confrontation and the increasing possibility that President Bush will launch a strike against Iran before the end of his term in office. Thus if the US is willing to confront Iran, Israel would not have to confront Syria, Iran's ally. On the one hand, Tel Aviv would let the US finish the job for it and on the other, it would save its efforts until a later stage when it is forced to face the outcome of a US Iranian confrontation. Awni Sadiq focussed on the futility of the secret negotiations between Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian negotiator Ahmed Qurei who was instrumental in negotiating the Oslo accords. The two leaders held up to 50 meetings and some 150 hours of negotiations meant to discuss the core issues and reach an agreement that would lead to the two-state solution by the end of the year. However, the writer cast doubt on the outcome of the negotiations because Livni is one of the hawks of the present government who is not likely to offer any concessions, and that Qurei is one of the participants in the Oslo agreement which failed to deliver. The negotiations are a clear indication to Sadiq that Israel, which always aims at holding unilateral talks with the Palestinians, is trying to hold talks with Abbas's government, which is with half the Palestinians. By so doing, it is trying to impede any rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas. It also leads us to an understanding of the US- backed Israeli concept of the two-state solution: it is based on the three famous Nos -- no to the return to the pre-1967 border, no to the division of Jerusalem, the eternal capital of Israel, and no to the right of return of Palestinian refugees. In a recent visit to the US, the writer added in the United Arab Emirates independent political daily Al-Khaleej that Livni reiterated the three Nos without change.
