The Situation

Text by Robert Rosenberg, images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)

Pressure mounts

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Voyages to Promised Lands, Take off, acrylic on paper

alk by Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz (under mounting U.S. pressure) about evacuating a handful of ‘illegal outposts’ in the territories has sent the settler leadership into a tizzy and the National Union into an emergency session, less than 12 hours after the Prime Minister’s Office announced that Ariel Sharon would holding consultations with Labor Party leaders, including Shimon Peres, Matan Vilnai, and Ephraim Sneh – all opponents of the Geneva Accord.

But both sides discounted talk that Sharon, who appears on the verge of a sharp turn in policy, saying he is considering unilateral moves if the Palestinian Authority can’t deliver on an end to terror, is about to dump the Right from his coalition and bring in Labor.

Pressure on Israel is clearly mounting – and the Right, sensing that Ehud Olmert’s comments over the weekend about massive withdrawals from the territories were a trial balloon for the prime minister, is making noises about applying its own pressure on Sharon. The settlers are saying that if Mofaz dismantles any populated outposts without reaching an agreement with the Yesha Council – and reports say this time that might happen -- they’ll take to the streets.

Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly sent the question of its ‘separation fence’ to the international court in The Hague, which could rule that the fence is illegal wherever it deviates from the Green Line, said international law experts in Israel today.

haron is unlikely to change the route of the fence he wants – deep into the territories from the west as well as a second fence on the eastern flanks of a putative two-canton Palestinian entity in the West Bank, but he might change the order in which parts of the fence are built: in other words, build now only on the Green Line and see what happens.

The U.S. and Palestinian Authroty Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’ say that as long as the fence is on the Green Line, or inside Israel, they have no complaints about the fence. It’s the fence’s route into the West Bank, to protect settlements there, which the Americans object to, most recently as yesterday afternoon in a statement made by Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer and a statement by Qurei’.

Judging by the Israeli press reports on the GA vote and The Hague court’s possible ruling, Jerusalem is counting on a U.S. veto if the court sends the issue to the Security Council. Maybe. But as Dan Margalit, Maariv’s columnist of the consensus notes this morning, Sharon is seeing his policies crash on the gates of the White House. And it is difficult to imagine any unilateral steps taken by Sharon that will meet the approval of the Americans, let alone the Palestinians. Sharon told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee today that meanwhile Israel is sticking to the roadmap, ‘but I am preparing a series of ideas, perhaps a new plan that people have been talking about lately.’ Sharon also said Israel would continue handing out work permits to Palestinians – aiming for 40,000 such permits in the near future.

But former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy, a keynote speaker at a day-long seminar at the treasury, was highly critical of the roadmap – but more so of the government’s 14 “comment sand corrections’ to the roadmap. He said the roadmap could not be implemented, but that the 14 comments and corrections were ‘immaturely, and negligently prepared … they are grammatically faulty, incomprehensible, and full of contradictions that cannot be overcome.’

Ehud Olmert, who breached the consensus in the Likud over the weekend and spoke openly about the need to withdraw from most of the territories, including some East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods, says meanwhile that ‘Qurei’s days in office may be numbered’ after the cease-fire efforts in Cairo failed. According to Yoel Marcus in Haaretz this morning, Olmert’s weekend remarks to Yedioth Ahronoth were indeed coordinated with Sharon, who is supposedly preparing a speech for delivery later this month in which he has promised to outline his plans for some kind of change in Israeli policy.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom is meanwhile going to Europe and then the U.S. to present Israel’s positions to various European leaders as well as meeting in Rome with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Palestinian ministers Nabil Sha’ath and Salam Fayyad, and then to Washington, on the status of the peace process. Shalom is going to urge Mubarak to keep up his pressure on Qurei’ to reach a cease-fire that includes a crackdown on terror. Shalom is also slated to meet with the pope.

Recommended:

FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCYALYPSE On November 14, 2003, in a dramatic development, four former Shin Bet chiefs call on the political leadership to make peace with the Palestinians. Read the full interview.

Sharon’s policy is bringing us to the brink of existential abyss a speech by Victoria Buch to the Peace Coalition weekly vigil outside the Prime Minister's Residence, November 29, 2003

The Weathervanes Are Turning Uri Avnery analyzes the changes that led to Ehud Olmert saying Israel must quit the West Bank and Gaza.

Ariga recommends

[an error occurred while processing this directive] in Frosties, the anthology of quotations

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation