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IN November 2005, ambassadors representing 25 European countries with missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah submitted a joint report warning that urgent intervention was needed to salvage hopes of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Specifically, the report noted, the ongoing expansion of Jewish settlements in and around East Jerusalem and the construction of a "separation barrier" to physically separate "greater Jerusalem" from the rest of the West Bank would "complete the isolation of East Jerusalem, the political, commercial and infrastructural centre of Palestinian life".
"From an economic perspective, the viability of a Palestinian state depends to a great extent on the preservation of organic links between Jerusalem, Ramallah and Bethlehem," the ambassadors noted. Still more ominously, the report warned that the expansion of Israeli settlements in and around East Jerusalem "risk radicalising the hitherto relatively quiescent Palestinian population of East Jerusalem".
This March a 26-year-old Palestinian man with no known affiliation with any Palestinian organisation walked into the Mercaz Harav, a Jewish religious school in Jerusalem, carrying a concealed AK47 assault rifle. After killing eight students and wounding 10 others, he was himself killed by one of the students.
Though the exact motives of the massacre are impossible to determine, the target seems to have been carefully chosen. The Mercaz Harav is the ideological centre of the Gush Emunim (Bloc of the Faithful) religious settler movement.
When Israel announced in June its plans to build a further 1300 new settler housing units in East Jerusalem, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that it was undermining the trust on which the peace process was being founded. Though belated, her efforts to salvage the peace process are certainly commendable. In the ideological war for Arab hearts and minds, the standing of the US and its Arab allies is in part a function of their success in securing a viable and independent state for the Palestinians.
Having negotiated a ceasefire with Hamas, Israel is negotiating a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah and peace treaty with Syria. Meanwhile, six months after the Annapolis peace conference, pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been utterly humiliated by his failure to halt the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
Less commendable has been the Australian Government's position. In March, Kevin Rudd tabled a motion in parliament that celebrated the 60th anniversary of Israel's establishment and reiterated his support for a two-state solution, yet Australia's silence on the expansion of Israeli settlements has been deafening.
In an interview for the Australia/Israel Review, the Prime Minister presented the most detailed exposition of his views on the Middle East to date. Without once mentioning Israeli settlements and the security barrier Israel is building through Palestinian land in defiance of the UN, he claimed that the failure of the Middle East peace process was attributable to Iran, which was "not only an existential threat towards Israel but also the broader Middle East, Europe and the world".
To meet this threat, Rudd proposed to implement calls by former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton to charge Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on "incitement to genocide", on the grounds that such a move would "move the international legal system from punishing genocide post-facto to preventing it before it occurs". For observers of Labor foreign policy, such an Israeli-centric view of the Middle East represents a clear break with the realist multilateral diplomacy of former foreign minister Gareth Evans.
In December 2006, the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton Commission in the US, a high-powered study group charged by Congress with assessing the situation in Iraq and making policy recommendations on a way forward, warned that all the key issues in the Middle East - Iraq, Iran, terrorism and the Arab-Israeli conflict - were inextricably linked and that the US would not be able to achieve its goals in the region unless it dealt with the Arab-Israeli conflict.
As an aspirant to a seat on the UN Security Council and close US ally, Australia is well positioned to play an important middle-power role in the resolution of these issues. Its capacity to do so, however, will not be realised unless it develops a reputation as a sensitive honest broker that is prepared to intelligently engage with all parties to the conflict.
Paul Heywood-Smith QC and Assoc Prof Bassam Dally are, respectively, the chairman and secretary of the Australian Friends of Palestine Association.
Link
http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/johnpilger
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