By Barak Ravi, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
The United States will conduct confidential assessments of whether Israel and the Palestinians are meeting their peacemaking commitments and share the results privately with the parties, U.S. and Western officials said.
Israel has sought to keep the U.S. process of judging compliance with the long-stalled “road map” peace plan largely secret. Palestinians say they favour disclosure of judgments on whether Israel is halting all settlement activity and whether the Palestinians are curbing militants as the plan demands.
Though the Bush administration has decided to keep the assessment process confidential, it reserves the right to go public with its views if necessary, the officials said.
U.S. judgments will be crucial because Israel has said it will not implement any peace deal until the Palestinians meet their commitments to combat militants in both the West Bank and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where militants continue to fire rockets across the border into Israel.
The monitoring process may be a test of Washington’s readiness to hold a key ally to its commitments. Despite U.S. and Palestinian pressure on Israel to freeze settlements, the Housing Ministry said on Sunday 740 new homes would be built in East Jerusalem next year.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed at U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis, Maryland last month to relaunch final-status peace talks with the goal of reaching a statehood agreement by the end of 2008.
They also agreed Washington – rather than the broader Quartet of Middle East mediators – would “monitor and judge” Israeli and Palestinian compliance with the 2003 road map.
Though Israel supports U.S. oversight, it has sent mixed messages about whether it would treat the findings as binding.
“We will conduct this process in confidence,” a senior U.S. official said
of the judging program, adding that “our purpose will be to encourage progress, not to chastise” the parties.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Washington will share the assessment results “with the parties, probably bilaterally, but perhaps in other formats as well”.
“We reserve the option to be public if need arises,” the official added.
Officials said the newly appointed U.S. envoy for Middle East security, James Jones, will not serve as the direct “judge” of whether the parties are complying with their commitments.
Rather than publicly name a judge, American diplomats in the region working with the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and Consulate in Jerusalem will send confidential assessments and recommendations to the State Department in Washington.
Decisions on whether to issue the parties passing, failing and warning marks will ultimately rest with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or President George W. Bush, officials said.
A senior official said final judgments “will come from the U.S. government as an institution, not an individual”.
Some former and current officials questioned the effectiveness of monitoring conducted largely in secret.
“Not conducting diplomacy in the glare of the public is often a good way to go,” said former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf, who served for seven months as chief U.S. monitor of the “road map” after its launch in 2003.
“But if it is done in secret, and if it stays secret, it gives people the opportunity to question our even-handedness,” said Wolf, whose own assessments as monitor were kept secret.
Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said U.S. judgments should not be hidden because “the whole point of it is to tell the world who is implementing and who is not”.
A Western diplomat said of plans to maintain secrecy: “Both sides don’t want to be publicly blamed for their shortcomings.”
Another diplomat said: “Hush hush means no effectiveness”.
Israel fears crisis with U.S. over impasse in peace talks
A senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel may come into conflict with the United States over increased pressure by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to advance talks with the Palestinian Authority. Meanwhile, the Israeli and PA negotiating teams, headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia, respectively, are to meet Sunday ahead of Tuesday’s meeting between Olmert and PA President Mahmoud Abbas.
The U.S. might want to up the pressure on Israel to fulfil its obligations in the first stage of the road map, the adviser said in private conversations, particularly removing illegal outposts and freezing construction in the territories.
“Their demands from Israel will only increase and it is not certain that we can meet them under the circumstances,” he added.
The adviser said that in Vice Premier Haim Ramon’s talks with American officials, he had gone “too far in promising them things to please them.”
Another senior government official involved in the talks also warned of expected crises with the Palestinians and the Americans.
“Israel has created a series of far-reaching expectations in the international arena,” this official said, referring to the implementation of the first part of the road map, “but this is not going to happen.”
“There is no political capability either to evacuate settlements or freeze construction in the settlements,” the second official added.
According to this official, the problem will be even greater when negotiations begin on the core issues. “There are detailed files that include Israel’s position on the day negotiations came to a halt in 2001,” he said. “What will happen when they open the Jerusalem file, for example? They’ll find that Israel’s final position at Taba is light-years away from Israel’s opening position today.”
Israel’s main problem is the Palestinians’ lack of faith in Olmert’s and Livni’s intentions. Construction in Har Homa and reports of talks toward a cease-fire with Hamas in Gaza have created great suspicion on the Palestinian side.
The U.S. administration is not satisfied with Israel’s conduct, especially with regard to the tender for new construction in Har Homa and reports of planning for a new neighborhood in Atarot in north Jerusalem.
Livni, the main impetus behind the talks, reportedly wants to keep them low profile to avoid widely-publicized crises like those in the last round of talks between the teams.
Olmert also wants to move the talks ahead, but to do so without breaking up the coalition. Meanwhile, sources in the Prime Minister’s Bureau said that negotiations will not move ahead, at least not before President George W. Bush’s visit on January 9.
One of the problems in the talks is that Israel has still not decided how the political-security establishment will prepare for them.
Olmert met with Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak Thursday to discuss the matter.
The main point of agreement among the three is to appoint Brigadier General Udi Dekel as head of the negotiation administration, although it is not clear whether he has accepted the post.
Samuel Fistel! Oh were the world as simple as you perceive!
What’s up with America?
1. President Bush won re-election in 2004 with the Neo-cons, led by Vice-President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, directing his foreign policy, which was pro-Israel and anti-Iran.
2. But just two years later the Republicans were convincingly defeated in the Congressional elections, and President Bush understood this as the American people rejecting the Neo-cons. He sidelined Vice-President Cheney and fired Secretary Rumsfeld.
3. That left him with the “Realists” as his new foreign policy advisers. These are led by James Baker, a life-long Jew hater (the author of “F_ck the Jews. They don’t vote for us anyway.”)
4. The “realists” say the neo-cons were foolish unrealistic dreamers with their hope to make the Middle East democratic. The “realists” say the business of America is business, that America should support the Middle East tyrants if we can do business with them, that we should not attack Iran because it will upset oil supplies, and selling out Israel is a trivial price to pay if it keeps the Muslims happy.
5. To formalize their position, the “realists” produced the Iraq Study Group report (co-chaired by James Baker), the Walt-Mearsheimer paper claiming that Israel and the Jews controlled the Neo-Cons, and the National Intelligence Estimate saying that suddenly Iran does not want to make an atom bomb, after all, and their reactor actually is for peaceful purposes.
6. President Bush brought in Robert Gates (an author of the Iraq Study Group report) to replace Rumsfeld. Secretary of State Rice all of a sudden realized that the Israelis are racist southern rednecks, and that Yasser Arafat was Martin Luther King Jr., and Israel was forced to enter thru the servant’s entrance at Annapolis (and they did, without a peep of protest, although Israeli Foreign Minister Livni almost “broke out in tears” afterward. And what a disgrace she is to the thousands of Israeli Jewish soldiers who have died for Israel!)
7. So does Israel have to worry? Not really. Bush is the lamest of lame ducks. He doesn’t have enough time left to sell out Israel, even if he wants to (and I’m not sure he does). None of the Republican presidential candidates seem to hate Israel too much, and they don’t seem to be controlled by the Jew-hating “realists”. I don’t think that Hillary Clinton would force Israel to surrender, but I’m not too sure about Barak Obama.