Israel Update for December 2009

Reports peaked in early December that a prisoner swap was imminent. The likelihood that a deal was about to be announced seemed to be enhanced when Hamas leader and former PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh suddenly cancelled a planned visit to Mecca to mark the annual Haj pilgrimage to the Islamic holy city. Yet continuing disputes about the makeup of the Palestinian prisoner list and internal Israeli struggles over that issue and others connected to it kept the emerging deal under wraps as Christmas came and went.

German mediators ran into a major roadblock mid month centered on Hamas demands that three well known terrorists be included in the prisoner exchange. Two of the men, Abdullah Barghouti and Ibrahim Hamed, were behind the deadly 2003 attack upon the Moment restaurant, located just one block from the Prime Minister's official residence in central Jerusalem. Barghouti was also involved in the terrorist assault on the Sbarro pizza parlor that left scores dead and wounded next to the bustling central Jerusalem intersection of King George Street and Jaffa Road. The third convict, Abbas Sayid, helped plan one of the worst terrorist atrocities ever launched in Israel-the 2002 Passover bombing at a hotel in the coastal city of Netanya. That heinous assault left the restaurant partly destroyed and 30 Jewish Seder guests' dead, including children, with many others wounded.

Calls for the release of former Fatah militia leader Marwan Barghouti were sounded by many Palestinian legislators and pundits, and by not a few Israelis who believe he might emerge as the new PA leader. Barghouti, who was jailed earlier this decade for life, was convicted of being directly responsible for the deaths of five Israelis as head of the Fatah Tanzim militia. He is widely perceived to be tough enough to negotiate a final peace accord with Israel, announcing that he will be a parliamentary candidate if freed before Palestinian legislative elections are held sometime next year. Barghouti pledged to focus his political energy on efforts to bring lasting reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

In mid-December, Palestinian Authority leaders convened a special session of the PLO Central Committee in Ramallah north of Jerusalem. The announced purpose of the gathering was to discuss ongoing political attempts, led by Egypt, to reconcile the PLO's Fatah party with the rival Hamas movement.

However, PA president Mahmoud Abbas used the special session to unveil yet another pre-condition for resuming stalled peace negotiations with Israel. International efforts led by Barrack Obama to get the talks rolling again in 2009 came to nothing.

Abbas said Israeli leaders must agree in advance that the final borders of a future Palestinian state will be established along the ceasefire lines that existed at the end of Israel's Independence war in 1948-49. A total Jewish settlement freeze, including in every portion of the eastern half of Jerusalem, must also be enacted, Abbas repeated. Israeli officials insist that adjustments must be made to the 1949 truce borders to reflect the many significant changes that have occurred on the ground since Israeli forces captured the area in 1967, particularly the fact that nearly 300,000 Israelis now reside in the contested zone.

Freeze Welcomed And Rebuked

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's late November announcement that he would enforce a ten month residence building ban in all Jewish communities located in Judea and Samaria was quickly condemned by most leaders of the settlement movement, even as it was welcomed and praised by the Obama administration and many governments in Europe and elsewhere.

The Palestinian Authority rapidly condemned the move, terming it totally insufficient to lure them back to the peace table. PA leaders decried the fact that the building ban is only designed to last a pre-set limited time and does not include construction of new Jewish homes inside Jerusalem's sprawling municipal boundaries. Netanyahu has made clear that he will never take any action that might call into question his long held commitment to guard Jerusalem's current status as Israel's undivided capital city.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip showed their contempt for the Prime Minister's building freeze by lobbing five mortar shells into Israeli territory the day after the housing ban was announced. Hamas claimed it was not behind the barrage, which caused no injuries, attributing the firings to Islamic fringe groups not under its direct control. On the same day near Hebron, an Arab assailant stabbed and wounded a Jewish man and woman at a convenience store before being shot by nearby soldiers as he fled the crime scene.

American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued an official statement that lauded the Israeli building freeze while hinting that the Obama administration supports Israel's oft stated position that negotiations alone must determine the final borders of any Palestinian state, which will not be identical to the ceasefire lines that existed up until the 1967 Six Day war.

"Today's announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements."

The Israeli Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported that the American administration actually followed up Netanyahu's welcomed announcement by requesting additional Israeli concessions. In particular, the White House team pushing with the State Department for renewed Palestinian-Israeli peace negotiations wants Netanyahu to unilaterally transfer further sections of Israeli-controlled land to the Palestinian Authority, especially in the strategic Jordan Valley and areas north of Jerusalem.

Under the Oslo peace accords, the land in question is listed as Areas B and C. Area C was mostly comprised of territory that Israel hopes to keep control over as part of any final peace accord, while Area B was meant to be temporarily patrolled by Israeli security forces while quickly coming under overall PA political control. The Oslo plan basically collapsed when the Palestinians began their violent Al Aksa attrition war in September 2000.