A Moment of Opportunity

Thursday October 18, 2007 10:22 by George Rishmawi

I was struck this morning with a headline saying “Rice sees moment of opportunity” to forge peace.

Such headline makes me wonder, whether the US Secretary of State is shortsighted, or she intentionally wants people to be shortsighted.

Section of the Wall near Jerusalem

What is the moment of opportunity she is talking about, while Israel continue to expand and build more settlements in the occupied West Bank which has never stopped since 1967 despite of the different agreements and in fact intensified after the Oslo agreement was made.

These settlements are built on daily basis on the land of the West Bank which is occupied by the military power of Israel. The West Bank land, the potential area where a future Palestinian state can be built, has now shrunk to half because of these settlements and the Wall which Israel started to built in 2002.

If the construction of the wall and settlements continue as planned, the Palestinian state will never be established, because one can not establish a state on tiny pieces of land, almost completely separate from each other, and totally confined inside another country.

So, what opportunity Secretary Rice is talking about? How would the November conference be a peace conference if it will not guarantee any of the Rights of the Palestinian people?

The November conference will only give a legal face to the Israeli measures in the West Bank especially for the Wall after the International Court of Justice at The Hague has ruled it illegal.

In the meantime, Rice asked the Palestinian President to avoid mentioning the establishment of a Palestinian state on the pre-1967 land, (i.e. the West Bank and the Gaza Strip) and also asked him not to mention the problem of the Palestinian refugees in the document that should come out of the conference.

So, if the November conference will not stop the expansion of settlements and the construction of the wall and will not mention the refugees’ problem and will not secure a Palestinian state on the land occupied in 1967, then what opportunity Rice is talking about.

Apparently, one has to stop and think about this conference a little more.

international | peace process | opinion/analysis george.rishmawi at yahoo dot com