With the prospect of peace talks stalled indefinitely, the Palestinians set their sights on trying to achieve unity between their rivals

By Philippe Agret

Palestinians wave their national flag in front of the headquarters of UNESCO during a march to mark the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine, which led to the creation of the state of Israel, on November 29, 2011 during the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. AFP


RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank: With peace talks in the doldrums, the Palestinians have fixed their sights on global activism and unity between their rival factions in order to advance their cause.

“We are in a ‘hudna’ (truce) until Jan. 26,” senior Palestinian official Nabil Shaath told reporters at a recent briefing. “But this political cease-fire will end on Jan. 26,” he said, referring to a deadline set by the international peacemaking Quartet, giving the parties 90 days to submit comprehensive proposals on territory and security.

“If on the 26th Israel does not come up with a freeze of the settlements and talks based on the 1967 borders, we will continue our international drive,” said Shaath, a senior figure in president Mahmoud Abbas’ ruling Fatah movement. Palestinian negotiators say they have laid out their proposals and suggestions in response to the Quartet’s proposition and they accuse Israel of failing to reciprocate.

However, Israel is reluctant to show its hand except in the framework of direct negotiations, which they say the Palestinians are “boycotting.”

“The Quartet has called for the resumption of direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. In the framework of those direct talks, the Quartet has specific ideas on how to move forward,” said Mark Regev, representative for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Israel has accepted the route laid out by Quartet, it is the Palestinian side that refuses to meet with Israel in face-to-face negotiations,” he said.

The Quartet’s latest attempt to resuscitate talks was announced on Sept. 23, just hours after the Palestinians submitted a formal request for full state membership at the United Nations.
Both sides welcomed the loosely worded proposal, but with completely different interpretations, prompting each camp to blame the other for the failure to resume talks.

Nevertheless, the Palestinians have low expectations of the Quartet, which groups top diplomats from the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, which they see as dominated by Washington.

And they have little faith in its envoy Tony Blair, who has been accused by Shaath of sometimes talking “like an Israeli diplomat.”

“It’s not a Quartet, it’s a ‘one-tet,’” joked Husam Zomlot, Fatah’s international affairs adviser, slamming Washington’s “total monopoly” on the peace process. “If we don’t snatch it [back] now, the two-state solution is dead,” he told AFP.

“Israel is so keen on sustaining the status quo, in keeping things as they are. For too long, for 20 years, Israel has maintained the status quo.

“This not going anywhere,” he said, referring to peace talks which began in Madrid in 1991 and which led to the Oslo Accords two years later, but which since then, have done little to end the conflict.
It is an assessment shared by many in the Palestinian leadership. “We see the process, but not peace,” say officials at Abbas’s Muqataa presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

“Only the first five years were genuine, until the death of [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin” who was shot dead by a Jewish extremist in 1995, said Shaath. “Since then, the peace process is dead – there has not been any progress. The settlements never stopped, the grabbing of land never stopped,” he said.

“While negotiating, Israel has deepened the colonization of the land,” Shaath said.
Negotiator Mohammad Shtayeh agrees. “We have been taken nowhere,” he said earlier this month. “The political negotiation has been used to maintain the status quo.”

With peace negotiations deadlocked for more than a year and a keen desire to break the status quo, the Palestinians are doing whatever they can to push for implementation of a two-state solution to the conflict, Shaath said.

“We have no alternative but to go to the U.N.,” he said. “It is the only alternative. All the other options are extending the conflict forever.”

A return to violence and conflict was not an option.

“We Palestinians will never let that happen again because we paid the price in blood. We are not going to allow violence to come back.”

The other top priority was to ensure the establishment of unity between the rival Palestinian national factions under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

One of the toughest challenges is bridging the years-long divide between Fatah and Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules Gaza and which could soon join the PLO – the body which is internationally recognized as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.

“The train for reconciliation has left the station,” Shtayeh said. “It’s a bit slow but it will happen. The reconciliation is serious.”

Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2011/Dec-28/158092-peace-on-ice-palestinians-set-sights-on-unity-between-rivals.ashx#ixzz1iO2fwiip

Iranian missile spin closes Hormuz for five hours

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 31, 2011,

By a media trick, Tehran proved its claim that closing the Strait of Hormuz is as "easy as drinking water," debkafile reports.

First thing Saturday morning, Saturday, Dec. 31, Iran's state agencies "reported" long-range and other missiles had been test-fired as part of its ongoing naval drill around the Strait of Hormuz. Ahead of the test, Tehran closed its territorial waters.

For five hours Saturday, not a single warship, merchant vessel or oil tanker ventured into the 30-mile wide Hormuz strait, waiting to hear from Tehran' that the test was over.

Instead, around 0900 local time, a senior Iranian navy commander Mahmoud Moussavi informed Iran's English language Press TV that no missiles had been fired after all. "The exercise of launching missiles will be carried out in the coming days," he said.

For five hours therefore, world shipping obeyed Tehran's warning and gave the narrow waterway through which one-fifth of the world's oil passes, a wide berth. They stayed out of range of a test which, debkafile's military sources report, aimed to demonstrate for the first time that Shahab-3 ballistic missiles which have a range of 1,600 kilometres and other missiles, such as the Nasr1cruise marine missile, are capable of reaching Hormuz from central Iran.

The Moussavi statement was not aired on Iran's Farsi-language media. It was not necessary; Tehran had demonstrated by this ruse that it could close the vital waterway for hours or days at any moment.

Friday night, shortly after Tehran reported the missile-firing test was to take place the next morning, Washington announced the $3.48 billion sale to the United Arab Emirates of 94 advanced THAAD missiles with supporting technology.

Like the $30 billion sale of 84 F-15 fighter jets to the Saudi Arabia announced this week, delivery dates were not specified. The first F-15s for Saudi Arabia are due some time in 2015. It must therefore be said that the announced sophisticated US arms sales to the Persian Gulf nations bear only tangentially on the current state of tension in the region around Iranian threats.

The Hormuz missile stratagem has given Tehran three advantages in its face-off with Washington and the Gulf Arab governments:

1. It gave credibility to the threats issued by Iranian military chiefs last week regarding free passage in the Strait of Hormuz and Western sanctions:

On Dec. 29, Navy commander Adm. Habibollah Sayari said it was "really easy" for Iran's armed forces to shut the strait, adding "But today, we don't need [to shut] the strait because we have the Sea of Oman under control and can control the transit."

The next day, Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guards Gen. Hossein Salami said the United States was not in a position to tell Tehran "what to do in the Strait of Hormuz. Any threat will be responded to by threat… We will not relinquish our strategic moves if Iran's vital interests are undermined by any means."

2. For Tehran, closing the vital waterway to international traffic without firing a shot – even for a few hours – served to rebut the warning given by US Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Lt. Rebecca Rebarich on Dec. 29. She said: "Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations: any disruption will not be tolerated."

It also addressed the dispatch of the USS John C. Stennis aircraft carrier through the strait into the Sea of Oman in proximity to Iran's ten-day Velayati 90 naval drill. The Stennis, accompanied only by a single destroyer, demonstrated US confidence in its military muscle against any Iranian threat.

As the Stennis passed through the big US air base at al-Udeid, Qatar, went on high alert.

3. Tehran did not explain why its war game, designated in advance a display of Iranian naval and air control of the Strait of Hormuz and the Sea of Oman, suddenly morphed into a ballistic missile test; nor its postponement.

debkafile's military sources report that the Iranians were in fact sending a message to the Gulf rulers and the US bases on their soil that they would not escape missile retaliation for a possible US or Israel attack on the Islamic Republic's nuclear facilities or harsh sanctions.