Tag: peace process

Supporting occupation – Gordon Brown in Israel

Whoever scheduled Gordon Brown’s recent visit to Israel is surely out of a job. Brown’s dreary, etiolated performance – appropriate for a political corpse – was rendered even flatter by its proximity to Barack Obama’s headline-hogging whirlwind tour of Europe and the Middle East. Despite the differences in style, however, both politicians took to the podium in Israel with a similar message: one of support for the latter’s rejectionist expansionism.

On the road again…

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The problem with the Annapolis ‘peace conference’ was that a) it had nothing to do with peace, and b) it was barely even a conference.  

Shaking hands and stealing land

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Life for Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is now so miserable that it has become quite difficult not to be seduced by the theatre of the latest ‘peace push’, such is the desire to see an end to the conflict. When Condoleeza Rice expresses her sincere ambition to create an independent Palestinian state, and when Ehud Olmert hints about a willingness to divide Jerusalem, it is extremely tempting to simply forget about the facts on the ground and dare to hope that perhaps, this time, they’re for real.

Behind the ‘peace process’

As Ehud Olmert busied himself shaking hands with Abbas and correcting uninformed journalists from calling the Annapolis summit a “peace conference”, the IDF yesterday ordered the expropriation of over 1,100 dunams of land from four Palestinian villages (Abu Dis, Arab al-Sawahra, Nebi Musa and Talhin Alhamar) in the West Bank, between East Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim. The land will be used for a new Palestinian road connecting East Jerusalem with Jericho, thereby freeing up the so-called E-1 area for Israeli development.

This follows a recent report that Israel’s police force in the West Bank is moving its HQ to the E-1 area.