THERE is news of an impending peace conference in Washington in November, bringing Israelis, Palestinians and as yet unnamed Arab states together around the table. This follows on from President Bush’s July call for an international conference to help jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But it might also be a belated and inadequate response to the earlier call by Saudi Arabia for Israel to agree to peace negotiations that would terminate the conflict between Israel and the Arabs.

In 2002 the Saudis had presented a plan trading Israel’s total withdrawal from the 1967-occupied territories for normalisation of relations with Israel. They reiterated this in 2005 and again this year.

Israel never responded and it is not clear which of the Arab states will come to the November conference, if any. Amr Moussa, the Arab League’s secretary-general, asserted on Sept 13 that none of them would attend until the conference’s goals were clarified. Saudi Arabia has also come out against participating if there is no pre-agreed agenda.

From what is known of the US initiative, it is vague on detail and limited in its goals. America is apparently seeking no more than the meeting’s support for a statement of principles to be drawn up between Israel’s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas. It wishes for the ‘moderate’ Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also to be there to give the Israeli-Palestinian arrangements Arab backing. The conference should end with a set of declarations but has no provision for negotiations between the parties.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, will be visiting Israel and the West Bank this month to “build upon some of the progress made by the two parties themselves” and to encourage them to reach an understanding before the conference. Phrases like “knocking heads together” and “rolling up their sleeves” are being used again, as if the problem were one of intransigence or laziness.

Readers may well have a moment of déjà vu. In September 1993, an agreement of principles was drawn up between another Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and another Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, memorably commemorated by that famous handshake on the White House lawn. The formula then will be repeated now, except with different players and with much less chance of success.

The Oslo agreement was supposed eventually to resolve the conflict, but instead, it initiated years of futile peacemaking, broken agreements and interminable negotiations.

It ended with the second Intifada and the current crisis. This conference will fare even worse. It is a transparent botch-up aiming to convince world opinion that the US is serious about solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while paving the way for Israel’s acceptance in the region at the cheapest price.

For, if the Arab states can be persuaded to sit at the same table with Israel, without its having to comply with any of their demands, it would be a real coup for the Jewish state. That is what underlies US and Israeli eagerness for Saudi and Emirates’ participation in the conference. In this sense, the Palestinian presence could be seen as the pretext for this Israeli penetration of Arab ranks.

The rhetoric that the meeting will outline the principles to establish a Palestinian state and suggest ways of resolving the core issues of borders, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem — all of which featured in the Oslo agreement and failed — should fool no one. It will be just another exercise in futility.

For, as always in this conflict, two parallel tracks operate: the reality on the ground and the fantasy world of Israel’s allies. In this world, the Palestinians will be content with being split into Hamas and Fatah supporters, into the West Bank and Gaza, meekly accept Abbas for their representative, although he does not lead the majority of Palestinians, and ignore Gaza. In this world also, the two-state solution is still an option, and needs only for Palestinians to renounce terrorism and make themselves worthy of statehood.

To shore up this fantasy, America is strengthening Abbas with funds and training for his security forces, while Britain’s Tony Blair is helping the West Bank population to develop civil institutions.

In this way, the cosy illusion of ‘moderate’ Palestinians (i.e. those in the West Bank) humbly grateful for western tutelage and willing to pay any price for the promise of statehood is essential.

It allows Israel’s allies to maintain the pretence of a legitimate peace process, while ignoring the real situation. A cursory look at this will show what a charade the forthcoming peace conference will be.

Thanks to unrelenting Israeli colonisation over the 40 years since the 1967 war, today there is no contiguous Palestinian territory left in the West Bank on which to construct a viable Palestinian state. The system of Israeli checkpoints and closures has interrupted continuity between towns and villages, and Jewish settlements, occupying large tracts of land, have consolidated that break-up.

The barrier wall, which is nearly two-thirds built, has ensured that the best land is annexed to the Israeli side, leaving the less fertile areas to the Palestinians. Currently, 46 per cent of West Bank territory is under Israeli control, and the whole of East Jerusalem, and there is no link between the West Bank and Gaza.

The 54 per cent of the West Bank allotted to the Palestinians is further transected by Israelis-only roads and ‘security areas’. So, where could a Palestinian state be established in this geography? The purpose of the ‘peace process’ has been to implement the two-state solution. Given the current reality, that is a pipe dream. As the outgoing UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process said in May, “A Palestinian state requires both a territory and a government, and the basis for both is being systematically undermined.” And so, he concluded, it would be impossible to divide the land into two states.

The Palestinian movement is riven by factional fighting. The division between Gaza under a Hamas government and the West Bank under Fatah is a reality. Israel and the Quartet powers have tried hard since the Hamas election in 2006 to destroy the Islamist movement by starving the Palestinian population and shutting them away in a large prison.

This has created unimaginable hardship and suffering, but it has not removed Hamas control of Gaza.

So, ignoring this reality and inviting Abbas to Washington as if none of it existed is foolish and pointless.

He himself is unwilling to attend the conference without a prior commitment from Israel on key issues. Olmert, hamstrung by his own shaky coalition, is unable to do other than stall — two weak men unfitted to their task. Even some Israeli commentators are warning against holding a conference in such circumstances.

Until the western powers recognise that the key to Middle Eastern peace is to deal with Israel’s policies and behaviour and not to hold make-believe conferences based on fantasy, there will be no peace in the region or the world.

The writer, who is the author of ‘Married to Another Man: Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine’, is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, England.

Email: ghada.karmi@btinternet.com

THE much-anticipated testimonies to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker mark an important phase in the current controversy raging in the United States with regard to war-torn Iraq. The two officials tried valiantly to give the impression that there was a perceptible improvement in Iraq.

Gen Petraeus admitted that “our experience in Iraq has repeatedly shown that projecting too far into the future is just not difficult, it can be misleading and hazardous as well”. Ambassador Crocker was candid enough to admit “there will be no single moment at which we can claim victory”. Both, however, spoke out against quitting the country, claiming that the troop build-up had led to measurable success.

If the US legislators were expecting an objective assessment of the situation, they must have been disappointed. However, soon thereafter, President Bush made an important speech which contained some recognition that the demand for troop withdrawal was striking a deep chord across the country. He introduced a new concept, “return on success”, to revive the flagging American spirit. Though careful to avoid using the word “withdrawal”, he claimed that “we are having enough success in Iraq that we can begin bringing some troops home”.

Bush thus tried to straddle the middle ground — not to give in to the demand for troop withdrawal, while responding to the growing clamour for troops to be brought back home. It was also a reflection of the administration’s realisation that minus a new military draft, the US would be short of troops to send to Iraq, without extending the current 15-month deployment. President Bush may also have hoped that this measure would enable him to wrest the initiative from the Democrats, who have been hammering away at the administration for its failures in Iraq.

The reality, however, is slowly dawning on the American electorate that the Bush administration has no strategy for Iraq. Bush’s speech contained no new idea, though there was some evidence of a subtle change in the administration’s approach to the problem. The goal for success no longer resembles the high hopes that the architects of the 2003 invasion had in mind. Now it is simply to exit with the least amount of additional bloodshed or damage to the US.

The news from Iraq itself belied any optimism on this score, as within hours of the speech, the tortuous compromise on sharing oil revenues began to unravel. Bush had also cited the Anbar tribal chief’s decision to fight alongside the Americans as proof that the war’s tide was turning. But Sheikh Abu Reesha’s murder showed how ineffective Washington was in protecting its allies.

Moreover, the Congress-mandated study by the Government Accountability Office revealed that of the 18 benchmarks that had been laid down as goals, the Maliki government had made progress on only three.

Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group is convinced that Iraq is sliding into a state of civil war. Abu Rish, an Arab analyst believes that there can be no reconciliation between the various factions, as long as occupation troops remain in the country. He also fears that the main beneficiary of a US withdrawal will be the radical cleric Moqtada Al Sadr, who has “covered all bases — the Shias, the anti-Americans groups, has good relations with Iran and has the biggest militia”.

Interestingly, the Iraqis appear least concerned with the increasingly bitter debate in Washington, and this includes even politicians who have the most to lose, should the US withdraw from that country.

Both Shia and Sunni leaders are convinced that President Bush will insist on keeping his forces in Iraq until the end of his tenure. Shia leaders are, therefore, concentrating on strengthening their positions by outflanking political challenges and building alliances with moderate Sunni sheikhs. The Sunnis, on the other hand, continue clinging to the hope that fellow Sunni Arab neighbours will rally to their side as counterweights to a Shia-dominated Iraq, supported by a powerful Iran.

It would also be recalled that when Bush had announced in January 2007 the dispatch of new troops to Iraq, he had promised to “use America’s full diplomatic resources to rally support for Iraq from nations throughout the Middle East”. The Iraqi Study Group, too, had advocated the need to bring in all the regional players, including Iran and Syria, into the dialogue process.

However, instead of doing that, Bush has continued to threaten them with regime change. This is not likely to convince them that they too have a lot to lose if Iraq disintegrates. There is thus no readiness in the region to work for a comprehensive political resolution of the problem.

The US has been in Iraq for over four years. It is high time that Washington recognised that continued occupation of that country is neither contributing to better security nor to political reconciliation. Sadly, Bush continues to view Iraq as a conflict between outsiders (Al Qaeda along with pro-Iranian Shia hardliners) against a struggling democratic government, but this is only a facile impression.

Moreover, while he refuses to face up to the reality of the situation in Iraq, the Democrats too, are being hesitant, backing away from proposals to impose a deadline for withdrawal, as is being demanded by the electorate.

Last week, Gen Sir Michael Jackson, head of the British army during the 2003 invasion, branded the US post-invasion policy as “intellectually bankrupt”, while Peter Galbraith, a former US diplomat, expressed the fear that “Iraq after an American defeat will look very much like Iraq today — a land divided along ethnic lines into Arab and Kurdish states, with a civil war being fought within its Arab part”.

With the Bush administration having failed to achieve any of the many goals it had proclaimed for Iraq, the only way out is for Congress to use its powers to demand a real change in strategy. So far there has been little evidence of this. Other than Bill Richardson, the other presidential aspirants have all shied away from pressing for a closure to this bleeding wound, fearful of being accused of letting down the troops and “losing” Iraq. Richardson alone has emphasised that “so long as American troops are in Iraq, reconciliation among Iraqi factions is postponed”.

Most analysts and scholars are publicly expressing the fear that Iraq as a single sovereign state may not survive the current turmoil. But with the neo-cons still occupying positions of influence in the administration, there is little likelihood of President Bush being able to read the writing on the wall.

When eminent strategists like Dr Kissinger, the architect of US foreign policy during the Cold War, oppose US withdrawal from Iraq on the specious ground that this would not end the war but redirect the conflict to other states, including Pakistan which “may even turn into a radical challenge itself”, we are tempted to resign ourselves to the inevitable. But this would be immoral — and dangerous for the international order.

THE lawyers representing the respondents, the federation and General Pervez Musharraf, during the hearing of the Jamaat-i-Islami constitutional petition — challenging, inter alia, General Musharraf’s occupation of office of president of Pakistan and his candidature for the forthcoming election to the office of president— submitted the following statement in the Supreme Court of Pakistan on Sept 18:

“1. If elected for the second term as the president, General Pervez Musharraf shall relinquish charge of the office of the chief of army staff soon after election but before taking oath of office of the president of Pakistan for the next term. 2. The nomination paper of General Musharraf should be scrutinised by the chief election commissioner/returning officer independently and in accordance with the law.”

This statement is a manifest victory for not only the lawyers representing the petitioner in this ongoing case but also for the entire legal community, which has through its relentless efforts succeeded in forcing General Musharraf to agree to doff the army uniform.

However, the general has failed to fulfill several social and political promises in this regard earlier. It remains to be seen whether General Musharraf would fulfill this promise. Because of General Musharraf’s uncivil behaviour of not only breaking earlier promises but violating his constitutional oath of office as well, it would not be out of place to expect the general not to honour this commitment.

A substantive analysis of the statement confirms the reality of this expectation. The statement is in the nature of a conditional offer rather than a permanent promise. It is dependent on the happening of an event in favour of General Musharraf, namely, his election for the “second term” as the president. As such, it would only be binding on General Musharraf on the happening of this event.

What if he is not elected as president? Will he continue to illegitimately hold the country hostage with the impending threat of declaring emergency or martial law? Taken to its logical conclusion, the statement is not a beneficial promise but rather a tacit threat by General Musharraf intended to blackmail the legislature into electing him as president.

If General Musharraf is indeed sincere about relinquishing charge of the office of the chief of army staff, there is no reason why he cannot or should not do so now. Not doing so before the election will give him undue advantage — as his army uniform is likely to influence the electoral process and provide a non-level playing field for other candidates. This would be discriminatory and against the letter and spirit of Article 25 of the Constitution, which grants equality before the law to all citizens.The second part of the statement is seemingly innocuous as well. It is not even a conditional offer or undertaking. Rather, it is merely a statement of fact that the chief election commissioner/returning officer should scrutinise the nomination paper of General Musharraf independently and in accordance with the law. This statement is valueless. The chief election commissioner is required to do that in any event.

The false bravado in submitting to the jurisdiction of the Election Commission is the inevitable result of the last minute amendment of the Election Rules made a few days ago omitting the application of the disqualification criteria to General Musharraf.

This move clearly evinces the weakness of General Musharraf’s position and the mala fide efforts on the part of his team to change the rules of the game to remove the multifarious legal obstacles that stand in the way of General Musharraf’s obstinate bid to retain his presidential status.

Besides these practical implications, the statement has no legal significance. It is a mere statement of intent and not an affidavit or undertaking that would attract legal consequences. The statement is merely intended to influence the court’s decision and to pre-empt it from requiring General Musharraf to doff the uniform prior to his presidential bid to enable him to keep his eager-to-jump-ship party members from abandoning him.

A promise to the court, even if considered valid and binding, may not be effectively enforceable under certain circumstances. Because of the general protection against legal proceedings afforded to the president under Article 248 of the Constitution, it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court will seek to enforce the promise made by General Musharraf or to charge him with contempt in case he chooses to renege on his so-called promise to the court for any reason.

The statement to the court is nothing but an abuse of the judicial process given the wizardry involved in seeking court sanction of an unconscionable offer to the legislature and given the inequality of the bargaining positions of the parties involved.

It is a blatant effort on General Musharraf’s part to pre-empt the constitutional petitions filed against him. Reliance on the general’s statement by the court would, therefore, be improper under the circumstances. The past undertaking to take off the uniform needs to be honoured before future trust can be placed on any other statement or promise made by General Musharraf.

The writer is an international lawyer based in Islamabad.

thassan@ijurist.com