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Politics : GENEVA ACCORD -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GST who wrote (25)	12/4/2003 10:30:26 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 190

John Soileau is a civil and productive poster worth reading, i know him from an insane stock thread a few years ago, where he was one of few periodically injecting intelligence .... so i wouldn't write this thread off on account of a few no-minds, they'll probably get bored and go back to the Dubya thread .... overview piece from The Economist - ' Israeli and Palestinian moderates have signed an alternative peace plan that deals with supposedly intractable issues, such as shared sovereignty and refugees’ right of return. But their governments remain to be convinced TEN years after the Oslo peace process was launched with similar fanfare in Washington, on Monday December 1st Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met in Switzerland to seal a comprehensive peace agreement between their warring nations, known as the Geneva accord. Under it, Israel would withdraw from most of the Palestinian territories it occupied in the 1967 war. The Palestinians would accept shared sovereignty in occupied East Jerusalem and effectively give up their refugees’ right of return to their homes in what was once Palestine but is now Israel. Dignitaries and politicians from America, Europe and the Arab world applauded the historic compromise in a star-studded ceremony. The accord’s two main authors—Yossi Beilin, a former Israeli justice minister, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a former Palestinian information minister—are expected to meet Colin Powell on Friday. The American secretary of state has welcomed the “peace”. It isn’t a real peace, of course, and not simply because the hope raised by Oslo has long been washed away by the despair of the Palestinians’ armed struggle, or intifada. Neither the dozens of Palestinians nor the 200 Israelis at Geneva were there as representatives of their governments. Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), has blessed the enterprise without endorsing the outcome. Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister, denounced the accord before once again nailing his colours to the “road map”—a peace plan sponsored by the so-called Quartet (America, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations)—which collapsed in the summer. On Tuesday Mr Sharon's deputy, Ehud Olmert, went so far as to say that it would be a mistake for Mr Powell to meet the Geneva negotiators. Mr Powell rejected the advice, asking: “Why should we not listen to others who have ideas?” The Geneva peace agreement has a long way to go before it replaces the road map or topples the Palestinian or Israeli governments. But it has shaken all three. Four of the Palestinian signatories nearly bailed out from the Geneva ceremony, alarmed by the rising tide of protest the concessions on Jerusalem and refugees have caused among the Palestinian factions, including Mr Arafat’s Fatah movement. The fall-out among Israelis has been similarly pronounced. Since the Geneva Accord was first drawn up, they have been swamped with a plethora of other “peace plans”: the settlers have proposed Jewish and Arab cantons in “Judea, Samaria and Gaza” (as they call the occupied territories); the opposition Labour Party has promoted an agreement that mirrors Geneva in outline while differing with it on detail; and Mr Sharon has been forced to face down all of these proposals with an ill-defined “initiative” of his own, which he has said he would pursue if the road map goes nowhere. First, says Mr Sharon, he will seek to revive the road map by talking to the PA’s new prime minister, Ahmed Qurei. To increase the chances of such talks bearing fruit, the Israeli leader has quietly dropped his precondition that the PA’s security forces engage in “a real war” against militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mr Sharon has also hinted that he may evacuate a few Jewish settlements. However, if these efforts fail, he will replace a negotiated solution with an imposed one. The Palestinians assume this means the establishment of new borders that would leave a future Palestinian state with less than half the West Bank and perhaps not all of Gaza. This is unlikely to happen anytime soon, if only because of a revived American interest in the road map. For the first time in months, America’s envoy to the peace process, William Burns, has been in the region. In meetings over the weekend he told Mr Qurei there could be no substitute for rooting out the “terrorist infrastructure” of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He also told Mr Sharon that Israel would have to dismantle settlement outposts and freeze settlement construction in the occupied territories, as it is bound to do under the road map. Mr Sharon has said he is prepared to remove some—but not all—of the 60 outposts established during his tenure as prime minister. He has said and done nothing about a construction freeze. As for Mr Qurei, he is awaiting the outcome of talks between the various Palestinian factions meeting in Cairo this week. He wants them to agree a ceasefire so that he has something in his hand when he finally sits down with Mr Sharon. In return for a truce he will demand that Israel stop military incursions like the one that ended with three Palestinians dead and 30 arrested in Ramallah on Monday. He will also insist Israel end construction of the barrier in and around the West Bank. Mr Sharon says the barrier is vital for Israel’s security. The Palestinians say it is charting the borders of their future “provisional” and utterly unviable state. Mr Qurei is unlikely to get very far. His Israeli counterpart has made it clear he regards the Palestinian terms for a return to the road map as every bit as pie-in-the-sky as the accord signed in Geneva. “No [Palestinian] conditions will be accepted, whether they concern ceasing construction of the separation fence or dismantling it or any other demands,” Mr Sharon told his cabinet on Sunday.' economist.com