Middle East Inside Line: "Warm" Turkish-Israeli Relations; Latest on Israel-Palestine Talks

Ankara's "Friendly Face" to Israel: Weeks after reports alleging that Ankara had been threatened by the US with a cut-off of military transfers unless ties with West Jerusalem improved, senior Turkish officials currently visiting Washington announced their commitment to preserving warm relations with Israel.

The Latest from Israel-Palestine-Washington: Haaretz reports that the Palestinian Authority submitted a paper, prepared by Israeli jurists, saying that --- contrary to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim --- Israel has the authority to freeze construction on private land. The PA demanded that the Obama Administration press for an extension of the freeze to East Jerusalem fr.

However, Haaretz reports,  from sources "close to the Obama Administration", that Washington will be urge Palestinians to soften their stance on Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor's proposal offering the continuation of construction in large settlement blocs but not in isolated settlements. In response to this "concession", land from Area C, which is both governed and controlled by Israel, will be transferred to Area B which is controlled by Israelis but governed by Palestinians.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who has proposed the continuation of settlement constructions in parallel with the "natural growth rate", stated on Wednesday that the de facto freeze in East Jerusalem cannot continue after 26 September:

Presently there are 1,000 housing units on the table in Ramot, another 600 housing units in neighborhoods like Gilo, east Talpiot, Har Homa and Pisgat Ze’ev. What, does someone expect that we will continue to freeze 1,600 housing units that went through all the [bureaucratic] procedures?

Pressure on Netanyahu Inside Israel: Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, Kadima Chairwoman Tzipi Livni accused Netanyahu of not being able to prevent the discrediting and delegitimising of Israel at the international level. She welcomed Netanyahu's decision to enter direct talks but warned him: "I hope the prime minister won't enter the talks as a favor to the Palestinians, or to the US, but rather that he will understand that this is in our best interest."

Ministers from the Labor Party are reportedly applying pressure on party chairman Ehud Barak to leave the coalition if Netanyahu turns toward the extreme right and clashes with Obama next month.

Israel-Palestine Analysis: What is Washington's Strategy on Settlements and Talks?

On Monday, reminded about the statement by Palestinian representatives that they would walk away if the settlement freeze was not extended in the West Bank, U.S. State Department Spokesman P. J. Crowley said:

Well, first of all, we look forward to the first meeting next week with Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Abbas, and Secretary Clinton here on September 2^nd as well as the individual meetings and dinner that President Obama will host at the White House on September 1^st. We look forward to getting into the direct negotiation and then we believe that once that negotiation starts, it’ll be incumbent upon both the Israelis and Palestinians to avoid steps that can complicate that negotiation.

Middle East Inside Line: Hezbollah’s “Evidence” on Hariri Assassination; A Nuclear Reactor in Lebanon?
Palestine-Israel Analysis: Ramallah’s “One Month Trial” and Netanyahu’s “Security Card”

Then, asked whether Washington was worried that the Israelis had not committed to extend that moratorium, Crowley implicitly revealed the Obama Administration's expectations:

No. As we’ve been saying throughout this process, our focus has been to get the parties into direct negotiations and once in the direct negotiations, then these very issues will be tabled and resolved.

On Tuesday, Crowley was asked whether the US had reached an understanding with Israelis that there would be no announcement that the settlement freeze would continue but some construction, possibly in large settlement blocks, would continue. Crowley did not deny but reiterated Washington's classic statement: "Well, we look forward to the meetings next week."

In contrast, a senior administration official briefing reporters in Jerusalem said that the US position had not changed,and that Washington “doesn’t accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements”. The official also said there were no “clandestine” understandings with either side.

On Wednesday, two US officials --- Daniel Shapiro, a top National Security Council staffer handling Israel and neighbouring countries, and David Hale, deputy to special Mideast envoy George Mitchell --- are going to the region to talk separatelywith Palestinians and Israelis.

Washington's message is clear to both sides: No provocative actions until 2 September and the start of the directly. The second strategy is to urge the Israeli government for a partial, if not a full, settlement freeze in the West Bank. Still, the question remains: beyond the refugee and status of East Jerusalem issues, how is the US going to persuade Ramallah to accept a peace plan likely to be linked to Israel's "sensitive" security concerns, even if it is based on 1967-War borders(even not mentioning the refugee and the status of East Jerusalem problems)?

Middle East Inside Line: Hezbollah's "Evidence" on Hariri Assassination; A Nuclear Reactor in Lebanon?

Hezbollah's "Evidence": Two weeks ago, Hezbollah's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah accused Israel of being behind the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He claimed aerial surveillance tapes showed Israeli intelligence had been tracking Hariri's movements before his death in a truck bomb explosion.

On Tuesday, UN-appointed prosecutor Daniel Bellemar, said that the "evidence", six DVDs that Nasrallah had already submitted, was "incomplete". "This can properly be done only if it is based on a complete record," Bellemare said.

Nuclear Reactor in Lebanon?: Referring to the country's electricity crisis, Nasrallah urged the Lebanese government on Tuesday to draw conclusions from current problems: Beirut should follow in Tehran's footsteps and build a nuclear reactor to Iran's Bushehr plant. Nasrallah added:

The cost of building the Bushehr reactor was less than Lebanon's investment in the electricity network. I call on the government to build a nuclear reactor to generate electricity, and then we can also sell energy to Syria, Cyprus, and other countries in the region.

On the same day, a clash between supporters of the Shi’ite Hizbullah and a Sunni conservative group killed at least three and wounded several others. It was reported that Muhammad Fawaz, the local Hizbullah commander in Bourj Abu Haidar, was slain along with his subordinate Ali Jouaz.

Palestine-Israel Analysis: Ramallah's "One Month Trial" and Netanyahu's "Security Card"

After half the members of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization failed to attend the discussion over direct talks with Israel, the Palestinian Ma'an News Agency reported that Hamas cancelled Saturday's reconciliation meeting with Fatah.

According to the London-based Arab language daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has re-labeled the talks as a two-stage process: a one-month trial period to see if Israel's Netanyahu Government will extend the freeze on West Bank settlements and then direct talks focusing on core issues.

Israel-Palestine: Forget the Hype, Talks Are Going Nowhere (Walt)

For that second stage of the talks, Abbas suggested that the Quartet --- in which Russia, European Union, and United Nations sit with the US --- can press Washington to get Israel to reveal its hand, behind closed doors, on the borders of a future Palestinian state. In a letter, Abbas urged the Quartet members to abide by resolutions of the UN pertaining to the Israeli-Arab conflict, the principles of the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, the 2002 road map and the 2002-2007 Arab Peace Initiative.

Azzam al-Ahmed, a senior Fatah official who also serves as an adviser to Abbas, expressed dismay over Washington’s failure to invite representatives of all the Quartet members to the launch of direct talks in Washington early next month.

On the Israeli front, Prime Minister Netanyahu is preparing to use his best card, "security issues", as soon as the talks commence. Over the weekend, Netanyahu said he plans to focus on security arrangements before addressing final borders. (That means "drawing final borders across security arrangements". If Israeli forces are deployed in the Jordan Valley and most of the 500.000 Israeli settlers are kept as a buffer force for the Israeli state from missiles, then the lines have more or less been drawn.)

Netanyahu increased the pressure by depicting a "real partner on the Palestinian side, sincere and serious in negotiations, negotiations which will require both sides to take necessary measures, not only the Israeli side but also the Palestinian side”. Then it would be possible to “shortly reach a historic peace agreement between the two peoples.”

In response to Ramallah's "one-month trial" for the extension of a settlement freeze, Netanyahu will use his "security" card in order to get the maximum concessions at the beginning of negotiations. That is a wise strategy: if the concessions are not made, then West Jerusalem can blame Ramallah for not living up to its agreement to negotiate. However, that in turn also points to the difficulty of getting Israel to move beyond the initial phase of talks.

Who might be responsible for that position? What about a country whose administration once supported Palestinians pre-conditions --- including the settlement freeze and ending the occupation in East Jerusalem --- yet, with urgent phone calls to Ramallah, has insisted on no pre-conditions and definitely no reference to Israel's weapons programmes, including its nuclear capability? Any guess who that might be?

Israel-Palestine: Forget the Hype, Talks Are Going Nowhere (Walt)

Stephen Walt analyses for Foreign Policy:

If you think the announcement that the Israelis and Palestinians are going to resume "direct talks" is a significant breakthrough, you haven't been paying attention for the past two decades (at least). I wish I could be more optimistic about this latest development, but I see little evidence that a meaningful deal is in the offing.

Why do I say this? Three reasons.

Israel-Palestine-Gaza Latest: Not So Fast With Those Talks?; Lebanese Aid Ship Delayed

1. There is no sign that the Palestinians are willing to accept less than a viable, territorially contiguous state in the West Bank (and eventually, Gaza), including a capital in East Jerusalem and some sort of political formula (i.e., fig-leaf) on the refugee issue. By the way, this outcome supposedly what the Clinton and Bush adminstrations favored, and what Obama supposedly supports as well.

2. There is no sign that Israel's government is willing to accept anything more than a symbolic Palestinian "state" consisting of a set of disconnected Bantustans, with Israel in full control of the borders, air space, water supplies, electromagnetic spectrum. etc. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that this is what he means by a "two-state solution," and he has repeatedly declared that Israel intends to keep all of Jerusalem and maybe a long-term military presence in the Jordan River valley. There are now roughly 500,000 Israeli Jews living outside the 1967 borders, and it is hard to imagine any Israeli government evacuating a significant fraction of them. Even if Netanyahu wanted to be more forthcoming, his coalition wouldn't let him make any meaningful concessions. And while the talks drag on, the illegal settlements will continue to expand.

3. There is no sign that the U.S. government is willing to put meaningful pressure on Israel. We're clearly willing to twist Mahmoud Abbas' arm to the breaking point (which is why he's agreed to talks, even as Israel continues to nibble away at the territory of the future Palestinian state), but Obama and his Middle East team have long since abandoned any pretense of bringing even modest pressure to bear on Netanyahu. Absent that, why should anyone expect Bibi to change his position?

So don't fall for the hype that this announcement constitutes some sort of meaningful advance in the "peace process"....

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