MI assessment: Mideast peace summit likely to fail

The Israeli Military Intelligence are already briefing people that the forthcoming regional peace summit scheduled for late November in Annapolis, Maryland, is bound to fail.

According to the MI's assessment, the Palestinians would like to make immediate gains at the summit, but in return will postpone or fail to carry out their commitments, primarily countering terrorist activities.

In its assessment, MI is also pessimistic about the ability of the Palestinian security forces to assume security control over the West Bank cities.

Political and defense sources who saw the MI assessment told Haaretz Wednesday that according to the intelligence analysts, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will not be able to assert his control over the West Bank cities if security responsibility is passed on to his forces.

At the moment the IDF operates in Palestinian cities supposedly countering terrorism with Palestinian forces doing police duties.

In its report, MI also expressed concerns about the pressure the PA is applying on the United States to push Israel for more gestures of goodwill prior to the summit.

Among the requests Abbas' aides presented to U.S. officials is the release of more prisoners, the removal of road blocks, permission for the militants exiled following the Church of the Nativity siege in 2002 to return, the release of more Palestinian tax funds, and the reopening of Palestinians institutions in East Jerusalem - closed at the start of the Second Intifada in late 2000.

MI warns against "a bottomless barrel" of Israeli goodwill gestures, for which the PA will not respond in kind. According to the intelligence assessment, Abbas and his aides are not showing any signs of initiative and boldness in security matters, nor any practical ability to assume additional responsibility, even though Hamas continually challenges them.

So the Israeli MI are preparing the long litany of why peace is impossible and, once again, saying that the Palestinians can't be trusted to root out "terrorists"; i.e., people who oppose the illegal occupation.

Now, of course, the Israelis are ignoring the Geneva Declaration on Terrorism when they glibly refer to Palestinians who oppose the occupation as "terrorists".

The Declaration states:

As repeatedly recognized by the United Nations General Assembly, peoples who are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination have the right to use force to accomplish their objectives within the framework of international humanitarian law. Such lawful uses of force must not be confused with acts of international terrorism. Thus, it would be legally impermissible to treat members of national liberation movements in the Caribbean Basin, Central America, Namibia, Northern Ireland, the Pacific Islands, Palestine, and South Africa, among others, as if they were common criminals. Rather, national liberation fighters should be treated as combatants subject to the laws and customs of warfare and to the international laws of humanitarian armed conflict as evidenced, for example, by the 1907 Hague Regulations, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and their Additional Protocol I of 1977. Hence, national liberation fighters would be held to the same standards of belligerent conduct that are applicable to soldiers fighting in an international armed conflict.

I can understand the Israelis concern that attacks on their soil might continue even after a peace deal was reached, but the simple truth is that this is a bridge that should be crossed after peace is agreed. It is putting the cart before the horse to argue that the possibility of such attacks rules out any chance of agreeing an end to occupation, especially when the occupation itself, under international law, gives a legitimacy to the persons opposing alien occupation.

Should attacks continue after the occupation has ended then the persons committing the attacks would have no legitimacy under international law and would become common criminals and deserve to be treated as such.

However, the MI are playing a long and familiar tune here in which we are all expected to pretend that the violence exists in a vacuum and is completely unrelated to the illegal occupation.

The simple truth is that I can't guarantee, and neither can the Israelis or the Palestinians, that violence will end should the Israelis finally end their illegal occupation and allow the Palestinians a viable, contiguous, state. But we can all guarantee that as long as the occupation continues, so will the violence.

And yet the Israelis have been treated - especially by American commentators - as if their demands are the height of good sense and reason when they say the violence must end before they can consider ending their occupation.

Such demands are often made by occupiers to justify their remaining in place and the world has always scoffed at such notions. The world scoffed when Britain demanded that opposition to her rule end before she could consider withdrawal from India. And when South Africa demanded an end to violence in the townships before they could consider ending Apartheid, there were calls for sanctions to be intensified.

The truth is that the occupier will always find reasons for why the occupation must continue. The difference here is that Israeli fears might well be valid. But the truth is that, until she ends the occupation, none of us will ever know.

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Tags: Israel, Palestine, Annapolis Peace talks, MI Assessment, Israeli Military Intelligence