The recently released video clip of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit reinvigorated rallies in support of a prisoner exchange and placed a major dilemma on the shoulders of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Instead of maintaining a refusal to trade over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for Shalit, Netanyahu faces renewed pressure to agree to an exchange because the video clearly shows Shalit alive and rehumanizes the abducted soldier who was previously viewed by many as a political prop.

Proponents of a prisoner exchange launched a new public relations campaign with the slogan “Bibi- you can do it, finish the job.” Many Israelis who previously opposed a prisoner swap on security grounds, now sympathize more with the soldier and his family. Previous hard-liners now see Shalit as a son of their country, a young man who simply wants to be with his family.

Hamas likely knew that releasing the tape to Israel would result in significant renewed interest from the population. Stalled negotiations led to multiple false “breakthroughs” and the citizens of Israel, who had not obtained signs of life from Shalit in years, remained jaded over the lack of progress. Now, Hamas officials publicly stated that they expect a final deal on Shalit within the coming weeks or, at most, the next few months. Meanwhile, Noam Shalit, the soldiers father, expressed a fear that the process would still drag on for years.

The reinvigoration of the pro-prisoner swap camp placed additional pressure on the Prime Minister’s Office to forge a deal with the terror group and bring Israel’s son home.

However, Netanyahu actually faces the same dilemma as he did last week. Does he exchange terrorists, with blood on their hands, for one Israeli soldier? Would agreeing to some of Hamas’ demands result in the abduction of additional soldiers by terror groups and therefore give Hamas dozens of Shalits? Does a prisoner swap set a precedent? The only difference between this week and last week is that the Israeli public now knows Shalit is alive and there may be more support for a prisoner exchange now than there ever has been.

Photo from Ynet.

The first exchange is complete. Israel swapped 19 female prisoners for a one-minute video of abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. The video, shot recently with Shalit holding the September 14 2009 issue of a Palestinian newspaper, shows Shalit in decent health and assuages concerns that the soldier died long ago.

Many analysts and officials contend that this preliminary exchange represents the first step in possibly securing the release of Shalit. Hamas has demanded the release of upwards of 1,000 Palestinian terrorists, a request that Israel repeatedly refused. However, the agreement for the tape’s release and ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas in Cairo could result in a subsequent compromise that includes Shalit returning to his family. See the video here or here or here .

The video clearly brings at least some happiness to the Israeli public, knowing that Shalit is in decent health and not in a body bag. However, the calculus of exchanging hundreds of terrorists for one soldier has not changed. Israeli officials contend that exchanging more than 1,000 prisoners for Shalit would simply place too big a risk on the State’s security. Many proponents of Shalit’s release advocate that Israel should give up almost anything in exchange for the soldier.

U.S. officials attempted to spin the tripartite meeting yesterday between President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas as a success that managed to re-infuse urgency into a stalled peace process. Moreover, direct negotiations with no preconditions between Israeli and Palestinian officials may formally resume within the next couple of months.

Under this context, the trilateral meeting seems like a significant breakthrough that could lead to a lasting peace between Israel and a sovereign Palestinian state. However, the peace process could dissolve into another Oslo -at worst Annapolis-  or cease to even begin if Obama’s diplomatic tactics are dismissed by his Middle Eastern counterparts.

The U.S. President pinned his reputation and his clout on securing the three-way summit during the United Nations General Assembly. As both Palestinian and Israeli officials expressed a reluctance for face-to-face discussions with one another, Obama dispatched Ambassador George Mitchell to the region for a week-long session of shuttle diplomacy. Mitchell succeeded in luring Netanyahu and Abbas to the meeting, but not until both leaders grumbled about it to both domestic and foreign press.

Many analysts contend that both Netanyahu and particularly Abbas only agreed to attend the summit to prevent embarrassing Obama by rejecting him. Abbas repeatedly expressed his refusal to meet with Netanyahu until a full settlement freeze, a position he clearly retracted, or at  least had to amend, by meeting with the Israeli leader. The likely domestic fallout that Abbas will encounter potentially weakened his already low stature with the Palestinian people.

Israeli officials claim victory for attending the summit, with far-left Israeli politician Yossi Beilin dismissing the meeting as a “pathetic” attempt at restoring the peace process. Beilin previously served as the chairman of the left-wing Meretz party and is largely considered a “co-architect” of the Oslo Accords.

From observations of Obama’s perspective, the meeting likely increased U.S. officials’ frustrations with the peace process and may not have accomplished anything. The meeting was largely cast as “business like” as opposed to friendly, with some media accounts describing the atmosphere as “cold,” leaving the peace process in a “deadlock” and “deep stalemate.” Some news reports even described Obama as “impatient,” “grumpy,” and “fed up” following yesterday’s meetings likely due to no apparent breakthroughs in the process. Obama generally attempts to use his charisma and penetrating personality to obtain concessions from both political allies and opponents, a strategy that seemed to fall short of his expectations with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

By calling the summit, Obama used up some of his clout and any future concessions to Obama by Israeli and Palestinian officials, but particularly Abbas, would require significantly more accomplished than yesterday’s meeting.

Moreover, the Obama Administration’s position on an unconditional settlement freeze, including East Jerusalem, has yet to come into fruition. Even tentative indications of an Israeli halt to settlements would only be temporary and exclude East Jerusalem, a compromise favoring the Israeli position far more than Obama’s stance. Similarly, Netanyahu even attacked the U.S. insistence of a settlement freeze as “costing us a great deal of time” as Obama called for urgency in the overall process. Instead, it seems that Obama will dial down his rhetoric on settlements to focus on other issues in the peace process in order to attain minor victories in Middle East diplomacy.

That said, the true fruit from yesterday’s meetings will only be seen in the months to come as either the parties resume negotiations, the situation remains the same, or an all-out war commences. While heralded as an opportunity to restart the peace process, yesterday’s meeting may have cost Obama more than he would have liked.

Along with Obama, Netanyahu, and Abbas, other officials attended the tripartite meeting, including:

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
• National Security Advisor General James Jones
• Ambassador George Mitchell
• Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
• Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
• Israeli National Security Advisor Uzi Arad
• Palestinian Advisor and PLO Executive Committee Member Yasser Abed Rabbo
• Long-time Palestinian Negotiator Saeb Erekat
• Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki

Photo taken from the New York Times.

Even though Palestinian and Israeli officials announced their refusal to meet at this week’s United Nations General Assembly, the obstinate statesmen reluctantly agreed to tripartite talks between President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Special Envoy George Mitchell spent all of last week in negotiations in the Middle East to secure the meeting, considered an early success for Obama. Originally, Abbas declared that he would not meet with any Israeli officials until there is a complete settlement freeze in the West Bank. Netanyahu continues to refuse to freeze settlements, although a temporary freeze agreement is likely in the works.

Separate meetings between Obama and each of the two other leaders will precede the three way discussion. While officials do not expect the brief meeting to result in the resumption of the peace process, the encounter represents a breakthrough that could soften the ground for additional negotiations.

Both the Palestinians and Israelis agreed to the meeting in order to avoid being blamed for refusing to even begin some sort of reconciliation. Further, any refusal to meet would result in a diplomatic blow to Obama, who has called for the meeting.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials took a hard-line approach against Israel, with Jordanian King Abdullah joining a growing chorus of Arab leaders ahead of the UN summit that urge a settlement freeze. A statement issued from Amman said:

“The two leaders [Abbas and Abdullah] believe that the world community must now take responsibilities by preventing Israel from scuttling current efforts aimed at relaunching serious and effective negotiations that can lead to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

“They warned that losing the opportunity currently available for achieving peace will jeopardize security and stability in the region.”

Happy new year and hopes for a great holiday to everyone.

Hopefully, this year will focus on peace and reconciliation, with prosperity and hope flourishing in both Palestinian and Israeli societies. Be-ezrat Hashem and Inshah Allah.

Shanah tova and Ramadan kareem.

Image taken from here.

We’ve heard mainly groans from Israeli politicians on the recently released Goldstone report on alleged Israeli human rights violations in the Gaza Strip. However, U.S. officials began chiming in with criticisms of the document. Notably, U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley attempted to deflect discussion of the report at today’s press conference onto the “underlying” reason for Israel’s strike on Gaza, which he described as the lack of a peace process. Crowley continued by expressing the concern of other U.S. officials regarding the report but he refused to elaborate. His comments include:

“Well, as to the contents of the report, we continue to review it. But I think from our standpoint, let’s remember the underlying causes of the tragedy in Gaza early this year, which was the lack of a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I think we do have concerns about the contents of the report. We are beginning to consult with countries represented in the Human Rights Council and to talk about what to do in light of the report.

But I think we should be cautious at this point that the report should not be used as a mechanism to add impediments to getting back to the peace process. It would be a sad irony if this report that is designed to protect human rights gets in the way of the process that we believe will benefit all in the region and ultimately lead to greater and deeper human rights in the Middle East. So we will continue our efforts through the UN, through the Human Rights Council, other national bodies looking forward – not backward – to try to get to a negotiation that leads to a two-state solution.”…

“We have reviewed the report. There was a one-sided unacceptable mandate for this fact-finding investigation and that mandate was set forth before we joined the Human Rights Council. Now we have a report. We’re going to take a look at it. I’m not going to talk about the substance of the report at this point. But in terms of its recommendations, we will consult with various countries and determine how to take action going forward. But again, our –”…

“I’m not going to – at this point, I’m not prepared to go into the content of the report. We continue to evaluate it. We have some concerns about it. We’re talking to countries about those concerns and about ways to work going forward within the Human Rights Council on this report.”

While troubling in some of its findings, the recently released United Nations Goldstone Report on Israel’s recent strike in the Gaza Strip represents flawed methodology and one-sided bias against Israel.

The President of the U.N. Human Rights Council provided a commission headed by Justice Richard Goldstone with a mandate to “to investigate all violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law that might have been committed at any time in the context of the military operations that were conducted in Gaza during the period from 27 December 2008 and 18 January 2009, whether before, during or after.”

Instead of adhering to this mission, the report places unrelenting emphasis on the broader conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and uses the U.N. pulpit to score political points against Israel.

The commission reserves entire sections of the report to chastise Israel for limiting free movement within the West Bank and for clamping down on West Bank demonstrations. While relevant to the overall peace process, these concerns are only peripherally pertinent to the war on the Gaza Strip and have no place in a report whose scope focused purely on the events of this January and late last December.

Unfortunately, this pattern of disregarding a commission’s mandate to unabashedly attack Israel remains a staple in the methodology and tactics of international investigations on the Israel Defense Forces. Following the Sabra and Shatila massacres during the first Lebanon War, the MacBride Commission, established to investigate war crimes during a very narrow time-frame of only a few days, expanded its scope to include the entire war in Lebanon and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians in general due to the panel’s belief that Israel attempts to “disperse the Palestinian population.” While the Israel-Palestine conflict was tangentially relevant, the MacBride Commission unilaterally expanded its mission to condemn Israel for human rights concerns well outside of the original framework of the inquiry.

Alongside the Goldstone Commission’s flawed scope, the report includes a one-sided assessment of human rights violations during the conflict. While the report comprises over a dozen chapters on inhumane acts committed by the IDF, the document only contains one chapter on the incessant rocket fire from the Gaza Strip into Israel. In 2008 alone, over 3,200 mortar shells and Qassam rockets bombarded southern Israel, a significant increase in attacks from previous years, according to GlobalSecuirty.org.

By failing to provide a proper context in the report, the Goldstone Commission clearly demonstrated its one-sided narrative of the facts.

Instead of admitting fault, the United Nations blamed Israel for the bias for failing to cooperate with the U.N. probe. However, representatives from former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s government claim that officials cooperated with the first U.N. envoy to the region headed by former Amnesty International chief Ian Martin.

The prevalence of two investigative commissions from the United Nations within six months remains another matter of concern regarding the infused anti-Israel sentiment on the world’s leading international body.

Regardless, the findings of the Goldstone Report include some disturbing accusations regarding the events of last December and early January. Masked as a legal and impartial investigative commission, the panel obtained significant international prestige and publicity. Some of the report’s findings should raise significant concerns regarding human rights violations by all sides in one of the bloodiest conflicts on the planet today.

However, the veracity of these claims remains highly questionable due to the obvious bias by the commission that was eager to use the United Nations as a soapbox for smearing Israel as a human rights pariah.

Bitterlemons has another great series, this time about the renewal of a U.S.-brokered peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.

Two of the scholars in the series seem to differ on the need for an immediate renewal of negotiations. George Giacaman expressed urgency, calling the current proposals a “last chance,” in attempting to solve the decades-long conflict through a peace process based on a two-state solution. Giacaman said in an interview:

“I don’t think we can expect, after 18 years of negotiations, another 18 years of negotiations. The Palestinian leadership, even during the Annapolis process, insisted on going straight to final status negotiations. This is the conclusion Palestinian leaders have drawn from the Oslo process. It is no good to leave all the outstanding issues to the end and never get there. I think everyone understands that they don’t have an additional 10 or 15 years for negotiations. This is it.”

Conversely, Ghassan Khatib urged caution in pursuing a premature peace process due to the detrimental effects that failure could cause the Palestinian leadership. Moreover, unsuccessful negotiations would only fuel the jaded attitude that both Palestinians and Israelis feel towards the prospects for peace. Khatib writes:

“There is, undeniably, an urgent need to resume peace talks. But the foundation for such talks must be laid carefully. There is great danger in entering into premature talks just in order to get a process going. Another dead-end process will simply remind Palestinians of Annapolis and the public will no longer tolerate talks for the sake of talks. Such a process will only backfire and damage any renewed credibility for the Palestinian leadership.”

Former Israeli Diplomat Alon Pinkas supported the idea of Palestinian state-building from the “ground up” but rejected as unfeasible a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood, he said in an interview with Middle East Progress. Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad recently expressed the need for Palestinians to develop preliminary institutions needed for a future independent state, including a vibrant economy. Pinkas declared broad support in Israel for Fayyad’s institution building declaration but stated that any independent Palestinian state erected within the next year would fail due to the lack of transparency and stunted economic growth. Pinkas said:

“Fayyad said two things, one that Israelis found very encouraging and another that Israelis found very curious or peculiar. The encouraging thing was that Fayyad said, ‘we need to build institutions, and processes and an economy that would make a future Palestinian state viable.’ And I think that idea cuts through left and right in Israel as a good idea. Because the last thing you want is a failed Palestinian state. Right now, a Palestinian state, if established in the next six to twelve months, is almost guaranteed to be a failed state.

The less encouraging thing that he said was that, ‘we, the Palestinians, intend to unilaterally declare or proclaim independence.’ I think that was more of a political maneuver than an actual expression of intent…

I mean in the event that a Palestinian state were to be established in the immediate future, say the next six to twelve months—with Hamas still controlling Gaza, with no transparent political institutions and with a very shaky or unstable economy—then that state would fail, as is the political science definition of a failed state. That is a development that is not only adverse for the Palestinians, obviously, naturally and predictably, but a bad option for Israel. I’m not patronizing the Palestinians. I’m not suggesting that I’ll decide when they are ready for a state. This is not neo-colonialism in neither attitude nor policy. I’m just saying that there are real and clear security issues involved and Israelis are very anxious and apprehensive - given the bloody experience of the last ten years - about what happens when the Palestinians fail to govern.”