The different fronts of the conflict that Israel keeps opened are demanding an urgent resolution without delay. Voices in the civil society claiming to the government to face the peace agreement say so.
Some other voices converge, moving half-hearted inside the complex political map in the area:
- Negotiation attempts that Jimmy Carter proposed during his recent visit in the Middle East.
- Bush Administration necessity of being able to leave with any achievement in the region facing the end of their term of office at November 2008, after so many years of unlucky management and war politics in the zone.
- Positive results in the negotiations that the Arab League has developed in Doha, favouring and bringing together to the round-table both parts positions to get a solution of the political and civil conflict in Lebanon.
There is no doubt that recent negotiations advances in the Middle East, have as principal main protagonists Syria and Iran; they have intervened somehow in Doha agreements making Lebanon possible to be governed.
It's probably also that same protagonists have intervened in prisoners exchange between Hezbollah and Israel and the truce accorded between Israel and Hamas with the mediation of Egypt Government.
Without Iran and Syria in one side, and without a rapprochement attitude by Bush Administration in the other side, facing and designing the new political map in the region, these little advances in the diverse conflicts in Middle East would have been unthinkable until a very few weeks ago.
Obviously , there is no way to justify threatens made by Israel to nuclear power plants in Iran.
-The director of the International Agency for Atomic Energy, Mohamed Baradei, has warned about the devastator effects of a possible attack in Iran. “I do not think about Iran as a current danger, serious and urgent”, he declared.
Since over five years, El Baradei has travelled to Iran many times to inspect nuclear installations in this Islamic republic, without finding yet evidences of USA and Israel accusations.
We understand the doubts and fears that Iran nuclear threatens generate in Israel population, denying their right to exist, as the Holocaust.
But diplomatic channels must be used up and geopolitical changes happened in the region must be visualized.
Israel takes a step forward to negotiations with Hamas for some reasons:
1. Olmert weakness due to the corruption accusations and the possibility to be charged and obliged to leave the government.
2. The decline of power of Israel Government in the local level as in the international one is so deep that, the utility of these bloody actions of reprisal that are of no use, is becoming more difficult.
3. The same happens to the supplies and food blockade over the Gaza Stripe, which has caused during last year and a half that its population lives like if they were in a concentration camp; if this situation continues, an unavoidable extermination will take place.
4. Due to the American pressure, through Condolezza Rice, who denounced together with the Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in Ramallah, which Israel is still building settlements and that ruins any peace agreement.
The truce between Hamas and Israel concentrated in these days, lasting six months, is a precious time for the organizations of Israelis civil society which are fighting for peace to take advantage of, in order to gain every Israeli for this cause. There is no solution for the conflict through armed actions. There is no solution with death reprisals over Palestinian population from Israeli Army, these facts have already been corroborated and expressed in some opinion polls among Israel population.
It seems that, or the Government agrees with the Army attitudes, or Israel Army can act however they want to and whenever they want to against Palestinian, because when the truce with Hamas was starting, there were incursions killing Palestinian members of the militia.
Last Olmert declarations related to the truce have been conclusive: “this truce is weak and it can be short due to the diversity of independent from Hamas armed groups that operate autonomously in the Stripe and with their violence they could end the truce”.
This truce process started last Thursday, in a second or third stage, will allow the opening of Rafah´s post which is the only way of exit to abroad for Palestinian from Gaza, at the same time it is suggesting the prisoners exchange for which Israel should liberate 450 Palestinian prisoners, while Hamas would liberate the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, kidnapped two years ago.
We can not obviate that Hamas accepts the truce due to the strong military reprisals and to the blockade which Gaza Stripe is subdued to.
There is no doubt that Israel, until the present day, has pretended to ruin the peace process started in Annapolis by all means.
Its politic has always been and is still an accomplished facts one; it leads to more settlements and free building in Palestinian lands; with more blockade and brutal reprisals over Gaza; with more dead people and civil casualties and with more control posts in Palestinian lands; with over 11.000 prisoners.
If until nowadays one o f the evident strategies of Olmert was to keep on saving time, it would seem that someone inside Israel Army has realised that it is just the time factor which in hindering Israel.
Manipulations exerted by Israel Government since Annapolis peace negotiations started are multiple and have had as an objective getting Palestinian leaders to throw in the towel giving up in this impossible mission and that way, they would finally leave that process, situation that fortunately has not happened.
The Israeli negotiation strategy consists in saying that that they are negotiating but, at the same time, they are not granting almost none of the petitions form the other side. At the same time, they are creating accomplished facts like housings and settlements in the occupied territories and they want this strategy to be validated or denied by Palestinian and the International Community.
In case that Palestinian Direction does not accept this negotiation strategy, they are automatically accused of being the ones that do not want the peace and the solution of two States .
However, both States until the present day are still rising that negotiations since Annapolis do not seem viable, due to the stagnancy and agony of the process.
It does not look viable because Israel is still behaving at every level as the colonist, without any gesture as one goes along that shows something different; Israel is still building the wall of shame inside Palestinian lands, which objective is setting the future frontiers. Israel keeps on thinking that the future Palestinian State will have to be formed by Bantustanes, isolated from the others and from the external world in Cisjordania, and Gaza will keep on having the treat of an enclave apart, not linked to the global negotiation.
The other sensible topic, and which deserves historical reparation to make possible the conflict resolution, is the Palestinian refugee’s subject, which represents an ethical and justice debt to be settled by Israel and the International Community.
Without specifying these topics, Annapolis is fatally wounded.
Israel has launched with Syria another political front of negotiation.
Last Tuesday, 17th of Jun, the prestigious British newspaper The Times, related the possible historical meeting which will take place next 13th of July in Paris for the first time between the leaders of Israel and Syria, due to the Euro-Mediterranean summit. This negotiator rapprochement comes from the intense part that Turkish Government has played.
In declarations to the British newspaper, Israeli sources said that it would be a very tempting offer that both leaders would bump into at the corridors during the summit, but everything would depend on what happened until Paris.
Israel Government could arrive at Paris in better conditions to negotiate with Syria having negotiated with Hamas and with Egypt mediation, the truce that came into force last 19th of June.
From this Platform we will always support any peace initiative which ends the violence, and focus negotiations and opens the dialogue between both parts. This rareness of good news in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for its credibility will have to count on the endorsement of a Resolution from the United Nations.
We must not start shouting about the different negotiator attempts from Israel, at every active front. We insist that all of them must be intensified to make peace something possible and lasting in the region; with Hamas, Abbas Government, and Syria and with Lebanon too, taking concrete steps for that.
Israeli popula tion waits for some gesture from their governors, and there is no doubt that Israel is continuing this truce with Hamas as a necessary demonstration of that there are good things in their politics. This is a necessary condition but not enough.
Annapolis seems to be agonizing. Until today there has not been any official declaration to show any kind of advance. The continuous snubs from Israeli Government continue, as the construction of new settlements in Palestinian lan d or with the unstoppable advance of the wall of shame.
The truce is not generalized, it is only for Gaza and not for Cisjordania, check points have not still been lifted, there has not been a meaningful liberation of Palestinian prisoners and hardly will we arrive at the end of Bush term of office with a situation different to the present one.
At the present, the 45% of Palestinian population supports Hamas, the discredit of the PNA for its paper in negotiations with Israel, and the proximity of Palestinian elections in 2009, together with the need that some Palestinian organizations propose about the Palestinian unity, bring hope to any kind of posterior negotiation under the signal of unity and with the massive support of its citizens.
The lack of cohesion of a joint foreign policy in the EU to face the conflict is an answer to the neoconservative triumph of pragmatism in front of the values of freedom and human rights which were the standard of the creators who dreamt with the European common project.
It is not true that we are at the end of ideologies, precisely in Europe, where Social- Democracy and welfare society and were born.
The EU has recently approved a legal normative about immigration and labour from the XIX Century; that is their dominant ideology nowadays. In this Neoconservative context, the approval of Lisbon Treaty will be hard to get with a denial from Ireland and a possible refusal from the Check Republic.
The designation of a Foreign Relations minister of that community seemed unlikely, which does not favour a unanimous attitude of its members to face the different problems to tackle the different problems foreign relations.
At present, obstacles for a common policy at the EU to face the conflict come from the attitude of a no-declared pro-Israeli front, counting on France, Germany, UK, Holland, Belgium and Italy; who, following the lines of American Administration, maintain a partial and unconditional attitude, which causes that any political initiative different to what they say is not considered.
From Madrid Platform we ratify the petitions that we have repeatedly exposed in our habitual chronicles, and we believe that the only possible way is them to act immediately, without more delays, every NGOs, mass media, intellectuals, etc. from both parts Palestinian and Israeli and European civil society too; they all must pressure their respective governments so that a commitment could be materialized and not broken at the first non-fulfilment or slip.
Peace is possible but it will not be if it only lies in governments.
