Depending on what you read, the moratorium on new settlement construction in the West Bank either ended yesterday or ends this Thursday, at the end of the month (I think the issue is the Israeli calendar, and while “the end of the month” is technically true, it’s the end of their month, which was yesterday). What is undeniable is that this completion has major implications for the nascent Israeli-Palestinian peace talks:
Israel let a moratorium on new building in settlements expire on Monday but Palestinians held back from carrying out a threat to quit peace talks, giving the United States more time to try to save the negotiations.
There appeared to be at least a one-week window for U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert what would be a major embarrassment for President Barack Obama — the collapse of a peace process launched at the White House just four weeks ago.
Earth-moving equipment began work in at least two settlements in the occupied West Bank but there was little sign, during a week-long Jewish holiday, of any widescale resumption of construction.
It’s important to understand that settlements continued to be built even during the “freeze” on settlement construction. Permits that went through the pipeline already were allowed to finish, and as a result only a slight reduction of construction occurred over the past 10 months. Failure to reinstate the moratorium now will mean that settlements never stopped growing, as the new permits will slide into the pipeline now.
As mentioned above, Mahmoud Abbas has delayed for a week any decision on breaking off the talks as a result of this inaction. He previously said that a return to settlement construction would signal an unwillingness to pursue peace. But I imagine the US is trying to apply lots of pressure to Abbas to keep the talks going, even though their pressure on Netanyahu failed to get a deal on extending the settlement freeze.
The jubilation in the settlements at the end of the moratorium just doesn’t bode well for the peace process, to state the obvious. The only good news comes at the end of an article about Abbas:
Any negotiations would be complicated by the rival Palestinian governments in the West Bank, which Abbas controls, and in the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Islamic Hamas militants who overran the territory in June 2007.
On Monday, Hamas’ top leader, Khaled Mashaal, said from his base in Syria that only minor issued remained for a full reconciliation with Abbas’ Fatah movement. Mashaal did not elaborate, saying only that the two groups have taken “serious and real steps” toward reconciliation and would meet in early October in Cairo.
There was no immediate comment from Fatah.
Perhaps the Palestinian movements are uniting. But in Israeli there remains a divide between the forces of peace and the forces of belligerence.
