Briefing Paper - Mar 2010

The March/April 2010 addition of Foreign Affairs¹ features an article entitled 'Armistice Now' written by the Lafer International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Middle East Commentator for Channel 2 News in Israel, Ehud Yari. The article's central paradigm asserts that Israel needs to urgently reach a provisional agreement with the Palestinian Authority and establish a Palestinian state within temporary armistice boundaries if it is to salvage the prospect of an increasingly less viable two-state solution. It further argues that the best solution for both parties would be to put aside discussions of final-status or comprehensive peace deals and seek a less ambitious agreement rather than pursue the 'daring shortcuts' and 'giant steps' that have been attempted to date.

Following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Palestinians did not exert military control over their territory and as such were not party to an armistice agreement with Israel. However, as Palestinians now have a semblance of control over certain portions of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, it is proposed that they now enter into such an arrangement along the lines of other Arab-Israeli armistice agreements of 1949. These agreements, proceeding from a UN Security Council resolution, included the drawing of armistice lines as borders and included further provisions such as prisoner exchanges and in some instances, territorial swaps. They also included the stipulation that "no provision of the agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims and position of either party in the ultimate peaceful settlement." Not only did they fail to achieve a lasting peace, but a formal peace treaty with Syria is yet to be secured some 60 years later.

Briefing Paper - Feb 2010

Key Points

• Israel's continued threats and belligerence toward its neighbouring states could plunge the region into all-out war. Given the current regional dynamics, it would be most prudent for Israel to come to a comprehensive peace agreement with the strategically placed Syria in order to avoid further escalation.
  
  
• Israel's political leadership and its defence establishment are deeply divided over the proposed methods of securing this peace with Syria. While senior members in the military believe it can be achieved through a deal to include the return of Syria's Golan Heights and thereby remove it from its current alliance with Iran and Hezbollah, others are of the opinion that force should be used to break the alliance.
  
  
• Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, would like a peace deal with Syria but does not want to return the Golan Heights. The alternative appears to be a very risky war on three fronts; Lebanon, Syria and Iran.
  
  
• Syria is prepared to go to the negotiating table with Israel providing it accedes to its demand for the return of its land. It is equally prepared to go to war.

Civil Society in the West Bank: between the rock of occupation and the stone of the Palestinian Authority
Briefing Paper - Jan 2010
Introduction
Palestinian civil society in the Occupied West Bank today faces one of its most daunting challenges in decades. Saddled with a military occupation Palestinians must also contend with an authority that impoverishes them while enriching itself. Media reports abound of widespread financial corruption at the heart of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA) while ordinary Palestinians are routinely denied of basic services and rights. Acting in the name of bringing order and security to the territory, the PA has closed scores of charities and dismissed thousands of public servants because of their real or perceived political affiliations. Although the unfortunate ordinary Palestinian people are the immediate victims, according to Professor Norman Finkelstein there is a much broader Western message behind these acts, which is to "teach Third World people what democracy means, and that means you elect people who we like, or you pay a price. And so the Gazans have to pay the price of electing the 'wrong' people into power". That price is also being paid by the people of the West Bank deemed to belong to the "wrong" party.

The prisoners’ exchange; what price?
Briefing Paper - Dec 2009
After last month’s astonishing speculation about a breakthrough in the prisoner exchange negotiations between the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza and Israel, it is now clear that the swap deal brokered by Germany has run into a brick wall.

This high stake diplomatic poker match was expected to result in the release of the French citizen and Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.