Sunday, September 23, 2007

Deception has a negative fallout

Sept.23, 2007

Deception has a negative fallout

The UN has exposed that Israel has been lying to to the United States, to the European Union, to the UN itself and the rest of the world when it proclaimed that it would ease its stranglehold on the West Bank as a measure to improve the air for negotiations with the Palestinians.
It promised everyone that it would reduce the number of roadblocks in the West Bank. What it did in practice was to add more roadblocks that help strengthen its control of the movements of Palestinians within the occupied territories, according to the United Nations.
While Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made the promise to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, buoyed by a similar pledge by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, assured Abbas that Israel was to remove at least 24 roadblocks and adopt some measures to alleviate the restrictions on movement of Palestinians.
Today, according to a report in Israel's Haartez newspaper, there are 572 Israeli-controlled roadblocks in the West Bank compared with 376 in August 2005, and this has been recorded by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which also says that in the past two months alone, Israel put up 40 new roadblocks.
The UN agency did note that Israel Israel did away with 29 barricade in the Hebron region, but it put up 48 new roadblocks, mostly embankments preventing access to various roads.
Nearly 500 of the roadblocks are unmanned structures, mostly consisting of concrete cubes, earthen embankments and other barricades blocking roads and exits from villages and towns, the report notes.
The figures cited in the UN report do not include Israeli checkpoints on the "Green Line" — the frontier that the Jewish state controlled ast the time of the 1967 war when it occupied the West Bank.
The Israeli deception has serious repercussions on the ability of Abbas to muster support from the Palestinians ranks for peace talks that are expected to be given a boost at the US-proposed Middle East conference later this year. It was on the basis of the promises made by Olmert and the reassurance given by the US that Abbas had promised his people that the Israeli stranglehold on their lives would be eased soon. Now, not only that Israel did not keep its promise but it also made life more difficult for the Palestinians, many of whom have to travel through detours for hours for a trip that should normally take about 20 or 30 minutes.
Instead of shoring up Abbas and boosting his standing, Israel has actually done him harm, and the paradox is that Olmert still expects him to secure majority support from the Palestinian constituency for peace negotiations.
The UN is helpless to do anything about the situation, particularly that the US would not only reject any contemplated action against Israel for its blatant violations of UN resolutions but also offer the Jewish state an all-embracing protective umbrella against international action.
And still the world expects the US-proposed conference to produce a fair and just process to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If anytihing, Palestinian frustration and bitterness would only grow into increased militancy as a result of the Israeli failure to keep it promises.