U.S. to open line of communication with Geneva Accord brokers

WASHINGTON - The U.S. administration is to establish a channel of communication with the brokers of the Geneva Accord and will follow its progress, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed Friday during a meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian co-authors of the unofficial peace plan in Washington.

Powell told Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo that he would discuss the initiative with President George W. Bush in the near future, and the two would work out the American stance on the issue.

Speaking after their meetings with Powell, and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York, Beilin and Abed Rabbo hailed the U.S.-sponsored road map to Middle East peace as "the mother of all initiatives," saying that theirs is meant to be complementary.

The State Department defended Powell's meeting with the authors of the Geneva Accord as constructive and said the initiative did not contradict the road map.

State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli also said the meeting left the administration "more convinced than ever" of the road map's viability. He stressed that in the end, peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be decided by governments, not by some informal process.

The 40-minute meeting "was a good, constructive meeting with this private group who has drafted a private plan," Ereli said, and "the ideas discussed today were not in any way contradictory or at cross purposes with the president's vision or with the road map."

Following the meeting, an Israeli government source said "the decisions of the future of the peace process will be made by the elected government [of Israel] and not by anyone else, especially not by people who have no political constituency whatsoever in Israel."

The Israeli government has vehemently opposed the initiatives, claiming it was contrary to the road map.

Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Ohmert has called Powell's move "an incorrect step by a senior representative of the American administration."

Later Friday, Beilin and Abed Rabbo met with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Beilin said at the end of the meeting, that Annan encouraged the Geneva authors to continue working toward peace, and termed their efforts a "revolution" amid the grim relations between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ahead of the meeting, Palestinians demonstrated in the West Bank and Gaza Strip against the unofficial plan, Israel Radio reported.

In Nablus, several thousand Palestinians, mainly Hamas supporters, protested against the unofficial peace plan negotiated by Israeli leftist opposition figures and Palestinian politicians. They burned in effigy Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo - two architects of the plan - and also set fire to Israeli, U.S. and Swiss flags.

Several hundred Palestinians participated in a similar demonstration in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Nuseirat.

Bush: Geneva Accord could be 'productive' On Thursday, Bush made his first direct public comments on the Geneva Accord, giving a guarded reaction to the unofficial peace plan.

"I think it's productive as long as they [the architects of the plan] adhere to the principles I have just outlined," the president told reporters after meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah. "And that is we must fight off terror, that there must be security, and there must be the emergence of a Palestinian state that is democratic and free."

"We appreciate people discussing peace," he said. "We just want to make sure people understand that the principles to peace are clear."

Bush also mentioned U.S. contacts with Israel to ensure that settlement expansion and the West Bank separation fence do not prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

"I also talked about the need for the Israelis to keep in mind that if they support a Palestinian state, which they have told me they do, that the conditions on the ground must be such for a Palestinian state to be able to emerge - and that's why we're continuing to talk to them about the illegal settlements and illegal outposts, as well as the fence."

Bush also called on the new Palestinian leadership to commit itself to the war against terror.

Beilin said Thursday that it was a mistake for the Bush administration to continue its policy of refusing to deal with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat in the search for an end to the latest round of Middle EAst violence.

"I think that he is relevant," Beilin, referring to Arafat, said at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "At the end of the day, if we want an agreement, it won't be without him, and we have to understand that."

Concerning either the road map or the Geneva pact, Beilin said U.S. and Israeli attempts to work around Arafat are misguided.

"Boycotting him and putting pressure on those people who met with him was, I think, the wrong way to deal with the issue because it strengthened him," Beilin said.

Despite Israeli efforts to isolate Arafat, Beilin said, "He is the only one who can still give orders to his people. He became stronger than before and we still call him an irrelevant leader."

Also Thursday, former U.S. president Bill Clinton released a statement in support of the Geneva Accord and a separate peace initiative by former Shin Bet security service chief Ami Ayalon and Palestinian intellectual Sari Nusseibeh.

So, it seems it wasn't an innocent meeting after all...

The Israeli government has vehemently opposed the initiatives, claiming it was contrary to the road map.

Just sit back and do what your told, Israel. What are friends for?

Bush also mentioned U.S. contacts with Israel to ensure that settlement expansion and the West Bank separation fence do not prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

I thought terrorism, responsible for over 1300 deaths, was the main condition on the ground and more important then those "illegal settlements" which constitute 3% of the disputed territories. It seems these "settlements" are more important to the US agenda.

Here is another thing I want to throw in to the discussion, which I hope is wrong, but it is not tinfoil material. Part of me says that this administration, with the opening of this "line of communication" with these leftists who are not in the Israeli government is being done because the Bush adminstration wants them in place of Sharon and are working to give them legitimacy. The stupid thing, if true, is that they are not electable to such positions in the Israeli government, and even as heads of the Labor party.

Either way, I could care. Both the Roadmap and the Geneva Accords are based upon the Saudi initiative of moving back to suicidal 1967 lines.

The US Administration needs to read the fine print:

Title: Academic: 'Geneva' authors duped the public (("DeLay told the Times that he can see why "Yasser Arafat likes this thing.")
Source: Jerusalem Newswire
URL Source: http://www.jnewswire.com/news_archive/03/12/031205_duped.asp
Published: Dec 6, 2003
Author: staff
Post Date: 2003-12-06 01:16:50 by out damned spot
1 Comments

Academic: 'Geneva' authors duped the public Jerusalem Newswire 12/5/03

A respected left wing Israeli academic this week leveled a broadside at the authors of the rogue "Geneva Accord" for failing to furnish the Israeli public with the whole truth about their unsanctioned agreement.

Prior to the accord's highly publicized signing ceremony, those behind it used the results of two suspect surveys to "prove" growing support for the plan. Again, the pollsters told the respondents little about Geneva's terms.

And in a related development, US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said he knows why Yasser Arafat and his PA like 'Geneva' so much - it gives them everything up front while guaranteeing nothing in return for Israel, and allows them to use terrorism as a bargaining chip.

"An end to Palestinian terror is not a concession in peace talks; it is a prerequisite to them," the Washington Times quoted DeLay as saying.

We were hoodwinked

"Do [the Geneva Accord authors] have the right to brazenly lie to the public as to what [their] document does or does not contain?" asked Avineri in a December 1 opinion article in Yediot Ahronot.

Avineri is a veteran history and political science professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, and a former director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry.

He believes the first major discrepancy lies in the fact that the initiators of the plan "present themselves as independent political and intellectual figures from both sides." While the Israelis involved were just that, the Palestinian side clearly represented the "ruling establishment."

"The Palestinian initiators do not include any opposition figures - because there is no real opposition in the Palestinian Authority, except for Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who, as is known, are not partners to the initiative," penned the professor.

Avineri also pointed out that, contrary to the claims of the authors, 'Geneva' does not even once make mention of "the Jewish people."

"It is no coincidence that the word 'Jew' doesn't appear in the document. The Palestinian signators do not include anyone who believes there is a 'Jewish people.'"

Likewise, the document's signers suggested to the Israeli public that the Palestinians had waived their so-called "right of return," and that most Israeli settlers currently living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza would be allowed to remain in their homes. Avineri asserts that a close reading of 'Geneva' shows both claims to be false.

Finally, Avineri censors the authors for failing to adequately tell the public of how the implementation of Israel's obligations would be placed under the supervision of an international monitoring group, including representatives from Arab states.

"In effect, Israel will cease to be a sovereign country regarding substantive matters and will turn into a kind of international mandated territory," he notes.

"Who would by a used car from these people? Not I."

Strategic assessment

Adding to Avineri's observations, Major-General (res.) Ya'akov Amidror formulated a strategic assessment of 'Geneva' for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which was published Thursday.

In addition to its presumptuous relinquishing of territory and sites seen by most Israelis as "red lines," Amidror noted that the accord leaves Israel "with no safety net in the event that the agreement is violated by the Palestinian side."

Among other positions, Amidror is the former head of the IDF's research and assessment division, with special responsibility for preparing the National Intelligence Assessment.

Arafat's kind of deal

In rare opposition to his boss, leading Republican Tom DeLay Thursday slammed 'Geneva' as "dangerous" and "counterproductive," according to the Washington Times.

Several hours earlier President George W. Bush had labeled the plan "productive" and publicly backed Secretary of State Colin Powell's planned meeting with its authors.

DeLay told the Times that he can see why "Yasser Arafat likes this thing."

The Geneva Accord called for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state without the dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure, and demanded no enforceable guarantees that the Palestinians would not again turn to belligerence.

The Congressman attacked the traditional "moral equivalence between Palestinian terrorism and Israeli self-defense" upon which the document was largely predicated, and insisted that "until the violence stops, Israel must defend herself as she sees fit."

"The sooner all nations acknowledge this fundamental reality, the sooner peace will be possible in the Middle East."

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