Hundreds of Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank city of Ramallah have called on the Palestinian Authority not to negotiate with Israel. They gathered Tuesday in Manara Square, chanting, “The people want to bring down Oslo," referring to the 1993 agreement that established the PA as a five-year interim administration to govern until a final treaty with the Jewish state was reached. Though largely ignored by international media, the protests drew attention to some crucial, but painful, aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. First, some 19 years after the Oslo accords were signed, the PA still remains “interim" with final-status negotiations leading to a Palestinian state remaining just a dream. The second is a nightmarish scenario. After building Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories captured in the 1976 war, Israel has irreversibly tightened its grip on the land on which a Palestinian state is to be founded. A report published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that nearly 40 percent of the West Bank is now taken up by Israeli infrastructure – roads, settlements, military bases and so on – largely off-limits to Palestinians. This report was published in 2008, and since then, Israel has only accelerated construction. And where there is no new settlement activity, Israel methodically breaks the territory into dozens of enclaves separated by each other and the outside world by zones that it alone controls, including hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks. The violence in occupied territories mainly occurs at points where Palestinians, Jewish settlers and security forces protecting the settlers meet. The UN is aware of the situation. On Friday its top human rights body appointed three officials to conduct a fact-finding mission on how settlements affect the lives of Palestinians. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded a freeze on settlements, and a recognition of the 1967 borders as a prerequisite for relaunching talks with Israel. While low level meetings have continued to take place between Palestinians and Israelis, the two sides have not held official talks since the fall of 2010. The Palestinians see Israeli actions as part of a long process of evicting them from their ancestral lands and making room for Jews to come from abroad. Israel maintains the status quo through its superior military power, its ability to control the movement of people in and out of the country, and blind US support. The futility of negotiating peace in these circumstances is obvious to any but the most politically blind. The Ramallah demonstrations show that ordinary Palestinians want Abbas to stick to his condition for reviving the peace process, which he describes as “clinically dead". US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who met Abbas on Friday said the Israeli Palestinian conflict should not be forgotten because of recent happenings in the Middle East. “In a time of upheaval across the region, we cannot lose sight of the critical importance of resolving this issue," Clinton told reporters. If the international community does not put pressure on Israel, the Ramallah demonstrations may prove to be the small beginning of a big upheaval. The US has to choose between a comprehensive Middle East settlement and the Jewish settlements in the occupied territories.
