The Israelis are proven masters of timing. They demonstrated this again yesterday when a further 26 Palestinians were released from their jails as part of the US-brokered peace process. Even as there was rejoicing in the West Bank and Gaza when the prisoners were reunited with their families, the Israeli government announced that there would be a further 1,500 new homes built in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's spin doctors have used an interesting tactic on this occasion. In recent days, the Israeli press and media have focused on the anger of the relatives of the Israelis who were the supposed victims of the Palestinians to be released. This type of coverage has been noticeably greater and more detailed than when the first batch of Palestinian detainees was released two months ago. Some might suspect that journalists were encouraged to concentrate on the story and that perhaps some of the relatives were encouraged to protest. The upshot of the apparent anger is that the Netanyahu government has said that it has felt itself obliged to authorize the 1,500 new homes as the only way of appeasing radical forces. This is a neat trick. In the past, Netanyahu has not shied away from spitting in the face of world opinion and authorizing the construction of illegal settlements without any excuse whatsoever. Yet here is Israel, supposedly involved in serious peace negotiations with the Palestinians, a key part of which is the issue of illegal settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, actually pressing on with further settlement expansion in defiance of international law, the wishes of the Palestinian negotiators and apparently also of the Obama White House. At the very moment when Palestinians are welcoming home another handful of their prisoners, who may or may not have been responsible for crimes for which they were convicted, here is Netanyahu committing a very clear and obvious crime against international law and the decrees of the United Nations. Tragically, what has happened demonstrates the subtext of despair that has underpinned every second that Palestinians have ever spent “negotiating” with the Israelis. Successive Israeli governments have never been interested in a settlement. Their core plan has always been the seizure of all of Palestine, the pauperization of its former owners and the ejection of all Arabs, even those holding Israeli citizenship, from the land of Eretz (Greater) Israel. For all their apparent readiness to talk, every Israeli government has been pursuing, to a greater or lesser degree, this Zionist ambition. Nothing has changed with the new talks. The same old duplicitous dance is being done, with the exception that Netanyahu has thrown in this interesting new step - that by acceding to Palestinian demands made within the peace talks for the release of prisoners, he has been forced to take action to placate “extremists” angry at the move. Thus he has signed off on another 1,500 new illegal settlements, the existence of which is arguably the most critical issue in the peace talks. If this were not the continuation of six decades of bloodshed, misery and humiliation for the people of Palestine, it would be a laughable stunt, made the funnier by the absurdity that the Obama administration is pretending to believe that its Israeli friends are sincere in their expressed desire for a genuine and just settlement.
