This site monitors and documents Israel's progress in complying with its commitments made at the Annapolis Conference in late November 2007. In particular, it aims to expose Israel’s chronic attempts at obstructing the peace process.
For all the excitement surrounding Annapolis – consisting of a media straining to keep a positive attitude – it was not a clean slate. In 2007, Israel demolished 970 inhabited Palestinian homes, further inflating a refugee population extant in Palestine for over 60 years now. Palestinian children killed at the hands of Israeli settlers or the IDF in 2007 totaled 93, bringing the sum of child deaths since September 2000 to 944.1 The blockade of Gaza – initiated last June when Hamas took control of the Strip – continues, resulting in massive unemployment and food and electricity shortages which have left 40% of Gazans without access to running water.2
Although Prime Minister Ariel Sharon committed to President Bush’s Road Map to Peace, as has his successor Ehud Olmert, the Israeli government has conspicuously failed to realize the demands of Phase One, which calls for an end to the seizure of Palestinian land, settlement expansion, house demolitions, and the destruction of Palestinian infrastructure. All of these have persisted.
Moving Towards Apartheid
Israel’s efforts to maintain control of the Jordan Valley and a Greater Jerusalem that would extend all the way to the Dead Sea in any final status settlement would confine Palestinians to an elaborate archipelago of politically and economically untenable bantustans. A state of apartheid – or hafrada,3 as Israeli officials unabashedly call it – has been developing in the state of Israel since its inception, both inside and outside the Green Line. But like all forms of oppression, and of state-building, apartheid is a process: it can be expanded, fine-tuned, and normalized. Likewise it can be abolished, though its effects will inevitably be felt for generations.
Israel’s maintaining control of Greater Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley, and the establishment of an unviable Palestinian canton state, likely to put remaining Palestinian pockets of the West Bank in Gaza’s current situation, would complete the apartheid model.
This in part explains why Israel is not ready for serious negotiations, and has done its utmost to stall them: construction of the Wall is not yet completed; settlements between Ma'ale Adumim are still sparse and inchoate, and simply too few Israelis live in the West Bank (282,000, plus 191,000 in East Jerusalem4) as yet to justify full control of the Valley. Moreover, it is unlikely to willingly give up its control of Areas B and C, which form a web of bypass roads and security barriers that divide major Palestinian cities and towns, and makes transportation within the West Bank extremely difficult for Palestinians. Peace will continue to elude the Middle East for as long as Israel maintains de facto sovereignty over the West Bank.
The Campaign to Renege
Two major rhetorical arguments underpin Israel’s noncompliance with the process. First, some Arab leaders in the area have not fully complied with the Road Map either. Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza continue to fire Qassem rockets towards the Israeli town of SderotIsrael’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, nor Hamas’ takeover of the Strip. Prior to its seizure of Gaza, Hamas offered Israel a “hudna” – a ten-year ceasefire during which both sides would negotiate a final-status agreement. Hamas’ terms for a long-term ceasefire included an end to the occupation of the Palestinian territories that began in 1967 – a demand that parallel’s the White House’s demands, (although the Road Map designates Jerusalem and the settlements as subject to negotiation.) Hamas’ offer was ignored. on a daily basis. The 2003 Road Map could not have anticipated
Also, anti-Israel militant factions – Hamas and Hezbollah among others – continue to receive financial and military support from Syria. This relationship represents Syria’s only means of gaining leverage over Israel in any negotiations over the illegally occupied Golan Heights, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has offered to negotiate his allegiance to these groups on a number of occasions, but Israel has never been willing to put the Golan on the table.
Secondly, Israel never fully committed to the Road Map, but rather made an ostentatious though half-hearted show of cooperation, and changed its terms to effectively render it futile. The Road Map was approved by Israel’s cabinet only after they had attached fourteen reservations to it. The reservations demand, among other things, that all terrorist organizations be completely “dismantled”, that the provisional Palestinian state be completely demilitarized, that Israel control the exit and entry of all persons and cargo to it, as well as its air space and electromagnetic space, and that final-status issues such as the sovereignty of the PA and Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are off the table. Another of the reservations stipulates that the end of the process “will lead to the end of all claims and not only the end of the conflict.”5 The blatancy of the contradictions here is astounding.
Thus the settler population in the West Bank grew by 4.5% last year, versus 1.5% growth inside the Green Line. Construction of the separation wall – recognized by virtually every humanitarian report on the subject as a threat to the Palestinian economy, healthcare system, and human rights – has continued, and has come to represent yet another form of collective punishment that Palestinians are forced to endure.
Monitoring the Occupation
Annapolis Monitor’s objective is to contextualize the headline news surrounding the peace process by juxtaposing it with developing facts on the ground. Too often have Israeli officials held press conferences wherein they once again promise to freeze settlements, and make gradual headway towards creating a Palestinian state; violations of those same commitments are too often overlooked. This site aims to provide a fully fact-based, comprehensive view of the situation in Israel-Palestine. Vitriol is confined to our editorial section, (to which all readers are invited to submit.)
Annapolis Monitor will also post summaries of reports released by humanitarian groups like B’Tselem, Peace Now, and the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Reports are compiled each week from a variety of sources in including B’Tselem, Peace Now, OCHA and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). The weekly reports provide a rudimentary summary of the week’s developments, and will address the most salient statistics and information from each of our departments: Gaza, House Demolitions, Checkpoints, Military Operations, and Settlement Expansion. Our department pages focus more specifically on these issues, and provide much more in-depth information on their respective topics.
1 OCHA oPt: Humanitarian Monitor – December 2007
2 OCHA oPt: Gaza Closure: Situation Report – 18-24 January 2008
3 Apartheid and hafrada both mean “separation” in Afrikaan and Hebrew, respectively.
4 Foundation for Middle East Peace: Report on Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Territories, January-February 2008
5 Haaretz: Israel’s Road Map Reservations. 27/05/2003
