33 Days to Go – Don’t Believe Everything You Read!

By Sherwin Pomerantz

The numbers are getting smaller and we now have 33 days to go to the opening of the UN General Assembly and the vote after that on Palestinian statehood.

The Palestinian Arab leadership has now reaffirmed its intent to move forward with this project in spite of serious concerns in a great many corners of the world about the efficacy of the move and whether it has real benefit to their cause. But what has struck me this past week in the run-up to the “Days of September” is how news from this part of the world is being reported in the world press.

Take for example the Government of Israel’s announcement last week that it had authorized the construction of 1,600 new “homes” (actually condos in western terms) in Ramat Shlomo and 950 new apartments in Har Homa. Well, it did not take any time at all for (a) the Palestinian Arab leadership to immediately call for a stop to Israel’s unilateral decision to construct additional homes in East Jerusalem, (b) for the US Secretary of State to, once again, say that Israel’s building in East Jerusalem is an obstacle to peace and (c) for EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton to express her “deep regret” over Israel’s decision to build in Ramat Shlomo.

But one needs to look behind the story to really figure out what this is all about. The community of Ramat Shlomo is ½ km from my office where I am writing this blog. The tech park in which our office is situated is just inside the 1949 (not the 1967) armistice lines while the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood is just on the other side of the line. It is located just east of Ramot which is also, for the most part, just over the 1949 armistice lines. Started in 1995 to handle the growing ultra-orthodox population situated on the north side of the city, Ramat Shlomo today has about 2,200 families (i.e. 16,000 people). This is a neighborhood whose natural growth is high and the 1,600 new units were originally authorized in March 2010 and will probably not be completed for another couple of years. The area itself is certainly an integral part of the City of Jerusalem, whether or not the rest of the world recognizes this.

Har Homa, located south of the city, is also just over the armistice line facing Bethlehem and was conceived to contain 8,200 housing units although, at the present time, less than half of those have been built. The community is mixed religious and secular and was opened to accommodate the growing population on the south side of Jerusalem.

In the earlier negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arab leadership it was always understood that the large settlement blocs would remain in Israeli hands if a peace agreement was ever reached. So the suburbs of Jerusalem such as Ramot, Ramat Shlomo, Har Homa, and Gilo were always acknowledged by both sides to remain within Israel under any peace agreement, just as would Ma’ale Adumim, the Gush Etzion bloc and Ariel. However, when US President Obama said 18 months ago that Israel must stop building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, he gave a gift to the Palestinians that they themselves did not expect. Once Obama said that the Palestinian Arab leadership had no choice but to be at least as Palestinian as Obama.

In this hyperactive political period, in which we now find ourselves, all of the earlier agreements and understandings, including the famous letter on the topic that former president Bush gave to Ariel Sharon acknowledging the US understanding of these facts, have been forgotten and now every square centimeter of land outside the 1949 armistice lines has become part of the “settlements.” Therefore, the way the non-Israeli world looks as things, all of this building is an obstacle to peace while the unwillingness of the Palestinian side to come to the table during the 10 month construction free in 2010 is totally overlooked.

Of course the news articles generally cover only the objections of the other side, the EU and the US and rarely give space to the remarks from the Israeli side. So, for example, in an August 12th article in the New York Times by Rick Gladstone, he waited until paragraph 12 of a 12 paragraph article to include the statement that “Israel has argued that any two-state solution with the Palestinians will involve holding on to areas like Ramat Shlomo, so that in its view, building there for its citizens should not affect talks.” So much for fair and balanced reporting.

It is in this spirit that Israel goes to the UN in September to object to the unilateral move by the Palestinians to get General Assembly approval for statehood. In the opinion of many jurists the Palestinians, by going unilaterally to the UN are in direct violation of the Oslo Agreement which states in Para V:4 “The two parties agree that the outcome of the permanent status negotiations should not be prejudiced or pre-empted by agreements reached for the interim period.” Similar language was contained, as well, in every additional agreement signed by the parties so going to the UN instead of sitting down and negotiating an end to the conflict with Israel is, by all accounts, in violation of agreement the Palestinians have signed with Israel. So what else is new eh? (Have you written those letters yet to the UN delegates?)