Op-Ed Contributors

Vague Middle East talks

By Yu Guoqing (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-07 07:58

Despite resuming peace talks, both sides still face difficulties with how to deal with the established Israeli settlements. Israeli right-wing parties strongly insist on keeping much, or all, of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And the Israeli government is unlikely to withdraw settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem as they have in the Gaza Strip.

The status of Jerusalem remains another core issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

At the end of the 1967 War, Israeli forces occupied East Jerusalem. Israel passed the Jerusalem Law in 1980, declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel "complete and united".

However, the international community, including the US, does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The US hasn't moved its embassy to Jerusalem and only maintains a consulate there. Palestinians insist East Jerusalem will be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Israel's persistence in settlement building in East Jerusalem, despite the US urging, could again bring the peace talks to a deadlock.

The problem of Palestinian refugees is another intractable problem in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Palestinian refugees are the Palestinian Arabs and their descendants who fled or were expelled from the territories that became the State of Israel during and after the 1948 Palestine War. After the 1967 Six-Day War, more Palestinian refugees fled the territories occupied by Israel. Currently, among the total 7 million Palestinians, over 4 million are refugees registered with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).

The problem of refugees is difficult to resolve. First, Israel denies any responsibility and insists that the Arab nations should be blamed for the refugee problem as they began the war. However, the Arab nations think Israel should take full responsibility.

Second, the circumstances and status of the refugees are getting increasingly complicated. Those registered refugees living in refugee camps on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip are aided and managed by the UNRWA. Some of the earliest refugees who now live in a number of nations are not willing to return to Palestine. While for Israel, it will not accept millions of refugees returning to the occupied territory, not to mention the potential compensation claims.

Without the coordination and assistance of the international community, the current Israeli-Palestinian talks are unlikely to resolve the refugee issue.

Certainly, the negotiations on the final status of Israel and the Palestinians will also include the establishment of an independent Palestine state, boundary delimitation, security guarantees, the allocation of water resources and other major issues. So, it will be arduous to complete talks over these problems within one year.

In addition, the Israeli and the Palestinian opposition forces might look to spoil the direct peace talks. The Palestinian faction Hamas, which controls Gaza, strongly rejects negotiations with Israel. Hardliners in Israel also oppose making concessions to the Palestinians and insist Israel should make reprisals against the provocative actions of Hamas militants. So, the way ahead is still arduous and not clear to all.

The author is a researcher with the Institute of West-Asia and African Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

(China Daily 09/07/2010 page8)