Israeli pro-settlement bill approval obstructs already-strangled efforts

The recent Israeli initial approval of a couple of pro-settlement bills are expected to obstruct the already-strangled peacemaking efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and revive the Middle East peace process, said Egyptian political experts.

The Knesset, Israel's parliament, passed last week the first reading of two controversial legislations that are meant to retroactively legalize about 4,000 settlement homes as well as unauthorized Israeli outposts and to allow expropriation of more Palestinian lands in the West Bank.

The approvals have been condemned by the Arab League and several Arab states while the international community blames Israel for the deadlock of the Middle East peace process due to its settlement expansion policy that is rejected even by its closest ally, the United States.

RIGHT WING TENDENCY

"The Israeli bills are ill-reputed; they have been the center of debate between Israeli and Arab Israeli lawmakers at the Knesset and their passage is related to a larger settlement expansion plan that undermines the whole peace process," said Tarek Fahmy, a political science professor and expert at the National Center for Middle East Studies.

The expert argued that there are no barriers for the approval of the controversial pro-settlement bills due to the right wing's sweeping influence on the political scene in Israel.

"An Israeli settlement council that is responsible for settlement expansion plans has prepared these draft laws for 14 months and I do not see any obstacles for the Knesset to pass them," Fahmy told Xinhua.

He described Israel's so-called "Master Plan 2020" and similar projects of expanding Jewish residency in Jerusalem, both the western and eastern parts, as "more dangerous" than the approval of the said pro-settlement bills.

For Mohamed Gomaa, expert of Israeli-Palestinian affairs and researcher at Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, the approval of the debatable bills was also "no surprise."

"It's normal and it reflects the general political tendency of Israeli's extremist right-wing ruling coalition," Gomaa told Xinhua, noting the right wing in Israel was not this powerful before the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli fanatic, after which it started to gradually rise until it dominated the Israeli political scene.

TRUMP INFLUENCE

Supported by the United States, Russia, China, the European Union and many other states, a UN-sponsored two-state solution seeks to put an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

Following the recent announcement of Donald Trump as next U.S. president, Israeli's Education Minister Naftali Bennett said it marked the demise of the two-state solution and meant that "the Palestinian people will never have a state of their own."

Similarly, Michael Oren, a Knesset member, deputy minister for diplomacy at Benjamin Netanyahu's office and Israel's former ambassador to the United States, said that the forthcoming Trump administration "spells the end of the two-state solution."

Professor Fahmy said the timing of the pro-settlement bills' approval has to do with Trump's win, given the recurrent reassurance of the U.S. president-elect regarding Israel's security as a top priority of his coming administration.

"The timing is scheduled to seize the opportunity of Trump's victory, which is why the initial approval of the bills has been done so quickly," the professor told Xinhua.

However, Gomaa of Al-Ahram Center believes that the bills would be approved anyway regardless of the winner of the U.S. presidential elections. "It is difficult to link the bills' approval with Trump's win, as the approval is just practical embodiment of the Israeli society's general tendency towards the right wing."

PARIS BID UNCERTAIN

France has been preparing for an international peace conference to be held in Paris before year end in attempt to revive the stagnant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, yet the bid has officially been rejected by Netanyahu in a recent phone call with French President Francois Hollande.

"I do not see much hope in Paris conference as the two parties of conflict have reached an impasse," said Fahmy, regretting the unclear and uncertain destiny of the Middle East peace process under the current Israeli practices that limit chances for peace and settlement.

For his part, Gomaa said that the initial ideas of Paris conference are meant to form an international monitoring commission to supervise the Israeli-Palestinian peace progress, which might marginalize the exclusive U.S. mediation role.

"However, Israel's rejection of the conference in the first place and the U.S. pressure on France to amend its wording practically hinder any qualitative progress in the Mideast peace process," the researcher told Xinhua.

He argued that the French initiative is already not expected to bring much progress in favor of the Middle East peace process to be obstructed by the recent approval of pro-settlement bills.

"The picture was already dim and such bills only make it dimmer," Gomaa concluded.

source: Xinhua