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Deadlock still reigns supreme; During apartheid, many observers saw an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as much more likely than a free South Africa.(News)

The Star (South Africa) April 4, 2007 BYLINE: allister sparks A handful of years ago political analysts were speaking of three of the most intractable conflicts in the world in the same breath: apartheid South Africa, Northern Ireland and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The three were linked because they shared the same defining feature of two peoples struggling for control of the same piece of land.

There were differences of history, faith and detail, but it was that common feature which made these three conflicts so emotionally fraught and therefore so damnably difficult.

As I recall, most analysts thought the Israeli crisis was the most likely to be resolved, because of the essentially humanitarian culture of the Jewish people and the determination of the early Zionists to establish a democratic state that would be “a light unto nations” and not be established at the expense of its existing inhabitants.

Conversely, they thought South Africa was the least likely to be resolved any time soon, because of the assumed racism and pig-headedness of the Afrikaners.

As for Northern Ireland, well that had been going on for so long, with its roots back in the time of Cromwell, that no-one could foresee an end to it.

Funny, isn’t it, how reality can sometimes turn out otherwise? The Afrikaners proved to be more pragmatic and less risk-averse than the others, while in recent days the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland have come together to form a government of national unity.

Now only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains.

There has been a flurry of excitement there too, these past few weeks as Saudi Arabia has stepped out of the diplomatic shadows to try to take over from Egypt as the Arab world’s chief peace broker.

First it brought the warring Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, together in the holy city of Mecca to form a new government of national unity.

Then last week it hosted an Arab League summit in Riyadh from which it extracted what it claims is a new peace initiative. Much self-congratulation and optimism has followed.

The plan offers Israel normal ties with all Arab states in return for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank, recognition of a Palestinian state, and a “just solution” to Palestinian refugees displaced with the founding of the Jewish state in 1948. here israeli palestinian conflict

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has given the plan a guarded welcome, saying it may help create momentum for future negotiations and has agreed to hold twice-monthly meetings with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

But don’t hold your breath. The hat-trick is not about to follow. I am writing this from the Gulf state of Qatar on what is my fifth visit to the Middle East in three years, attending a conference of 400 journalists and political analysts from all parts of the Arab world, with a sprinkling of Western specialists thrown in, and I can’t find a single person among them who thinks anything is going to come of this Saudi initiative. israelipalestinianconflictnow​.com israeli palestinian conflict

In the first place the Saudi plan is not new. It is the regurgitation of a five-year-old plan which was rejected by Ariel Sharon in 2002. Sharon was then probably the most strongly entrenched and trusted Prime Minister Israel has ever had: if anyone was capable of making the kind of concessions needed to clinch a peace deal, it was he.

But he baulked at a complete withdrawal from the occupied Palestinian territories where some 400 000 Israelis have established scores of settlements, some the size of small cities and obviously intended to be permanent. And he rejected any notion of a return of Palestinian refugees.

Israel is mortally afraid of one day finding itself outnumbered by Palestinians. It regards the permanent entrenchment of a Jewish majority as fundamental to its existence as a Jewish state – while also claiming it wants to be a democracy.

How then, the people here are asking, can Olmert – arguably the weakest premier Israel has had following his inconclusive war with Hezbollah last year – do what Sharon could not?

Nor is it only Olmert who is weak. The United States is the only power that could force Israel into a politically difficult deal, and it is unlikely to do so while led by the lame duck George W Bush who, in any case, is a rightwinger with no appetite for such action.

So where does this leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The short answer – continued deadlock.

This is serious in an age of rising cultural tensions, for the plight of the Palestinian people is the central factor in world unrest. As Ahmed Shaik, the smart editor-in-chief of the Al Jazeera television channel which is based here tells me: “The Palestinian issue is in the genes of every Arab. We can never let it go.” It is a truth which is evident wherever you go in this region – and indeed among Muslims everywhere. It is what has driven some to fundamentalism and a few to the fury of terrorism.

On this visit I sense a palpable rise in the level of tensions. The plight of the Palestinian people grows ever more desperate, as mindless international sanctions bring their pitiable mini-bantustans on the West Bank and in Gaza to serious levels of humanitarian distress. Unemployment has reached Zimbabwean levels and 75% of the population are in poverty.

Yet no-one seems to care. The sanctions continue, a collective punishment because these people voted for the militant resistance movement, Hamas, in free and fair elections 14 months ago.

Civil services are collapsing, schools and hospitals are in crisis because teachers and nurses can’t be paid and infrastructure is crumbling: last week Palestinians drowned in their own excrement as a sewerage dam in Gaza broke.

As Professor John Dugard, the distinguished South African jurist who is the official United Nations rapporteur on conditions in the occupied Palestinian territories points out, it is the first time in history that an occupied people have been subjected to international sanctions. This is a collective punishment imposed by the US, the European Union, Russia and – God help us! – the United Nations itself.

Yet such is the imbalance in Western perceptions, that it is the Israelis who are constantly portrayed as the victims in this conflict.

Meanwhile the news from Iraq – where more than 150 000 people have died as a result of George Bush’s war – grows more ghastly by the day. Bush’s new “surge,” sending 20 000 more troops to “stabilise” Iraq, has seen the death toll rise another 15% in March.

The war in Afghanistan is also worsening. But the greatest fear here now is that the Americans are preparing to attack Iran – and that the Gulf states will suffer as Iran retaliates with attacks aimed at hurting the West by crippling the oil industry in their midst.

I doubt there will be such an attack. Having recently visited the US as well, I don’t believe Bush has the political support base to launch such a foolhardy third Middle East war when two are already going so disastrously. But it is hard to convince people here of that – such is the degree of cynicism, anger and a sense of cultural persecution among them.

The Islamic world feels itself under siege and that itself has become the greatest danger to world peace.

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