Netanyahu rejects the peace plan

Nothing suggests that the meeting between US President Barack Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is going to be the beginning of a solution to the conflict in the Middle East.

In his speech on the eve of last week's meeting, Obama merely recalled the principles that have underlain almost all the peace agreements that have time and again been attempted since 1967: Israel's withdrawal to the borders previous to that date and, on the part of Arabs and Palestinians, recognition of Israel's right to exist. And in his response, Netanyahu explicitly rejected the proposition which, for a long time, Israel has been making a dead letter by means of its actions: that the 1967 frontiers should be a basis for negotiation. Netanyahu referred to the political and demographic changes that have taken place during the 44 years of illegal Israeli occupation as the principal cause of his rejection.

This argument is certainly a remarkable one, if we keep in mind that the only relevant political change has been the unilateral annexation of the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem on the part of Israel. And as for demographic change, this is the result not of any natural phenomenon, but of a persistent Israeli strategy aimed at the appropriation of territories that do not belong to it, progressively "cleansing" them of their Palestinian inhabitants.

The encroaching Jewish settlements and the wall of separation in the West Bank territories are only the most visible part of this strategy, the manifest illegality of which Israel considers itself accountable to no one - not even to Obama, who demanded an end to the settlement process.

As for the less visible, more discreet part, it has to do with a mass of discriminatory legal and administrative provisions for the Palestinians, whose life in their own land is turned into a Kafkaesque labyrinth of vexatious regulations, set up with the intention of causing them to leave. With his refusal to accept the 1967 frontiers as a point of departure, Netanyahu is indirectly demanding the endorsement of these practices.

One point on which Obama and Netanyahu did coincide, was on their condemnation of the agreement between Fatah and Hamas, propitiated by the new Egyptian government in order to recover political unity in the West Bank and Gaza. Both leaders underlined that Hamas is internationally considered a terrorist organization, but they overlooked the fact that the agreement Hamas has signed with Fatah is meant to be a precursor to the holding of elections in the Palestinian territories within a year. They also coincided in their rejection of the proclamation of a Palestinian state in September, though both Obama and Netanyahu must certainly realize that that it is not entirely in their hands to prevent such a move.