Headlines, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa

MIDEAST: New Face of Palestine, Now Showing

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Nov 12 2009 (IPS) - Other than to movie aficionados, the refurbishing of an old cinema hall is no cause for great excitement.

Except in Jenin where an old-new cinema is proving to be quite a landmark.

Only a few years ago at the vanguard of Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation, this northern West Bank town is now the model of a refurbished Palestine.

It’s no coincidence that the man at the heart of that process, special international envoy and former British prime minister Tony Blair, was there this week.

Following a walkabout in the Jenin city centre, Blair declared, “The Palestinian economy on the West Bank is growing strongly,” though he added, “obviously it’s also important we find a way to re-launch the political negotiations.”

In 2002, at the height of the Intifadah, a fierce Israeli crackdown on the uprising razed large chunks of the Jenin refugee camp. Even after, the town was notorious for its lawlessness; local armed militants even challenged Yasser Arafat’s legendary authority.

Now, the militants are nowhere to be seen – they’ve handed in their weapons; many have become part of the Palestinian Authority police.

Instead, Jenin’s streets are filled with Arab Israeli shoppers who are now even permitted to drive through Israel’s Jalameh crossing point to reach the town market.

Also, to look in at the old-new movie theatre, closed in 1987 during the first Intifadah, but now scheduled to re-open within months.

Meanwhile, away in Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reportedly trying to convince President Barack Obama that long before the first screening, he’d be ready to do “his utmost” to induce the Palestinian Authority back to the peace table.

The outcome of Tuesday night’s White House meeting remains shrouded in mystery. At the behest of the Administration it had all the trappings of a semi-clandestine encounter.

Even usually compliant Israeli TV correspondents travelling with Netanyahu were reduced to reporting that, “We still don’t know whether the Prime Minister was genuine when we’re told he told the President he’d offer the Palestinians major concessions, or whether he’s genuine when he tells his nationalist supporters at home that they’ve nothing to worry about.”

Netanyahu aides are adamant. They say the Prime Minister has been under pressure from his right-wing coalition partners to conduct a peace process “for the sake of process” whereas, maintain the aides, Netanyahu himself argues “we genuinely need to try to reach an agreement.”

Either way, it’s still not clear whether the Israeli leader has convinced Obama that he means peace business.

What is clear on the other hand, is that the President’s much-vaunted Middle East peace initiative is in serious trouble.

Obama is stuck at a crossroad of dead-end avenues: down one avenue, advice to back off from trying to solve the conflict until the parties themselves want to do so; down another, advice to pressure an Israeli leader perceived as intent on spurning his peace effort; and now down a third, his own advice to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to resign.

Last week, Abbas threatened he would not seek re-election unless Israel agrees to a total freeze of its settlement activities, thereby fulfilling his condition to return to the peace table.

What may save the Obama peace effort is ‘the Jenin Way’.

Jenin has been created as the prime model of how a stable and viable Palestinian state will look and function. Over the past two years it’s been nurtured in that direction under the combined political tutelage of Tony Blair and the military tutelage of U.S. General Keith Dayton.

Now, Abbas’s Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is planning to take the Jenin Way further.

In late August Fayyad presented the international community with a detailed plan for building up Palestinian Authority institutions. He also set a timetable of up to two years for implementation of the plan.

Fayyad’s plan was initially accorded a positive reaction by the Israeli government, stressing as it did institution-building and efficient security services.

But, Israeli intelligence reports indicated that Fayyad actually had more in mind.

The Palestinian Prime Minister has reportedly won a secret understanding from the U.S. Administration that, in the event of peace talks failing to get off the ground or reaching an impasse, the U.S. would recognise an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, even if unilaterally declared.

The well-informed Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reports that when Israel learnt that support for such a Palestinian move was also gathering in Europe and at the UN, Netanyahu, in advance of his Washington trip, asked for a U.S. guarantee that it would veto such a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence.

During the past four decades, the U.S. has made it abundantly clear that it does not back an Israeli future in the occupied Palestinian lands, and that Israel’s settlement enterprise is illegal and should be stopped. For the past decade, the U.S. has also backed the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a negotiated two-state solution.

The U.S. has yet, however, to put on the table its own explicit border plan.

In the event of another dead-end at the peace table, Obama might well be enticed, say analysts, to himself turn down the unilateral way.

That worries Israel.

Wariness that the Administration might eventually lay down such a plan is what might have prompted Netanyahu’s sudden panicky talk of readiness for “serious concessions”.