IV Online magazine - Archive

On October 3, Mahmoud Abbas. de facto Palestinian President (his term of office was officially completed in January 2009), stated that he would reject all dialogue with Israel if the settlement freeze on the West Bank was not renewed. The same day, outgoing Israeli chief of staff Gaby Ashkenazi was “visiting” Bethlehem, where he met officials of the Palestinian security forces. The coincidence of these two apparently contradictory events illustrates the increasingly flagrant lack of synch between, on the one hand, diplomatic posturing to revive a “peace process” which is long dead and buried and, on the other, the reality on the ground, the continuation of Israeli expansionist policies and the ever stronger integration of the Palestinian Authority in the apparatus of colonial oppression.