Major task ahead for Abbas

There is no doubt that US policy towards the Middle East has been, to date, a failure and it is very unlikely that the Obama administration will undertake any new steps that will revive Arab affection for the US administration, since his term in office is expiring in the next few months, even though he may be visiting Saudi Arabia in the near future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly rejected a US proposal to increase by 20 per cent US financial and military aid, which reached $3.6 billion a year.

Israel demanded an increase to compensate for the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran, which Israel claims has accelerated the arms race with the Gulf states and adversely affects their strategic position.

A recent book review in The Washington Post “makes it difficult to dispute [the book’s] central premise that American military engagement in the Greater Middle East has not been crowned with success”. 

The book, titled “America’s War for the Greater Middle East”, written by Andrew J. Bacevich, was reviewed by Celeste Ward Gventer, a former deputy assistant secretary of defence who is reportedly consulted on a variety of defence and security issues in Europe and the Middle East.

This disheartening situation might induce Arabs to give more support to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who intends to submit a proposal this month for a UN Security Council resolution condemning the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian territories.

He is due in New York in the coming few days.

The Palestinians are encouraged by a 2011 UN resolution that agreed, by 14 votes to 1, that these settlements are illegal and demanded an immediate halt to all Israeli settlement activity.

The US, regrettably, vetoed that resolution.

Israel captured the Palestinian territories, except for the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 war and began its illegal settlement construction thereafter.

At present, there are nearly 600,000 Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians hope to establish their capital, and the West Bank.

Peace Now, considered a dovish Israeli group that tracks settlement construction, said, according to The Associated Press, that Israel has begun building an additional 1,800 new settlements in the West Bank in 2015.

It remains to be seen whether the US will again veto the anticipated UN resolution.

This month was the anniversary of the horrifying massacre in Deir Yassin, in 1948, when two extremist Jewish militias, Irgun and Lehi, massacred over 100 Palestinians, including women and children.

In a statement, the Washington-based delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation described the massacre as “part and parcel of a systematic plot to depopulate Palestinian villages and empty the land of its people”.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the occupied territories has not abated.

The number of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli police has skyrocketed since October, when a wave of violence began in the West Bank and Gaza.

By February 2016, 440 Palestinian children had been arrested, compared to 182 the year before.

By March, 41 children had been killed. Parents complained that they no longer felt safe letting their children outside to play.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation authorities have destroyed 523 Palestinian houses and civilian structures in the West Bank since the start of 2016, an increase of 275 per cent over last year, according to a Palestinian centre.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa reported that extremist Israeli settlers resumed last Monday their provocative tours to Al Aqsa Mosque, a Muslim holy compound in Jerusalem, among calls by Jewish organisations for mass visits to the holy site to mark the beginning of the Jewish Passover holiday.

A UN report underlined: “More than 1,500 children were orphaned, an estimated 27,000 children had their homes completely destroyed and 44,000 children were displaced at the time of the survey.”

Abbas has a major task ahead of him.

The writer is a Washington-based columnist.