A few months after the Annapolis conference, which re-launched the "peace process", Israel announced plans for building of new colonies in the occupied West Bank.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon criticised Israel and stated that the decision to build more settlements [colonies] conflicted with "Israel's obligation under the road map" for Middle East peace.
The Bush administration refused to condemn the Israeli decision. The US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice simply said: "It's important to do everything possible to advance peace." President George W. Bush refused to criticise Israel saying the obligations of both sides under the road map "are clear".
The Israeli organisation Peace Now documented that "since the Annapolis summit there was a leap in the number of tenders and construction plans in East Jerusalem. Tenders for the construction of at least 750 housing units in East Jerusalem were issued between December 2007 and March 2008, while throughout all 2007 until the summit, only two tenders for 46 housing units were issued."
Hagit Ofran of Peace Now remarked: "This is the same mistake Israel has made since Oslo - building in the settlements and not understanding that it's a sign to the Palestinians that Israel does not want peace".
The cause of peace has suffered another blow, but the "peace process" moved right on. This is the mystery of the "peace process".
It gave the occupier the right to choose its negotiating partner; it based the process on a plan repeatedly breached, and it promoted the entrenchment of the present gross inequalities of the parties. But it is still called "peace".
Helpless victim
As Israeli leaders were preparing to announce plans for the construction of "hundreds of new homes on occupied land it considers part of occupied Jerusalem, just hours after Rice wrapped up a three-day visit to the region by saying the peace process is "moving in the right direction".
It was indeed "moving in the right direction" - the direction of more expropriation and more colonies of Palestinian land, to ultimately allow the occupier to impose its "peace" terms on a helpless victim.
This was after all the logic which informed the choice of Mahmoud Abbas, the Fatah leader and Palestinian president, as the acceptable negotiating partner for Israel and Washington. He accepts the "peace process" but is helpless to do anything about it, and does not grasp its mystery.
Hamas, which was democratically elected by a majority of the Palestinian people, and understands the mystery of the "peace process", has been marginalised, vilified and boycotted by Israel and Washington,
That is why the Palestinian leadership is forever appalled and shocked by the Israeli violence of siege and collective punishment regularly inflicted on the Palestinians. And that is why it is regularly outraged by the other continuing Israeli violence of dispossession and settlement of Palestinian land.
The Annapolis conference itself should have given the current Palestinian leadership some clues to solving the mystery of the "peace process".
The Annapolis re-launched "peace process" was based on the widely discredited roadmap for peace - a failure denounced by one of the parties with the complicity of its chief sponsor, Washington.
The roadmap calls for a ban on unilateral actions that prejudice the negotiations between the parties. Former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, who "accepted" the roadmap only with 14 reservations, proceeded to violate the ban on unilateral actions.
He developed and implemented the disengagement plan from Gaza without any negotiations with the Palestinians.
Washington initially objected but then the Bush administration, in what the New York Times described as "a major shift of policy on the Middle East", agreed to breach the roadmap and to support instead the Sharon plan.
There was no need to speculate on the motives behind the Sharon disengagement plan.
His chief adviser, Dov Weisglass, who had the merit of candour, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the real intent of the disengagement plan was: "the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. This whole package of the roadmap has been removed from our agenda indefinitely".
Further, the roadmap strictly bans all activities pertaining to colonies and calls for an end to Palestinian militants' attacks against Israelis.
Response to criticism
In response to criticisms for the latest announcements of more colonies, Israeli leaders said that the colonies had been authorised by Washington.
They cited a 2004 letter Bush sent to Sharon in which the US president accepted "already existing major Israeli population centres" that would prevent a return to the pre-1967 boundaries".
This had also been confirmed by Sharon's adviser: "In regard to the large settlement [colonies] blocs," he said, "thanks to the disengagement plan, we have in our hands a first-ever American statement that they will be part of Israel..."
Bush's support for Israeli colonies, both in breach of international law and of the roadmap itself, was evident at Annapolis. He called for the dismantlement of the "infrastructures of terror" and of the "illegal settlement [colonies] outposts".
This phraseology-faithfully mirroring Israeli discourse, conveniently bypasses the illegality of the colonies themselves and focuses on the few outposts not authorised yet by the Israeli government.
The 'peace process' therefore is moving in the right direction that its logic dictates - a settlement imposed by the logic of war in which the occupier consolidates its hegemony and strengthens its oppressive grip on the destiny of the victim.
Understanding the mystery of the 'peace process' is necessary for the promotion of real peace in which there is recognition of the wrong suffered by the victim, reparations made, some justice achieved, and life free from occupation and fear guaranteed..
Professor Adel Safty is author of 'From Camp David to the Gulf', Montreal, New York.
