US upholds contiguous Palestinian state
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US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell told reporters after meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday that Washington supports the creation of a Palestinian state with "contiguous territory."
The "contiguous" Palestinian state suggests that Palestinians would be able to travel between any two places of their future state without entering Israel.
Analysts believe that Mitchell was reassuring Palestinians over its position of upholding the creation of a Palestinian state.
Jonathan Rynhold, a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies near Tel Aviv, said Mitchell used the word "contiguity" to make the Palestinians understand that the US is not prepared to allow Israel to continue settlement expansion, despite Benjamin Netanyahu's reticence over a complete freeze on Israeli construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The idea of being able to move through a Palestinian state in the West Bank without having to enter Israel is not new. It had been talked about during the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush.
However, the Palestinian leadership is seemingly seeking reassurance from the current U.S. government of Barack Obama regarding the geographical nature of a Palestinian state.
The Palestinians want negotiations to resume from where they left off a year ago, when Ehud Olmert was the Israeli prime minister. His successor Benjamin Netanyahu, however, wants talks to begin without preconditions.
"This is the Americans saying 'we've got our standard preconditions and here's one of them. You've both agreed in the past to negotiate on this basis, so here's something you really can't say no to as a precondition'," said Rynhold.
By discussing and stressing contiguity, the Americans are sending a message to the Israelis concerning settlements, he added.
He cited Israel's so-called E1 project as an example. The scheme intends linking Maaleh Adumin, an Israeli town of some 30,000 people in the West Bank, with Jerusalem.
Both the Palestinians and the Americans object to its implementation because they say it will break the West Bank in two. Rynhold believes the Israelis will accept this argument.
"Israel can live with the Road Map and it can live with contiguity," he said, referring to the document that currently serves as the basis for the international push for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Road Map refers to the "creation of an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders through a process ... to enhance maximum territorial contiguity, including further action on settlements."
Some in Israel and beyond suggest that a Palestinian state be created only in the West Bank, because of the ongoing battle between the West Bank-based Fatah movement and its key political rival Hamas, which has been controlling Gaza for over two years. However, the majority is holding that the West Bank and Gaza should together constitute a single Palestinian state.
As such, the two would have to be physically linked. While the idea of a contiguous state makes perfect sense, there are practicalities on the ground that would have to be thrashed out with the Israelis.
The distance from the West Bank to Gaza at their closest points is some 30 kilometers as the crow flies. That distance would have to be crossed via one or more secured methods, with both rail and road as possible options. Tunnels and viaducts have both been suggested in the past.
Whatever the eventual solution would be, the issue is one that is often "overlooked," according to Justus Reid Weiner, the co-author of Linking the Gaza Strip with the West Bank: Implications of a Palestinian Corridor across Israel.
"A state does not possess an inherent right to a link between its geographically distinct areas. In particular this may be applied to the sovereign link called for by the Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank," he suggested, underscoring Israel's fears about a safe passage between the two territories being used by militants without Israeli ability to intervene.
However, the majority opinion does appear to favor some physical link between Gaza and the West Bank.
These and other issues, particularly those surrounding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, are likely to be high on Mitchell's agenda during the rest of this week.
On Thursday, the envoy, along with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is expected to present to Obama an interim report on progress to date about the efforts to bring the Palestinians and Israelis back to the negotiating table.
With that in mind, Mitchell travelled to Egypt over the weekend where he met two senior government ministers. Washington is hoping that Cairo can help revive the Israeli-Palestinian talks and prod Hamas and Fatah to end their various disputes ahead of peace talks.
The Obama administration has thus far taken Egypt's role very seriously. Egyptian opinion has been sought along the path as Obama seeks to find a new formula to advance Palestinian-Israeli peace.
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