Annapolis Conference joint understanding and statements

Joint Understanding on Negotiations
27 November 2007

(www.mfa.gov.il)

The representatives of the Government of the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), represented respectively by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Mahmoud Abbas, in his capacity as Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and President of the Palestinian Authority, have convened in Annapolis, Maryland, under the auspices of President George W. Bush of the United States of America, and with the support of the participants of this international conference, having concluded the following Joint Understanding:

We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples, to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition, to propagate a culture of peace and non-violence, and to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis.

In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security:

• We agree to immediately launch good faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues, without exception, as specified in previous agreements.
• We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations, and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.
• For this purpose, a steering committee, led jointly by the head of the delegation of each party, will meet continuously, as agreed.
• The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party.
• The first session of the steering committee will be held on 12 December 2007.
• President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert will continue to meet on a bi-weekly basis to follow up the negotiations in order to offer all necessary assistance for their advancement.

The parties also commit to immediately implement their respective obligations under the Performance-Based Road Map to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israel-Palestinian Conflict, issued by the Quartet on 30 April 2003 (hereinafter, "the Roadmap") and agree to form an American, Palestinian and Israeli mechanism, led by the United States, to follow up on the implementation of the Roadmap. The parties further commit to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the Roadmap until they reach a peace treaty. The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitments of both sides of the Roadmap.

Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the Roadmap, as judged by the United States.

In conclusion, we express our profound appreciation to the President of the United States and his Administration, and to the participants of this international conference, for their support for our bilateral peace process.

Joint Understanding Read by President Bush at Annapolis Conference
Memorial Hall
United States Naval Academy
Annapolis, Maryland

PRESIDENT BUSH: The representatives of the government of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, represented respective by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and President Mahmoud Abbas in his capacity as Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and President of the Palestinian Authority, have convened in Annapolis, Maryland, under the auspices of President George W. Bush of the United States of America, and with the support of the participants of this international conference, having concluded the following joint understanding.

We express our determination to bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict between our peoples; to usher in a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition; to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis. In furtherance of the goal of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security, we agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty, resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception, as specified in previous agreements.

We agree to engage in vigorous, ongoing and continuous negotiations, and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008. For this purpose, a steering committee, led jointly by the head of the delegation of each party, will meet continuously, as agreed. The steering committee will develop a joint work plan and establish and oversee the work of negotiations teams to address all issues, to be headed by one lead representative from each party. The first session of the steering committee will be held on 12 December 2007.

President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert will continue to meet on a bi-weekly basis to follow up the negotiations in order to offer all necessary assistance for their advancement.

The parties also commit to immediately implement their respective obligations under the performance-based road map to a permanent two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, issued by the Quartet on 30 April 2003 -- this is called the road map -- and agree to form an American, Palestinian and Israeli mechanism, led by the United States, to follow up on the implementation of the road map.

The parties further commit to continue the implementation of the ongoing obligations of the road map until they reach a peace treaty. The United States will monitor and judge the fulfillment of the commitment of both sides of the road map. Unless otherwise agreed by the parties, implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States.

Robert Fisk: Welcome to 'Palestine'

Published: 16 June 2007

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party - Hamas - and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today "Palestine" - and let's keep those quotation marks in place - has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn't like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the "moderate" (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word "occupation", who always referred to Israeli "redeployment" rather than "withdrawal", a "leader" we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn't vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas's bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas's Fatah and the rotten nature of the "Palestinian Authority".

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps - or variations of them - were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption - the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer "Palestine" EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

All over the Middle East, it is the same. We support Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, even though he keeps warlords and drug barons in his government (and, by the way, we really are sorry about all those innocent Afghan civilians we are killing in our "war on terror" in the wastelands of Helmand province).

We love Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, whose torturers have not yet finished with the Muslim Brotherhood politicians recently arrested outside Cairo, whose presidency received the warm support of Mrs - yes Mrs - George W Bush - and whose succession will almost certainly pass to his son, Gamal.

We adore Muammar Gaddafi, the crazed dictator of Libya whose werewolves have murdered his opponents abroad, whose plot to murder King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia preceded Tony Blair's recent visit to Tripoli - Colonel Gaddafi, it should be remembered, was called a "statesman" by Jack Straw for abandoning his non-existent nuclear ambitions - and whose "democracy" is perfectly acceptable to us because he is on our side in the "war on terror".

Yes, and we love King Abdullah's unconstitutional monarchy in Jordan, and all the princes and emirs of the Gulf, especially those who are paid such vast bribes by our arms companies that even Scotland Yard has to close down its investigations on the orders of our prime minister - and yes, I can indeed see why he doesn't like The Independent's coverage of what he quaintly calls "the Middle East". If only the Arabs - and the Iranians - would support our kings and shahs and princes whose sons and daughters are educated at Oxford and Harvard, how much easier the "Middle East" would be to control.

For that is what it is about - control - and that is why we hold out, and withdraw, favours from their leaders. Now Gaza belongs to Hamas, what will our own elected leaders do? Will our pontificators in the EU, the UN, Washington and Moscow now have to talk to these wretched, ungrateful people (fear not, for they will not be able to shake hands) or will they have to acknowledge the West Bank version of Palestine (Abbas, the safe pair of hands) while ignoring the elected, militarily successful Hamas in Gaza?

It's easy, of course, to call down a curse on both their houses. But that's what we say about the whole Middle East. If only Bashar al-Assad wasn't President of Syria (heaven knows what the alternative would be) or if the cracked President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad wasn't in control of Iran (even if he doesn't actually know one end of a nuclear missile from the other).

If only Lebanon was a home-grown democracy like our own little back-lawn countries - Belgium, for example, or Luxembourg. But no, those pesky Middle Easterners vote for the wrong people, support the wrong people, love the wrong people, don't behave like us civilised Westerners.

So what will we do? Support the reoccupation of Gaza perhaps? Certainly we will not criticise Israel. And we shall go on giving our affection to the kings and princes and unlovely presidents of the Middle East until the whole place blows up in our faces and then we shall say - as we are already saying of the Iraqis - that they don't deserve our sacrifice and our love.

How do we deal with a coup d'état by an elected government?

War between brothers

Jun 15th 2007 | RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition

The Palestinians' two main groups are on the verge of a struggle that could split the two parts of a putative Palestinian state in half

AP

BY THE end of this week, the Islamists of Hamas will have either destroyed the secular-minded Fatah in the Gaza Strip or shown that they can. The relative quiet after a deadly burst of violence between the rival Palestinian parties in May was broken by a series of tit-for-tat killings that quickly got out of hand. After troops from the presidential guard of Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, rocketed the house of Hamas's Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister, the Islamist party launched a full-scale attack. As The Economist went to press, Hamas troops had taken control of most of the Gaza Strip and had chased Fatah forces out of their bases, while several top Fatah commanders had either fled Gaza or had been killed.

Fatah arrested Hamas men in the West Bank and suspended its participation in the Palestinian Authority (PA) coalition government, which the two parties formed in March in an attempt to stop such fighting, and threatened to pull out altogether. But Fatah has little to bargain with. Hamas has already shown that its fighters, though less numerous, are better armed, trained and disciplined. In contrast, Fatah field commanders have been complaining loudly about their lack of equipment and leadership. Several of Fatah's top people in Gaza have been out of the strip for weeks.

The frustrated head of an Egyptian mediating team this week called on ordinary Gazans to take to the streets in protest against the violence, which has included kneecappings, summary executions and throwing handcuffed captives off tall buildings. Some protesters did sally out; one was shot dead.

They seem powerless in the face of a conflict that has been building since Hamas ousted Fatah from the PA in last year's election. From the start, Fatah tried to prevent Hamas from getting full control of the PA security services, which are a cornerstone of political power and a job scheme for unemployed militants, and which had become bloated with Fatah loyalists during the secular party's long and corrupt rule. Hamas countered by adding a tough, disciplined “Executive Force” of its own loyalists to the PA roster in Gaza, where it is much stronger than in the West Bank.

Fatah then won backing from the United States to turn the presidential guard into an elite force to counter that of Hamas. Under the guise of strengthening Mr Abbas as a moderate (unlike Hamas, which still refuses to accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state), America has provided $59m for training and supplying the presidential guard with non-lethal equipment, which Israel has let enter Gaza.

Israel has also let through at least one shipment of weapons from other Arab countries. Fatah officials have asked for more, but to no avail. Recently the Americans have been pressing Mr Abbas to adopt a new “action plan” to beef up his office, clean up Fatah, and boost training for the security services under his control, all with a view to giving him enough clout to call new elections later in the year.

Not surprisingly, Hamas sees Western support for Mr Abbas's troops, along with the now 15-month-old Western boycott of the PA, as part of a conspiracy to force it out of power. The official American line is that it is strengthening the presidential guard in order to “build law and order in Gaza” and to secure the border crossings where goods for the strip's 1.4m residents enter and leave. But occasionally the elite force has attacked Hamas positions, with notable success, and mid-level Fatah officials want more of that. “The only way Fatah can win, or at least get out with some self-esteem, is if the political leadership takes a decision to engage the presidential guards in this battle,” says Nasser Jumaa, a Fatah legislator from the West Bank town of Nablus.

Within the Israeli establishment, opinion is split on whether to let in more weapons. But Gaza is already awash with arms smuggled in through tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border; any meant for Fatah could easily end up in Hamas's hands. This week Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, took up an earlier suggestion by his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, for an international force to patrol the Egypt-Gaza border strip to prevent weapons-smuggling. Egypt has, up to now, said no.

Messrs Abbas and Haniyeh are trying to pull things back from the brink and to negotiate. But some predict a total split between a “Hamastan” in Gaza and a West Bank ruled by Fatah. No Israeli leader—including Ehud Barak, the former prime minister, who this week won the Labour party's primary election and could return to power next year—will feel any pressure to talk peace with a Palestinian leadership so definitively divided.

Jewish worshippers desecrate Muslim cemetery in West Bank

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent A Muslim graveyard in a village near the West Bank settlement of Ariel was desecrated by a group of Jewish worshippers visiting the area on Friday morning.

A group of some 1,300 Jews visited the tomb of Joshua Ben Nun on Thursday night, in full coordination with the Israel Defense Forces.On Friday morning, after the Jewish worshippers had left, Palestinians informed leftist groups that several tombstones in the local Muslim graveyard had been vandalized. Some were smashed; others were sprayed with slogans reading "death to Arabs."

The Civil Administration filed a complaint with police.

IDF representatives met with the organizers of the excursion, who promised to repair the damages next week.

Israel Fires Rocket on Gaza, Says it Plans More Strikes

By Robert Berger Jerusalem 20 May 2007

Officials say an Israeli air force fired a missile at a house in Gaza City, killing eight people and wounding at least 12 others. Robert Berger reports from VOA's Jerusalem bureau Israel says it plans to take tougher military action against Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

A Palestinian youth wounded in Israeli missile attack in Gaza, 20 May 2007

Israel's Cabinet has decided to intensify air strikes on Palestinian militants in Gaza, in response to rocket attacks. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel would strike at the terrorist infrastructure and those responsible for firing rockets across the border.

Mr. Olmert said the military leaders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad would be targeted.

The decision came after six days of air strikes on Gaza, in which Israel has targeted militants in their vehicles and suspected rocket factories. However, ministers ruled out a ground offensive in Gaza, saying they wanted to avoid a major escalation.

The government has been under growing pressure from angry residents of the Israeli border town of Sderot, which has been hit by dozens of rockets since Wednesday.

"This government has done nothing!" shouted one resident. "This country should be ashamed! They are caving in to terror!"

The Cabinet's decision came as Hamas and the rival Palestinian Fatah faction agreed to end all hostilities, strengthening a ceasefire reached on Saturday. Gun battles on the streets of Gaza have left some 50 Palestinians dead over the past 10 days.

Palestinian Information Minister Moustafa Barghouti said the agreement is bittersweet.

"I never felt so shameful in my life like when we had to use the word 'cease-fire' between Palestinians," said Moustafa Barghouti.

With Israel stepping up air strikes on Gaza, the Palestinians have put aside their differences, for now.

Israeli Troops Kill at Least 8 Palestinians in Two Days

Palestinian authorities say Israeli troops killed two Palestinian militants Sunday in the West Bank city of Nablus.

Officials said the two were members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent offshoot of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement.

Troops surrounded the house they were hiding in and killed them during a heavy exchange of fire.

On Saturday, Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during raids in the West Bank and an air strike in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military says its aircraft fired on a car carrying Palestinian militants who had been firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. One member of Islamic Jihad was killed, and another was wounded.

One of the militants' rockets hit a house in the Israeli border town of Sderot. An ambulance service said two Israelis were slightly hurt.

In the West Bank city of Jenin, officials said Israeli troops killed three Palestinian militants traveling in a car.

Palestinian officials say Israeli troops also shot and killed a Palestinian policeman and a 17-year-old girl. Officials say the girl was shot as she stood at the window of her house. Israeli officials said they were investigating the incident.

Saturday's fighting was among the worst since Israel and the Palestinians agreed to a ceasefire in November.