Abbas Meets With Obama as Palestinians Vent Frustration

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas visited the White House on Monday, where he spoke with President Barack Obama about the peace negotiations with Israel that began last July and have continued amid growing violence and expanding Israeli settlement construction in the occupied territories.

Obama has urged both sides to make tough political decisions in order to salvage the two-state solution. Xavier Abu Eid, a Palestinian Authority spokesperson, told VICE News that Abbas raised “severe Israeli violations” with Obama that threatened to derail the process.

Abbas is being pressured to extend peace talks, which are scheduled to end on April 29. He indicated that he would agree to an extension if Israel freezes settlement construction and proceeds with the scheduled release of a group of Palestinian prisoners at the end of March.

“We are hopeful that the fourth batch will be released by the 29th of March because this will give a very solid impression about the seriousness of these efforts to achieve peace,” Abbas said.

Ahead of Monday’s meeting, thousands of Palestinians held rallies throughout the West Bank in a dramatic display of solidarity with Abbas.

A large Palestinian rally in Ramallah, West Bank.

“We are here to support our leader,” a Palestinian named Jamal Nasser told VICE News at a rally in Ramallah. “To resist pressure from the US and uphold our national principles.”

These principles include establishing a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem, a “right of return” for Palestinian refugees, the removal of settlements in occupied territories, and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state based on borders that existed prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

“Conditions of Coercion”

Sitting alongside Abbas at their meeting, Obama said that he continues to hope that “the people of the Palestinian Territories and Israel are ready to move forward in a new spirit of cooperation and compromise.”

His optimism isn't reflected in the West Bank, where exhaustion after a series of abortive peace talks over the last 20 years is palpable.

“There is no cooperation, there is crisis,” former Palestinian presidential candidate Mustafa Barghouti told VICE News. “Israel has doubled its settlement construction during the time of the negotiations, and the level of oppression during this same period is unprecedented.”

According to the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department, Israeli security forces have killed 56 Palestinians and injured another 897 since the most recent talks began in July. Meanwhile, data from Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics indicates that 2013 saw a surge in new settlement construction of 123 percent compared to the previous year. Israel has a record of expanding settlements during peace negotiations.

Many wonder why the Palestinian Authority and the international community continue to believe that bilateral US-brokered negotiations will deliver a two-state solution, when nothing has indicated Israel’s intention to allow an autonomous and viable Palestinian state. Israeli settler population in occupied territory has doubled in the 20 years following the landmark Oslo Accords, and Israel has consolidated its control over most of the West Bank.

“They are not talking about a sovereign state,” Barghouti said of Israel. “They are talking about a Bantustan state” — a reference to the territories established for black South Africans under apartheid.

Omar Barghouti (no relation), a Palestinian activist and co-founder of the “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement against Israel, told VICE News, “Israel and the US are trying to impose a surrender agreement on a weak, unprincipled, and unrepresentative Palestinian leadership that lacks the necessary democratic mandate to legally sign anything on behalf of the Palestinian people. Any agreement reached under such conditions of coercion will be regarded by the Palestinians, and indeed international law experts, as null and void.”

This view was echoed by a man named Mahmoud who identified himself as a member of Hamas, which governs Gaza. “Palestinians have spent 20 years under the peace regime. What have we seen? A bloody five-year uprising, a 700-kilometer apartheid wall, an open-air prison on the Mediterranean, and hundreds of thousands more settlers living in the occupied territories.”

Obama faces considerable skepticism in his attempt to solve the most intractable conflict in current history.