The Gilo announcement — more than just an announcement

Lara Friedman at Americans for Peace Now writes in to correct me about the nature of Israel’s Gilo announcement.

In my earlier post, defending the State Department’s equivalence between the expansion of Gilo in southern Jerusalem and Palestinian plans to declare a state unilaterally, I said that — contra an AP reporter (and my heart goes out to AP this week, so I’m not going make much more of this) — "a planning committee’s ‘announcement’ of intent pretty much equates to the Palestinian Authority’s "announcement" of intent, rhetoric-wise — they’re both ‘announcements.’"

Lara writes:

The committee (which by the way operates under the framework of the  Ministry of Interior)  approved the deposit of the plan for public  review.  This is a significant and tangible step that sets into motion  the end-game toward implementation of the plan.

With this step taken, it becomes very difficult to stop implementation  of the plan.  Prior to this stage the plan could have been quietly  delayed or quashed with nobody really noticing and no cost in political  capital to Bibi.  With this step taken, stopping or even significantly  delaying the plan will involve much higher political costs.

A quick summary of how this process works:  When a plan is deposited for public review (following completion of various earlier approval steps), the decision is published in local newspapers and in the Public Record and the plan is (for the first time) made available for public scrutiny.  The public may then inspect the proposed plan.  Once a plan is deposited for public review there is a 60-day period in which to file  objections.  Anyone who sees himself or herself adversely affected by  the plan may file an objection to the Jerusalem Regional Planning Committee.  Hearings are then held (usually one session suffices) and  after the Committee considers the objections, the plan is either rejected, amended, or approved.  As a rule the process is resolved within about a month (after the end of the 60-day public review period).  A final decision about the plan is taken the same day or  immediately thereafter. In some cases (like the Mughrabi Gate), where  the sensitivity of the plan makes the Committee especially cautious, the process may take significantly longer.

Once the public review is complete and the plan has gotten final approval from the Committee, the plan’s statutory approval is published in the Public Record (gazette and the press), after which the plan enters effect. The Minister of Interior may notify the Regional Committee that a given plan requires his approval in order to enter  effect, in which case the publication of the plan’s approval will take place only after the signature of the Minister. In the past it has been rather common for the Minister to exercise this authority in East Jerusalem construction schemes (like Har Homa and Ras el Amud) – but  clearly not to actually stop those schemes from being implemented.

So, this is more than an "announcement" and more than "rhetoric." I don’t think this changes the thrust of my post (and Lara wasn’t saying it does — she is correcting me in on important point of fact, not interpretation), because the Palestinian Authority has also launched formal proceedings toward unilateral statehood — so the equivalence still is justified. But I should have been less dismissive of both events, the Gilo expansion and the Palestinian countdown towards a unilateral declaration of independence.

My broader point is this: There was a imbalance of perception, at least, over the last eight years in how the Bush administration addressed violations of the "road map" peace plan by the Israelis and Palestinians. I say "imbalance of perception" to make the point that the Bushies did not ignore Israeli violations; they did address them, but mostly behind closed doors. The Palestinians, they took to the woodshed in public.

Whether there was a real imbalance requires a magazine-article length investigation of each violation and how it was dealt with; but in diplomacy, perception is often reality and an imbalance of perception is an imbalance.

The way to redress this is not to inaugurate a new imbalance, this time in the Palestinians’ favor; all that does is create another imbalance. The way to redress this is simply to be fair. One may agree or disagree with the particulars of the Gilo expansion or the UDI; one may argue that fairness is not germane to justice, from the Israeli or the Palestinian perspective. But given what we know to be the outlines of Obama’s Middle East policy — evenhandedness — slapping down both the Gilo expansion and the UDI is consistent.

Finally, in an aside, Lara makes another important point:

I know this may see far down in the weeds but it is important stuff and worth getting right, especially when we are dealing with an issue where people rely mostly on gut impressions (like, "but this is just construction inside Gilo! How can that be a problem?!") rather than facts (like, "this is construction on new ground that expands the footprint of Gilo toward Wallajeh and dovetails with another plan for a huge new settlement straddling the Jerusalem/West Bank line")

This is fundamental: There are plenty of arguments over how to define Gilo and other "new" neighborhoods, but this expansion appears to have little to do with how one defines Jerusalem’s borders; it’s about spilling over into the West Bank.

That point has been missing from much of the discussion of the latest controversy. At the very least it might stanch some of the bloodshed over at the Atlantic, where Jeffrey Goldberg has argued, essentially, "it’s just Gilo" and Andrew Sullivan has countered, essentially, "so what if it’s just Gilo."

An interesting argument, boys, but take it up another time. In this case, at least, it’s not just Gilo.