In the run up to the latest round of ‘mirage’ peace talks, the Geneva Initiative created a series of campaign commercials directed at the Israeli public. The commercials attempt  to demonstrate the “partners’ that Israel can find in the Palestinian Authority. On first viewing, I thought these ads were a joke or some skit by the popular Israeli comedy show Ereztz Neherdet.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IvJ0Wzzz8k[/youtube]

The term ‘occupation’ is strikingly absent in these clips. None of the “partners’ directly use the term. Have the peace talks become so disconnected from reality that Palestinian negotiators are unable to directly address one of the core and fundamental problematics of the conflict? Sadly, the answer is yes and this is one of the chief obstacles to peace. The leadership of both sides have shown an unwillingness or inability to embrace the reality on the ground. Israel has taken this dialectic to an extreme by informing the world it is in a settlement freeze while continuing to build settlements. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority is busy with infighting and as a result slowly quelling the popular struggle.

The ‘partner’ series of commercials is a perverse example of how far away reality is from the discussion between Israel and the Palestinians. More importantly, these gimmicks reflect the disappearance of the term “occupation’ from the diplomatic discourse between Israel, the United States and the Palestinian Authority. Without direct discussion of Israel’s occupation, any international effort to bring about solution to this conflict is bound to fail. It starts and ends with the occupation and its maintenance.