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A Middle East Peace That Wreaks Havoc
With the odds stacked so strongly in Israel's favour, Palestinians rightly view the US talks with dread
What an irony that the Palestinians' arch-enemy, Israel, should also be their saviour. There is a real danger that the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks due to starton September 2 in Washington could yield a botched deal that falls far short of the needs of international law or elemental justice, and sets back the cause of Palestine for decades, if not for ever. Fortunately this will not happen as long as Israel's obduracy can be relied on to save the Palestinians from such an outcome.
Time and again, when Israel was thrown a lifeline by Arab neighbours that could have ensured its legitimacy and security, its folly and greed lost it those opportunities. But, since they came at great cost to Palestinian rights, Israel's obduracy had the perverse effect of safeguarding those rights. All peace proposals after 1967 were based on maintaining Israel as a regional power and forcing the Palestinians to settle for less than they were entitled to. They were repeatedly offered paltry settlements that legitimised Israel's hold on most of their land and undermined their right of return. Had Israel agreed, the Palestinian cause would have been lost long ago.
When in the 1979 Camp David negotiations Egypt sought to give the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza a basis for a future independent state, Israel refused. It spurned a succession of Arab peace proposals, most recently the Saudi plan of 2002, offering Israel peace and recognition in return for a Palestinian state. And when, in the 1993 Oslo Accords, the PLO finally capitulated and accepted Israel's occupation of Palestine's remnants so long as it would enable the establishment of an independent state on this morsel, Israel responded by taking more land.
Decades of Israeli rejection and the reality of Israel's western support finally persuaded the Palestinian leadership to get what it could. Where once Palestinians fought against dispossession and for their right to reparation and return, today's browbeaten leadership has settled for a set of aspirations that bear little relation to rights or justice. It is this defeated leadership, reportedly under US pressure to attend or have Palestinian Authority funding withdrawn, which will take part in the talks.
The aim is a two-state settlement, which will supposedly end the conflict. The parameters are familiar from past (and, failed) peace proposals, and grossly unfair to the Palestinians. Historic Palestine will be partitioned roughly along the 1967 lines into a Jewish state on 78% of the land, plus an undefined area of the West Bank also to become Israeli, and a Palestinian state on the remainder - less than 20%. How much of East Jerusalem will go to the Palestinians has not been determined, and there will be no return of refugees.
Israel's prime minister has set conditions before the talks. Israel will keep the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem will remain Israel's undivided capital, and the Palestinian state must be unarmed, with its borders and airspace under surveillance. Nothing will happen unless the Palestinians first recognise Israel as Jewish and guarantee its security.
Despite such preliminaries, the indications are that Israel is not serious about a deal. Its moratorium on settlement building, which in any case excluded East Jerusalem, will end on 27 September. Israeli commentators are sceptical about Binyamin Netanyahu's intentions. Moty Cristal, a former Israeli prime ministerial adviser, believes he "is buying time, looking for ways to stay away from action on the ground". Nonetheless, President Obama, with mid-term elections looming, lacking a foreign policy success and focused on Iran, is determined to see a result.
How could that be achieved, within the constraints of an Israel that cannot be pressured and a weak, unrepresentative Palestinian leadership that excludes Gaza and Hamas? And since Israel's position rejects all the main Palestinian requirements - land, Jerusalem, refugees - progress, if any, can only be made by demanding more concessions from the weaker side. This will mean less land available for the putative Palestinian state, reducing its viability. Hence Jordan's and Egypt's presence at the talks to work out a deal that provides an extension for the West Bank into Jordan, and Gaza into Egypt. No other permutation is possible. Israel will lose very little, but even this may be too much for its "greater Israel" proponents.
If some version of this scenario were to happen and the Palestinian side were bamboozled into agreeing, it would destroy the Palestinian cause and wreak havoc within Palestinian ranks. Such an outcome haunts many Palestinians, who neither trust nor respect the negotiators and think they might sign away Palestinians' rights. This may be unfair, but they can rest assured that if there is any possibility of a peace deal emerging from Washington, the Israeli side - if not theirs - will never let it happen.
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10 Comments so far
Show All"If the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights, then the State of Israel is finished."
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7118937.stm
Or, as one of the last Palestinians still allowed into Israeli Parliament Haneen Zoabi puts it, "The largest threat to Zionism is democracy".
http://countercurrents.org/blumenthal240710.htm
And apparently some of the right-wing Israelis want a single-state solution, the better to squeeze the Palestinians out or onto small restricted confines. That way they can keep alive their dream of 'greater Israel.' Some Native American's told me they call Palestinians "Palestindians."
I haven't been optimistic about seeing justice come out of there for a very long time. Still, I keep hoping and it is good to see that there are others who support the idea of justice for the Palestinians. Not that many years ago, even mentioning the Palestinians made one an outcast in liberal circles. No doubt in conservative circles too but I never went to those places to check.
Many Palestinians are interested in a single-state solution, too, realizing that there is no way that a two-state solution will be anything but bantustans and cantons, South Africa style, with none of the powers and rights of statehood.
If there were to be a single-state solution, all citizens would have to enjoy equal rights, and therefore Israel could not be a "Jewish" state with special rights for Jews. The world will no longer tolerate apartheid, whether in the U.S., South Africa, or Israel.
We can help Israel move into reality and justice by supporting the international movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction Israel.
There is now a generation of people in South Africa who didn't live under apartheid. There is a generation of people in the U.S. who didn't live under Jim Crow laws.
Which is not to say that there aren't great problems in South Africa, any more than there is justice or an end to white privilege in the U.S. since the enactment of civil rights legislation. But at least the laws no longer designate blacks as second class citizens.
The great thing about a single-state solution in Israel/Palestine is that because of demographic growth, the Palestinians will soon outnumber the Jews, and thus will be more able to ensure that they are truly equals with Jews in their own country. Which, unlike the Israeli Jews, they have long been willing to live in peacefully with people of other religions.
Good summary, petrkrop.
I think the two-state solution remains attractive because of a deceptive impression that it's the "least impossible". And that impression, in turn, is at least partly fed by the illusion that splitting the baby is manifestly a fair and just approach.
It echoes the apocryphal judgement of King Solomon without the twist of nuance and subtlety that reveals the seeming obvious and inevitable solution as a ruse; that is, it's the judgement without the animating wisdom.
Had Israel not devoted itself to a wantonly greedy and venal policy of stealing lebensraum by any means possible to establish irreversible "facts on the ground", a two-state approach might have been possible.
Now, it's as if Israel is a "private party" that inexorably emerged from its reserved dining room to take over the entire restaurant, including the waitstaff-- but may eventually be persuaded to magnanimously yield Palestinian patrons the remaining table squeezed between the restroom and kitchen doors.
The 20% Palestinians/Arabs within Israel's pre-1967 border don't share equal rights with Jews. To expand the "one-state" would only make the open air prisons of Gaza the West Bank towns officially within Israel's border and accelerate Jewish occupation of the rest of the West Bank.
"Israel's prime minister has set conditions before the talks. Israel will keep the Jordan Valley, Jerusalem will remain Israel's undivided capital, and the Palestinian state must be unarmed, with its borders and airspace under surveillance.
Nothing will happen unless the Palestinians first recognise Israel as Jewish and guarantee its security."
Kafka meets Orwell ....
The incredible audacity to "demand" a security guarantee from the Palestinians for a Zionist state that has turned their lives into a veritable hell by
- treating them as inferior human beings (Zionist colonial mindset enforced by preaching "Jewish chosenness" and hiding behind a "divine mission" and the Holocaust ...)
- executing a long planned ethnic cleansing campaign in 1948 (still ongoing - though the means have changed)
- systematically stealing their land and consistently violating their human rights and property rights ...
.. and in spite of the extensive criminal and amoral record ... still presenting themselves to the world "as victims of terror" ...(greatly helped by "9/11" induced Islamophobia and WOT ..Cui bono? indeed ...)
Any Palestinian "leader" who - after decades of Israeli deception and state terror - agrees to "talks" with Israel, accepting such absurd "conditions" from a rogue and racist state can only be called a traitor to his people and a real scumbag.
Hamas- with all their faults - is the only party who is neither corrupt nor willing to give up universal rights ... they insist that Israel respect international law and the rights of Palestinians as human beings ...that is why they must be treated as pariahs ..and be demonized ...
The presentation of the recent "attack on four Israeli settlers" near Hebron is just another example of how Israel controls the media ..
What the "settlements" really mean for Palestinans (Hell) does not interest the media ... (here in Europe also:
http://www.btselem.org/english/publications/Index.asp?TF=01&image.x=17&image.y=6.
"The settlement enterprise has been characterized, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal attitude toward international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law ...
Israel has masked the ongoing land grab under a cloak of legality. As such, it has emptied the legal system that Israel operates in the West Bank of the basic values of law and justice, exposing it as a system intended to serve political objectives while enabling the routine violation of Palestinian human rights.
.. On 30 May, Fatima Sabarna, 55 years old, resident of the Beit Ommar town, north of Hebron district, died after a settler’s car ran over her. She died half an hour after being taken to Al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron city ...
...Nightly raids by settlers who have burned down tents and killed livestock have caused panic among Palestinian residents and are serving to exacerbate the growing tension...
B’Tselem has extensive documentation of such activity by settlers from Kiryat Arba. For example, on the morning of 5 February 2008, a settler drove from Givat Haharsinah, the northern neighborhood of Kiryat Arba, to the farmland of Khalifah D’ana, on which the army has built a secondary fence and declared it an SSA. The settler got out of his car, took his power saw and began to cut down fruit trees belonging to D’ana, who stood taken aback on the other side of the fence, unable to intervene. After he finished cutting, the settler put the wood into his car and drove off toward the settlement ... just one example ...
- imagine this would happen in the US - the mother of enforcing all property rights ..
...The continuing discrimination in allocation of the shared water sources creates a chronic water shortage for Palestinians, primarily in the northeastern and southern sections of the West Bank, at the same time as nearby settlers receive a regular and unlimited amount of water. Israeli policy
severely diminishes the income and standard of living of Palestinian families ...
the list goes on and on ...
Who - with the least bit of human decency - could agree to "talks" with a government that endorses all these inhumane actions and crimes?
There cannot be a Palestinian state as long as Israel can get away with anything -- state terror, land theft, mass murder, systemic racism, you name it ...
.. as long as the hypocriticial and dangerous role of the US in this world is not effectively challenged by its own citizens ...
I wonder what is the "unbreakable" bond between the US and Israel?
Inflicting enormous injustice and suffering on others - but always pretending that it is for a good cause, to defend "values", to bring "security" ...?
...a national identity based on narcissistic denial of the true intentions .. and horrific consequences to people in weaker countries ...
I disagree with the one-state solution.
The United States, the UN Security Council, and the International Community, including the European Union must force Israel to cede West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians so that THEY can create their own independent, sovereign nation-state alongside Israel. Moreover, it must be explained bluntly, under no uncertain terms, that Israel is endangering her survival as a Jewish State by holding onto those Palestinian Territories. An international conference must take place in order to really jumpstart the process of moving towards the only safe, sane and sensible solution to this decades-old conflict; the TWO-state solution, with Jerusalem as a SHARED capitol between the two states of Israel and Palestine.
PERFECTION
Everything put back the way it was before the Israeli invasion of 1949, and the Jews who refuse to live under Palestine rule get shipped out of the country.
You are correct that a one-state solution would never work, but your wish list would require Israel to be most humble and merciful, a complete reversal of things as their stuck in an ethnic cleansing grab it all mode.
Sure understand the old testement better after watching Israel, especially the parts where God decides they are in need of regular diciplining. Now if only old nameless cosmic rock chucker would check in on what is happening these days.....
Maybe you can start to understand why I want a law passed banning all cults from the state.
and by state I mean the whole state: the police, the security services, parliment, judges the NHS, the state!
Will a Law pass banning cults from the state? NO! Why because all the cult members in the government and outside it will work to stop that happening- They care nothing for socitey they are out for them selves and their power!
'Fuck the people' seems to be there motto!
A cult member will alway serve their cult first, therefore it is undemocratic to allow them into government...
and thats another reason why, there is no peace!!
Get rid of the cults in Government and peace will be easier!