[News] The Futile Undertaking of Palestinian Statehood

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Weekend Edition, September 24-25, 2011
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/23/the-futile-undertaking-of-palestinian-statehood/

One State, Two States, No State


The Futile Undertaking of Palestinian Statehood

by ESAM AL-AMIN

Today, September 23, Palestinian Authority (PA) 
leader Mahmoud Abbas submits, to the UN the 
application for Palestinian statehood for the 
Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967.

What are the implications of this effort? Does it 
serve the Palestinian cause? And why do Israel 
and the U.S. oppose this action? What’s the alternative?

Paradoxically, this month marks the eighteenth 
anniversary of when Abbas stood alongside Bill 
Clinton, Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin on the 
White House lawn in a ceremony celebrating the signing of the Oslo Accords.

As one of its architects, Abbas sold the Oslo 
agreement to the Palestinian people as the 
vehicle towards the establishment of an 
independent Palestinian state and the restoration 
of the rights of the Palestinian people.

But throughout the past two decades lofty 
promises were offered to the Palestinians, while 
endless negotiations across continents took place 
between Israel and the PA, which Abbas has headed 
since the death of Arafat in 2004: Madrid (1991), 
Oslo (1993), Wye River (1997), Camp David (2000), 
Taba (2001), Quartet’s road map (2002), Annapolis 
(2007), bilateral negotiations (2008), Obama’s 
promises for settlements freeze in Cairo (2009) 
and declaration of statehood within one year at the UN (2010).

But despite the fact that international law and 
world public opinion are overwhelmingly on the 
side of the Palestinians, all these efforts for 
establishing an independent Palestinian state 
were futile as they confronted the hard reality 
of brutal military occupation on the ground and 
Israeli intransigence at the negotiating table.

While the millions of Palestinian refugees in the 
Diaspora have been shut out of this process since 
Oslo, the Palestinian people living in the 
occupied territories have been witnessing the 
continued expansion of Israeli settlements on 
their lands as well as the ethnic cleansing of 
Jerusalem and confiscation of their sacred places.

Let’s briefly review some of the facts from the 
past decade alone, during which Abbas was 
championing negotiations under the auspices of 
the supposedly “honest broker,” the United States.

Almost 6500 Palestinian civilians have been 
killed since September 2000, including over 1500 
children. Of that figure, two-thirds (over 4400) 
have been killed since the Roadmap in 2003. 
During the same period, over 45,000 Palestinians 
were injured, some maimed for life, 24,000 since 2003.

There are over 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in 
Israeli jails, including over 250 females and 
children under the age of 16. Half of them were 
arrested after 2003, many with no charges and 
held under administrative detention. (Since 1967, 
over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained and 
imprisoned – a staggering 20 per cent of the 
total population or about 1 out of every 2 men 
has been detained at one point in his life under the occupation.)

According to the Israeli Committee Against House 
Demolitions, over 25,000 Palestinian homes were 
demolished since 1967 –  over half since 2003, 
including over 4300 during the Israeli military assault on Gaza in 2008-2009.

There are 236 illegal Israeli settlements in the 
West Bank and East Jerusalem with over 650,000 
settlers confiscating Palestinian land and 
displacing thousands of Palestinians. Israeli 
settlers have more than doubled in the last ten 
years, controlling 43 percent of the land in the 
West Bank and East Jerusalem with over four 
hundreds checkpoints and Jewish-only roads, as 
well as the separation Wall snaking through Palestinian territories.

Since the 2007 siege on Gaza, 95 percent of the 
factories and workshops in Gaza have closed and 
the agricultural sector and fishing industry were 
severely damaged, leading to over 40 per cent 
unemployment (more than doubling the unemployment 
rate of 2003). The siege has also prevented 
reconstruction of thousands of homes destroyed in 
Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2009. As a result of 
the continuing damage to the water system in 
Gaza, at least 95 per cent of the water drawn 
from the system is not drinkable. The 
unemployment rate in the West Bank is at 17 per 
cent. In any economy such figures lead to severe 
depression and abject poverty. For the past three 
years more than half of Gaza’s population and a 
quarter of the West Bank depend on charity for their daily survival.

If these facts prove anything, they conclusively 
lead to the implosion of the disastrous path that 
Abbas and his cronies have embarked on for two 
decades. The current application for UN 
Palestinian statehood by the Palestinian 
leadership is thus an attempt to cover up the 
failure of its approach that offered major 
concessions on fundamental Palestinian rights in 
exchange for promises that were never realized.

For example the Palestinian Papers exposed 
earlier this year by Al-Jazeera demonstrated the 
horrifying degree to which the current 
Palestinian leadership and its negotiators were 
willing to concede behind closed doors on 
fundamental issues like the right of return of 
Palestinian refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, 
borders, security, and sovereignty only to be 
rebuffed by the Israelis for more concessions.

In short, the whole premise of the Oslo process 
was that in exchange for the Palestinian 
leadership’s historic recognition of the Zionist 
state on 78 per cent of historical Palestine, 
Israel would in return recognize the “State of 
Palestine” on 22 percent of the land, namely the 
West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. But the 
problem with this approach was that one party was 
allowed to receive all the benefits and dictate 
all the terms, while the other was left begging 
for its rights as it was stripped of all its bargaining chips.

For decades, the world has known that the 
contours for any political settlement in this 
century-old intractable problem were hovering 
around either a two-state solution (the 78-22 
formula), one-state (bi-national, one-man 
one-vote), or apartheid (one people controlling the fate of another.)

Many in the world including the U.N, the U.S, the 
E.U, and even liberal Zionists (hoping to 
preserve the Jewish majority and Zionist nature 
of the state) have embraced the two-state 
solution. But successive Israeli governments have 
worked incessantly to shut down this option in 
the hope that Israel could retain East Jerusalem 
and as much West Bank territory and aquifers as 
possible, while making life difficult for the 
Palestinians so they could either give up and 
leave, or accept the hard realities of the status quo.

Whether Shamir, Rabin, Barak, Sharon, Olmert, or 
Netanyahu-Lieberman; all Israeli leaders have 
expanded the settlements and built a segregated 
system in the West Bank and Jerusalem that in 
essence foreclosed the two-state option.

At the same time, millions of people around the 
world are fed up with injustices carried out by 
imperialist, racist, or colonialist policies. 
They support the notion of racial equality, of 
one-person one-vote in historical Palestine that 
would also redress the historical injustices done to the Palestinian refugees.

In essence, Abbas, who reached a dead end, is 
trying to salvage his failing approach by 
claiming a hollow diplomatic victory. But the 
problem with it is that it will provide Israel 
with the perfect pretext to deny the Palestinian 
refugees right of return to their historical land 
enshrined in international law and UN Resolution 194.

This move will also provide Israel with the 
justification to reject the one-state solution 
that guarantees real equality, democracy, 
justice, and genuine peace, once it fails to 
subjugate the Palestinians or expel them from their land.

So with this action the Palestinians are freely 
giving up their only remaining card to play 
toward any future settlement: the dissolution of 
the PA and the pursuit of one-state.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, is at a 
loss. On the one hand, President Obama has 
himself called last year for the establishment of 
the State of Palestine within a year. He declared 
that the two-state solution is imperative and a 
vital national security interest of the U.S. But 
on the other hand, his administration has done 
everything in its power to derail this effort.

The only explanation of this myopic behavior is 
the depth and breadth of the influence of the 
Israeli lobby, especially over Congress and the 
Republican Party. A recent New York Times article 
described how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 
frequently calls on Israeli politicians to lobby 
Republican members of Congress on Middle East issues.

In one instance the paper quotes a Republican 
member of Congress, who said that, “Netanyahu has 
more credibility in the Congress than Obama.” 
This statement, claiming that the majority in 
Congress would believe a foreign leader over 
their president in what constitutes the national 
security interest of the country, is incredible and possibly treasonous.

Many in the Palestinian leadership, including 
Abbas’s advisors Saeb Erekat, Nabeel Shaath and 
Yaser Abed Rabbo, talk openly that this call for 
statehood is a tactical move to force Israel back 
to the negotiating table with some leverage and 
international backing. It seems that they have no 
intention to change their colossal path of 
negotiating away –behind closed doors- 
fundamental Palestinian rights and to continue to 
provide “security cooperation” against other Palestinians in the West Bank.

If Abbas were really serious about this move, he 
would not have waited until today to submit the 
statehood application, when the U.S. could demand 
postponing the Security Council vote (to avoid a 
devastating veto damaging its credibility around 
the world) by using a rule that allows delays for 
up to five weeks. Had he applied early he could 
have forced the U.S. to veto the resolution this 
week and expose its hypocrisy, while demanding 
the implementation of previous UN resolutions 
that call for Palestinian statehood, right of 
return, and rejecting all Israeli settlements on 
Palestinian territories as well as the annexation of East Jerusalem.

In short, the struggle for justice for the 
Palestinian people is misplaced and should not be 
reduced to the question of statehood on 22 
percent of their historical land. Any solution 
addressing the Palestinian problem must deal with 
the main cause of this predicament.

Thus any long-lasting and genuine resolution of 
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be based on the following principles.

1) The rejection of a nineteenth century 
political system and ideology that bestows 
political and civil rights in a country based on 
ethnicity or religious affiliation. Zionism for 
over a hundred years has called for the 
ingathering of Jews around the world in Palestine 
and the expulsion and exclusion of Palestinians from their homeland.

For decades Israel has prevented the 
implementation of UN resolution 194 calling for 
the return of Palestinian refugees expelled in 
1948 to their cities and villages, while 
simultaneously granting automatic citizenship 
rights and housing to millions of European and 
American Jews in Palestinian territories, most 
recently to over a million Jews from the former Soviet republics in the 1990s.

In the same fashion that America abolished the 
system of slavery, and South Africa did away with 
the apartheid regime, the world must dismantle 
the institutions of Zionism (Jews-only rights, 
immigration, employment, housing, roads, 
benefits, etc.) Not only because this is the root 
of the problem, but more importantly because it 
is the right and moral thing to do. But fighting 
a racist ideology should never be allowed to be 
exploited by anti-Semitic groups to attack or 
undermine Judaism or its adherents, a religion 
and culture that enriched the world for millennia.

2) The historical land of Palestine (Israel, the 
West Bank and Gaza) is a land that belongs to all 
its inhabitants including the Palestinian 
refugees expelled in 1948 and their descendants. 
They should be allowed to return to their lands 
if they choose to do so as well as be compensated 
for their unjust suffering. Each citizen of this 
land must enjoy equal rights in a democratic, 
secular, and civil state. For instance, the 
European Union would never invite a Jewish-only 
democracy to join it. To qualify for such 
membership in the 21st century, such a country 
must be a multi-ethnic democracy guaranteeing equal rights to all its citizens.

3) Any powers that deny a just resolution rooted 
in racial and religious equality must be exposed 
and rejected. The path for this struggle must be 
based on the unity of the Palestinian people and 
their supporters across the globe including world 
Jewry. It is also imperative that this approach 
embraces the struggle of non-violent resistance, 
civil disobedience, mass protests, and economic boycotts.

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt have detailed 
in their book “The Israel Lobby” the reasons 
behind the unprecedented support the U.S. has 
provided to Israel throughout the years to the 
detriment of America’s vital national interests.

In a nutshell, American tax dollars have been 
subsidizing Israeli occupation, repression and 
brutality against the Palestinians for decades. 
Over $170 billion dollars have been given to 
Israel (a quarter of which since 2003) with the 
most sophisticated weaponry in the US arsenal. 
Meanwhile, the US has cast 42 vetoes to shield 
Israel diplomatically from any condemnation of 
its illegal occupation or war crimes.

Therefore any strategy of non-violent resistance 
against the cruel reality of military occupation 
and subjugation of the Palestinian people must 
encompass popular resistance that includes a 
component that challenges the huge U.S. support, 
especially by a blind Congress.

It is U.S. policies, after all, which enable 
injustice, oppression, suffering, and Israeli 
intransigence. Until U.S. politicians, power 
brokers, military leaders, corporate executives, 
media conglomerates, and opinion makers are 
forced to side with what is morally right, a 
heavy price must be exacted through the ballot 
box, sanctions, boycott, and shaming them in public.

Furthermore, as the fearless masses leading the 
Arab uprisings continue to be successful in 
deposing their dictators and challenging Israeli 
and American hegemony in the region, the 
Palestinian cause will finally regain its status 
as the center of regional politics and at the 
heart of the peoples’ passions in the pursuit for 
justice. As profound democratic reforms sweep the 
Arab world in favor of a pluralistic and more 
equal society, the Zionist project will begin to 
look more like a relic from a medieval era than an enlightened enterprise.

Eventually a state that represents all its 
inhabitants on the basis of equality and genuine 
respect and dignity for all its citizens is one 
that the world will some day celebrate, not a 
phony declaration that legitimizes the oppressive 
nature of one and confers false hope on the other.

Esam Al-Amin can be reached at 
<mailto:alamin1919 at gmail.com>alamin1919 at gmail.com




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