[News] To end the occupation, dissolve the Palestinian Authority

[Anti-Imperialist News]

  To end the occupation, dissolve the Palestinian Authority

Iyad Burnat
*http://electronicintifada.net/content/end-occupation-dissolve-palestinian-authority/12990*
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/iyad-burnat>

11 December 2013

My head feels like it will explode. There are many urgent questions but, 
like most Palestinians, I feel a sense of incomprehension as I listen to 
the news about John Kerry's 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/john-kerry> recurring visits, and 
the talk of a Palestinian state and lasting peace.

When people step away from their TV screens and go out into the street, 
they experience a different reality. They experience heavily armed 
soldiers storming, killing and imprisoning.

They experience checkpoints 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/checkpoints> dotting the roads. They 
experience bulldozers and equipment uprooting their olive trees and 
building houses for Israeli settlers 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/settlers> on their land.

What is happening? Where is the peace? Where are the negotiations? And 
who is Kerry anyway?

To the Palestinian Authority 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/palestinian-authority> negotiators, 
I ask: What are you doing?


    Israel gains time

Allow me to travel with you twenty years back in time to the start of 
Oslo negotiations <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/oslo-accords>, 
which also marked the beginning of the attempted eradication of our 
dream of an independent Palestinian state. The Zionists have always 
aimed to gain time in order to impose a /fait accompli/ on the 
Palestinian people.

More time is tantamount to more construction of colonies; the number of 
colonies that were constructed since Oslo has doubled, bringing the 
number of Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/west-bank> --- including East 
Jerusalem <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/east-jerusalem> --- to as 
many as 650,000, according to some figures 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2011/05/netanyahu-claims-there-are-650000-settlers-not-just-half-a-million.html>.

More time means more checkpoints and more separation walls, all of which 
put the entire Palestinian people in ghettoes and Bantustans 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/bantustans> where they cannot move 
securely through the barriers of humiliation and the gates of indignity. 
That's what negotiations have brought us.


    Brazen

And now, shamelessly and brazenly, you are talking about a Palestinian 
state on twelve percent of historic Palestine? Where is this Palestinian 
state? And what are its borders?

Who gave you the right to negotiate on my behalf? Who gave you the right 
to prevent my children from visiting the sea, which is not farther than 
25 kilometers from where we live? They have not seen it in their whole 
lives.

Who gave you the right to prevent my children and me from visiting 
Jerusalem <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/jerusalem>? That great 
city is only 20 kilometers from my home, but we can only hear about it 
in the news and see it in pictures.

Who gave you the right to negotiate on my right to live in freedom, 
peace and security? Such rights are inalienable and cannot be usurped or 
surrendered by anyone.

And when will your negotiations come to an end? Will any agreement be 
subject to a popular referendum in which the entire Palestinian people 
living in Palestine and in the diaspora participate?

You recognize quite well that these negotiations are absurdly hollow and 
meaningless, and that you are certain that the primary beneficiary from 
these negotiations will be the Israeli occupation. So why do you cling 
on to these negotiations with tooth and claw?

I am quite sure that these negotiations will not achieve peace, or a 
Palestinian state.


    Doomed to failure

Reality suggests that Israeli occupation forces will not abide by the 
outcome of these negotiations, just as Israel has refused to abide by 
the outcome of previous negotiations --- under the pretext of security.

If the negotiations fail --- and I'm sure they are doomed to failure --- 
what will happen next? What are the alternatives and what are your 
plans? What is your strategy for ending the occupation?

I am disheartened to say that after these failed negotiations there will 
be more failed negotiations. You are divided and quarreling among 
yourselves.

Your goals are not national. You do not work in the best interests of 
the people, but for partisan and factional interests.

What a pity that you do not believe in our right to live in freedom, 
like other peoples of the world.

Freedom is not something that is given to people. It is something that 
is gained.

We will not gain our freedom except through popular resistance, in which 
all segments of the Palestinian people are unified against the 
occupation, in an organized popular intifada.

There will not be a popular intifada before the Palestinian Authority is 
dissolved, and a unified, principles-centered national leadership is 
formed. Only such leadership can take forward a global intifada to end 
the occupation once and for all.

/Iyad Burnat organizes regular protests against Israel's wall in the 
West Bank village of Bilin./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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