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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/palestine-israel-recognising-right-surrender">middleeasteye.net</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Recognising the right of the Palestinians to surrender</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Joseph Massad - July 30, 2021<br></div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><p>One of the exceptional and key elements in the diplomatic game <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/countries/israel" target="_blank">Israel</a> has
deployed since its establishment in 1948 has been its refusal to
recognise the right of the indigenous Palestinian people to represent
themselves. </p>
<p>Whereas Israel, in the words of Golda Meir, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/1.5256637" target="_blank">insisted</a>
that "the Palestinian people do not exist" well through the 1970s and
1980s, the international community, especially the United Nations and
formerly colonised countries around the world, came to recognise the
Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as their sole and legitimate
representative in the mid-1970s.</p>
<p>Essentially, what Israel, and the US behind it, demanded was that for
representatives of the Palestinians to gain legitimacy by the colonial
West and the Israeli settler-colony they would have to fully surrender
all their national indigenous rights to their Jewish colonisers.</p>
<p><br><span>A legitimate representative</span></p>
<p>Israel’s belated acknowledgment that there indeed existed a Palestinian people was quickly followed by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/08/world/arafat-says-plo-accepted-israel.html" target="_blank">two principal conditions</a>
it set to recognise the legitimacy of their representatives, namely
that the PLO accept the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish settler-colony
built on the stolen lands of the Palestinians, the theft of which the
Palestinians must acknowledge as legitimate, and that the Palestinians
cease and desist from any and all resistance, especially military, to
Israeli settler-colonialism. Otherwise, representatives of the
Palestinians would be deemed "terrorists" not fit for any negotiations
with their colonial oppressor.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It took representatives of the Palestinians from 1948 until 1993 to
accept Israeli conditions and surrender, when the PLO signed the Oslo
accords</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It took representatives of the Palestinians from 1948 until 1993 to accept Israeli conditions and surrender, when the PLO signed<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/what-are-oslo-accords" target="_blank"> the Oslo accords</a> and was finally recognised by Israel as the "legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people. </p>
<p>Once the PLO <a href="https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2018/11/181106114236864.html" target="_blank">surrendered</a>
all the internationally recognised national indigenous rights of the
Palestinian people in Oslo, the negotiations that Israel agreed to
conduct with it were essentially about the nature and mechanisms of
continued Israeli occupation over less than a third of the Palestinians
(in the West Bank and Gaza).</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/Israel-western-allies-run-out-Palestinian-enforcers" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/palestinian-authority-police-west-bank-2009-reuters-edit_0_0.jpg?itok=l8ddhIlN" alt="" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Israel and its western allies have run out of Palestinian enforcers</p>
<p><br>
</p></div>
<p>Israel barred any <a href="https://studies.aljazeera.net/en/reports/2018/11/181106114236864.html" target="_blank">negotiations</a> over its rule over and oppression of the rest, whether refugees in exile or the oppressed minority subject to <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-long-making-news" target="_blank">an apartheid</a> regime
inside Israel. Almost three decades of negotiations later, Israel
decided that the nature of its settler-colonial rule over all
Palestinians after Oslo should remain as it was before, if not
intensified further. Israel then moved to ensure that the Palestinian
resistance movement, Hamas, would be labelled a terrorist organisation
in Europe and North America, as it had <a href="http://aei.pitt.edu/14582/1/WD328_Al-Fattal_on_EU_FP_in_Palestine.pdf" target="_blank">done with the PLO until 1991</a>,
unless Hamas followed in the footsteps of the PLO and surrendered by
accepting the legitimacy of Israeli settler-colonialism across
Palestine, and renounced all resistance. </p>
<p>But was this a new or old colonial strategy? Whence came Israel’s
longstanding refusal to recognise the Palestinian people and the
legitimacy of their representatives unless they surrendered and accepted
dispossession by Jewish settler-colonialism as legitimate? </p>
<h3>Colonial precedent</h3>
<p>As with every other measure the Israelis use to subdue the
Palestinian people, they have never innovated strategies, but rather
plagiarised well-established European colonial precedents. In fact, the
conditions Israel set for recognising the legitimacy of representatives
for the Palestinians were the standard conditions set by British
colonial rulers after Britain conquered Palestine between December 1917
and September 1918. </p>
<p>Palestinians had established myriad organisations to resist British
occupation and sponsorship of Jewish settler-colonialism; the most
prominent were branches of Muslim-Christian Associations (MCA) across
the country, with <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4284071" target="_blank">the first formed</a> in Jaffa.</p>
<p>In November 1918, the Jaffa MCA <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Origins_of_Palestinian_Nationalism/vaOrAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1" target="_blank">submitted</a>
a memorandum to Brigadier-General Sir Gilbert Clayton, chief political
officer and policymaker of the British military administration,
affirming the Arab character of Palestine (“our Arab homeland,
Palestine”) and objecting to the <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/balfour-declaration-enduring-colonial-criminality" target="_blank">1917 Balfour Declaration</a>’s Jewish National Home policy.</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/000_ARP1967183%20%281%29.jpg" alt="A picture dated before 1937 during the British Mandate in Palestine shows Arabs demonstrating in the Old City of Jerusalem against the Jewish immigration to Palestine (AFP)" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="447" height="291"></p>
A picture taken during the British Mandate in Palestine
(dated 'before 1937') shows Arabs demonstrating in the Old City of
Jerusalem against Jewish immigration to Palestine (AFP)</div>
<p>This was especially important, as the Jewish colonists,
under the sponsorship of the Zionist Organization (now the World Zionist
Organization), staged a parade on 2 November, the first anniversary of
the Balfour Declaration, to celebrate the success of their colonial
project. </p>
<p>The MCA convened the first Palestinian National Congress in Jerusalem in early 1919, and <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Origins_of_Palestinian_Nationalism/vaOrAgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1" target="_blank">called for </a>the
liberation of Palestine and all of Syria. The major purpose of the
Congress was opposition to Jewish settler-colonisation. Citing Wilsonian
principles of self-determination, the Congress dispatched a delegation
to the Paris Peace Conference to deliver its demands.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-violence-young-jewish-stoking#autoplay" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/video_thumbnails/eiRrLL7uBqk.jpg?itok=R7Sv2cX5" alt="" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Israel-Palestine: Meet the young Jewish ultra-nationalists stoking violence</p>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-palestine-violence-young-jewish-stoking#autoplay" target="_blank">Read More »</a>
</p></div>
<p>In July 1920, the same month France conquered Syria and ended its
independence, the British replaced their military government in
Palestine with a civilian one, and appointed the Zionist British
politician <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/565641" target="_blank">Herbert Samuel</a> as the first High Commissioner of their new colonial acquisition.</p>
<p>A third National Congress convened in Jaffa in December 1920 and
called for the "independence" of Palestine. The Congress elected a
committee, the Palestinian Arab Executive, to represent it before the
British government and internationally. High Commissioner Samuel replied
to the Congress’s demand for independence by stressing that the
participants did not represent the Palestinian people.</p>
<p>The League of Nations also<a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Guardians/W4sIMQAACAAJ?hl=en" target="_blank"> refused</a>
to grant them legitimacy, as it too was committed to the Zionist
movement’s project of Jewish colonisation of Palestine. The League’s
1922 <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/palmanda.asp" target="_blank">Mandate</a>
document did not once mention the Palestinian people, who constituted
the majority of the population at the time, and dedicated a third of the
Mandate articles to issues dealing with Jewish colonisation and the
Jewish colonists, who constituted less than 10 percent of the
population. </p>
<p>When the Muslim-Christian Associations appointed a delegation to
travel to Europe in 1921, the British colonial secretary wrote to Samuel
to state that the delegation should be aware that: "administrative
reform can only proceed on [the] basis of acceptance of the policy of
creation of a National Home for the Jews, which remains a cardinal
article of British policy”. He added that “No representative bodies that
may be established will be permitted to interfere with measures (i.e.,
immigration, etc.) designed to give effect to [the] principle of a
National Home or to challenge this principle."</p>
<p>When the British offered to establish a legislative council for
Palestine in 1922, they insisted that candidates and parties would have
to recognise the legitimacy of the British colonial Mandate and its
Zionist settler-colonial project. The Palestinians refused. The <a href="https://books.google.ae/books?id=3GwMAQAAMAAJ&q=Ann+lesch+Arab+politics&dq=Ann+lesch+Arab+politics&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y" target="_blank">fifth Palestinian Congress</a>, convened in 1922, launched a campaign to boycott the elections.</p>
<div>
<p><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/063_1318353319.jpg" alt="People march through downtown Chicago protesting Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip on 16 May 2021 (AFP)" style="margin-right: 25px;" width="447" height="298"></p>
A march in Chicago to protest against Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip, 16 May 2021 (AFP)</div>
<p>The <a href="https://books.google.ae/books?id=3GwMAQAAMAAJ&q=Ann+lesch+Arab+politics&dq=Ann+lesch+Arab+politics&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y" target="_blank">sixth</a>
Congress, in June 1923, met after the League of Nations granted the
Mandate to the British, and stressed non-cooperation. Ultimately, the
British refused to recognise any Palestinian representative
association that did not accept the legitimacy of the British Mandate
over Palestine and its commitment to Jewish colonisation of the country.</p>
<p>As none accepted these conditions, the British denied the
Palestinians and their organisations national recognition throughout
their three-decade rule.</p>
<h3>Drastic transformation</h3>
<p>When the Zionists conquered Palestine and established Israel in 1948,
they already had an effective strategy that the British and the League
of Nations had followed to deny the Palestinians national recognition.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Once Palestinians surrender and accept Israel’s right to colonise
them, the West would grant them a hypocritical understanding of a
"lite" version of "human" rights</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Therefore, it was a drastic transformation when the UN, the successor
to the League of Nations, recognised the PLO in 1974, more than half a
century after the League had sponsored Jewish colonisation of their
country and denied recognition to the Palestinian people. </p>
<p>Following the Oslo accords, the PLO, which established<a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/tags/palestinian-authority?page=4" target="_blank"> the Palestinian Authority</a>,
lost much of its legitimacy, as it became a collaborator with the
occupation and surrendered the national rights of the Palestinians. With
<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538077" target="_blank">the rise of Hamas </a>in
December 1987 and its increasing legitimacy among Palestinians, the
Israelis began to follow the same old British colonial formula they had
followed with the PLO, an effort that intensified internationally in the
1990s, following the Oslo surrender. </p>
<p>As a result of Israeli efforts, in the past three decades the <a href="https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/" target="_blank">United States</a> (October 1997) and the <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/fight-against-terrorism/terrorist-list/" target="_blank">European Union</a>
(December 2001) designated Hamas a "terrorist" organisation, and refuse
any diplomatic engagement with it unless it "recognises" Israel and
"renounces" armed resistance to Israeli settler-colonialism. Following
Hamas’s landslide victory in Palestinian legislative elections in 2006,
the so-called Quartet of US, EU, Russian and UN diplomats <a href="https://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/354568CCE5E38E5585257106007A0834" target="_blank">imposed</a> similar conditions on any Palestinian Authority government that might be formed. </p>
<p>These are hardly novel conditions that the West has set before it
agrees to engage the leaders of the colonised natives of Palestine. </p>
<p>In 2018, a US-sponsored resolution to condemn Hamas was <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/un-general-assembly-rejects-us-resolution-to-condemn-hamas/a-46623413" target="_blank">defeated </a>in
the UN General Assembly, though assiduous US efforts were able to rally
87 countries to support it. Hamas mounted a legal challenge in 2010 to
the EU designation, a case it won in 2014 when the EU General Court
ruled in its favour. The EU appealed the decision in 2015.</p>
<p>More court judgments came in <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/hamas-terrorist-organisation-ecj-european-court-of-justice-eu-uk-palestinian-israel-a7860301.html" target="_blank">2017</a> and 2019, which maintained Hamas on the designated terrorist list. In September 2019, however, a lower European Court in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-israel-hamas/eu-court-moves-to-keep-hamas-tamil-tigers-off-terrorism-list-idUSKCN11S1JJ" target="_blank">Luxembourg</a> reversed those decisions and removed Hamas from the list, leading the European Court of Justice to also remove it.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, as the EU court decision is a legal "opinion", it is not
binding on the EU, which continues to consider
Hamas "terrorist". Hamas’s legal efforts came to nought. Still, last May
the EU sent <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/Israel-western-allies-run-out-Palestinian-enforcers" target="_blank">signals</a>
of its willingness to open diplomatic channels with Hamas, provided the
latter met its conditions of recognising Israel and the PLO’s 1993
surrender at Oslo. </p>
<h3>Indigenous rights</h3>
<p>The effort to delegitimise Hamas became more urgent after the
resistance organisation’s military performance last May, when it
retaliated against Israel’s ongoing colonial onslaught. In response,
Swiss Jewish organisations launched a campaign to have the Swiss
government list Hamas as "terrorist".</p>
<p>The Swiss foreign ministry <a href="https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/switzerland--hamas--and-the-question-of-terrorism/46658172" target="_blank">refused</a>
to do so, while stressing that it "condemns the fact that Hamas denies
Israel’s right to exist and defines armed struggle as a legitimate means
of resistance". Also last month, the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/25/hamas-flag-banned-in-germany-under-new-terror-rules" target="_blank">German</a>
parliament went as far as to ban the Hamas flag. As for the United
Kingdom, the longtime sponsor of settler-colonialism in Palestine, it
had designated Hamas’s military - but not its political - wing as
"terrorist" in March 2001.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Quartet faced the possibility of yet another Hamas
victory in the cancelled elections that were supposed to take place this
year, and <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/back-to-democracy-europe-hamas-and-the-palestinian-elections/" target="_blank">reasserted</a>
its own conditions for recognising a Palestinian government, namely,
that the "future Palestinian government must be committed to
non-violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous
agreements and obligations".</p>
<h3>Palestinian leadership </h3>
<p>What the history of British, US, European and Israeli refusal to
recognise the national and indigenous rights of the Palestinian people
to their own country, and their right to defend themselves against
Zionist settler-colonialism, has clearly shown is that the Palestinians
would only be recognised as a people after they surrender all their
national indigenous rights.</p>
<div>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-long-making-news" target="_blank"><img src="https://www.middleeasteye.net/sites/default/files/styles/read_more/public/images-story/000_SM1T1%20%281%29.jpg?itok=CSaLWJhq" alt="" width="400" height="250"></a></p><p>Israel has long been an apartheid state. Admitting it now is too little, too late</p>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-palestine-apartheid-long-making-news" target="_blank">Read More »</a>
</p></div>
<p>Once they surrender and accept Israel’s right to colonise them and
steal their country, and once they renounce resisting
settler-colonialism, the West would grant the Palestinians a
hypocritical understanding of a "lite" version of "human" rights, which
Israel itself, however, would continue to deny. </p>
<p>The Palestinian leadership refused to surrender to Britain and Israel
from 1918 until 1993. Since their surrender, the PLO and the PA have
come to symbolise nothing less than a Quisling regime.</p>
<p>With the final loss of the PA’s meagre legitimacy during the Israeli
attacks on all Palestinians in May, Israel, the West and their Arab
allies began to worry about <a href="https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-science-32095d8e1323fc1cad819c34da08fd87" target="_blank">the astronomical rise of Hamas’s popularity </a>among
the Palestinians and across the Arab world, prompting the increased
pressure to further delegitimise the organisation internationally in an
effort to force a PLO-style surrender.</p>
<p>Hamas leaders, especially its military commanders, know very well
that acceptance of Israel’s and the West’s colonial terms is detrimental
to Palestinian national rights and to the century-old Palestinian
national struggle. </p>
<p>What Israel and its Arab and Western allies refuse to recognise,
however, is that no matter how many Palestinian leaders they have
coopted to surrender since the early 1920s, their efforts have always
failed to end the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle. There is no
indication they will succeed in the future either. </p>
<p><i>The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.</i></p>
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