By Marwan Bisharaby
February 03, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" -
On February 1,
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the
Palestinian Authority,
succeeded in extracting from the
Arab League a rejection of US President
Donald Trump's Middle East plan by
warning its leaders that neither he, nor
they, could afford to go down in history
as the ones who "sold Jerusalem" and the
Al-Aqsa Mosque to Israel.
This is the same argument the late
Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat made to justify
rejecting the US and Israeli dictates at
the Camp David summit in 2000, knowing
all too well that Arab autocrats may not
care about Palestinian rights but could
not be seen to have
surrendered Jerusalem.
The ploy worked.
US arrogance in declaring all of
Jerusalem the capital of Israel has
backfired on Trump's entire "vision",
leaving Washington humiliated and its
foolishly dubbed "deal of the century"
barely alive.
Furthermore, Abbas severed all
relations with the US and Israel. "If
Jerusalem is off the table, America is
off the table," warned one Palestinian
official.
This may have come as a shock to the
Americans, who thought he
would come back to the table sooner or
later, but it was no surprise to their
Israeli partner.
American ignorance or Israeli
arrogance
It is hard to say whether the Trump
plan has been driven mainly by the
ignorance of young Jared Kushner,
Trump's adviser and son-in-law, or the
arrogance of his mentor, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But it is
probably both, since gullibility is
required for successful manipulation.
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It is embarrassingly clear that the
plan is based on Netanyahu's extremist
ideas. Indeed, when Trump and Netanyahu
stood side-by-side at the White House
ceremony to announce it, there could be
little doubt whose vision it was. Trump
seemed like he was reading it for the
first time.
And from there on, it was downhill
for the plan as the president's
son-in-law parroted Netanyahu's
propaganda pointers and debunked cliches.
Indeed there is an eerie resemblance
between Kushner and Netanyahu's former
spokesman, Mark
Regev, in style and spin, both
taking their cue from Frank Luntz's Global
Language Dictionary, which became
Israel's propaganda playbook after its
release a decade ago.
It did not help that Netanyahu, the
puppet master, wanted the plan to be
announced, especially the parts
legitimising new Israeli annexations of
Palestinian land, not to make peace with
the Palestinians, but to win a fourth
term.
Unlike Kushner, Netanyahu knows all
too well the deal is a non-starter for
the Palestinians. He has already tested
its main ideas and is familiar with the
Palestinian response.
Indeed, such anticipated Palestinian
rejection is the very reason he devised
and supported the plan in the first
place.
All of this begs the question, what
now? What will the Palestinians do if or
when Netanyahu goes through with the
annexation?
A game changer
Netanyahu's refusal to make a deal
with "moderate" Abbas - the amenable
negotiator, who rejected armed struggle,
embraced diplomacy and accepted the
principle of a demilitarised Palestinian
state on a fifth of historic Palestine -
and his insistence on annexing more
Palestinian territories, leave the
Palestinians with no option but to
embrace a new vision and a new strategy
of liberation.
What applies to the Palestinians also
applies to Abbas. After all, Netanyahu
is hoping to do away with both, future
Palestinian independence and current
Palestinian leadership.
To be clear, Abbas has proven too
naive for too long, reckoning that
winning the moral argument is enough to
change Israel's strategic calculus.
But Abbas misses the cardinal
principle of diplomacy: it is a
reflection of the balance of power.
Palestinian failure to extract an
independent state from the disastrous
Oslo Accords is the direct result of
Israel's supremacy on the ground.
The same goes for Abbas's renewed
call for an international conference
under the auspices of the international
Quartet, namely the US, the UN, the EU
and Russia. The US supremacy in such a
gathering will ensure no result is
disadvantageous to Netanyahu's Israel.
Diplomacy could achieve little
without a real change on the ground in
Israel-Palestine.
Even Trump, who admires the strong
and abhors the weak, may find it in his
interest to redress the US position,
albeit technically, if the situation
changes.
A Palestinian spring
Change requires summoning Palestinian
talent, energy and passion for liberty
and justice, which in turn needs
national reconciliation and unity around
a clear national agenda. It also
necessitates dismantling the "police
state" in the occupied Palestinian
territories which has intensified its
grip on the civilian population under
pressure from the US and Israel.
Abbas's announcement that all
security coordination with Israel will
be severed and that it will be treated
as an "occupying power" rather than a
"peace partner", is a first important
step towards galvanising popular support
for a freedom agenda.
If Abbas indeed goes through with it,
this will prove a game-changing
development that could transform the
conflict for years to come.
Agree with him or not, the
octogenarian Abbas should be commended
for believing in peace and appreciated
for schlepping around the world from the
Arab League to the UN to promote
coexistence.
But he should not stop there. He must
also ensure a smooth transition of power
to a new, younger, more vibrant
Palestinian leadership that can
galvanise and channel people power at
home and abroad.
Despite over 70 years of
dispossession, 53 years of occupation
and a million imprisoned, the
Palestinians remain resolute. They may
bend but they do not break.
With Palestinians making up some 20
percent of Israel's population - a
number that will rise to 25 percent in
the not-so-distant future - the "Jewish
state" is fast becoming a bi-national
state.
And with almost as many Palestinians
as Jews living between the Jordan River
and the Mediterranean Sea, and with a
maximum distance of a few kilometres
separating any Palestinian from any Jew,
Israel-Palestine is increasingly a
binational reality. Israeli annexation
of new territories will only help
underline this fact.
In this context, no nukes, no air
force and no walls will define the
future relationship between the affluent
centres and ghettos, between rich cities
and their belts of poverty, indeed
between next-door neighbours. Israel may
continue to use brutal force against the
Palestinians, but like every colonising
power in the past century, it will not
be able to subdue a determined
indigenous population with violence.
There is a demand for a change of
vision based on ethical not religious
awakening, one that transcends fetishist
archaeology and sacred sites to honour
sacred human rights for all.
It is time for David to face up to
Goliath, for liberty to overcome
occupation, for democracy to beat
fanaticism, and for justice to defeat
and uproot racism. Thirty years after
apartheid was dismantled in South
Africa, it is time it is done away with
in Palestine as well.
It is time for a Palestinian and
Jewish spring.