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The Palestinian
path to peace does not go via Annapolis
World opinion is still on the side of the people of the occupied
territories. But as long as they are divided, talks are futile
By Jonathan Steele
11/16/07 "The
Guardian" -- -- As
the United States-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian meeting in
Annapolis, Maryland, approaches, the key question is what
follows when it fails. Fiasco is looming, so what do the
Palestinians do next? In their decades-long bid for justice,
they have already tried everything.
The "armed struggle" of the 1970s, with its publicity-seeking
aircraft hijackings, won global attention but no major
concessions. The suicide bombings of the 1990s hardened Israeli
attitudes and lost the Palestinian struggle much of its
legitimacy. The Qassam rockets which continue to be fired from
Gaza inflict damage and occasional death, but bring
disproportionate retribution from the Israeli airforce.
Taking the political path has been only marginally more
productive. When the Palestinian leadership in the 1980s made
the historic compromise of accepting Israel's implantation on
78% of pre-1948 "mandate Palestine", they were rewarded with no
equivalent Israeli recognition that Palestinians should control
the remaining land.
There was a flicker of optimism in the dying months of the
Clinton administration, when a peace deal was almost brokered
between Yasser Arafat and the Ehud Barak government. Although it
failed, the mood among most Israelis and Palestinians favoured a
two-state solution. The line was: "Everyone knows what the
outlines of a peace deal are. It just needs political decisions
at the top." But Ariel Sharon's government put paid to that, and
the Israeli definition of what constitutes a viable Palestinian
state has continued to diminish.
Today no major party is willing to contemplate a reasonable
concept of Palestinian independence. Instead, the ancient
settlement project of Zionist dreams moves forward unabated,
with the outrage of the ever-expanding wall and the annexation
of east Jerusalem and its hinterland. According to the latest
figures, Palestinians only control 54% of the West Bank. The
rest has been taken by Israeli settlements. Meanwhile 570
closures - concrete blocks, mounds of earth and checkpoints -
divide the remaining Palestinian land into mini-enclaves of
anger and indignity.
Attempting to convince successive US administrations that
pressure needs to be put on Israel has also not worked for the
Palestinians. Even Bill Clinton confined himself to
sweet-talking. He never wielded any muscle, let alone hinted at
sanctions for Israel's serial non-compliance with UN
resolutions.
To expect anything tougher from George Bush is futile. Indeed,
it is hard to fathom what his people are up to by proposing the
Annapolis meeting. The president shows no real energy or
engagement on the issue, compared with Jimmy Carter, Bill
Clinton, or even his father. Does he seriously think he can get
an agreement, and have one foreign policy success after the
disaster of Iraq? Even if Mahmoud Abbas were to sign a
meaningful piece of paper at Annapolis, the Palestinian
president lacks the moral or political authority of Arafat. He
is more likely to be denounced than praised by most
Palestinians.
Efforts to send a message to Washington and Israel through the
ballot box have also yielded the Palestinians no benefits. When
voters elected Hamas two years ago in the hope of showing the
world their frustration, the Israeli and US response was first
to punish them and then to try to split them by pampering the
defeated Fatah movement diplomatically and giving it arms. Had
Fatah been rewarded with substantial Israeli concessions on
lifting roadblocks and releasing prisoners, undermining Hamas
might have worked. The opposite has happened. If Abbas thinks he
can win new elections on the basis of an Annapolis deal, he will
be disappointed. Everything suggests Palestinian voters would
give Hamas more support in the West Bank than they have already.
So what options do the Palestinians have? Could non-violent
resistance on a mass scale make a difference, as it did in the
intifada, which started 20 years ago next month? Mary King's new
study, A Quiet Revolution, provides a timely reminder of what
they achieved through courageous and disciplined mobilisation. A
former activist of the US civil rights movement and now a
professor of peace and conflict studies, she explains how
Palestinians shook off the Israeli military occupation through a
sustained campaign of boycotts and defiance. The template was
South Africans' mass democratic movement against apartheid. Of
course, like Pretoria, the Israeli government highlighted the
occasional Molotov cocktails and sporadic stone-throwing to
demonise the entire movement as violent, but the core of the
protests was unarmed civil disobedience.
The first intifada was more impressive than the much-touted "colour
revolutions" of recent years, or even of the east European
uprisings of 1989, with the exception of Solidarity in Poland.
It did not receive US or other foreign government funding. It
was not an affair of a few days against a weak and divided
regime. It required months of brave activity and the endurance
of mass arrests and heavy repression from opponents like defence
minister Yitzhak "break their bones" Rabin who, unlike the
crumbling Communist elites of 1989 or the administrations of
Milosevic, Shevardnadze, and Kuchma, had no compunction in
repeatedly using force.
Palestinian success in getting the Israelis to abandon their
military administration of the land seized in 1967 and accept
the Oslo arrangements for Palestinian self-rule did not, alas,
lead to peace or a final settlement. Most Palestinians now
deride Oslo. But it was a victory, and a key stage in their
struggle.
Should non-violent resistance be revived on a large scale? What
would the focus be? Mass sit-ins at the major roadblocks with
crowds pushing through? Marches to the sites where the wall is
going up? Or should the target of popular protest first be the
Palestinians' own elites? In recent months nothing has been more
damaging to the Palestinian cause than the violence between
Fatah and Hamas, egged on by the Israeli government, the Bush
administration and a supine European Union.
The central requirement for any new Palestinian initiative is
Palestinian unity. Don't let opponents divide you. Resist
international flattery. Ignore the instinct for revenge. The
jury of international public opinion is still on the side of the
Palestinians' demand for justice. It may not have achieved as
much as it could have, but it matters, and needs to be
preserved.
j.steele@guardian.co.uk
© Guardian News and Media
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