Palestinians Need Less
Negotiations, Not More
By Matt Peppe
January 03, 2015 "ICH"
- When the U.N. Security Council resolution
to end the Israeli military occupation of
the occupied territories and establish a
Palestinian state by 2017 was
defeated, not a single human with a
pulse was surprised. The resolution received
eight votes in favor, with the United States
and Australia against and five countries
abstaining. Even though the measure was one
vote shy of adoption, the United States
decided to exercise its veto power anyway
just to make its rejectionist stance
abundantly clear. But the bill would not
have lead to a fair settlement anyway. If it
led to a settlement at all it would have
been an unjust one for Palestinians. A just
settlement would mean assuming the goals of
the resolution as a starting point, not as
an end point.
Explaining why she put a kibosh on the
resolution, United States Ambassador Samantha
Power said the bill was "imbalanced" and
addressed "only one side." It did address
only one side - Israel's. It was imbalanced
because it sought legal rights already due
to Palestinians since 1967 as its objective
while ignoring other Palestinian rights like
the right of return and equal rights inside
the 1948 borders. And it rewarded Israeli
for 47 years of atrocious criminality -
ethnic cleansing, land and water theft,
destruction of thousands of homes and olive
trees - without any consequences.
The insistence on maintaining the status quo
was explained by Power saying that "we
firmly believe the status quo between
Israelis and Palestinians is unsustainable."
Power also made multiple references to
negotiations between the parties. "The
United States every day searches for new
ways to take constructive steps to support
the parties in making progress toward
achieving a negotiated settlement," she
said. By this, she apparently meant that the
United States searches for ways to force
Palestinians negotiate how many of their
rights they are willing to forfeit, while
Israel demands they don't have to give up
anything.
The only acceptable outcome for Israel is
maintaining control of all of Mandate
Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Sea,
by de facto annexation. The United
States knows this and has enabled them to do
so, by giving them $3 billion per year in
aid and vetoing 43 resolutions meant to hold
them accountable since 1972, among other
things.
If Power was not being dishonest and
deceitful, the only other explanation for
her statement is that she is clinically
insane. The definition of insanity is
"a mental illness of such a severe nature
that a person cannot distinguish fantasy
from reality." The idea that Israel has ever
for one second been interested in a
negotiated settlement since its foundation
in 1948 is more of a fantasy than Game of
Thrones. And to think the U.S. has done
anything other than aid and abet Israel's
conquest of Palestine through ideological,
financial and diplomatic support would
require an unfathomable level of historical
amnesia.
If Israel was interested in an actual
settlement they would have to admit that
they cannot bargain with what does not
belong to them - namely any land
beyond the Green Line. Palestinians don't
need another resolution to clarify that
Israel needs to remove its military
occupation from the lands that were
conquered in the 1967 war. This has already
been the law for 47 years.
UN Security Council
Resolution 242 declared that "the
establishment of a just and lasting peace in
the Middle East ... should include" the
"withdrawal of Israel armed forces from
territories occupied in the recent conflict"
and "termination for all claims or states of
belligerency and respect for and
acknowledgment of the sovereignty,
territorial integrity and political
independence of every State in the area."
This was reiterated six years later with the
demands in
Resolution 338 to implement 242 "in all
of its parts" and that "negotiations shall
start between the parties concerned under
appropriate auspices aimed at establishing a
just and durable peace."
By proposing a new resolution that would
achieve at best what is already guaranteed
by Resolutions 242 and 338, Palestinians
would be forced to surrender the rest of
their rights - namely the right of return of
the 1948 refugees and their ancestors
displaced during the Nakba, and the end to
discrimination of Palestinians within Israel
who are second-class citizens in the Jewish
State.
Israel could not practically dismantle all
the illegal settlements they have built in
the West Bank and move 500,000 settlers back
inside the Green Line, much less absorb
possibly millions of refugees, many who
still hold the keys to their ancestral homes
inside Israel. There is no possibility of a
two state solution. It is as much as a
fantasy as Ambassdor Power's claim that the
U.S. doesn't believe in the status quo.
Once this two-state scam is exposed for what
it is, the only possibility left is a
binational state where Palestinians enjoy
equal rights with Jews. It is the reason
that Ali Abunimah, writing in the
Electronic Intifada, said last month he
hoped for the U.S. to veto the U.N.'s "terrible
resolution."
"It insists that the entire question of
Palestine be reduced to the question of the
1967 occupation and that merely ending this
occupation would effectively end all
Palestinian claims," Abunimah writes.
When the question of the occupation has
already been resolved in existing law in
favor of the Palestinians, why would they
want to give away willingly the rest of what
was stolen from them? Since Yasser Arafat
signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, Palestinian
leadership has demonstrated their
willingness to surrender the rights of the
people they represent to placate Israel and
the United States and be left with scraps.
With incredible foresight Edward Said called
the Oslo Accords, with "so many unilateral
concessions to Israel," the "Palestinian
Versailles." Then, as now, Israel was
not willing to give an inch toward
recognition of Palestinian
self-determination. Pretending that
Palestinians can lure Israel into accepting
a settlement if they just concede a little
bit more is even more absurd now than it was
21 years ago in Oslo.
A new census
shows that Palestinians will outnumber Jews
in Greater Israel by 2016. Palestinians in
the occupied territories and within the '48
borders are expected to equal Jews with a
population of 6.42 million before surpassing
them. By the end of the decade, the census
bureau estimates Palestinians will reach 7.4
million to 6.87 million Jews. This does not
even include the estimated 5 million
Palestinians living in the diaspora and
prohibited by Israel's Prevention of
Infiltration Law from returning.
So by virtue of merely existing Palestinians
will put an end to Israel's hollow claims of
being a democracy. Of course this is no
small feat. Palestinians have been
struggling for seven decades to maintain
their existence in spite of dispossession,
ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and slow-motion
genocide. How else to honor this heroic
resistance than to prove definitively that
Israel's claims to being a democracy and
Jewish state have never been anything more
than a myth?
By demanding their rights outside of
negotiations with Israel, as they did when
they signed the
Rome Statue this week, Palestinians are
able to apply pressure unilaterally. With
world opinion turning in favor of the
Palestinian plight, it has become clear that
isolation of Israel and forcing them to be
accountable for their crimes is the only way
for Palestinians to attain their rights.
Joseph Massad writes that "Palestinians
must insist that those in solidarity with
them adopt BDS [Boycott, Divest, and
Sanction] as a strategy and not as a
goal, in order to bring about an end
to Israel's racism and colonialism in all
its forms inside and outside the 1948
boundaries."
It is worth remembering that the only reason
Israel exists at all is precisely because
the colonial powers who created it acted
against all concepts of democracy and human
rights. If the newly formed World Court
would have heard the case of Palestinians in
1948, when they owned nearly 90% of the land
and consisted of about 66% of the
population, they never would have permitted
granting the country to a minority to rule
over it.
No amount of negotiations will be able to
force Israel to give up its racism and
colonialism willingly - just as no
negotiations were able to force the South
African apartheid regime to do so. The only
way for Palestinians to achieve peace will
be in spite of the Israel and the United
States, who will continue as they have for
decades to do everything they can to prevent
Palestinian self-determination. Palestinians
must expose Israel and the U.S.'s hypocrisy
on democracy and human rights, not let them
hide from it.
http://mattpeppe.blogspot.co.uk/
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