Palestine's perpetual agony

Palestine’s perpetual agony

S P SETH

The perpetual agony of the Palestinian people at the hands of Israeli occupiers is likely to get worse. The reason for this is two-fold. First, with the two-state framework talks under John Kerry’s hectic shuttle diplomacy collapsing due to Israeli intransigence, the Palestinians went ahead to sign 15 international conventions they were entitled to under the UN observer-state status accorded them some time ago. They had refrained from doing this under US pressure to facilitate peace talks with Israel. And with no headway in that direction, Palestine has sought to create some international leverage, as some of these conventions might allow it to highlight human rights violations under Israeli occupation. Israel was furious and threatened to withhold taxes it collects in the occupied West Bank for the Palestinian Authority (PA). The US was also not happy because it would further derail the peace talks, which were not going anywhere anyway.

Second, the two main components of the Palestinian movement---the Fatah exercising control in the West Bank and Hamas controlling Gaza--- have agreed to form a unity government of technocrats to be followed in a few months with new elections. Considering that such agreements in the past have floundered because of deep-rooted differences between them, this new deal too might not go anywhere, considering the pressure that will be brought upon the Palestinian Authority by Israel and the US on for supping with Hamas, regarded as a terrorist organization by much of the west and Israel. Which makes the PA’s agreement for a unity government with Hamas somewhat ‘sinister’ for Israel. At a more practical level, the loss of revenue withheld by Israel as well as possible loss of US aid, might seriously damage the structure of an already shaky Palestinian Authority.

The main reason for the collapse of the peace talks, though, is that Israel is not really keen on a two-state solution. Therefore, they were stalling the diplomatic process while not outrightly rejecting the US initiative to find some sort of a solution to the intractable Palestinian question, which tends to complicate its relations with the Muslim world. Saeb Erkat, the Palestinian negotiator in the talks, is spot on when he says that, “Mr Netanyahu and his government were using Palestinian division as an excuse not to make peace. Now they want to use Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse for the same purpose.” And: “During the past nine months of negotiations, Mr Netanyahu’s government has increased settlement construction, home demolitions, killings, detentions and military raids.”

And why are the Israelis doing it? Because they want to complete their imaginary state of Judea and Samaria through a creeping process of building more settlements and demolishing more Palestinian homes. In Netanyahu’s view, Israel has already made, as paraphrased by Peter Beinart, vast, gut-wrenching concessions by abandoning its claim to Jordan, which by rights should be part of the Jewish state. With this mind-set, the idea that Israel might be receptive to a two-state solution is simply a delusion, nurtured in some realm of the Obama administration. Israel will always find ways of stalling any peace process by blaming its intractability on the Palestinians. For instance, one reason it has generally advanced in the past was the absence of peace partners among the Palestinians. Of course, Hamas is always the problem as a “terrorist” organization, as if Israel is the friendly neighbourhood watch.

And they are getting away with it because they have managed to subvert the US political system through a powerful Zionist lobby. To quote Beinart from his article in New York Review of Books, “… in the United States, groups like AIPAC [American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and the Presidents’ Conference patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace.” Furthermore: “In the world of AIPAC, the Holocaust analogies never stop, and their message is always the same: Jews are licensed by their victimhood to worry about only themselves… “ And: “…since Jews are history’s permanent victims, always on the knife-edge of extinction, moral responsibility is a luxury Israel does not have…” In the process, the Palestinians are demonized in all sorts of ways as terrorists, subhuman and whatnot, the way Nazi Germany demonized Jews before seeking to exterminate them in the Holocaust.

In another issue of the NYR, Beinart speaks of the heartache of a woman, a Harvard researcher, whose father and other members of her extended family were murdered in the Holocaust. It was living among Palestinians, she says, that brought her closer to her parents, not because Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians echoes the Nazi treatment of Jews—it obviously does not—but because for the first time she encountered people (Palestinians) utterly terrified of the state (Israel) that enjoyed life-and-death power over their lives. And, as Beinart paraphrases, by seeing Palestinians---truly seeing them—we glimpse a faded, yellowing photograph of ourselves. We are reminded of the days when we were a stateless people, living at the mercy of others.

The tragedy of the Palestinian people is not likely to end anytime soon because the United States, which alone has the power to change the situation, is seriously constrained by the political power wielded by the Zionist lobby. The most recent example of this is the abject apology the US secretary of state, John Kerry, had to make for a rare moment of truth when he said that, if Israel continued on its rejectionist course, it risked becoming an “apartheid” state. In apologizing for the wrong choice of words, Kerry said, “If I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term…is through a two-state solution.”

The point is that Israel is already an apartheid state and wants the Palestinians and the Arab world to recognize it as a Jewish state. This is a relatively new demand designed, at an opportune time, to exclude its Palestinian citizens from exercising their rights. As for the Palestinians in occupied West Bank, they are already living in a state of apartheid. As Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said of Kerry’s apartheid comment, “ He [Kerry] is using the word in the future tense, but [the Israelis] have already created an apartheid state in the West Bank.” Elaborating, she said, “When you build roads for settlers that no one else can use, or have two separate legal systems, what else can you call it?”

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au