The problem with the Palestinian leadership is that, despite its frequent protestations and angry condemnations, it is yet to take independent initiatives or operate outside the American-Israeli paradigm.
After several postponements, US President, Donald Trump, has finally revealed the details of his Middle East plan, dubbed the ‘Deal of the Century’, in a press conference in Washington on January 28.
Standing triumphantly beside Trump, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, must have surely understood that the timing of the announcement, only a few weeks before Israel’s third general elections in one year, was tailored especially to fit the embattled Israeli leader’s domestic agenda.
Consisting of 80 pages, 50 of which are entirely dedicated to the plan’s economic component, the document was a rehash of previous Israeli proposals that have been rejected by Palestinians and Arab governments for failing to meet the minimum standards of justice, equality and human rights.
Former Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, contended in an interview that the plan is not even American, but an Israeli one.
“What you heard last night from Trump is what I heard from Netanyahu and his negotiating team in 2011-2012,” Erekat said. “I can assure you that the US team did not make a single word or comma in this program. I have the protocols and I am willing to reveal to you what we have been offered. This is the plan of Netanyahu and the settler council.”
It was no surprise, then, to read the reaction of Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, who assigned Trump’s plan to the “dustbin of history”.
As expected, Trump has granted Netanyahu everything that he and Israel ever wanted. The American vision for Middle East ‘peace’ does not demand the uprooting of a single illegal Jewish settlement and recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s ‘undivided’ capital. It speaks of a conditioned and disfigured Palestinian state that can only be achieved based on vague expectations; it wholly rejects the Right of Return for Palestinian refugees and fails to mention the word ‘occupation’ even once.
Obviously, only Israel benefits from the US plan; the Zionist discourse, predicated on maximum territorial gains with minimal Palestinian presence, has finally prevailed. Every Israeli request has been met, to the last one. Meanwhile, Palestinians received nothing, aside from the promise of chasing another mirage of a Palestinian state that has no territorial continuity and no true sovereignty.
Palestinian concerns continue to be ignored, as Palestinian rights have been ignored for many years, even during the heyday of the ‘peace process’, in the early and mid-1990s. At the time, all fundamental issues had been relegated to the ‘final status negotiations’, which have never taken place.
The ‘Deal of the Century’ merely validated the status quo ante as envisioned and unilaterally carried out by Israel.
That said, Trump’s plan will fail to resolve the conflict. Worse, it will exacerbate it even further, for Israel now has a blank check to speed up its colonial venture, to entrench its military occupation and to further oppress Palestinians, who will certainly continue to resist.
As for the economic component of the plan, history has proven that there can be no economic prosperity under military occupation. Netanyahu, and others before him, tried such dubious methods, of ‘economic peace’ and such, and all have miserably failed.
Time and again, the UN has made it clear that it follows a different political trajectory than that followed by Washington, and that all US decisions regarding the status of Jerusalem, the illegal settlements and the Golan Heights, are null and void. Only international law matters, as none of Trump’s actions in recent years have succeeded in significantly altering Arab and international consensus on the rights of the Palestinians.
As for the status of—and Palestinian rights in their occupied city—East Jerusalem, rebranding a few neighborhoods—Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis—as al-Quds, or East Jerusalem, is an old Israeli plan that has already failed in the past. The late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, had enough political sagacity to reject it, and neither Abbas nor any other Palestinian official would dare compromise on the historic and legal Palestinian rights in the city.
The Palestinian leadership cannot be absolved from its responsibility towards the Palestinian people, and its unmitigated failure to develop a comprehensive national strategy.
Immediately after Trump announced his plan, Abbas called on all Palestinian factions, including his rivals in the Hamas movement, to unite and to develop a common strategy to counter the ‘Deal of the Century’.
Knowing that the US-Israeli plot was imminent, why did Abbas wait this long to call for a common strategy?
National unity among Palestinians should never be used as a bargaining chip as a scare tactic, or as a last resort option aimed at validating ineffectual Abbas in the eyes of his people.
The PA is now facing an existential crisis. Its very formation in 1994 was meant to marginalize the more democratically-encompassing Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
According to the new American diktats, the PA has already outlasted its usefulness.
As for Israel, the PA is only needed to maintain ‘security coordination’ with the Israeli army, which essentially means ensuring the safety of the illegal and armed Jewish settlers in occupied Palestine.
While unity among Palestinian parties is an overriding demand, Abbas’ PA cannot expect to maintain this ridiculous balancing act: expecting true and lasting national unity while still diligently serving the role expected of him by Israel and its allies.
While Trump’s sham ‘plan’ does not fundamentally alter US foreign policy in Israel and Palestine—as US bias towards Israel preceded Trump by decades—it has definitely ended the so-called ‘peace process’ charade, which divided the Palestinians into ‘moderate’ and ‘extremist’ camps.
Now, all Palestinians have become ‘extremists’ from Washington’s viewpoint, all equally shunned and marginalized.
Abbas would be terribly mistaken if he thinks that the old political discourse can be saved, which was, oddly enough, written in Washington.
The problem with the Palestinian leadership is that, despite its frequent protestations and angry condemnations, it is yet to take independent initiatives or operate outside the American-Israeli paradigm.
And this is the Palestinian leadership’s greatest challenge at this stage. Will it move forward with a Palestinian-centric strategy or persist in the same place, regurgitating old language and reminiscing of the good old days?
This article was originally published at RamzyBaroud.net on February 5, 2020.
The frame works within the political faction of Palestinian resistance movements are hanging on by a thread, based on what has transpired throughout my life time. It is the Paestinian people who suffer the most barbaric atrocities in modern history, far surpassing the Nazi Third Reich’s victimization of Jews, in terms of the longevity of the racial extermination camps and policies, in effect for over an entire century of rapicity, ethnic cleansing, racism, and slow motion genocide.
The genocide on the Paestinians is the greatest failing in modern history. It is official policy that is nothing other than that of a narcisstic, sadistic, and psychopathic nature. It is a brazen and demonic sense of entitlement by the Israelis and the West that supports them to treat the Palestinians as sub-humans. It is disgusting gluttony and covetness in the most exteme form possible.
I do not understand why it is that the Zionist minority in the West has had so much ability to manipulate political discourse and policy in their favor when all of the facts prove them wrong. Perhaps it is the result of the ineptitude of many that they attack, or more likely than not, a lack of courage to stand up to a paper tiger. The Israelis must be reminded that they are both surrounded, and outnumbered by enemies of their own making. Remind them that in the face of it all, they are nothing but screaming paper tigers.
The UN and ICC appear to be taking steps in the right directions. Courts in Texas have as well. Abby Martin is suing the state of Georgia for refusing to sign a pledge of allegiance to Israel.
Netenyahu basically bragged and asserted that the United States is an Israeli colony in a tweet after the UN Council on Human Rights criticized Israel for human rights abuses against Palestinians saying:
It was also not for nothing that the American administration has taken this step together with us. In recent years, we have promoted laws in most US states, which determine that strong action is to be taken against whoever tries to boycott Israel.
— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) February 12, 2020
With all of the disasters both foreign and domestic taking place in the United States, politicians would be more than grateful to place the blame for their policies on Netenyahu, particularly in the year of a presidential election coinciding with economic and foreign policy calamities heading our way. The devil made them do it.