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“The
Peace Process is dead, long live the Peace Process!” This proclamation,
of course, is borrowed from the one announcing the death of one king
and the accession to power of the next. Its purpose is to make clear
there will be no interregnum, no break in the continuity of the
monarchical institution.
In the same fashion, the “Peace Process”—the
U.S.-moderated negotiations between the Zionist state and the rump of
the U.S./Israeli-imposed Palestinian Authority—moves to its next stage
once the current round is declared officially dead, a terminus not long
off given numerous signs coming from Tel Aviv and Washington.
But just as we need to differentiate between
transitions of monarchs based solely on lineage, as opposed to those
rooted in war, conquest, or simply skullduggery, so too must we
understand the context of the current peace process “failure” and the
implications for Palestinian liberation.
We put “failure” in quotes as a reminder of
who is bargaining and over what—that is, a colonial-settler state, the
junior partner to the world’s foremost imperialist power, negotiating
the terms of surrender of a puppet body set up to administer a “state”
with no defense force and a completely dependent economy on a
fragmented fraction of the land of historic Palestine. Such
negotiations certainly deserve to fail!
The mainstream media has claimed the talks
were derailed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to
extend his freeze on settlements—a freeze which, in any case, was
documented by the liberal Israeli group Peace Now to have never been
seriously implemented. Such liberals, and the Obama administration,
worried that the decades-long expansion of such settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem was making increasingly impossible a
two-state solution (while being happy to ignore what such a “solution”
meant for the rights of the millions of refugees around the world, and
for the democratic rights of Palestinians within pre-1967 Israel).
In fact, the hold of settlements over land in
the West Bank has gone so far that openly right-wing figures in Israel
have in increasing numbers put forward their own one-state
solution—i.e., the open declaration that Palestinians would be
second-class citizens in a “Greater Israel” from the river to the sea.
There’s no question that Netanyahu’s obstinacy
over the settlement “freeze” angered Obama, who had already received
his Nobel Peace Prize at least in part in anticipation of a deal that
now appears off the table. Of course, Obama wanted to quiet down a
global flash point at a time when the U.S. is increasingly sunk in the
quagmires of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen—and soon
perhaps Iran and elsewhere.
Israel, by the same token, saw the maneuvering room
afforded by Washington’s difficulties in the region. It was more
than happy to take advantage of those difficulties to satisfy the
expansionary needs that flow, as in any capitalist state, from the
internal and external rhythms of its economy. These needs find both
political and military expression (although overlaid with spurious
religious justifications).
Of course, the deal desired by Obama was
merely Washington’s conception of how to end once and for all
the struggle for Palestinian liberation. The deal would have Tel Aviv
grant slightly more autonomy to the Palestine Authority, and give the
PA economic and internal security responsibility over part of the West Bank and East Jerusalem
but with little control over its borders, no right to its own military,
and numerous other restrictions. Above all, the plan would require the
abandoning of the historic rights of refugees and of Palestinians
inside pre-1967 Israel.
Washington saw the opportunity to achieve this partly
because of the success of illegally appointed West Bank Prime Minister
Salam Fayyad in beginning to shape an economy totally dependent on Israel, the U.S., and the IMF and World Bank. This economy
might well prove to be more stable, if no less exploitative, of the
majority of Palestinians than under Yasir Arafat’s regime, whose
corruption was so blatant that it proved a hindrance to investors’
ability to efficiently exploit the labor of the Palestinian masses.
Dissent against Fayyad’s reforms, as well as
against PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ traitorous negotiating postures,
have been crushed with the help of U.S. General Keith Dayton, who has
been arming and training PA security forces (see an account of Dayton’s
actions in the Oct. 14 New York Review of Books.)
Obama never had any intention, despite
Netanyahu’s intransigence, of cutting a single dollar of the $3 billion
in annual aid given to Israel. And the timing of the end of the settlement
“freeze,” coming just a month before the U.S. midterm elections,
limited Obama’s ability to twist Netanyahu’s arm, for fear of offending
a donor base already shrinking thanks to campaign donor rules
significantly loosened by the Supreme Court. And with Republicans
poised to make significant gains in those elections, Obama will emerge
with even less wiggle room.
In fact, far from pressuring Netanyahu, Obama
offered Israel a range of generous diplomatic, security, and financial
“incentives,” including new F-35 planes, and agreeing to a permanent
Zionist military presence in the Jordan Valley, all in exchange for
just one or two months more of the pseudo-freeze.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s government, uniting the
“right” (the party of Moldovan immigrant Avigdor Lieberman and allied
parties) and the “left” (the Labour Party) with his own Likud, is
moving quickly on several fronts to make even more explicit the racist
nature of a state founded on dispossession and expulsion.
First is the passage by the Israeli cabinet of
the draft of a law requiring anyone seeking Israeli citizenship to
swear loyalty to a “Jewish and democratic” state. Coming on top of
renewed demands by Netanyahu—supported by Obama—that the PA recognize
Israel’s right to declare itself a Jewish state, it is also correctly
seen as another way of denying the right of refugees to return—i.e., as
an implicit admission that refugees should only expect to find safe
haven in a rump Palestinian “state.”
Palestinian politicians and organizations have
denounced the law as a precursor to more steps whittling down the
already-limited civil and political rights of Palestinians in pre-1967
Israel.
In preparation for expected revolts against
such measures or a sell-out “deal,” Israel conducted training exercises
during the first week of October that were described by journalist
Jonathan Cook as intended to test “its ability to quell any civil
unrest that might result from a peace deal with the Palestinian
Authority requiring the forcible transfer of many Palestinian Arab
citizens. In the operation, security services established a large
detention center in the Galilee region to cope with an ‘unprecedented’
number of arrests of Palestinian citizens.”
Cook reported on a proposal by Lieb-erman to
the UN General Assembly in September, in which he outlined “land swaps
that would force many of Israel’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens into
a future Palestinian state in return for annexation to Israel of most
of the Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.” Cook noted that
Netanyahu, although saying he was not consulted about the speech, did
not criticize it.
Meanwhile, the pace of settler violence
against Palestinians has escalated, from physical eviction of
Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, to the burning of
thousands of olive trees during the fall harvest and beatings and
shootings of Palestinians trying to protect their land and crops.
Within pre-1967 Israel, the Bedouin village of
al-Araqib has been torn down six times since August, as part of an
ambitious plan by the Jewish National Fund to drive more Palestinians
off their land in the Naqab (Negev). The JNF, which raises most of its
money in the U.S. and has tax-exempt status, is covering its theft with
claims of “restoring” the land (what environmental groups call
“greenwashing”).
Liberal Israeli group B’Tselem recently issued
a report documenting from 2006 to 2009 the murder by the IDF of, on
average, one Palestinian civilian every other day—all with total
impunity. This does not include those murdered in such operations as
the attacks on Gaza in winter 2008-2009.
In the face of Netanyahu’s obstinacy, and
Washington’s acquiescence to it, PA head Mahmoud Abbas’ first response
was to get the Arab League to issue a statement saying the PA should
only return to “indirect” talks—and giving Tel Aviv and Washington another
month’s grace period to think things over.
In mid-October, The New York Times
reported another diplomatic pose being struck by Abbas. Now he claims
to be seeking recognition of a Palestinian mini-state from the UN, the
International Court of Justice, and states signatory to the Geneva
Conventions, relying on legal precedents set in past agreements.
This is, of course, just diplomatic posturing.
But what’s significant about the article are its last two paragraphs:
“If the Palestinians were to go to the United Nations Security Council,
they might well face an American veto. Therefore, they might start in
the General Assembly, where there is no veto and where dozens of
countries would be likely to support them.
“While that would be less binding, it would
provide a kind of symmetry—dark or poetic, depending on one’s
perspective—with Israel. It was in the General Assembly in November
1947 that the Zionist movement achieved success through a resolution
calling for the division of this land into two states, one Jewish and
the other Arab. Israel has long viewed that vote as the source of its
international legitimacy.”
Palestinian activists have long correctly
exposed the illegitimacy of a state relying for its justification
solely on a General Assembly resolution, in disregard both of other
international laws and institutions, as well as the wishes of the
expelled population—a disregard imposed by force of arms at its
founding and ever since.
Of course, if the PA seriously thought that
any international recognition of its rump state were in the offing, it
would hasten to permanently drop any demands for refugee rights or the
rights of Palestinians inside pre-1967 Israel.
In the face of all this oppression,
repression, and diplomatic puppet shows (pun intended), grassroots
Palestinians continue to fight for their freedom in a variety of ways,
including in the United States. The U.S. Palestinian Community Network
(USPCN) is holding its second Popular Conference as we go to press. On
its agenda is an ambitious and politically astute set of workshop and
“Palestine Movement Assembly” tracks, addressing the needs of women and
students, strategizing about Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
and, most excitingly, seeking to develop new proposals for addressing
the civil and national rights of Palestinians worldwide. Look for a
report from this conference in our next issue. For more information on
USPCN, see palestineconference.org.
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