I have always been very optimistic that peace
between the Palestinians and Israelis will one day be achieved. Yet, I cannot be the optimist I once was about
the new round of “peace talks” recently launched by Secretary of State John
Kerry. For the sake of peace, however, I,
as well as the majority of Palestinians, hope that peace will finally be achieved
although we are not holding our breaths. This is the last chance for
peace.
On the 20th Anniversary of the Oslo Accords,
which I witnessed on the White House Rose Garden, it is fitting to say that we
have been talking endlessly to no real end. What many perceived as the final
chapter of the long enduring conflict was only a mirage in the desert seen by Palestinians
while the Israelis knew that the thirst for peace would not be fulfilled. With each passing unattained deadline; with
the quadrupling of colony activity by Israeli right wing fanatics; with each
assault on Gaza; and with the building of the Apartheid Wall, as well as many
other measures that deflated rather than elevated the prospects for peace, I, along
with a great majority of Palestinians, have become pessimistic. Secretary of State Kerry’s attempt to broker
a Middle East peace does not alleviate this changed attitude.
Ever since the Madrid Conference in 1991, we have
been talking with the Israelis. Except
for a limited, very limited, autonomy in the form of an “authority” over only
populous Palestinian cities called Area A, the “talks” have led to a massive
confiscation of Palestinian land in the West Bank and an increased hawkish mentality
within Israel that will not dismantle the occupation’s military apparatus but
rather has fermented that hateful feeling that the insidious Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and its decadent blockade of Gaza will last forever. All the while, Israel tells the world that
Palestinians in Gaza cannot oppose, in any form, the open-air prison that
Israel imposes. Palestinians cannot
fire rockets into Israel; cannot seek United Nations statehood; and cannot
attempt to go to the World Court to bring Israeli leaders before an
international tribunal for international war crimes. We cannot even have democratic elections
unless the outcome of the elections is what Israel and the US will accept.
Agreements were made but not regarding final status maters—which
kept getting put on the back burner that never gets lit. The Oslo Accords called for final status
negotiations to begin no later than
May 1996. Fast forward seventeen years later on the 20th Anniversary
of Oslo. Palestinians and Israelis are now “talking” once more after a three
year stall due to Israeli refusal to freeze its expansion of its colonies on Palestinian
land and their insistence of no preconditions to talks, while the Palestinians
did not want to talk for the sake of talking and wanted to finally discuss a final
status agreement. After a concession by
Israel to release Palestinian political prisoners (prisoners who should not be
prisoners in the first place), the pressure from the United States, a leading
donor country, was too great for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to
overcome and he finally relented to the “talks”. So we are now talking, yet again.
So here we are 20 years
later waiting for the final status talks to conclude. While these “talks” are clouded
in secrecy, the general sentiment among Palestinians is that this should be the
final “Oslo” approach to attaining peace. Talking for the sake of talking will no
longer be acceptable if the outcome of the “talks” does not bring forth a
comprehensive peace agreement. The
meaning of a comprehensive peace agreement does not mean that it is conditioned
upon issues to be agreed upon in the future. It means a final agreement, an end
to the conflict, a fully implemented peace treaty that covers all aspect, all
issues and all-encompassing matters.
Comprehensive peace
agreement also means that the following major issues will be resolved:
·
Jerusalem’s
status
·
Palestinian
refugee right to return or be compensated
·
Established secure borders of the two states
·
Water
rights and control
·
Removal of
colonists in the West Bank or incorporating them into a Palestinian State
If the “talks” do not
lead to a comprehensive peace agreement, a different Palestinian strategy needs
to emerge. A strategic discussion of
that alternative path to be addressed now, less we continue to stagnate for
years without any real direction.
I am no supporter of
violence and strongly believe that the rockets launched from Gaza into Israel
and the use of suicide bombers against civilian targets leads to a negative
perception of the Palestinians. Yet, I also strongly believe that those under
occupation have a fundamental right to resist that occupation. I equate the
Palestinian right to resist to that of the American colonies right to declare
independence against a King who amassed troops in the Colonies to control the
population, who taxed them without representation and who imposed a series of
intolerable acts upon Americans. The grievances
that Palestinians have against Israel are not less intolerable. They include:
·
Taxation in
the Palestinian territories is beholden to the whims of the Israeli government.
Israel collects about two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority‘s self-generated
revenue which, since the 2006 Palestinian legislative election, has been routinely
withheld by Israel. No self-respecting
people would tolerate this. The Thirteen American colonies did not and neither
should the Palestinians.
·
Israel has two
sets of laws for two peoples—which clearly show that Israel is practicing
apartheid:
o Israelis living illegally in the West Bank are
allowed to carry Uzi submachine guns which they use to intimidate Palestinians.
Palestinians, on the other hand, are not allowed to carry any form of arms,
including rocks.
o These gun-taunting Jews are never prosecuted for
their criminal activities including the destruction of Palestinian olive
groves.
o License plates on the West Bank are color coded
to inform the soldiers whether the occupants are Jews or Palestinians.
o By-pass roads are for the exclusive use of Jews
while Palestinians are subjected to dehumanizing military checkpoints.
o Palestinians are brutally subjected to
imprisonment under military administrative detention orders that are renewable
every six months; no formal charges are ever presented in open court; and no
trial is ever forthcoming. Many Palestinians linger in Israeli military jails
without ever having been accused of any crime and without being tried in court.
Their detention is summarily extended under the guise of the military detention
used by the British Mandate law of 1945 entitled Law on Authority in States of
Emergency. As many as 200 Palestinian children, some between the ages of 12 to
15, are currently detained in such fashion. In July, 2013, Israeli soldiers
even detained a 5 year old child.
o Palestinians are not free to move from one part
of the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority to another and cannot go
from the West Bank to Gaza or vice versa.
Abusive military checkpoints dot the landscape, many of which are mobile,
leaving the Palestinian population to wonder how long a normal 10 minute trip
between Ramallah and Beir Zeit will take—sometimes hours.
·
Israel has
built an apartheid wall
o That divides and encircles towns into conclaves
with controlled military gates that subject the Palestinians to the whims of
the Israeli soldiers. This has created many open-air ghetto/enclave prisons;
o That divides landowners from their farms thus
depriving the use of the land which benefits Israeli farmers;
o That divide relatives from each other;
o That inhibits the flow of commerce, thus imposing
a stranglehold upon the Palestinian economy; and
o That cuts into more than 8.5% of Palestinian land
on the West Bank an area that is less than 22% of the original partition by the
United Nations in 1948.
No people can tolerate
living under such grievances. The human spirit, inherent in all peoples, will
not tolerate a permanent status which subjugates their inalienable right to be free.
If the current “talks” do not end the Israeli military occupation of Palestine,
the Palestinian human spirit needs to find another path to freedom. Looking
back at the endless path that the Oslo peace process has taken over the past
20+ years would beget Palestinians to search for a new path to the inevitable desire
for the human spirit to be free.
The first Palestinian
Intifada which began in December, 1987 paved the road to the Madrid Conference
in 1991. Talks ensued thereafter only to
be usurped by secret talks in Oslo, Norway which lead to the Oslo Accords
signed on September 13, 1993 at the White House Rose Garden. The Palestinian Authority took root in the
West Bank and Gaza; hopes for peace were so high that many Palestinians
activists became complacent. Then the peace process was derailed when Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist and by Palestinian
suicide bombers, both bent on scuttling the peace process. Benjamin Netanyahu
became the Israeli Prime Minister and changed the Madrid Conference formula from
“land for peace” to “land for security” demonstrating that the Israeli use of
the English language was superior to that of the Palestinians in that the
former knew how to play on the sympathies of the American public. Netanyahu’s
self-proclaimed efforts to kill the Oslo Accords, exposed in a 2001 video, were
successful.
Nevertheless, the Oslo Accords
timeline for final status talks came and went; new agreements were signed (Oslo
II, Wye River and Sharm el-Sheik) and the Camp David and Taba Summits (2000-2001) proved that an impasse
was evident. The September 11, 1991 attack by Al-Qada terrorists focused the
world attention away from the Palestinian/Israeli conflict throughout President
George W. Bush’s administration. While President
Bush stated that the downfall of Saddam Hussein will lead to the democratization
of the Middle East, paradoxically he and, not so surprisingly the Israelis,
rejected the outcome of the Palestinian elections in 2006.
President Barrack Obama, although sincere in his efforts to
achieve Middle East peace, could not budge the Israelis to stop the building of
colonies on the West Bank, although succeeding American administrations called
them “obstacles to peace.” Consumed with
domestic economic woes brought about by the Great Recession, President Obama
let the conflict in status quo doldrums. Israelis, happy to keep the status quo,
insisted on the Palestinians returning peace talks without any preconditions—interpretation:
Israelis wanted to continuously talk without talking about final status talks.
In the middle of the two decades of talks, a second Intifada
took root. This time Israel crushed the
uprising with its use of tanks and helicopter gunships; such military might was
not seen in the First Intifada. The fact that the Palestinian police force was given
guns through the Oslo Accords to maintain civil order gave the Israelis the perceived
justification for its precipitous use of its full military force to put suppress
the Second Intifada—youths throwing stones. Images of helicopter gunships
attacking Ramallah in 2002 remain vivid memories. Israel also attacked Tulkarm,
Qalqilya, Bethlehem, Jenin and Nablus. Goliath was attacking David, yet the true
story was not exposed as Israel prevented the media from entering the West
Bank.
The perception of David vs. Goliath needs to be retold.
Palestinians are the new David. But
before Palestinians can take on the role of David, they need to reconcile
amongst themselves. Fatah and Hamas need to reconcile at all costs. Read my
article entitled “Demand Palestinian Reconcilation” on this subject at http://fadizanayed.blogspot.com/2013/04/demand-palestinian-reconcilation.html.
Additionally, the Palestinians must not fall into
the Israeli trap of a three state solution: Israel and Area C and most of Area
B; Palestinian Authority controlling Area A and some parts of Area B; and Gaza
controlled by Hamas. Read my article entitled Oppose the Israeli Three State
Solution at http://fadizanayed.blogspot.com/2013/03/oppose-israeli-three-state-solution.html.
The new path the Palestinian Revolution needs to take needs
to be unorthodox. Palestinians should endorse
the following actions:
- · Palestinian unification. Palestinians should demand that Fatah and Hamas reconcile.
- · The Palestinian police should be ordered to take their guns and give them to the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints. We need to be David using a rock against the military might of the Big Israeli Army. We do not need the guns that are not effective against the Mighty Israel Army. We should confront Israel with our stones from Mother Earth against the tanks and helicopter gunships.
- · The Palestinian Authority should no longer accept money from donor nations. We cannot afford to be bribed into complacency and to accept the status quo of a continued brutal military occupation.
- · Palestinians should use their cameras, camcorders and cell phones to inundate Facebook, Twitter, blogs and all forms of social media with images of the atrocities of the Israeli army.
- · Support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel
- · Palestinians need to organize a coherent message of non-violence that needs to be shared by thousands on these social media outlets. Throwing stones against the military occupier is within the international right of Palestinians to resist the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
- · Palestinian youth need to understand the power of the land and use it against the military occupation forces. This is not a call to arms but a call to repel the occupation.
I can hear the arguments stating that these actions will
cause an increase of Palestinian suffering and that people will die. My answer:
Palestinians are suffering and dying regardless, albeit these policies may
increase the rate. I believe that
Palestinians would rather die with their dignity rather than live in disgrace. The
Palestinian youth understand that by allowing the status quo to linger, as did their
fathers and grandfathers before, will only lead to the continued suppression of
their inherent right to be free. Thus, the choice to rebel is easy. Either
allow the status quo to linger and forever be occupied or rebel and free your
human spirit.
The Palestinian human spirit to be free is no different than
the human spirit inherent in all human beings desiring to be free. It is no
different than the human spirit that inspired the American Colonies to declare themselves
independent from a brutal King; that ignited Black South Africans to break the
chains of apartheid; that encouraged African-Americans to March on Washington
for equal rights; and that empowered the people of India to break the bonds of colonization. Read more about my thoughts on the human spirit to be free at
What alternative do the Palestinians have should the “talks”
collapse? Should they accept the status quo and continue to be subjugated to
the brutal Israeli occupation with the inherent bribery and forced complacency
all the while seeing their land usurped dunnem
by dunnem? Should the Palestinians
give up, as the Israelis would love for them to do?
The human spirit inherent in all poeople will guide the Palestinians
to a new revolutionary path should the “talks” collapse. That path should be
guided by the moral cause against occupation and with the vision that the
oppressed, the weak, the underdog will triumph over oppression, over
colonization, over a contemptuous military occupation of Palestine..
It is a new revolution of Rocks vs. Tanks. Boy vs. Soldier. Right vs. Might.
It is the story of David vs. Goliath retold.
