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Same Old Tune by Khaled Amayreh | |
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"Exploring The Powerful Issues & Emotions of The Middle East"
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Editor's Note:
After a week off, we have found an fascinating article
by Khaled Amayreh that few in the US will be exposed
to. This is from an Egyptian newspaper, Al Ahram.
Many people send in emails to us asking why we do not
have an "even handed" approach to these articles. The
reason is that I have yet seen an eloquent article that
says why Israel is justified in occupying Palestinian
lands.
The other larger reason is that it is not difficult to
find articles critical of Palestinians in the US media.
Every city newspaper carries a ratio of nearly 25:1
articles critical of Palestinians.
It has been that way for so many years.
Just as it would be absurd for any fair-minded editor to
give equal credence to a position that stated 1+1=3, we
believe that US and Israeli policy is as wrong as the
above mathematical equation.
It is that simple.
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Same Old Tune – by Khaled Amayreh
When Israel and the PLO signed the ill-fated Oslo
Agreement in 1993, many people, save the "pessimists" and
"extremists", thought that peace was finally around the
corner and that a new politically stable and economically
prosperous Middle East was in the offing.
Shimon Peres, one of the Oslo Agreement's main godfathers,
prognosticated then that Gaza would become the Singapore
of the Middle East. Others, in their wild imagination and
naïvety, predicted that the West Bank would become a new
Silicon Valley, a sort of a Mecca for foreign investors.
The ensuing euphoria prompted the late Palestinian leader
Yasser Arafat to declare Palestinian towns "liberated,
liberated, liberated," with Peres telling the world in
every TV interview that Israel had virtually ended its
occupation of the "Palestinian territories" and that 99
per cent of Palestinians were living under the rule and
control of the Palestinian Authority. Peres neglected
to tell the world that the PA itself was under Israeli
occupation and that the PA leader couldn't leave his head-
quarters in Ramallah and Gaza without an Israeli permit.
Along with the false euphoria, grand names and grand
titles characterised that episode, with substance always
conspicuously absent or in a very short supply.
Thus we had a Palestinian president, Palestinian
government, state security court, and even Palestinian
armed forces, when in fact there was very little substance
if any to all these big names and titles.
Nearly all of this came to naught as Israel continued to
devour more and more Palestinian land and as Jewish settle-
ment expansion further narrowed Palestinian horizons,
making the creation of a real Palestinian state very
difficult if not outright impossible.
And with the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and the
election of Ariel Sharon twice as prime minister of Israel,
the entire Oslo Agreement became virtually anachronistic
if not irrelevant, if only because Israeli policies and
actions rendered it so.
Of course, Gaza didn't become the Singapore of the Middle
East. Instead, it has become a virtual concentration camp.
This is while the West Bank continues to languish under
sinister military occupation, with the construction of the
separation wall and as many as 700 Israeli roadblocks and
checkpoints, manned by sadistic and trigger-happy Israeli
soldiers, turning Palestinian daily life into an enduring
hell.
Now, 14 years later, it seems that we are about to witness
Oslo-2 as the US, Israel and other players, such as the
new quartet peace envoy, former British prime minister,
Tony Blair, are trying to reproduce Oslo-1 with the same
public relations, same euphoria and the same lies.
Indeed, it might be safe to conclude that the putative
Oslo-2 agreement being contemplated, even if doesn't bear
the Norwegian appellation, is going to be a poor cousin
of the first Oslo Agreement.
For example, the old agreement, at least theoretically,
was based on UN resolutions 242 and 338 and the land-for-
peace formula, whereas the new proposed agreement is likely
to be based mainly on America's good will and guarantees.
And like the old agreement, the new one, as elucidated
this week by Blair, promises economic prosperity for
Palestinians, but says very little about the core issues
of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict such as the fate of
Jerusalem, the right of return for Palestinian refugees
and, indeed, ending the Israeli occupation which began
in 1967.
And it seems that almost every one is going with the flow,
at least for the time being.
For its part, the PA, beset by its war with Hamas, is
bracing itself for grand plans, encompassing every aspect
of Palestinian life, from "liberating Gaza from Hamas" to
"cleansing the West Bank of Jewish settlements." This
week, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, whose government lacks
constitutional legitimacy, relies mainly on force and fait
accompli, and depends on Western backing and Israeli
acceptance, presented his government's platform for the
next few months.
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The platform includes a lot of nicely written promises,
like building a robust economy, reestablishing the rule
of law and enhancing the quality of life for ordinary
Palestinians. However, it is clear that Fayyad is making
the same mistake that Arafat did during the so-called
Oslo-era; namely, ignoring and overlooking the umbilical
cord of the Israeli occupation, which controls all
economic development for the Palestinians. After all, how
can national achievements be made in the absence of
independence, sovereignty and freedom of movement?
For its part, the American administration is also giving
the impression of déjà-vu. In the early 1990s, when the
US wanted to mobilise as many Arab states as possible for
the war of liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein's army,
the US administration convened the Madrid Peace Conference,
the Oslo Agreement's predecessor, in order to placate Arab
public opinion and convince the Arab world that the US was
serious about resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Now, the US is ostensibly trying to do it again, by
cajoling and if necessary bullying its Arab allies into
joining Israel in a part-international part-regional
conference to discuss the proverbial peace process, as
if that moribund process needed any more discussion after
all these years of peace initiatives and negotiations and
agreements. The renewed American attention, however, is
hardly altruistic and may well be related to and motivated
by possible plans to attack Iran's nuclear installations
on Israel's behalf.
So, is the US trying to sell the Arabs another deception?
Another Oslo agreement, in preparation for a new war on
another Muslim country, this time Iran?
Of course, an eternally opportunistic Israel will undoubted-
ly seek to emerge the sole if not main winner in any
prospective conflagration in the region.
This is why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who
wouldn't even agree to meet with PA President Mahmoud
Abbas until he dismantles the "infrastructure of terror",
is now having chummy chats with Abbas and even voicing
willingness to discuss final-status issues, giving a false
impression of flexibility and a propensity to make peace.
But in reality Israel is only posturing and its steps are
no more than PR tactics. Last week, the foreign ministers
of Egypt and Jordan, Ahmed Abul-Gheit and Abdul-Ilah Al-
Khatib, visited Israel and met Israeli leaders from Olmert
to opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu. The latter
advocates limited autonomy for the Palestinians, a
euphemism for continued apartheid.
As usual in such circumstances, Israel sought to fully
utilise the visit in order to give the impression of
harmony and agreement between the two sides. To the
uninitiated, the scene of Tzipi Livni and Peres amicably
holding hands with the two Arab foreign ministers would
give the impression of complete concordance.
Seeking to encourage Israel to accept the Arab Peace
Initiative, the Jordanian foreign minister told Israeli
officials that Arab states were sincere about peace and
were ready to normalise relations with Israel if the
latter withdrew from all the territories occupied in 1967
and accepted a dignified settlement of the Palestinian
refugee plight pursuant to UN Resolution 194.
Israeli leaders heard but didn't listen. In fact, instead
of relating seriously to the Arab initiative, Olmert told
the two ministers: "I hope next time you will bring some
more Arab ministers with you."
The snide, if not insulting, remarks actually encapsulated
what the Israelis want, namely full normalisation with the
Arab states, especially the oil-rich region, without making
any serious move toward ending the 40-year- old Israeli
occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza
Strip.
In addition, the Jewish state hopes that by cajoling Arab
states, especially the Saudis, into normalising relations,
Israel would be able to bully the PA into accepting a
deformed, incomplete and truncated state on the West Bank,
without Jerusalem, without the right of return and with
the bulk of Jewish colonies remaining intact or annexed to
Israel.
Needless to say, the Israeli prime minister seems convinced
that the current PA leadership's obsession with "statehood"
overrides its demands for total Israeli withdrawal from
the occupied West Bank. This week, the London-based Arabic
newspaper reported that Olmert and Abbas were holding
secret talks on a permanent settlement. Israeli and
Palestinian officials have neither confirmed nor denied the
report. However, with the Abbas-Fayyad regime in Ramallah
almost completely dependent on Israel, it is amply clear
that the secret negotiations are not being conducted
between two equal partners but between a parsimonious
occupier that owns or controls nearly all the assets and a
vanquished supplicant that has to beg for everything from
the occupier.
Hence, it is safe to conclude that any agreements or
compromises reached or imposed outside the umbrella of
UN resolutions, including any prospective outcome of the
proposed American-backed regional conference, slated to
take place in the autumn, will ultimately meet the same
fate and same failure that the Oslo Agreement met.
The reason is clear. Israel rejects any peace settlement
based on human rights and international law and insists
on giving Palestinians only "gestures" and "good-will
measures", but not rights.
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