Palestinians Need Real Freedom, not a Deformed State

01. May, 2010 Print This Article! 0 Comments

Khalid Amayreh

Day after day, it is becoming amply clear that the Palestinian Authority (PA) regime in Ramallah is implicated in the gradual implementation of conspiratorial designs devised by the U.S. and Israel and aimed at liquidating the Palestinian national cause.

Today, the United States is belatedly discovering that its protracted dark embrace of Israeli apartheid which is morphing itself in many respects into a sort of home-grown Nazism, is costing America dearly in terms of its reputation and vast geopolitical interests in the Muslim world.

This is obviously what has prompted some American officials to remark that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a vital U.S. strategic interest.

In the meantime, it is equally obvious that in order for Washington to maintain Israel as the undisputed military master of the region, the U.S. would have to enlist the support and unhesitating backing of most if not all of the Arab world behind the current American crusade against Iran.

But in order to do the job successfully, the U.S. must at least appear to be carrying out genuine efforts to get the Arab-Israeli “peace process” moving, even if only seemingly.

In short, we are witnessing another affronting replay of the deceptive American tactics that we had witnessed in the early 1990s when then US Secretary of State James Baker convinced certain Arab states to back the war on Iraq in return for pressuring Israel to give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Eventually, the mostly gullible Arab regimes obliged, and Israel remained quiet for a while, while Zionist efforts to arrogate more and more Arab land in the West Bank continued unabated.

Today, the same stupidity, same gullibility and probably same treachery as well are being played out as the American-funded PA is reacting nearly euphorically to manifestly false American promises about pressuring Israel to end its Nazi-like occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

First of all, it is highly unlikely that a U.S. administration that has been utterly unable to force Israel to stop demolishing even a single Arab home at the Sheikh Jarrah or Silwan neighborhoods will be able to force Israel to end the occupation and give up the spoils of the 1967 war.

Indeed, it is almost a foregone conclusion that for purely domestic American factors, the Obama administration will be neither able nor willing to do what it takes to end the chronic stalemate in occupied Palestine, namely forcing Israel to return to the pre-1967 borderlines.

The American political environment is simply too Zionized and too infested with and prostituted by virulent Zionist influence that a pro-active and genuine American effort to control the Zionist devil is simply unlikely and unexpected, at least in the foreseeable future.

Yes, we might very well hear some un-classical remarks from this or that American official about endangerment to American national interests in the Middle East and beyond as a result of Israeli policies. But these remarks, music to some naïve Arab ears, are utterly unlikely to lead to any substantive change in the basic American embrace of Israeli Nazism.

The US realizes too well that the Palestinian issue is not and won’t soon be a first-degree preoccupation for most if not all tyrannical Arab regimes whose ultimate strategic goal is to remain in power for as long as possible. Just look how Mubarak, the emperor of Egypt, is striving to please the Americans, even at the expense of impoverishing, humiliating and even murdering his own people.

And since the US is the ultimate “power broker” in the region, at least as far as these corrupt and decadent despots are concerned, the US is likely to continue pursuing the same whoring policy, namely keep the regimes in power in return for getting them to pay little or no attention to what Israel is doing to Palestine and its people.

Now, it is not only the hypocritical Arabs that are harrowing after the American mirage, the increasingly disconcerted PA is also jumping out of its skin to laude the disingenuous American efforts as if Obama were ushering the Second Advent of Christ.

I think the PA is being deceived and tricked. First of all, the eyes of the U.S. are being focused on Iran, not the Palestinian issue which is only being used to isolate Iran by depriving it of a credible “propaganda asset” or “red herring” that help divert attention from the Iranian nuclear program, as the Americans seem to think.

Yes, Iran , and nothing else, is the driving and main motive behind accelerated U.S. efforts to woo states such as Syria and also to induce false euphoria in occupied Palestine similar to that which was fostered prior and after the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991 when frustrated but utterly gullible Palestinian rabbles were duped to break their own olive trees into shreds in order to hoist olive branches on the hoods of Israeli military jeeps and armored vehicles that didn’t hesitate to shoot them.!!

Today, some Palestinians are acting very much like a whore during the Holy Month of Ramadan, as the adage goes. They are so desperate that they want to see a state, even, a deformed or hollow one, established and recognized by the West as if such a brat would finally come up with a magical solution for all Palestinian ills.

The Obama administration reportedly has privately promised PA leader Mahmoud Abbas a state within two years. Well, this joke reminds me of a Quranic verse about Satan and his false promises. “Like Satan when he said to man: Disbelieve, but when man disbelieved, Satan said: I am surely clear of you; surely I fear God, the Lord of the worlds” (suratul Hashr-59-16).

How many times do we have to remind ourselves of the utter worthlessness of American pledges and promises?

They promised to protect our people in Lebanon, following the withdrawal of PLO forces from there in 1982, and the result was a genocidal slaughterhouse for our helpless refugees in Sabra and Shatila, at the hands of the Nazis of our time, the very people who continue to cry “Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, holocaust, gas chambers, suicide bombing” at any gesture of dissatisfaction directed at Israel while indulging themselves in actions befitting the Gestapo, SS and the Wehrmacht.

George W. Bush, the former Fuhrer of Washington, promised us a state in 2005 and 2006, but his promises eventually landed in the dustbin of history. This is the man who invaded, occupied and destroyed two Muslim countries and killed, or caused the death, of millions of innocent people because “God told me to do it.”

And then came the hapless “roadmap” or more correctly “lie-map” which promised us a breakthrough. However, instead of ending the occupation, the roadmap saw a phenomenal expansion of Jewish-only settlements on the very land that is meant to be home for a future Palestinian state.

And now we are being affronted with another scheme, another deception, and another lie while our leaders are mistaking their gullibility and stupidity for statesmanship and brinkmanship.

Well, has it not occurred to them that the thoroughly savaged Palestinians won’t accept anything less than real freedom after all these years of brutalization, humiliation and homelessness?

Has it not occurred to them that the state being promised by Hillary Clinton is actually a whore of a state, a brat as deformed as the international order that allows Israel commit every conceivable crime under the sun with impunity thanks to American protection?

Well, let me be clear. The “state” we are being offered is a state that is not worth the name; it is a state without the bulk of Jerusalem, without the repatriation of the refugees, but with most of these satanic settlements and settlers remaining in place, a perpetual thorn in our side.

It is a state that would be made up of territorially discontinuous cantons whereby traveling from one canton to the other would have to be okayed by the ultimate master, Israel.

It is a state that has no real sovereignty or authority and certainly not a modicum of dignity. It is a state that would perpetuate and even consolidate the Israeli occupation and domination of our land and our lives.

For God’s sake, we decline to accept such a state. History after all shall not expire upon the end of the Obama administration’s term in office. And the Palestinians, who have survived despite history and kept up the struggle for decades, can still go on and on and on.

We shall not commit adultery with our just cause just to please and appease some immoral politicians in Washington.

We never will.

Source: Palestine Information Centre

Khaled Amayreh

Obama needs Palestine merely to pursue his scheme to isolate Iran, says Khaled Amayreh cynically in occupied Jerusalem

Desperate to achieve progress of any kind on the Israeli- Palestinian track, the Obama administration is pressuring, even bullying the weak and vulnerable Palestinian Authority (PA) to agree, at least in principle, to an Israeli proposal that would see the creation of a Palestinian “state” on some 60 per cent of the West Bank.

However, such an entity as proposed by the Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in recent talks with US officials, would be devoid of any semblance of sovereignty and conspicuously lacking control of its borders, which would be temporary in any case and tightly controlled by Israel.

Israel reportedly ensured the American administration that negotiations over the fate of the remaining 40 per cent of the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem and land located west of the Apartheid Wall, would ensure the creation of a viable mini- Palestinian state.

The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, utterly desperate and confused as to the best approach to adopt, fears that Israel is only trying to trick the Palestinians (and the Americans) into accepting a vague arrangement that would eventually enable Israel to arrogate up to half of the West Bank under the rubric of a cumulative peace process and Palestinian statehood.

For its part, the Obama administration’s representative George Mitchell has been holding several rounds of inconclusive talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders. It seems desperate and determined to achieve something that would help isolate Iran and also enhance the Democratic Party’s chances in the next Congressional elections in November.

The administration officials have been arguing that the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is of the utmost importance to American interests and affects US global strategic standing.

However, these statements are being interpreted by many experts as part of the administration’s posturing to resist mounting pressure by pro-Israeli groups, including Congress. Congress is widely considered another “Israeli occupied territory” and is strongly trying to undercut President Obama’s efforts to get Israel to freeze settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which is widely seen as a sin-qua-non for a successful peace process, let alone for the conclusion of a final peace agreement.

An expression of Abbas’s confusion and desperation loomed large this week when he admitted that he had asked the US to “impose a solution on the sides”. The admission is very telling since it presumed that Abbas believed that an American-imposed solution would be somewhat evenhanded.

Speaking in Ramallah before a meeting of Fatah’s Revolutionary Council, Abbas said: “We’ve asked the American administration more than once to impose a solution.”

Abbas said he would reject the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders. “The Palestinians were being asked to take a state with temporary borders on 40 or 50 per cent of the West Bank and then they [the Israelis] tell us ‘we will see what comes up next.’”

Meanwhile, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad continued to promise the Palestinians, even in a euphoric way, that a state would be born around this time next year with or without agreement with Israel.

Speaking at a conference “The Present and Future of Jerusalem” at Al-Quds University in Abu Dis on 26 April, Fayyad said Palestinian statehood was already a de facto reality and that the international community would soon come to the conclusion that a formal recognition of that reality was inescapable.

“Without a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders, there can be no stability or security in this region. The creation of a Palestinian state is not only a Palestinian interest, but is also an Israeli and world interest,” Fayyad told Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) officials and a group of Palestinian intellectuals and academics present at the conference.

However, a few hours later, Abbas was quoted as saying that the PA wouldn’t declare Palestinian statehood without Israeli consent. “We stand by agreements. We will not declare Palestinian state unilaterally.”

The Palestinian leader, who was being interviewed by the Israeli TV Channel-10, said he was extending his hand in peace to the Israeli people, saying that he was willing to work with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

He also added that he would be willing to return to the negotiating table next month, saying he hoped to get Arab League approval for the proposed proximity talks.

Nonetheless, Abbas is unlikely to obtain Arab League approval for speedy but nearly unconditional talks with the Netanyahu government if only because such talks had been tried before ad nauseam but to no avail.

Abbas had been vowing not to resume talks with Israel unless the Jewish state froze settlement expansion in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.

According to Arab sources in Damascus and Cairo, the 22-state body, which is struggling to overcome an erstwhile notorious image of incompetence and reconstruct a more positive image, will reject any unconditional resumption of talks with Israel in the absence of guarantees regarding halting Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

The League’s Monitoring Committee, which is entrusted with following up on the Arab Peace Initiative, is expected to meet next week in order to vote on the proposal.

Despite repeated assertions rejecting a state with temporary borders, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah is still reluctant to say a clear-cut no to the Americans, calculating that the Obama administration represents a rare opportunity that must not be allowed to be wasted or missed, and that it would be politically inexpedient for the overall Palestinian cause to reject outright the latest American proposals.

Indeed, it is likely that it was in this context that Abbas had asked the Obama administration to impose a solution on the sides.

There are those who are profoundly convinced that the extremist government of Binyamin Netanyahu is only prevaricating and playing tactics with both the Obama administration and the PA leadership.

One PA official present at the Al-Quds University conference described Mitchell’s talks with PA officials in Ramallah as “a tedious repetition of the same old platitudes about the beauty of peace and need to restart talks.”

“The Americans, unable or reluctant to pressure Israel, are trying to pressure us, given the fact that we are the weaker party. They think that the key to isolate Iran in the current standoff with the West lies in far-reaching Palestinian concessions to Israel on cardinal issues such as Jerusalem and the refugees. And I want to tell you something. Even if all Arab states say yes for such concessions, we, the mother of the child, will say a clarion no because this is our land, our future.”

The official, who demanded that his name not be mentioned, said the bulk of the PA leadership was fully aware of “Netanyahu’s tricks, deception, mendacity and stalling tactics”.

“Netanyahu wants to gain more time to create more irreversible facts in Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, and the Americans have come to think that we are merely obsessed with the symbol of statehood, even at the expense of losing Jerusalem and one third of the West Bank, in addition to the right of return for the refugees. Well, all I can tell you is that they are dreaming if they think that we will succumb to their designs and wishful thinking.”

Needless to say, the Palestinian official’s scepticism is more than justified. Netanyahu, while telling Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he is willing to conduct “frank and honest discussion” over all core issues, has been telling settlers, leaders and his own coalition partners that there is no way Israel would leave any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinians and that settlements west and east of the Annexation Wall would continue to grow irrespective of the peace process with the Palestinians.

source: Ahram Weekly

Khalid Amayreh is a Journalist living in Dura, Hebron District, West Bank, occupied Palestine . He has BA in journalism: University of Oklahoma , 1981 MA in journalism,