While the United States and Israel boast of their
democratic values, they continue to wreak havoc on
Palestinian self-determination, as the Palestinian Authority is pressured,
cajoled and offered inducements to accept agreements that most
Palestinians clearly do not want.
This is not
to say that most Palestinians don't want an agreement—just that they want
a fair one. But the current discussions are based on massive disparities
of power: Israel is a major military force; the Palestinians don't even
control their own borders. True, they have international law, Geneva
conventions and human rights on their side, but that doesn't speak nearly
as loudly as Israel's military machine (including an estimated 200 nuclear
weapons) and its multifaceted U.S. backing.
The
Palestinians are also hampered by a leadership that seems more interested
in preserving its status and lining its pockets than in achieving the
rights of the people. It's a disquieting paradigm: The powers collude and
the people get shafted.
The Israel strategy
seems to be to take something by force and then give back a small portion
of it, labeling it a "concession" and expecting to be thanked.
International law calls for the return of all Palestinian refugees forced
from their homes in 1948, along with compensation for them. It calls for
Jerusalem to be an international city shared between a Jewish and
Palestinian state, and for the Palestinians to have a state larger than
what they are currently striving for on the West Bank and Gaza.
International law would call for the removal of all Israeli settlers in
the West Bank and Gaza; they have been placed there while the land is
under occupation, and ethnic transfers under occupation are
illegal.
It would not have been much of a
"concession" for Saddam Hussein to give back part of Kuwait. Would Clinton
have negotiated with Milosevic to let some of the ethnic Albanians back
into Kosovo? What Israel has done to the Palestinians is no more
legitimate.
Having only recently waged war on Yugoslavia because of its
"ethnic cleansing," Clinton now puts his political muscle into trying to
get the Palestinians—the world's largest refugee population—to give up
hope of returning to their rightful homes. An opportunity to do justice
was once again missed. Instead, the politics of illusion seem to have come
to the Mideast with a vengeance. It appears the Palestinians have been
offered a "Jerusalem" that is not Jerusalem; the right of return for only
a nominal number of the Palestinian refugees; a "state" without control
over water, borders or real sovereignty; "territory" that is not
contiguous; and symbols of nationhood that would become more signs of
shame than of pride for an injured people.
On
Jerusalem, the trick was to expand the city to include a village named Abu
Dis and claim "That's Jerusalem." It's as though another country conquered
Washington, D.C., and Takoma Park, expanded the boundaries of Washington
to include Takoma Park and then said that it was going to give back that
"part of Washington" as part of a fair "compromise."
The cruel twists of fate against the Palestinians
cannot be overcome by such sleight of hand. True peace will come as a
consequence of doing the hard work of justice, not through ambiguous
agreements worked out in secret. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians
must be acknowledged in a forthright fashion. Palestinian refugees must be
allowed back to their homes, and not just enough to provide pretty
pictures for the cameras. There are about 4 million displaced
Palestinians. In effect, Israel says it will not allow significant numbers
to return because that would shift its demographic balance. But that
attitude is morally and legally illegitimate.
Talk of the Palestinians getting 90 percent of the
West Bank masks the reality that that is only 22 percent of historic
Palestine, that Israel seems to be insisting on leases, the dubious
promise of future pullbacks and the fragmented nature of
Palestinian-"controlled" territories, as well as the lack of actual
Palestinian control over travel, imports, exports and water
resources.
This was in a sense the opposite of the original
Camp David accords, which were fundamentally based on international law:
full Israeli withdrawal and removal of the illegal settlements. Similarly,
in South Africa, the final state—the end of apartheid and creation of a
multiethnic democracy with one person, one vote—was the explicitly stated
end point. The Palestinians, if the Oslo process continues, seem doomed to
having bantustans and permanent subjugation.
Such a situation should not be appealing to Israelis.
Do they want a genuine peace that gives them real security or a feeling of
perpetual guilt over knowing that their neighbors feel righteous
resentment over what they have done to them? Genuine peace would
mean real acceptance of the people of Israel as equal partners in the
Mideast, neither military-economic conquerors nor an outcast, outlaw
nation.
____________________
The writer
is communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy.
First published as an opinion article in the Washington Post, July 27,
2000. Reprinted by permission of the author.
