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Israel is deceiving itself
Most Palestinians do not believe negotiations with Tel Aviv will lead to Palestinian state.
- By As'ad Abdul Rahman Special to Gulf News
- Published: 23:44 May 31, 2008
All the protests of Palestinians, other Arabs, Muslims and the world community have not changed the colonisation policy of Israel. The moment a new Israeli colony project is commenced, the Palestinians and all others start putting pressure on President Mahmoud Abbas to stop contacts with the Israelis.
After much hesitation, he is forced to declare suspension, but not complete freezing, of negotiations with his Israeli "partners".
Then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice enters the picture and, brandishing the stick of cutting off aid, succeeds in convincing Abbas to resume negotiations. Such an "offer that cannot be refused" is usually sufficient.
Lately, the Israeli government has decided to expand colonies in the West Bank. This followed the approval given by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to modify the path of the apartheid wall to include a colony in "Greater Jerusalem" area.
Enjoying the support of the Israeli government, the colonists, according to a report by the (Israeli) Peace Now movement published in late 2007, miss no chance to expand the colonies.
The construction rate inside the colonies, from April to August 2007, was enough to increase the number of colonists in the West Bank by 5 per cent, bringing their number to 268,000.
Rice declared that the purpose of her last visit to the region was "to push forward the peace process" and to ascertain that Israel did what had been agreed upon during her previous visit last March - namely the dismantling of about 50 road barricades in the West Bank.
She also emphasised the US stance against continued Israeli construction activity inside the colonies. This was a declaration that the "old game" was still on: the Americans do the reprimanding while the Israelis respond with promises.
Dynamics
It is precisely what the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz expressed in a recent editorial, discussing the dynamics of deceit - the "deceit of the Americans, deceit of the Israeli voters who take peace as their reference standard, deceit of the Palestinians and, above all, self-deceit".
Israel, Ha'aretz concluded, continues "working against itself, against its future and against any chance of coexistence between two states that can live side by side together".
During the press conference with Abbas, Rice described the colonisation activity as "a source of trouble", alluding to an American-Palestinian agreement on the matter.
She, however, made sure to link the question of the Israeli military barricades to Palestinian security guarantees that Israel demands. She added that Washington still believes in the possibility of a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement before the end of George W. Bush's term next January.
Rice also appreciated the "serious and deep" negotiations that are taking place. "We still believe," she said, that "an agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis" by the end of the year, before the end of Bush's term, "is an attainable goal".
Ari Shavit, in a recent article in Ha'aretz said, "Of course, peace is better than Greater Israel but, even at Peace Now's first demonstration in April 1978, that wasn't the choice.
"The visionary element in Peace Now was, and remains, an illusion ... But, illusory slogan aside, there was also an incisive grasp of reality. It understood that occupation corrupts, that the settlements [colonies] were a disaster, that every effort must be made to divide the land between two nation-states."
The majority of the Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, according to opinion polls, do not believe in the possibility of any success, as a result of the current negotiations, towards achieving a final solution that may lead to the establishment of a real Palestinian state.
In fact, Palestinian public opinion demands putting an end to the "negotiations", as long as the Israeli policy of enlarging the colonies continues. And who can dare blame them?
Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
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