Painful Deception In Palestine

AN ARTICLE THAT IS ON THE MARK!

By Rami G. Khouri
(Rami G. Khouri is an internationally syndicated columnist, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star)

"Rather, the national unity government being contemplated is a show of Palestinian weakness, vulnerability and irresoluteness. It is largely a desperate response to the Israeli-American-European financial embargo that is slowly starving the Palestinians. To avoid death by strangulation and malnutrition, the Palestinians must practice diplomatic submission and subservience to Israel-American positions. In return for a resumption of financial aid and normal diplomatic contacts, the Palestinians must meet the three conditions that were set after the Hamas election victory in January. The Middle East "Quartet"—the U.S., EU, U.N. and Russia—established those conditions as recognition of Israel's right to exist, renunciation of violence, and recognition of previous peace accords with the Israelis.

This waste of time and massive deception deceives nobody. It neither responds to the Quartet’s demands nor offers any hope of a diplomatic breakthrough to a negotiated peace. It is not even sure to resume financial aid to the Palestinians, as the ongoing United States-Israel-Europe debate reveals. As a forced response to inhuman strangulation by the U.S.-Israel, the Palestinian national unity government only perpetuates a low quality American-Israeli-Palestinian tradition of dancing around the tough decisions that need to be made, without grasping them. This always turns into a dance of death on both sides, as we witness today.

Adding forced capitulation and new levels of ambiguity to the already limp legacy of Palestinian national leadership behavior will only generate new forms of political frustration and tension; these will ultimately express themselves in unpredictable manifestations of contestation, resistance and perhaps violence. Israeli-American attempts to punish, strangle, starve, boycott, jail, kill, bankrupt and generally humiliate the Palestinians into submission and surrender will fail, as surely as the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. Bringing the elected Hamas leadership into this cycle of false hopes and slightly delusional expectations will only add Hamas to the list of discredited political amateurs."