The one clear solution

A workable and just solution in Palestine is predicated on one principle, tested in South Africa: side with racism or be against

By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly

"......Isn't it amazing that discussions of this sort could arise at a time when the Palestinians and their cause against the colonialist apartheid system in Palestine are in such a tragic plight? While the Palestinians are mired in turmoil and confusion, their friends in South Africa and elsewhere are in a quandary over whether to be more Palestinian than the Palestinians: Should they support Hamas or Fatah? Is it right to boycott Israel when the Palestinian leadership, itself, is busily normalising relations with the Israeli government? One can understand their predicament. However, they should bear in mind that in Palestine this "normalisation" is taking place before any deal has been struck and that whatever deals are in the works do not aim to alter the existing racist order.....

.....Last week, a prominent ANC leader told me, "long ago we advised the Palestinians not to accept Oslo. As you know, we are not in favour of the ethnic-state solution to problems of this sort. But this was their choice. We, too, did not want anyone from African or other friendly nations to meddle in our affairs." On the other hand, a former resistance hero who is now a top ranking minister admitted, "Israel is an apartheid regime. This is not a foreign policy issue for a country such as South Africa, regardless of the geographical distance."

......More immediately, the so-called two-state solution that is on the table between the two "sides" is not intended to produce two actual states, but rather to entrench the existing Zionist/apartheid state that was founded at the expense of a dispossessed people and a Palestinian "Bantustan". South Africans know only too well what a Bantustan is. They were semi-autonomous political entities with puppet chieftains, intended to alleviate the apartheid regime's demographic burden......

So what are friends of the Palestinian people supposed to do if they feel that racism and colonialism are universal moral questions and not foreign or domestic policy issues in this day and age? Here are Israel and the Palestinian Authority on the verge of producing some vague declaration of principles that will offer the Palestinians even less than what Barak proposed in Camp David II. There's a conference in the works that the Americans tentatively called a "meeting" (so as to spare the participants any embarrassment and so as to keep people from pinning too high expectations on what is essentially a PR gambit). But the contours of the outcome of that meeting have been clear for quite a while. They have been shaped by current balances of power. There will be no right of return for Palestinian refugees; East Jerusalem will not be the Palestinian capital; and there will be no dismantlement of all Israeli settlements and no return to pre-June 1967 borders. At the same time, the Zionist regime will remain fully intact and its inherent racism will become a domestic issue......

The Palestinian people have been torn by the occupation and by the consequences of the occupation. They need a unified national liberation programme opposed to the artifice of the current Palestinian-Israeli negotiating scheme. But this alternative programme must tell the Palestinian people and the world what Hamas truly wants (merely to return to a power-sharing formula with Fatah, for example?) and what Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and a large segment of Fatah want. These forces must assume this responsibility before it is too late, even to the extent of neutralising conflicting ideologies so as to produce a truly democratic national alternative and to emerge as a strong and cohesive political force. Is this not what leadership is all about?"