The Deadly Dance for Peace

By Sonja Karkar
Special to PalestineChronicle.com

"......History should give everyone pause to reflect. Past peace talks have never amounted to anything and there is nothing to suggest that this summit will achieve anything either. One has only to recall the failures of Oslo, Camp David, Taba, the Saudi Peace Plan, the Road Map and the Geneva Accord. Yet, the Palestinians are again allowing themselves to be swept up in the diplomatic contredanse, with America confidently waving on the show.......

All in all, the current moves towards peace are looking very much like the empty promises US President George W Bush made about a Palestinian state in 2001 in the hope that those promises would draw Arab public opinion into his anti-terrorism coalition. If that were indeed the case, a third intifada would be more than likely. No doubt Israel would again announce that it has no partner for peace and with US backing would move very quickly to try and quell such an uprising. However, it would not win the hearts and minds of the Arab populations. While it might put paid to US plans for an Arab-Iranian conflict, who knows what other conflagration not imagined in the neo-con “constructive chaos” scenario, might be ignited if Israel’s deputy prime minister Avigdor Liebermann has his way and packs Palestinians onto buses for collective transfer out of East Jerusalem. [3] Such incendiary ideas should spur on the parties to negotiate a fair settlement of all the issues before any racist “solutions” take hold......

.....If Abbas really wants to deliver on Palestinian hopes for a better future, he must show that he has a commitment to seeing justice done not just paying lip-service to it. Any more concessions from the Palestinian negotiators before final status issues are agreed upon, will end up redefining the conflict, a situation that would be untenable to the Palestinian people.......

And so the peace dance goes on – one shuffle forward and two quick steps back with a lot of swaying from side to side in between. The deadliness of this show is never revealed behind the smiles, the performers hoping the spectacle will be enough to lull everyone into believing that this peace is worth having. It may have worked with Oslo, but onlookers are a lot wiser now. We have yet to see if the participants are too – Palestine’s future depends on it."