Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A new Palestinian strategy or the same failed one?


A Good Analysis
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 9 September 2008

"Is the Palestinian national movement about to abandon the two-state solution and demand instead a single democratic or bi-national state throughout Palestine-Israel? That is the intriguing possibility raised by a new paper published by an ad hoc group called the Palestine Strategy Study Group (PSSG).....

The PSSG paper does indeed provide further evidence of the rapid crumbling of the dogma that the two-state solution is just and achievable and moreover that it has no plausible alternatives. And yet it is far less than a full embrace of the one-state solution. Rather, it would appear that among PSSG participants there are quite different and even contradictory goals.....

The paper does have several strong points that Palestinians and all those who support their cause should endorse and rally around. It calls on Palestinians to seize the initiative and to define the terms of the discourse rather than continue to allow Israel and its backers to do it for them. The PSSG calls for national unity and broad consultation among all Palestinians. It also calls on Palestinians to reject and expose the deceptive language of "peacemaking" and "state-building" that have been used to conceal and perpetuate a lived reality of expulsion, domination and occupation at Israel's hands.....

In spite of its positive attributes, a close reading of the PSSG final report entitled "Regaining the Initiative - Palestinian Strategic Options to End Israeli Occupation," (available in English and Arabic at http://www.palestinestrategygroup.ps/) also offers reasons for caution......

What is even more shocking is that the Arabic version of this same document contains substantially different language -- as if Israeli and Western audiences were supposed to read one thing, and Palestinian and Arab audiences another.....

More telling is that the paragraph which appears in the English version, assuring Israel that the right of return is merely a threatening demand that would not be pressed if Israel quickly negotiated a two-state solution is omitted from the Arabic version.....

These are not mere discrepancies in translation. They are substantive differences that recall the Palestinian leadership's long-standing tactic of telling Palestinians that they will achieve their rights, while reassuring Israel and its backers that they will get all their demands which are incompatible with even minimal Palestinian rights.....

.....With no chance of an agreement with Israel before the end of the year, PA heavyweights may be trying to use the PSSG exercise to shore up their own positions by scaring Israel into giving them anything at all that could keep the two-state show on the road.

The background to this is that next January the term of US-backed Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas officially ends. His term may simply be illegally extended, just as the elected Hamas-led "national unity government" was illegally deposed and replaced with the appointed US- and Israeli-backed Salam Fayyad "government." Already the jockeying to replace Abbas among officials who have no regard for Palestinian rights and interests is taking place. With no possibility of free and fair elections, after January, Abbas or his successor will have even less legitimacy than the PA leader does now. Those at the top are also aware that within Fatah grassroots there is growing impatience to rejoin the rest of the Palestinian people as part of the struggle, rather than allowing what is left of their movement to be turned into a tool of Israel.

These maneuverings do not invalidate the need for a fundamental reassessment of Palestinian strategy. Rather they serve as a warning that failed Palestinian Authority leaders in Ramallah will do whatever it takes to reinvent themselves and cling to power, including hijacking any nascent initiative intended to help unify, mobilize and liberate the Palestinian people.

It is up to the Palestinian community collectively, in all parts of historic Palestine and in the Diaspora, to continue to push for and participate in a fundamental reassessment of strategy and objectives that answers to all whose rights and interests have for too long been bulldozed."

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