Tuesday, November 18, 2008

The PA is cheating the Palestinian people


By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

"With fanfare, fireworks, military parades and a lot of rhetorical overindulgence, the American-backed Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas has been celebrating the 20th anniversary of the so-called “Independence Day.”

In 1988, the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who, too, had a hard time distinguishing reality from fiction, declared Palestine “an independent state,” although he knew well, as did the rest of the world, that a country thoroughly occupied and savaged by a Nazi-like foreign power can’t be truly independent, let alone sovereign, until it is fully liberated from the Jaws and claws of the foreign occupiers.

That was the same Arafat who in the mid 1990s toured the West Bank using his Egyptian-donated Russian-made helicopter, declaring one city after the other “liberated, liberated, liberated.” (The two helicopters, dubbed by Israel as the Palestinian air-force were later destroyed by the Israeli air force)......

Abbas claims that there won’t be peace and stability in the Middle East until Israel withdraws to the 1967-borders. Well, if so, why did he and his visibly stupid negotiators agree to allow Israel to retain the so-called “Jewish neighborhood” in East Jerusalem in the context of any prospective final status settlement? Aren’t these illegal colonies built on occupied territory in violation of international law, as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled a few years ago?

Moreover, is Abbas willing to trade Jerusalem, the first kiblah of Islam, the home of al Masjidul Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, for a few snake-infested sand dunes in the Negev desert?

Besides, does Abbas really think that any Israeli government will be willing to give up all these colonies, especially in East Jerusalem, and go back to the armistice line of 1967? Why would the Israelis do it under existing circumstances, especially with PA military and political leaders telling Israeli leaders in broad daylight that “we are friends and allies and have one common enemy which is Hamas? "

And I don’t think they ever will as long as the current Palestinian leadership continues to behave and act as beggar and collaborator. Because beggars can’t be choosers and collaborators are no better than dogs." [How dare you, Khalid, insult dogs! I like dogs; they are faithful, which is much more than you can say about the traitor.]

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