Recognising Palestine?

The efforts of the Palestinian Authority to push for statehood are nothing more than an elaborate farce, writer says.

A GOOD PIECE
Ali Abunimah
Al-Jazeera

"What do you do if your decades-long campaign to bring about an independent Palestinian state on those fractions of historic Palestine known as the West Bank and Gaza Strip have resulted in total failure? The answer seems to be, if you are the Western-sponsored Palestinian Authority (PA) in Israeli-occupied Ramallah, to pretend you have a Palestinian state anyway, and to get as many other countries to join in this charade as possible. This appears to be the essence of the PA strategy to gain admittance for the "State of Palestine" to the UN General Assembly by September. Already, the PA is lobbying hard for countries to support the move, and in recent months a number of states, particularly in Latin America, have extended full diplomatic recognition to the Ramallah authority.....

A fantasy 'state' The PA's push for recognition of a Palestinian state is the diplomatic counterpart to its much-touted "institution-building" and "economic development" efforts which are supposed to create the infrastructure for a future state. But the institution-building program is nothing more than a mirage, boosted by public relations tricks and good press. In fact, the main "institutions" the PA has built are the police-state and militia apparatuses used to repress political opposition to the PA and any form of resistance to Israeli occupation. Meanwhile the economy of the West Bank, and the PA itself, remain completely dependent on foreign aid....

'Paper' victories The effort to seek diplomatic recognition for an imaginary Palestinian state on a fraction of historic Palestine is a strategy of desperation from a Palestinian leadership that has run out of options, lost its legitimacy, and become a serious obstacle in the way of Palestinians regaining their rights....

Rather than fetishising "statehood", the BDS campaign focuses on rights and realities: it calls for an end to Israel's occupation and colonisation of all Arab lands conquered in 1967; full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel; and respect for and implementation of the rights of Palestinian refugees. These demands are all fully consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international law. The PA has never endorsed this campaign, and in fact has sought to distract from and undermine it by calling only for a half-hearted boycott of Israeli settlement goods while actively promoting trade with Israel in violation of the BDS call. Reduxing the bantustans Many have accurately likened the Palestinian "state" envisaged by the PA and its sponsors to the "bantustans" of apartheid South Africa. The bantustans were nominally independent states set up by the apartheid regime to grant "citizenship" to blacks, as a way to derail demands for true equality....

Not coincidentally, the only country to have had extensive dealings with the bantustans – allowing them to open diplomatic missions and frequently receiving their leaders – was Israel. Israel saw the bantustans as a model for how it would one day manage the Palestinians...."