Pushing only for limited statehood at the UN risks strangling future progress towards genuine justice
Ghada Karmi
(Ghada Karmi is a leading Palestinian activist, academic and writer. She is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic studies at the university of Exeter and is also vice-chair of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU))
guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 September 2011
"....The Arab revolution sweeping the region should have been an object lesson for Palestinians. The new Arab revolutionaries have not fought just to attain a few of their rights; they have demanded a totally new order. Israel's growing global isolation and enfeeblement should have been another spur to Palestinian action. Rather than seizing this unprecedented historic opportunity, the Palestinian leadership has pulled out the stops for a minimal political arrangement, ignoring the rights of refugees and legitimising Israel's 1948 occupation of almost 80% of the original Palestine, including its post-1967 illegal settlements under cover of the "land swap" device. This misreading of the zeitgeist was a massive blunder and an inexcusable failure of leadership.
The vigorous campaign to enlist world support for this pathetic arrangement, as if it were the acme of Palestinian ambition, should have been fought instead for basic Palestinian rights. If limited statehood had been an interim stage in a longer-term strategy to attain those rights, it could have been acceptable.
As things stand, the danger is that international endorsement of the current statehood proposal will make it the benchmark for all future peace negotiators, and entrench the idea that partitioning Palestine unequally means justice. True friends of the Palestinians should oppose this application and support their struggle for real justice."
Ghada Karmi
(Ghada Karmi is a leading Palestinian activist, academic and writer. She is a research fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic studies at the university of Exeter and is also vice-chair of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU))
guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 September 2011
"....The Arab revolution sweeping the region should have been an object lesson for Palestinians. The new Arab revolutionaries have not fought just to attain a few of their rights; they have demanded a totally new order. Israel's growing global isolation and enfeeblement should have been another spur to Palestinian action. Rather than seizing this unprecedented historic opportunity, the Palestinian leadership has pulled out the stops for a minimal political arrangement, ignoring the rights of refugees and legitimising Israel's 1948 occupation of almost 80% of the original Palestine, including its post-1967 illegal settlements under cover of the "land swap" device. This misreading of the zeitgeist was a massive blunder and an inexcusable failure of leadership.
The vigorous campaign to enlist world support for this pathetic arrangement, as if it were the acme of Palestinian ambition, should have been fought instead for basic Palestinian rights. If limited statehood had been an interim stage in a longer-term strategy to attain those rights, it could have been acceptable.
As things stand, the danger is that international endorsement of the current statehood proposal will make it the benchmark for all future peace negotiators, and entrench the idea that partitioning Palestine unequally means justice. True friends of the Palestinians should oppose this application and support their struggle for real justice."
No comments:
Post a Comment