The first and second Intifadas in the West Bank and Gaza steered the Palestinian liberation project away from unity with the rest of Palestine. In his second instalment on Israel's historic options, Azmi Bishara argues that there is no reason now why that unity cannot be recaptured
As Usual, A Great Piece
By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly
"Negotiations on the "two-state solution" have been voided of all substance. The Palestinian national liberation movement has lost all its sources of strength as a liberation movement, including its ability to rely on the Arab community instead of the "international community". It lost and forfeited its sources of strength before ever becoming a state and securing national sovereignty. It became the Palestinian Authority, an entity totally dependent upon negotiations, America's and Israel's good intentions, Israeli public opinion and other such factors. Negotiations over the Palestinian state have been reduced to a process of blackmail in which concessions are demanded and offered and fundamental rights are bartered away.
From the attitude that negotiations are an alternative to resistance, as opposed to the culmination of resistance, a new Palestinian leadership was born, a leadership so bound to the negotiating process that it is existentially dependent upon it. Israel knows that; we know that. Moreover, in this process, what is most essential to the concept of negotiation has been drained and replaced by Israeli handouts and the tokens of good intention that this leadership needs in exchange for laying siege to, hunting down and killing those Palestinian forces that have chosen and adhered to the path of resistance......
Unfortunately, the formula that Israel is currently proposing in this regard, as couched in the Bush and Sharon "visions", has so little to do with the actual creation of two sovereign states living side-by-side that it effectively proves the futility of the two-state solution. Worse yet, the Palestinian elite born from the "peace process" along with Arab regimes that are itching to put this burden behind them are helping Israel to market the rhetoric and stage the scene so as to make it appear as though the creation of a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution is really on the cards. So for the time being we will be hearing a lot more about "land swaps" (without Jerusalem), "recognition of the right to return" without the exercise of this right, the creation of an entity without full sovereignty but called a state, and other such devices and euphemisms of which there seems to be an endless supply.
Would such a settlement bring peace, even if not a just peace? An answer to this question will be offered in the third episode."
As Usual, A Great Piece
By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly
"Negotiations on the "two-state solution" have been voided of all substance. The Palestinian national liberation movement has lost all its sources of strength as a liberation movement, including its ability to rely on the Arab community instead of the "international community". It lost and forfeited its sources of strength before ever becoming a state and securing national sovereignty. It became the Palestinian Authority, an entity totally dependent upon negotiations, America's and Israel's good intentions, Israeli public opinion and other such factors. Negotiations over the Palestinian state have been reduced to a process of blackmail in which concessions are demanded and offered and fundamental rights are bartered away.
From the attitude that negotiations are an alternative to resistance, as opposed to the culmination of resistance, a new Palestinian leadership was born, a leadership so bound to the negotiating process that it is existentially dependent upon it. Israel knows that; we know that. Moreover, in this process, what is most essential to the concept of negotiation has been drained and replaced by Israeli handouts and the tokens of good intention that this leadership needs in exchange for laying siege to, hunting down and killing those Palestinian forces that have chosen and adhered to the path of resistance......
Unfortunately, the formula that Israel is currently proposing in this regard, as couched in the Bush and Sharon "visions", has so little to do with the actual creation of two sovereign states living side-by-side that it effectively proves the futility of the two-state solution. Worse yet, the Palestinian elite born from the "peace process" along with Arab regimes that are itching to put this burden behind them are helping Israel to market the rhetoric and stage the scene so as to make it appear as though the creation of a Palestinian state within the framework of a two-state solution is really on the cards. So for the time being we will be hearing a lot more about "land swaps" (without Jerusalem), "recognition of the right to return" without the exercise of this right, the creation of an entity without full sovereignty but called a state, and other such devices and euphemisms of which there seems to be an endless supply.
Would such a settlement bring peace, even if not a just peace? An answer to this question will be offered in the third episode."
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