The Roadmap to Peace

There has been renewed interest in issues around the Israel/Palestine conflict in the last few weeks. Firstly, I can only presume that this is directly related to our (and indeed the USA’s) need to divert attention away from the increasingly disastrous operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as hoping to provide a smokescreen from any future plans we may have to attack Iran. The idea, I suppose, is that if we pretend to look half interested in sorting out a little bit of land the Palestinians can play at statehood on, we get to look good in the eyes of the Middle East. Laughable assumption though it may be, it would seem to fit with current UK/US government ideology, removed as it is from any semblance of reality. Secondly, as is always the case when talking about this subject I feel the need to set a few ground rules: there is no ‘Israel/Palestine conflict’, all there is is one continuous 60 year illegal occupation of sovereign Palestinian land , punctuated with uncounted acts of violence, aggression and terrorism not by one side, but by both. It remains the case that while groups on both sides have committed unspeakable acts of horror on each other, the Palestinians retain a right to self defence and self determination, and this will continue until they regain control of all of their land, their borders, their airspace, their ports, water, electricity, economy, and most importantly, dignity.

Thus, in the last few weeks, we have witnessed the spectacle of the US, the Quartet, and Israel all, to various extents, stating their eagerness to restart the ‘roadmap’ and ensure a ‘viable Palestinian state’. Legitimised by their stooge Mahmoud Abbas, head of the Bantustan of Rammallah and de facto spokesperson of the Palestinian people, various ideas have been floated in recent weeks, that in the mainstream media stand as proof of the serious nature of the current push for peace. However, to those observers with an interest in the ‘facts on the ground’ (a particularly popular piece of semantics within the Israeli government and their US counterparts) and even a passing knowledge of the history and the current situation in Palestine, and undoubtedly for the Palestinians themselves, the latest moves are simply one more slap in the face for their rights and their never ending quest for justice. Interestingly even the UN, that talking shop for nations with its historic role as arbiter and legitimator of US foreign policy since at least the Suez crisis, is beginning to feel embarrassed at the extent to which the Palestinian people themselves are painted out of the peace process. After all, until their leadership acquiesce to the concessions demanded of them by the Israeli government, the Palestinians are not to be allowed a voice in this process to determine their future and their fate.

Not that this should come as a surprise to the informed observer. After all, the Palestinians have been powerless to speak for themselves, determine the outcomes of their own lives, even control the most basic elements of their lives and existences (including their movement, economy, security, education, electricity, water, airspace, borders and welfare). Hence in the current discussions we are casually informed by the media that the Quartet feels that there may be the possibility of progress if the Palestinian negotiating team are willing to come to the table and discuss a land swap, whereby the Palestinians will be allowed to keep land equivalent to the landmass of the West Bank in return for allowing the Israelis to retain key settlements on the West Bank.. Until they agree to this demand to concede land it is the Palestinians who are held up as standing in the way of peace. This whole argument is erroneous. The absolute incontrovertible truth which this demand seeks to bypass is that the land in question all belongs to the Palestinians. Not by claim, historical fact, or ‘facts on the ground’ but in the legal framework which ought to guide this whole process but is consistently overlooked – the internationally agreed UN 1967 green line (which itself is already a concession of land on the part of the Palestinians vis-à-vis the original 1948 UN partition of British mandate Palestine or even the 1949 UN armistice line). [I feel I should add here, that upon re-reading my blog it looks very much like I’m a big fan of international law and the UN. I’m not. Its just that, for one, I believe that in a non-hierarchical democratic system, the rules and rights ordinary people would choose to confer on each other would roughly measure up to the basic tenants of our UN agreed human rights, and secondly, that in the context which many of the struggles I mention exist we have to force the debate onto agreed international terms to bypass the might of the US, and that whilst I would love to advocate anarchy as a solution to, for instance, the Palestinian problem, I feel it more realistic to strive for justice in language everyone else can understand]. After all, were we to discuss historical facts there would be a strong social justice argument for the talks to only proceed when the Israeli government is willing to discuss returning lands it seized militarily between its military offensives of 1948, 1967 and 1973 (and indeed continues to seize for ‘security purposes’ to this day). The notion that it is the Palestinians who ought to come to the table willing to discuss giving over control of land, any land, anywhere, to the Israelis is laughable. The argument continually proffered by the Israelis and their US allies, is of the necessity of addressing the current peace process to ‘facts on the ground’. At the heart of this argument is the fact that there are hundreds of Israeli settlements (as well as over 400 checkpoints) within the 1967 agreed Palestinian borders, covering somewhere in the region of 40% of 1967 Palestine and providing homes to over 400,000 Israelis (including East Jerusalem, still over 250,000 discounting the residents there). The argument is made that removing these settlements, as happened in Gaza (of which I will speak more later), is simply unrealistic, and that they therefore must remain, and be taken into account in any final settlement (no pun intended, this is no laughing matter).

Of course what this entire argument fails to mention is that these are all illegal settlements. Illegal under international law, illegal under the terms laid down for occupying armies in the Hague Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention, immoral, and unjust. These are settlements built on land stolen by force. Settlements that bisect the west Bank in such a way as to create a series of Bantustans in the West Bank which make the notion of a viable Palestinian state ridiculous and insulting. Settlements that have been a deliberate policy of successive Israeli governments for at least the last 25 years, precisely designed as a long term ploy to create irreversible facts on the ground to force any final status settlements in the ‘peace’ process heavily in the favour of the Israeli negotiating position. Let us be clear about some basic and irrefutable truths which ought to form the absolute basis of any Palestinian negotiations:

The only viable borders for a Palestinian state are the UN agreed 1967 green line

There can be, nor should be, any negotiations while any Israeli settlements remain anywhere within the 1967 green line

There can be, nor should be, any negotiations while there remains any Israeli military or security apparatus on any Palestinian land

The apartheid wall is immoral, unspeakably cruel, and illegal in international law. It must be torn down and repartitions made to all those whose lives it has destroyed

The peace process, which can only begin when the above issues have been rectified, must recognise the inalienable right of return of all Palestinian refugees

The peace process must recognise the views of all Palestinians, including the millions of refugees scattered across Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, the rest of the Middle East, Europe, America and elsewhere (estimated to be in the region of three million people). These people and/or their forefathers were forced to flee their homeland and have a right to have their views, opinions and desires represented by those selected to negotiate for the Palestinian people

Mahmoud Abbas is not a suitable negotiating partner. He represents a minority of the Palestinian people, is the choice figure of the US and to an extent the Israeli government, rather than the Palestinian people, and is the successor of the morally bankrupt Yasser Arafat and his Fatah party. For many years, since at least their retreat to Tunis, Fatah represented an autocratic, corrupt and self serving institution that gradually failed to speak for, or speak to, the mass of the Palestinian people it claimed to speak for. In gradually gaining the support of the Israeli government and the US it delegitimised itself, and came to rely on the support of those it claimed to oppose to legitimise and support its rule. Through the deliberate policies of the Israelis, with the full support and connivance of the US, it came to need these alleged ‘foes’ to cement its position. In supporting Fatah for so long, and creating a gulf between Fatah and the Palestinian people, the Israelis and US have, much to their chagrin, provided the perfect conditions for the emergence of Hamas as the spokespeople of the Palestinian people. For so long the Palestinians retained a mainly secular political outlook, but in viewing the increasing ineffectiveness and corruptness of Fatah they have been forced toward a position where the only radical voice speaking for, and acting in the interests of, the Palestinians, was Hamas. Effectively, the Israeli government, the US, the UK, and the EU have all sought to punish Palestinians for electing Hamas in free and fair democratic elections. We can see why the people of Palestine may have been pushed towards voting in these right wing religious fundamentalist zealots by considering the political, economic and military situation in Palestine since at least the first intifada. Now consider the illogicality of trying to punish the Palestinians for their choice: all that will happen is that by punishing the Palestinians choice with tanks, missiles, sonic booms, incursions, bored closings and electricity blackouts, you push the people of the West Bank, and especially Gaza, further and further into the arms of Hamas, the most hard line option with their promises of blood and death and terror. It is always the same when you try to intimidate another with violence and bloodshed, you push them towards the bloodiest and most violent group or individual they can find as they seek comfort, protection, and revenge. Now the Israeli/US nexus have made this bed they must lie in it. They offered the Palestinians democratic elections, and the Palestinians held democratic elections (ratified unanimously by the independent UN election observers) and elected Hamas. However much the Israelis, the Quartet, the UN, the EU, the UK, and many people the world over, may disagree with Hamas policy and actions, we must recognise that they are the elected voice of the people and are a reflection of the views of Palestinians, created by the facts within Palestine.

For let us not forget that when your opinions of the situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are formed not by CNN, the BBC, and Haratz, but through your daily suffering in Gaza or the West Bank, the view looks very different. The resort to violence, the constant attempts to defend themselves and respond to Israeli actions and incursions, the use of suicide bombers and Qasam rockets, these all seem much different when you have lived in the squalor, violence and apartheid of the Gaza Strip or the West Bank. When you have experienced your loved ones killed with high velocity munitions shot from militarised observation towers, witnessed women refused passage though ‘checkpoints’ and forced to deliver their babies in the dirt at the side of the road then watch their babies die in their arms, seen your home bulldozed for ‘security’ purposes, lived with the daily humilities and inconveniences caused by these same checkpoints, been subjected to nightly sonic booms by F16 jets, seen your land stolen, your crops destroyed, your youth fired upon, stood by powerless while your farmland is cut off form you by a wall that makes its former counterpart in Berlin look like a garden fence, and your history and culture ridiculed and destroyed, things seem very different. When you have watched all this occur in the context of settlements linked together by high quality “settler only” roads springing up unendingly on your land, when these settlements appropriate your water, your farm land, your ancestral homes, when these settlers attack you, use you as slave labour to fuel their expansion into international markets for clothing, food, and flowers, and when these settlements use what land remains to you as their personal garbage dump, things look very different. When those occupying your land have the 4th largest army in the world, armed not just by their own burgeoning military-industrial complex, but by the most modern weaponry provided by the US, UK, France, and others, and have recourse to tanks, APCs, Apache Helicopters, F16 jets, Cluster Bombs, heavy artillery and every type of gun and munitions available things look very different.
The Palestinians right to defend themselves from the brutal, bloody and murderous events that daily occur in their illegally occupied homeland (but which are so infrequently reported to us here in the West) is unquestionable. Having said that it remains, without a shadow of a doubt, indefensible to target these attacks at civilians, at women and children, and people in bars, clubs, cafes, schools, and so on. But this resort to terror is not the solely a crime committed by Palestinians against Israelis. There can be no doubt from the frequency with which it occurs (whether we in the West get to hear about it from the mainstream media) that the IDF deliberately target civilians in their operations in the West Bank and Gaza. In doing so they commit terrorist offences too. Terrorism is not only confined to guerrilla groups and Palestinian resistance movements – states too can commit terrorism. Indeed, the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy comments, as part of his analysis of the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel form Gaza, and the subsequent IDF military incursions into the Gaza Strip, “anyone who takes an honest look at the progression of events during the past two months will discover that the Qassams have a context: they are almost always fired after an IDF assassination operation, and there have been many of these. The question of who started it is not a childish question I this context. The IDF has returned to liquidations [e.g. targeted assassinations], and in a big way. And in their wake there has been an increase in Qassam firings”. So, in direct contravention to the discourse we get here in the UK, even the Israeli media accepts that more often than not the Palestinian violence is a tit-for-tat response to its constant precursor, Israeli violence. Indeed, it is worth noting (especially in the context of the attempts to reinvigorate the ‘roadmap’ and talk about ‘peace’) that from 16 July this year when US President George Bush announced November’s peace meeting the Israeli military killed 104 Palestinians (21 in the West Bank; 83 in the Gaza Strip; 12 children); injured 442 (251 inthe West Bank; 191 in the Gaza Strip; 54 children); and arrested 1,181 (1,096 in the West Bank; 85 in the Gaza Strip; 54 children); as well as setting up 29 additional military checkpoints in the West Bank.

So we cans see if we take the time to really look what is happening that any current discourse about ‘peaces’, especially one that holds up the Palestinians as being unable or unwilling to renounce violence whilst painting the Israelis as the innocent and injured party desperately seeking peace with its blood thirsty neighbour, is laughable. Until the conditions I outlined above are met, or at least acceptable as the bottom line for any future negotiations, any attempts to find a solution will be externally imposed and doomed to failure. And yet it will be the Palestinians who are held up as being opposed to peace while the Israeli government is shown to be doing all it can. Nothing could be further from the truth. Take as an example the recent withdrawal form Gaza. Heralded as being the most brave and humanitarianly minded move yet in this whole grotesque saga, the move was indeed highly desired by the residents of Gaza. Offered the chance to have all illegal settlements removed and the end of military occupation seemed like the endgame for Gazans. To finally control their own movement, destiny, economy, borders, and future seemed the final solution all had been striving for. And yet it has not turned out like this at all. Israel has indeed removed all settlements (blowing many up as it left to prevent the Palestinians benefiting form them) and no longer occupies Gaza militarily. At least not on the ground. There are still incursions. They still shell Gaza. They still send in Apache helicopters to carry out ‘targeted’ assassinations. They still use F16 jets to cause sonic booms over the tower blocks of Gaza City. And they still control every element of life for Gazans. For they control the border crossings, the airspace, the sea, the water, the electricity, the jobs, the economy, and thus the fate of 1.5 million people. Since the Israelis closed the borders to all movements of goods and people the frail economy in Gaza has crumbled as fast as the health and dignity of its population. Now some 85% of Gazan’s are unemployed, all building work (including vital repairs to the sewage system) has halted as the Israelis refuse to allow the importation of concrete, the price of flour has soared 80% due to its scarcity (the UN provide emergency food aid to over 600,000 in the Gaza Strip), and even the provision of electricity is subject to the whims of the Israeli government. For whilst the discourse in the UK has been around the Israelis using electricity blackouts as some sort of collective punishment (illegal under international law) in retaliation for Qassam rocket attacks, we cans see that the Qassam rocket attacks are themselves responses to Israeli violence against Palestinians. And so the cycle of violence continues. And yet the disintegration of the Gaza strip is held up as just another example of the inability of the Palestinians to rule themselves, and their violent nature and lust for blood. Whereas, what Palestinians really seem to want is a few basic tenants of humane and human existence: land, water, electricity, jobs, food, security, peace.