bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 18/2008
A Palestinian View:
A historic
compromise under threat
by Ghassan Khatib
With both Israelis and Palestinians
commemorating 60-year anniversaries at this time, it is instructive to look
at what the respective sides are remembering. For Israelis, 1948 brought
independence and statehood. For Palestinians, 1948 brought only disaster,
the forced displacement of between more than half of their number, a
majority that was to be shoehorned into refugee camps across the Arab world.
The different commemorations show the depth of the conflict and the
conceptual chasm separating the two sides. But with the passing of time what
Israelis used to call "the Palestinian narrative" is inexorably becoming
undisputed and well-documented historical fact. Both Palestinian and Israeli
historians are coming to the consensus that pre-state Jewish militias were
in fact supported by the British Mandate authorities and in 1948 executed a
pre-planned and systematic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population of
Palestine. This cleansing led directly to the establishment of Israel and
the Palestinian refugee problem.
In Europe, there also seems to be a new understanding of the proper
historical context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As generations
change there is greater understanding that the way Europe tried to solve its
"Jewish problem", "compensating" Jews for European persecution by supporting
the creation of Israel to settle Jews here, only caused suffering to another
people.
It is with this historical context in mind that it should be clear how far
Palestinians went to reach historical reconciliation when they decided at
the end of two decades of internal political debate to give up their
historical rights and adopt a political position based on international
legality and the relevant and specific resolutions of the United Nations.
This process culminated in the late 1980s with the adoption of a two-state
solution and the recognition of the right of Israel to exist in peace and
security within the 1967 borders, or 78 percent of historical Palestine.
This historic compromise was meant to clear the way for the establishment of
an independent Palestinian state on the rest of Palestine, requiring only an
end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and
the Gaza Strip.
The Palestine Liberation Organization subsequently signed the Oslo accords
(and several other agreements) that attested to its commitment to this
compromise. But developments since then gradually created the feeling among
Palestinians that such an historic step was not enough for Israel, which
apparently wanted to have its cake and eat it. Israel, starting to enjoy an
end to hostilities and war not only with the Palestinians but also with Arab
countries, became less and less motivated to pay the necessary price for
such peace, i.e., ending its occupation and allowing the establishment of a
Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The reason was manifold. Partly, in the course of negotiations and after the
establishment of the Palestinian Authority, Israel was able to transform the
Palestinian leadership and make it economically, politically and otherwise
dependent on Israel and foreign aid. At the same time, Israel continued its
expansion of settlements in occupied territory, clearly signaling that while
it wanted to reap the economic and political dividends of peace, it was not
prepared to give up its occupation. In 2000, seven years after Oslo, Israeli
peace groups and international monitors showed that Israeli settlements in
occupied territory had doubled. The occupation had not been rolled back.
Rather it had been consolidated.
The failure of the peace process to bring an end to occupation together with
the transformation of the Palestinian leadership and its poor governance
record led to a gradual and consistent decline in Palestinian public support
for the historic leadership that had become dependent on Israel and a
corresponding increase in support for the opposition, led by the
fundamentalist Islamic political movement, Hamas. Eventually Hamas won free
and fair parliamentary elections in 2006 and subsequently also forcefully
took control of the Gaza Strip.
With the end of the terms of PA President Mahmoud Abbas, US President George
W. Bush and possibly Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert more or less
coinciding with the 60-year commemorations, the two peoples and the conflict
are at a crossroads. On the one hand, the trends favoring the use of force
and continued conflict look likely to continue as a faltering peace process
limps along without tangible result. Only the adoption of strategies that
respect the legitimate rights of both peoples can reverse this trend.-
Published 12/5/2008 © bitterlemons.org
Ghassan Khatib is coeditor of the bitterlemons.org family of internet
publications. He is vice-president of Birzeit University and a former
Palestinian Authority minister of planning. He holds a PhD in Middle East
politics from the University of Durham.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet
forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its
specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers
and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the
region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org
and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
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