Oslo Accords and the PA are a Hindrance to Palestinian Liberation
By Marion Kawas | Palestine Chronicle | February 8, 2020
On January 28, 2020, US President Donald Trump unveiled the details of his ‘Deal of the Century’ in Washington D.C. with Benjamin Netanyahu by his side.
Many of these details had been leaked before, but this press conference put it all together in one package, replete with maps. For many Palestinians, this exercise simply acknowledged what is already the reality on the ground.
But for those still clinging to the façade of “international order”, Trump’s apartheid plan is the final nail in the coffin of the much-touted “two-state” solution. The “two-state” solution that has dragged on for over 25 years, and only resulted in more theft of Palestinian land, more illegal Israeli settlements and more oppression for Palestinians.
It is time to realize that the “state-building” exercise, initiated by the Oslo accords, has failed and failed in a way that has crippled the Palestinian struggle for decades. It is also time to acknowledge that Trump’s Steal/Scam/Theft of the Century is regrettably the logical outcome of those same Oslo Accords.
In the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization PLO was widely recognized as the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. One of the main planks in its platform was the creation of an independent, secular, democratic state in Palestine. Western governments of the day went out of their way to attempt to vilify and exclude the PLO from international forums and other events.
How did we possibly come from that to what we are witnessing today? How and when did the PLO change its focus and what were the repercussions on the Palestinian struggle? Why did the Palestine National Council PNC vote in 1998, under the guns of the occupier, to amend and nullify crucial articles in the PLO charter? A vote that ultimately neutered and marginalized both the PNC and the PLO as effective representative bodies for Palestinians, a vote that was boycotted at the time by many PNC members and leading visionary Palestinian intellectuals, such as Edward Said.
The Oslo Accords dramatically re-framed the parameters of the Palestinian movement and what was considered “acceptable”; but did they also succeed in laying the foundation and granting legitimacy for greater normalization with Israel?
If you want a favor from the U.S. government, it seems normalization with Israel is the road to take, as happened recently with Sudan’s leader al-Burhan. These are all important questions that need serious discussion in the entire Palestinian movement, including those in diaspora and in refugee camps. The fight for Palestinian liberation cannot move forward until the setbacks of the past are addressed, and the disgraced Palestinian Authority, and its job as a security contractor for Israel, held to account.
It’s immaterial now if the Oslo Accords could have worked if they had been honored and implemented as promised – they weren’t. In fact, it is now apparent that the whole intent of the Oslo Accords (or at least its backers) was to contain, control and censor the militant spirit and legacy of the Palestinian struggle. History has brought us to another pivotal moment for the Palestinian national collective. This moment can either be met with a recognition of these realities and give birth to bold ways for new leadership to move forward, or be squandered and add more unnecessary years to the arduous path for liberation.
Palestinians around the world demonstrated and protested in the last week to show their total rejection of this latest attempt on their national dignity and existence. And no, it’s not because they insist to “miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity”! It’s because they refuse these “opportunities” to surrender, to commit national suicide, and to sell-out their and their children’s birthright.
As in the darkest periods that have come before, the Palestinian people will prevail and foil all conspiracies against their legitimate national and human rights. The right of return, the right to genuine self-determination, the right to live in dignity and freedom – the new generation of Palestinians are as committed as any before them that these rights are sacred and will NOT be sacrificed.
– Marion Kawas is a member of the Canada Palestine Association and co-host of Voice of Palestine.
Ex-Netanyahu Adviser Brings Thousands Of Christians To Israel On Propaganda Trips
MEMO | February 6, 2020
A former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brought thousands of Christian American students to Israel over the last four years for propaganda junkets, reported JTA.
“Passages”, a nine-day trip whose itinerary includes Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Bethlehem and West Bank settlement Alfei Menashe, began in 2016 and will reach 10,000 participants by the end of this year.
The programme was founded by former Netanyahu adviser Rivka Kidron and former US marine Robert Nicholson.
The initiative is funded by what Kidron described to JTA as a “diverse group” of private donors to the tune of $16.7 million per year (the annual budget for 2020).
According to JTA, Passages is “unabashedly pro-Israel”, calling the country “a force for good in the region and in the world” on its website.
Passages participants “must be recommended and go through a rigorous screening process that aims to identify leadership potential”.
The executive director of “Passages”, Scott Phillips, described the success of the programme as a “long game”.
“Growing the number of students it brings to Israel is one goal, but the final measure of success will be keeping them engaged in the Christian community and in Israel advocacy,” JTA added.
Abbas is a mouthpiece for international impositions on Palestine
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 6, 2020
The Palestinian Authority has learned nothing from decades of futile UN Security Council Resolutions. Do the people of Palestine really need international consensus regarding the already very clear illegality of US President Donald Trump’s so-called deal of the century?
Pushing on regardless, PA leader Mahmoud Abbas is pursuing repetitive, useless and time-wasting options to give an impression of being engaged diplomatically with the international community and its impositions. While Abbas pleads at the UN to obtain another symbolic show of alleged international support, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon is lobbying the Security Council “to enlist their support for the joint US-Israeli action and to prevent support for any Palestinian declarations of protest.”
The draft resolution calls for a rejection of Trump’s deal and seeks yet another endorsement of the two-state compromise, despite the impossibility of its implementation. Abbas’s refusal to consider a unified Palestinian approach that encompasses all legitimate forms of resistance against Israeli colonisation makes UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s job of presiding over the constant Israeli violations of international law and human rights easier. As long as the PA scrambles after the international community for a solution, the UN only has to regurgitate the same rhetoric about its two-state vision. Accountability in this regard is not applicable, as the PA and the UN know full well.
In what would now be perceived as a weak condemnation of Trump’s deal, Guterres cautioned against “actions that would erode the possibility of a viable and contiguous Palestinian state,” with reference to Israeli settlement expansion. However, the US-Israeli scheming goes beyond expansion to formal, rather than merely fact-on-the-ground annexation. The UN is, as usual, several strategic steps behind, so as not to run out of the plethora of violations to speak out against during opportune moments in which the Palestinian cause is exploited yet again.
If the US vetoes the resolution, which is certain, the PA is likely to get another round of passive support from the UN General Assembly. For Abbas, a show of votes might be enough to claim validity, yet again, for the two-state compromise, as opposed to Palestinians’ political rights. The truth, however, is that the international community has only supported rhetoric about Palestinian rights. Altering its trajectory now would spell disaster for the UN in terms of its own complicity in endorsing Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Hence, the cautious warnings against settlement expansion while refusing to advocate in favour of decolonisation. Likewise, the UN will entertain Abbas and his overtures because the PA has proved that it squanders any potential for change.
Trump’s deal is the least of the international community’s concerns. Abbas is only accentuating his irrelevance with resolution gimmicks at the UN. Palestinians are voiceless at the UN primarily because of the UN’s protection of Israel, but also due to Abbas consolidating his role as spokesman for international demands and counter-narratives about what Palestinians want. A resolution confirming what is already known makes no difference to the political violence that Israel continues to inflict upon Palestinians. The PA should be turning towards its own people, as it should have done on previous occasions and refused, instead of wasting time at the UN for yet another opportunity to lament about delays.
Palestinians in Israel are the next target for the deal of the century
![Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump's 'peace deal' on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Women-in-Gaza-protest-against-US-peace-deal2.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=85&strip=all&ssl=1)
Women in Gaza come together to protest against Trump’s ‘peace deal’ on 5 February 2020 [Mohammad Asad/Middle East Monitor]
MEMO | February 6, 2020
Israelis of all political persuasions welcomed the Trump “peace plan”, but the Palestinian citizens of the self-styled Jewish state are angry because the deal refers to land and population swaps between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory. This confirms that Israel wants to displace them, fulfilling right wing aspirations.
Arab members of the Israeli parliament have said that they will not agree to the deal of the century and its explicit annexation proposal. Nevertheless, the right-wing Israeli government now has a green light to strip citizenship from hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the “Triangle” in northern Israel.
It is clear that Trump’s plan is not just about taking more of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967, but that it also wants to “transfer” Palestinians from the areas occupied in 1948. Israel wants to “swap” the area with the PA; protests against this are not, therefore, simply in solidarity with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the refugees in the diaspora. There is also a conspiracy against their existence in Israel.
The Palestinians in Israel have held crisis talks about the implications of the deal, especially for those in the Triangle, which is a predominantly Arab area in Israel, near the West Bank, divided into the Northern Triangle and the towns of Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baqa Al-Gharbiyye and Umm Al-Fahm, and the Southern Triangle, which includes Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia. It is a stronghold of the Islamic movement in Israel, led by Sheikh Raed Salah.
The part of the Triangle mentioned in the Trump plan covers 350 square kilometres. The area threatened by the swap proposal covers more than 42,000 acres, inhabited by 300,000 Palestinians, who make up 20 per cent of the total Palestinian population inside Israel and have Israeli citizenship. These villages are thus a source of demographic concern for Israel due to the steadily increasing population, which is expected to reach 500,000 in the next five years, tipping the demographic balance in favour of the Palestinian Arabs.
The Triangle is more conservative in nature than the more integrated Arab regions in Israel. Swapping the land and population out of Israel will see the loss of those who best preserve traditional Palestinian identity. Local political groups believe that the land and population swap is an extension of previous efforts by Israel to liquidate the Palestinian issue; Israel wants more land but without the people of Palestine on it. It is not the first time that the Israelis have sought to transfer the largest number of Triangle residents and the least amount of land. Such a move will not only hit the Palestinians directly involved, but also their extended families and social connections, many of which will be severed.
Efforts to Judaise the Triangle areas to provide Israel with some strategic depth have included a belt of settlements on the outskirts of the Arab towns. This has caused anxiety among the Palestinians, with almost daily attacks by settlers against them and their properties. There is also a fear that another massacre like that at Kafr Qasem in 1956 is on the cards in order to make the local population leave of their own accord.
A plan developed by the late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, called the “Seven Stars” project, tried to change the demographic nature of the Triangle. A Jewish majority was to be created by establishing religious centres, hemming-in Umm Al-Fahm so that it could not be developed further, and linking the area to settlements in the West Bank. This would also have seen the removal of the so-called Green “Armistice” Line of 1949 dividing the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 from those occupied in 1967. The latter were supposed to form the “State of Palestine” according to the international consensus. Sharon’s project did not get beyond the discussion stage.
It is clear that Israel is seeking to buy enough time to impose a fait accompli on the ground by getting Knesset approval for the deal. Although the Arab MKs have the third largest coalition with 12 seats, their chances of thwarting the vote on the plan are almost non-existent in light of the general agreement within Israel to implement Trump’s plan.
Israelis have declared the Palestinian-Israeli population growth as a “demographic time bomb”. With a falling birth rate among Israeli Jews, the fear is that Palestinians will outnumber them across historic Palestine within the next ten years.
Land swaps to defuse this “threat” to the “Jewishness” of the state of Israel have been mooted before, of course. Post-1967, Israel’s policies in the newly-occupied territories have included the annexation of Jerusalem, still unrecognised by most countries in the world; land confiscation; house demolitions and the removal of residency rights.
In 1982 a secret document called for the Interior Ministry to crack down on the Palestinians and push them to leave their land. This was picked up by the racist General Rehavam Ze’evi in 1988, and notorious Rabbi Meir Kahane, who called for Umm Al-Fahm to be attacked as a means of provoking its residents.
By 2004, former Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman was proposing the swap of minor Israeli settlements in the West Bank with Arab villages and towns in the Triangle, based on similar agreements made post-World War Two in different parts of the world. Donald Trump’s “peace plan” is in many ways simply a US-endorsed Judaisation project giving Israel everything that it wants, for now. Its aims and objectives mirror those of earlier schemes.
Israeli security agencies are also concerned about the growing influence and activities of the Islamic movement within the “Jewish state”, particularly in the Triangle, as its ideas are similar to those of the Muslim Brotherhood. The movement also mobilises volunteers against Israeli violations at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The fear is that the conflict will spill over into serious clashes between Palestinian Muslims and religious Jews.
The timing of the release of the deal of the century helped Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces yet another general election next month — the third in less than a year — as well as indictments for corruption. The deal is a bit of a lifeline for the Israeli Prime Minister. Nevertheless, approval and implementation of its terms may be postponed until after the election, giving the Arab MKs time to try to prevent the displacement of citizens from the Triangle.
Palestinians within Israel believe that the Trump “peace plan” is anything but peaceful, and will lead to violence. In fulfilling the aims and aspirations of the Israeli far-right, it looks set to entrench even further Israel’s status as an apartheid state, with the indigenous people facing ever more discriminatory legislation and displacement. It remains to be seen if they can prevent the implementation of the plan, at least the land swap clause, which seeks to rob so many people of their citizenship and transfer them against their will.
READ ALSO:
The PA will opt for losing Palestine if it means keeping its ‘authority’
First Morocco, then Sudan: Netanyahu Intensifies Normalization Efforts with more Arab Countries
Palestine Chronicle | February 6, 2020
Amid the ongoing Israeli efforts to normalize ties with African countries, Tel Aviv has been intensifying its diplomatic relations with Sudan and Morocco over the last week.
On February 4, Israeli media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been lobbying the United States to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the occupied Western Sahara region, in exchange for a normalization of ties with Rabat.
Although the two countries have no official diplomatic relations, “contacts between Netanyahu and the Moroccans started getting more serious after a secret meeting with Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2018,” according to American news website Axios.
Meanwhile, Sudan had agreed to allow flights to Israel to cross its airspace, Reuters news agency reported Wednesday.
This comes two days after Sudan’s top military official Abdel Fattah al-Burhan held a surprise meeting with Netanyahu in Uganda.
Burhan currently serves as the head of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, a transitional ruling body made up of civilian and military figures.
The visit stirred controversy in the African country, generating tensions between the military and civilian groups, with Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok declaring that “all decisions related to Sudan’s foreign affairs “should be made” exclusively by his Cabinet”, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Defiant, the Sudanese military responded with a statement Wednesday in which it described the meeting as being in “the highest interests of national security and of Sudan.”
Sudan’s military spokesman Amer Mohamed al-Hassan told Al Jazeera that “Sudan has not announced full normalization (with Israel), but it is exchanging interests”.
“From Uganda, Netanyahu declared that Israel and Sudan were working towards normalizing relations.” Haaretz also reported. “For Israel, it was a major diplomatic breakthrough with a Muslim-majority African state.”
“The continent’s rapprochement with Israel is unfortunate, because, for decades, Africa has stood as a vanguard against all racist ideologies, including Zionism – the ideology behind Israel’s establishment on the ruins of Palestine,” wrote Palestinian journalist and editor of The Palestine Chronicle Ramzy Baroud.
“If Africa succumbs to Israeli enticement and pressure to fully embrace the Zionist state, the Palestinian people would lose a treasured partner in their struggle for freedom and human rights,” Baroud added.
EU funding criterion accused of ‘criminalising Palestinian resistance’
MEMO | February 4, 2020
The European Union has been criticised for caving-in to Israeli pressure following its adoption of a new funding criterion, which critics have warned is intended to criminalise Palestinian dissent. Fresh concerns were raised over terms added by the EU last year, which required Palestinian institutions to ensure that no beneficiaries of their projects or programmes are affiliated with groups listed as terrorist organisations by the bloc.
When the new criterion was introduced, the Palestinian Non-Governmental Organisations (PNGO) network rejected the terms in a letter signed by 134 Palestinian NGOs in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem two months ago. Although the EU defend its criterion, insisting that the new restrictions would not affect individuals and was aimed at political entities, the NGOs expressed concerns over the document’s ambiguity.
Palestinian institutions said that the new demands were not included in previous agreements with the EU, and that approving them would mean that they would be required to apply a political test on who was entitled to receive donor funds.
“The danger in agreeing to these terms lies in excluding the legitimate struggle of the Palestine people from its international legal framework and including it in the circle of terrorism,” said Muhsien Abu Ramadan, a leading Palestinian analyst, writer and former president of the PNGO network in the Gaza Strip.
Mustafa Barghouti, general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative and a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, dismissed the new criterion: “Palestinian civil society institutions will not distinguish between one citizen and another because of their political opinions, race, religion or anything else.”
While the EU’s funding covers around 70 per cent of the projects in the Palestinian territories, it had not directly involved itself in any controversy over who receives the money. That task was left to accredited Palestinian NGOs.
This change in EU policy is believed to be a consequence of Israeli pressure, according to Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Tariq Dana. “The latest EU move has been a result of constant Israeli pressure on the EU to refrain from funding many Palestinian organisations, especially those engaged in revealing and reporting on Israeli colonial practices, human rights violations and crimes,” explained Dana.
Israeli forces fire at Palestinian protesters in Hebron, West Bank on 30 January 2020 [Mamoun Wazwaz/Anadolu Agency]
The assistant professor at the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies believes that the new criterion has to be situated in “the context of ongoing Israeli colonisation” and is a new mechanism for controlling Palestinian lives. Defunding Palestinians NGOs has become a key goal for Israel in its attempt to supress dissenting voices, Dana claimed. Legitimate organisations which use international law to report human rights violations, such as Al-Haq and Addameer, are thought to be at risk of having donations cut.
Others are also in danger, such as the Bisan Centre for Research and Development, an organisation which implements projects in Area C. According to Dana, the centre “supports the steadfastness of local communities suffering from the Israeli military and settlers.” The director of Bisan Centre, Ubai Aboudi, is thought to have been arrested by Israel recently and is being held with neither charge nor trial in administrative detention.
Trump’s deal will go ahead, because there is no real PA opposition to it
By Lama Khater | MEMO | February 4, 2020
After Mahmoud Abbas’s speech about Donald Trump’s “deal of the century”, there was optimism that it would lead to something new on the ground from the PA. At the very least, that it would help to manage the relationship between the Palestinian factions.
Several days have now passed and nothing has happened to match the seriousness of the situation. Abbas’s speech at the Arab League summit in Cairo was weak, suggesting that we can expect more of the same tweaked slightly to suit the PA leader’s media performance. None of this has any impact on the political world, nor does it set the stage for action to face the risks arising from the deal if Israel starts to implement it unilaterally.
There is no point in threatening to cut off the security relationship with Israel while the PA prisons are still filled with young Palestinians on charges of forming cells to resist the occupation. Nor is there any point in announcing a boycott of America while the Director of the CIA was in Ramallah for a meeting with senior PA security officials Majed Faraj and Hussein Al-Sheikh.
What more does the Trump administration and Israel want from the PA for it to maintain security cooperation? Regardless of how serious any political estrangement and boycott is, will Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu care about the insults and condemnation voiced by the PA against their plans? They know exactly what they want from the PA and they know that the authority will not give up its security role in the West Bank, where most of the effects of the deal will be felt. The PA is not only continuing its security role to please the US and Israel, which may result in its toppling, but also because this is in total alignment with Abbas’s approach, to which he still clings despite all that has happened. He still thinks that armed resistance to the Israeli occupation is “terrorism” and a future “State of Palestine” must be demilitarised. Does any sane person dream of a demilitarised state in a troubled world, believing it to be worthy of the efforts needed for its creation, and that it will be both viable and sustainable?
The details of the deal make it clear that the two-state solution is an illusion, and that there is no place for a Palestinian state inside historic Palestine or alongside Israel; the facts imposed on the ground by the occupation made this obvious many years ago. However, in exposing it clearly, Trump has put the ball firmly in the PA-Fatah court; the Fatah leadership is now required to take a progressive stand when its anger dies down. So far, it has done nothing in terms of internal reconciliation or ending the monopoly over Palestinian decision-making; it is not ready to back down from its catastrophic mistakes against the national cause and Palestinian people. Is it that hard to admit that the path followed by Fatah has led us to this position? If we concede that it was a political endeavour that was justified at the time, why do we continue to stick to it now in our current position, and make statements about ending security cooperation with Israel, which we know to be a lie?
With such hesitation, weakness and failure to implement even a single bold measure, what does the PA believe will prevent the deal from being implemented, especially as many of its stipulations already exist in practice? There is no doubt that the PA’s fruitless efforts will not stop this from happening, because what is needed at this moment are practical decisions that surprise the Israelis and go beyond formalities, public relations and speeches.
The move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018 was a test to see what the Palestinian response would be to the deal when announced in full. The official response was muted, with no significant changes to security cooperation or anything like that. Israel and the US are now well aware that whatever they do, no red lines will be crossed, simply because the PA is so weak in enforcing them. We can expect the deal to be implemented, unilaterally or otherwise, following which the future will be more dangerous for the people of Palestine.
The PA will opt for losing Palestine if it means keeping its ‘authority’
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | February 4, 2020
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to provide proof of his worthlessness when it comes to political decision-making. If the US “continues” with the so-called deal of the century, Abbas has threatened only the possibility of a full boycott.
The US “peace plan”, which enhances Israel’s strategies for forcibly displacing Palestinians and rendering them refugees while taking away their right to be recognised as such, is not enough for the PA to implement its threats, dependent as it is upon security coordination with the occupation for its existence and function. In May 2014, Abbas described security coordination with Israel as “sacred”, despite policy differences with the Israeli government.
This coordination facilitated the targeting of dissenting Palestinians and resistance activists. In 2014, security coordination with Israel during Operation Brother’s Keeper resulted in the re-arrest of 50 former Palestinian prisoners who had been released in the Gilad Shalit exchange deal. One of the most appalling security coordination deals involved the PA in the killing of Palestinian activist and writer Basel Al-Araj in March 2017.
Yet other logistics are dependent upon security coordination, including the movement of goods and people. The PA’s political existence depends upon security coordination, while the Palestinian people bear the brunt of the violence associated with its surveillance.
Abbas’s periodic threats to cease such coordination cannot be taken seriously. As far as quashing Palestinian political dissent and resistance, the agreement with Israel is the best that the coloniser and collaborator can get. In terms of political engagement, security coordination provides the PA with the much-needed funds to sustain its existence. The premise of state-building, albeit illusory, provides the backdrop for such funding to continue, as does the two-state compromise, also illusory.
The international community’s response to US President Donald Trump’s plan announced last week was not a complete rejection. Leaving just a slight possibility that the world might find common ground over the two-state designation by the US isolates the PA more than ever. Its constant bleating to the UN and the EU to salvage the two-state imposition upon which international consensus has been reached will not save the PA’s diplomatic endeavours now. As far as the international community is concerned, the PA is even more coerced into retaining security coordination. There is common ground between the US and the international community in this, despite the previous hype attempting to pit one side against the other for the sole purpose of extending the two-state diplomacy further.
Abbas will not be taken seriously this time (if he ever was). If anything, his empty threats will bring further ridicule upon the PA, exposing its lack of autonomy. While the dynamics of Trump’s plan are indeed a threat to the PA, especially when considering the previous action undertaken by the US to isolate it diplomatically, Abbas faces a greater threat to his power if security coordination is ended permanently. The bottom line is that the PA will risk losing what remains of Palestinian land in order to maintain the façade of its “authority. After all, it has developed a notorious reputation for granting concessions to the occupation, but it will not jeopardise the crumbs of power thrown to it by Israel and the international community.
PA: Waiting for the worst is not an option
By Omar Olimat | Addustour | February 4, 2020
After the American president announced his plan for peace, the PA categorically and justifiably rejected the deal due to its undeniable injustice against the Palestinians’ right to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
No one denies that the PA and other countries concerned with the Palestinian issue were completely aware of the plan’s details and implementation mechanisms, but the plan’s main points were not significantly different to what was leaked in the past two years. It does not stipulate East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, the return of the refugees, nor a sovereign state in a real sense.
Everyone was aware that any peace plan adopted by the current American administration, which would be welcomed by the Israeli right-wing, would not be in the interest of the Palestinians, and would give the Israelis what is not theirs. So, why did the Palestinian leadership wait for the official announcement of the details of the plan, to reject it and attempt to bring together the fragmented Arabs to reach a kind of collective rejection of it?
The Palestinian Authority is not that weak, and it has several cards that it could have thrown onto the table before the formal announcement of the plan. If it was unable to stand up to the US administration, it at least could have hindered the wording regarding some of the critical issues in the plan and left it to future negotiations to determine the future of East Jerusalem and the refugees.
Levelheadedness and balance are requirements, and no one would think to hold the PA responsible for the deal that included the deliberate killing of international laws and hundreds of UN resolutions that support the right of the Palestinian people to establish their state, as well as a clear bias in favour of the occupation state. However, reality indicates that sitting and waiting for the worst is not a feasible option, but rather, complete suicide, given the leaked details of the plan in coincidence with total American support of Netanyahu, even if by slaying the concept of peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
The PA was fully aware of what the deal would stipulate, of the environment in which it lives today, and the fragmented Arab reality, as some countries are drowning in chaos and protests, while others are suffering under the impact of harsh economic conditions, and others have their visions and strategies. The PA and other Palestinian factions must better prepare themselves to confront the liquidation of the Palestinian cause.
There is still time, and the war of words and statements will not restore the Palestinians’ rights. Moreover, Israel is determined to immediately state the implementation of what was comprised in the plan, so steps must be taken to ensure that the ball is returned to the Israeli and American court. Perhaps the first of these steps is to return to the status of an occupied state to hold Israeli legally and internationally responsible, whether it likes it or not.
This article first appeared in Arabic in Addustour on 3 February 2020
Land in eastern Gaza declared a disaster zone due to Israel use of herbicides
MEMO | February 4, 2020
The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture declared arable lands in eastern Gaza to be a disaster zone on Monday, after the Israeli army repeatedly sprayed the area with chemical herbicides.
Despite a year-long break from such practices, the Israeli authorities confirmed on 22 January that they have resumed unannounced the spraying of herbicides along the fence along the nominal border of the Gaza Strip, Haaretz has reported. It was said by the Ministry of Defence to be necessary “based on security needs… but solely [takes place] within Israel territory.”
However, an investigative report by Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, found that “aerial spraying by commercial crop-dusters flying on the Israeli side of the border mobilised the wind to carry chemicals into the Gaza Strip, at damaging concentrations.”
Analysis of first-hand videos from fields close to the border fence revealed Israeli armed forces using smoke from a burning tyre to confirm the westerly direction of the wind, ensuring that the chemicals landed in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army said it has acted under the country’s “Plant Protection Law”, which enforces regulations on plant protection and the monitoring and prevention of diseases. Officials thus claim that spraying practices at the Gazan border are identical to those used across the country.
However, such use of chemicals between 2014 and 2018 damaged 14,000 acres of land in Gaza, destroying all the crops grown there. The latest spraying has damaged an estimated 2,000 acres of land so far, the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture reported.
According to the Guardian, no Palestinians have ever received compensation for the damage caused by the spraying of chemicals by the Israelis, despite a petition from human rights groups in Haifa and Gaza. In contrast, farmers in the Israeli agricultural town Nahal Oz allegedly received compensation in 2015 after suing the authorities for the loss of crops.
Forensic Architecture reported that herbicide spraying predominantly takes place during key harvest periods, targeting spring and summer crops, with Glyphosate the most commonly used chemical. However, Glyphosate was declared “carcinogenic in humans” by the World Health Organisation’s Cancer Research Agency in March 2015. The chemical has since been ruled safe for use by various US and European safety agencies, although several environmental groups have opposed this ruling.
The UN Information System on the Question of Palestine (UNISPAL) noted concerns over the ability to predict where, and in what concentration, toxic chemicals will land. In a report to the General Assembly in September 2019, it was said that as “damage cannot be reasonably predicted by the army… such herbicides should not be used in such close proximity to the fence.”
READ ALSO:
Trump Green Lights Greater Israel
Palestinians lose again
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • February 4, 2020
Many interested parties have already weighed in on President Donald Trump’s “Deal of the Century.” Even though it sounds like a phrase that a used car dealer would use, the “Deal” is dead serious in that it effectively denies to the Palestinians in perpetuum any political entity that has attributes of genuine sovereignty. Israel, which has just postponed a vote to immediately annex some of its illegal settlements on the West Bank with the blessing of the White House, will completely surround the fragmented Palestinian holdings by virtue of the annexation of the entire Jordan River Valley. It is the Zionist dream of a Greater “Eretz” Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea finally achieved. The empty shell swiss-cheese-like completely disarmed state of Palestine will have no authority over its borders and airspace, no means to defend itself and no right to manage its own water resources.
Within the territory granted to Palestinians by Trump there will remain Israeli settler enclaves guarded by soldiers and police. Israel will have total control over the entire West Bank. Millions of Palestinians under its control will de facto be stateless people without basic civil rights whose land will be stolen by settlers. They will be unable to travel even within their “state,” forced to pass through checkpoints, arrested and imprisoned for speech harming “public order” and jailed through indefinite “administrative detentions” without any charges or trial.
Gaza will be completely disarmed and connected to the West Bank by a tunnel controlled by Israel. Presumably, the Mediterranean will continue to be a restricted area for Gazan fishermen, patrolled by the Israeli navy with the offshore oil and gas reserves exploited by Israeli companies. In return for their complete surrender, the Palestinians will be required to express gratitude for being able to survive as helots in what will be largely an open-air outdoor prison. If they behave well, they may or may not get money doled out by Trump to Israel for distribution to the Palestinians as long as they keep quiet and smile as they writhe under the Israeli thumb.
One of the more interesting features of the Deal is that Trump insists that the Palestinians will have East Jerusalem as their capital while at the same time confirming that an undivided Jerusalem will be under total Israeli control. If one looks at the map provided by the White House when the Deal was unveiled, it appears that a piece of East Jerusalem is indeed shown as part of the Palestinian land. But obviously, even though it will have that area technically as its capital it will have no sovereignty over it. It is a detail that is clearly unsustainable and may in fact be a complete fiction designed to demonstrate how magnanimous Israel and the United States are in giving the Palestinians a “state.”
Trump’s one-sided Deal was crafted around Israeli interests, not those of the United States and without any input whatsoever from the Palestinians themselves. The team pulled together by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner consisted of Orthodox Jews and they worked closely with U.S. Ambassador (sic) David Friedman, whose time in Israel has consisted mostly of being an apologist for Netanyahu, excusing accelerated Israeli settlement building as well as the weekly shooting party along the fence line in Gaza. Immediately after Trump and Netanyahu announced the outline of the Deal in Washington, Friedman stated that the Israeli government was at that point free to begin the annexation of any or all of the illegal settlements.
The sad part of what we see unfolding in front of our eyes is that the United States, long an enabler of Israel, is now openly a partner in Israeli war crimes. The Fourth Geneva Convention, adopted in 1949, was intended to protect civilians in time of war. It clearly states that occupying a territory obtained by war and colonizing it with your own people is a war crime. Germany’s demand for lebensraum for German colonists during the lead up to the Second World War and its defining the Slavs who would be displaced as Untermenschen was the crime that motivated the drafters of the Convention. Does that sound familiar? The words are probably somewhat similar in Yiddish.
Most of the mainstream media commentary on the Deal is neutral or even mildly critical, observing inter alia that it is a gift to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at the podium and beaming alongside Trump. If the boost from the White House succeeds in getting Bibi reelected, Trump will expect payback big time in 2020 through the Israel Lobby’s influence over Jewish voters and from the generosity of Jewish billionaire donors named Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer and Bernard Marcus.
That Trump has betrayed U.S. interests repeatedly in the Middle East and has also flipped on his pledge to remove American soldiers from its “loser wars,” makes him a disgrace as president, though he will likely be re-elected as the voters have been fed a steady diet of propaganda both by the mainstream media and government on Israel. That just might be because Jews are vastly over-represented both in the media and in the choke points in government that deal with the Middle East and foreign policy in general. Even liberal Jews who are critical of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians tend to rally round-the-flag at election time and vote for the candidate perceived as being “strongest” on Israel. One notes with interest that while Senator Bernie Sanders roundly condemned the Deal, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi saw “some areas of common ground here” in it. She would, wouldn’t she? And I am sure Senator Chuck Schumer, the self-proclaimed protector of Israel in the Senate, is secretly delighted.
In the rather less restrained alternative media, there is much banter about how the Deal is little more than a sweeping annexation plan that is really Apartheid by another name. That in itself is a bit of a fudge as the reality in Palestine is far worse than South African Apartheid ever was. Some braver individuals have observed how the United States is controlled by Israel in terms of its engagement in the Middle East, but the language used to describe the situation really misses the point. The United States vis-à-vis Israel is not controlled by Israel per se but rather by subversion from within, Jewish billionaires having bought both major political parties and a Jewish dominated media spouting nonsense about the “only democracy in the Middle East” and “America’s best friend and ally.” Israel is neither a democracy nor a friend. And the American Jews and their allies the Christian Zionists who are full time promoters of the Israel myth are little more than traitors to the United States and everything it once upon a time stood for.
The Palestinians have already rejected the Deal, but their refusal to participate will be seen by Trump and Israel as an insult, or at least it will be spun that way. Trump has already warned that his proposal is the Palestinians’ “last chance” and his United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft has advised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas not to raise the issue at all with the world body. Unwillingness to embrace it will provide a good opportunity to really lower the hammer on the Arabs. The map provided by Trump shows a cluster of Bantustans surrounded by Israel soldiers and police who historically have regarded nominally Palestinian areas as a free fire zone. When violence erupts, which it will, the largely unarmed Arabs will be slaughtered and David Friedman, Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu will all conveniently blame it on the Palestinians as it was the Israelis who “wanted peace” and the only obstacle remaining was and is the obduracy of the Palestinians. If only they had accepted the Deal, the outcome would have been different the contrived narrative will go.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Featured Video
Fear Is the Mind Killer
or go to
Aletho News Archives – Video-Images
From the Archives
Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda
Dr. Joseph Mercola | July 9, 2022
“Infertility: A Diabolical Agenda,” is the fourth vaccine-related documentary by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. It tells the story of an intentional infertility vaccine program conducted on African women, without their knowledge or consent.
While it’s been brushed off as a loony conspiracy theory for years, there’s compelling evidence showing it did, in fact, happen, and there’s nothing to prevent it from happening again. … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Israeli strikes kill 10 in southern Lebanon, including 3 rescue workers
- Israeli military ‘failed on all fronts’: Poll
- US at a crossroads: Iran’s firm positions leave Trump no option but to capitulate
- Iran signals decisive response to end US maritime bullying, piracy
- Trump eager for off-ramp in war on Iran, but Netanyahu has him trapped: Former official
- Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ offers ‘limited’ shield against ballistic missiles: Defense official
- Ukraine Seeks to Provoke a Nuclear Conflict: Zakharova
- US squares up to China over Panama Canal
- Monroe Doctrine 2.0: ‘Great Reset’ for US Imperialism?
- Nuclear Apartheid: Iran’s Rise Exposes the NPT Fraud and the West’s Israel Exception
- If Americans Knew
- How Tony Dokoupil Became the Face of ‘Zionist Fanatic’ Bari Weiss’s CBS
- Far Right Israeli Settler Movement Enters Syria in a Push for “Greater Israel”
- ‘People Have the Right to Be Buried’: In Gaza, Thousands of Palestinians Remain Trapped Under Rubble
- Born during Israel’s genocide: Gaza’s child survivors bear the scars of war
- Who are the women and girls behind Gaza war’s horrific casualty toll?
- Beloved Gaza doctor detained “indefinitely” without charge – Daily Update
- By Week’s End, Trump’s War Will Be Plainly Illegal
- CBS News Reportedly Ousts London Bureau Chief Over Differences With Bari Weiss Over Gaza Coverage
- State Department Says US Is in Conflict With Iran ‘At the Request’ of Israel
- What ceasefire? Israel won’t stop killing in Gaza, Lebanon – Daily Update
- No Tricks Zone
- Oversupply Of Volatile Solar Energy Leads To Record NEGATIVE Prices!
- New Study: Extreme Heat Records, Heatwaves, Extreme Cold Records Declining Across US Since 1899
- It’s The Cold, Stupid! Cold 20 Times More Lethal Than Heat, Multiple Studies Show
- European Institute For Climate And Energy: “Climate Debate is Seldom About Science”
- New Study: The Climate May Be 5 Times More Sensitive To Solar Forcing Than Commonly Assumed
- EV Industry Reached $70 Billion In Losses In 2024 Due To Delusional Green Ideologies
- Reality Check: Maldives Have Actually Grown In Size Or Remained Stable Over Recent Decades
- Abrupt Climate Change Also Occurred NATURALLY In The Past …25 Times During Last Ice Age
- Cave Discovery Reveals Today’s Desert Climates Were Recently Far Warmer, Wetter, Teeming With Life
- German Expert: Heat Dome Led To Record Temps In Western USA…Warmer In 1934, 1936
Aletho News 