http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51921-2000Jul26.html
No Less Than Equal Partners
By Sam Husseini, Washington Post
Thursday, July 27, 2000; Page A23
While the United States and Israel boast of their democratic
values, they continue to wreak havoc on Palestinian
self-determination, as the Palestinian Authority is pressured,
cajoled and offered inducements to accept agreements that most
Palestinians clearly do not want.
This is not to say that most Palestinians don't want an
agreement--just that they want a fair one. But the current
discussions are based on massive disparities of power: Israel is a
major military force; the Palestinians don't even control their
own borders. True, they have international law, Geneva conventions
and human rights on their side, but that doesn't speak nearly as
loudly as Israel's military machine (including an estimated 200
nuclear weapons) and its multifaceted U.S. backing.
The Palestinians are also hampered by a leadership that seems more
interested in preserving its status and lining its pockets than in
achieving the rights of the people. It's a disquieting paradigm:
The powers collude and the people get shafted.
The Israel strategy seems to be to take something by force and
then give back a small portion of it, labeling it a "concession"
and expecting to be thanked. International law calls for the
return of all Palestinian refugees forced from their homes in
1948, along with compensation for them. It calls for Jerusalem to
be an international city shared between a Jewish and Palestinian
state, and for the Palestinians to have a state larger than what
they are currently striving for on the West Bank and Gaza.
International law would call for the removal of all Israeli
settlers in the West Bank and Gaza; they have been placed there
while the land is under occupation, and ethnic transfers under
occupation are illegal.
It would not have been much of a "concession" for Saddam Hussein
to give back part of Kuwait. Would Clinton have negotiated with
Milosevic to let some of the ethnic Albanians back into Kosovo?
What Israel has done to the Palestinians is no more legitimate.
Having only recently waged war on Yugoslavia because of its
"ethnic cleansing," Clinton now puts his political muscle into
trying to get the Palestinians--the world's largest refugee
population--to give up hope of returning to their rightful homes.
An opportunity to do justice was once again missed. Instead, the
politics of illusion seem to have come to the Mideast with a
vengeance. It appears the Palestinians have been offered a
"Jerusalem" that is not Jerusalem; the right of return for only a
nominal number of the Palestinian refugees; a "state" without
control over water, borders or real sovereignty; "territory" that
is not contiguous; and symbols of nationhood that would become
more signs of shame than of pride for an injured people.
On Jerusalem, the trick was to expand the city to include a
village named Abu Dis and claim "That's Jerusalem." It's as though
another country conquered Washington, D.C., and Takoma Park,
expanded the boundaries of Washington to include Takoma Park and
then said that it was going to give back that "part of Washington"
as part of a fair "compromise."
The cruel twists of fate against the Palestinians cannot be
overcome by such sleight of hand. True peace will come as a
consequence of doing the hard work of justice, not through
ambiguous agreements worked out in secret. The ethnic cleansing of
the Palestinians must be acknowledged in a forthright fashion.
Palestinian refugees must be allowed back to their homes, and not
just enough to provide pretty pictures for the cameras. There are
about 4 million displaced Palestinians. In effect, Israel says it
will not allow significant numbers to return because that would
shift its demographic balance. But that attitude is morally and
legally illegitimate.
Talk of the Palestinians getting 90 percent of the West Bank masks
the reality that that is only 22 percent of historic Palestine,
that Israel seems to be insisting on leases, the dubious promise
of future pullbacks and the fragmented nature of
Palestinian-"controlled" territories, as well as the lack of
actual Palestinian control over travel, imports, exports and water
resources.
This was in a sense the opposite of the original Camp David
accords, which were fundamentally based on international law: full
Israeli withdrawal and removal of the illegal settlements.
Similarly, in South Africa, the final state--the end of apartheid
and creation of a multiethnic democracy with one person, one
vote--was the explicitly stated end point. The Palestinians, if
the Oslo process continues, seem doomed to having bantustans and
permanent subjugation.
Such a situation should not be appealing to Israelis. Do they want
a genuine peace that gives them real security or a feeling of
perpetual guilt over knowing that their neighbors feel righteous
resentment over what they have done to them? Genuine peace would
mean real acceptance of the people of Israel as equal partners in
the Mideast, neither military-economic conquerors nor an outcast,
outlaw nation.
The writer is communications director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy.
(c) 2000 The Washington Post Company
