A few points and facts to continue a much-needed discussion
By François Lazar
It will soon be twenty years since the Oslo Accords were signed. On the ground, the constitution of the Palestinian Authority and the carving-up of the Left Bank into three zones have simply enshrined the Israeli agenda, negating the most elementary rights of the Palestinian people and the continued theft of their lands. Without the billion dollar subsidies contributed especially by the Gulf countries, would not the Palestinian Authority, which was appointed to keep the people in line, have failed a long time ago?
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Shortly after the signing of the Oslo Accords, the Left Bank was partitioned into three zones. Zone A, which covers18% of the territory and included the major Palestinian cities, was placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Zone B, representing 22% of the territory, passed under the control of the occupation army, but with the auxiliary administrative responsibility of the Palestinian Authority. And lastly, Zone C, amounting to 60% of the territory and covering a number of Israeli settlements, was placed under full control of the occupation army. While Zones A and B are divided into more than 150 disconnected cantons, surrounded by the wall and barbed-wire fences and controlled by over 350 military check points, Zone C concentrates practically all the natural wealth and is a homogeneous territory. According to the B'Tselem association, the Israeli population there has grown from 110,900 to 350,000 inhabitants in the space of 20 years.
Also in the space of those twenty years, the so-called
peace-process
– a phrase that is still used by the media and governments throughout the world to refer to one of the biggest diplomatic frauds of contemporary history – has simply rubber-stamped Israel's policies of crushing and repressing the Palestinians. Is it not the case that the Palestinians have been divided as never before with the creation of the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders have constantly drained the PLO of any content, and by the separation from the Gaza Strip? Within this framework, an increasing number of voices are calling for a return to the roots of the Palestinian national movement, as represented by the PLO’s founding Charter.
***
Moving from one
temporary solution
to another
temporary solution
, each time supported by successive US presidents, the State of Israel has been gaining ground. Discussions on the prospect of a Palestinian State are only intended to play for time, as everyone is aware that such a prospect will never come into being. First and foremost because it rules out the possibility of implementing the refugees' right to return, but also because Zionism is fundamentally focused on exclusion. Permanently maintaining the principle of a
process
evokes the image of a war of attrition and endless war, because if there is such thing as a process in this region of the world, what it actually amounts to is a process of strangling.
The sole purpose of the numerous visits to the region by John Kerry – and before him, Clinton and Rice, sometimes accompanying President Bush – is to conceal this situation and, with the help of well-disciplined media channels, to make believe that a
solution
is supposedly just round the corner. The main point, in a region where the major powers are no longer at the helm in historical terms, is to enable the State of Israel to keep its capacity to maintain order. These operations, however, have never blunted the Palestinian people's sense of injustice, their capacity to resist and to demand equal rights. Nor have they contained the economic and social crisis, which an increasingly broad layer of the Jewish Israeli population regard as a situation fraught with uncertainty and instability.
Is it correct to say, as Dialogue Review has been doing for over ten years, that democracy will not exist on the territory of historic Palestine unless the right to return of Palestinian refugees and equal rights for all the component parts of the region’s population are enacted? Can it be said that any other perspective will simply prolong the process of dispossession and imprisonment of all the Palestinian people?
We invite our readers to continue this discussion and to send their contributions.
Content :
- Page 4
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A few points and facts to continue a much-needed discussion.
By François Lazar - Page 5
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Uri Avnery's Specious Attack On The One State Solution
By John Spritzler - Page 8
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Without Return, Palestine Will Not Be Free.
By Abir Kopty - Page 10
- Meeting with Hassan Abu Ali, member of the Central Committee of the Popular Front of Liberation of Palestine
- Page 11
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The October War and the PLO Charter, forty years on.
By Samir Hassan - Page 17
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After Zionism, one State for Israel and Palestine (SAQI Books – London 2012).
By Sam Ayache - Page 22
- In Israel the law does not apply to every citizen. An interview of Haneen Naamnih
