http://www.zmag.org/burchillpal.htm
This peace offer is an insult to Palestinians
By Scott Burchill
October 12
The Australian (daily newspaper of Australia)
No greater compliment can be paid to US and Israeli opinion management
than speculation by Middle East observers over whether recent lethal
clashes between Palestinians and Israelis constitute the collapse of
the peace process.
That a lasting solution to conflict in the Middle East is said to be
in jeopardy implies that a just and fair settlement is within reach,
that Palestinians will never get a better offer, and the only
remaining question is whether Yasser Arafat will have the courage to
grasp the peace.
In fact no such process worthy of the appellation exists or has done
for some time. Rather, the peace process simply describes whatever
arrangements Washington and its regional client are seeking to impose
on Palestinian Arabs.
It should be obvious that regardless of whether Ehud Barak and Arafat
resume their dialogue, the Palestinian people - as opposed to the
corrupt and isolated Palestine Liberation Organisation leadership -
have long since abandoned all hope in the Oslo process (1993) and in
related efforts to create a diplomatic legacy for Bill Clinton.
The spin doctors in Washington and Tel Aviv want us to see Arafat as a
violent recalcitrant who cannot match Barak's generous concessions and
compromises offered at Camp David recently. Palestinians on the ground
live a different reality. There are three reasons they are unlikely to
accept what Barak, Clinton and Arafat have in mind for them.
First, Washington is not regarded as an impartial or credible
mediator. Not only has the US been Israel's main financial backer,
since the early 1970s it has been primarily responsible for blocking a
negotiated settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict. For 30 years
it has distorted the meaning of UN Security Council resolution 242
(1967, "land for peace") - from full Israeli withdrawal behind
pre-June 1967 borders to partial withdrawal and consistently vetoed
its implementation, thus helping to prolong and legitimise Israel's
illegal occupation of Palestinian soil.
Unsurprisingly, Palestinians resent being told how much of their land
Israel is "generously" prepared to return to them.
Second, for Palestinians, the ultimate result of the misnamed peace
process is what Noam Chomsky has accurately described as
"Bantustan-style arrangements", a state that would comprise four
cantons of largely unusable land on the West Bank and one on the Gaza
Strip.
These cantons are surrounded by territory to be annexed to Israel,
which will remain in control of crucial water resources and the
freedom of movement of the population between their disconnected
enclaves. Israel has good reason to expect that under these
arrangements the population will be a cheap supply of labour for its
economy and tightly controlled by a brutal but ultimately compliant
Palestinian government - hence the South African comparison. Arafat
and the PLO leadership look increasingly like the Chief Buthelezi and
Inkatha of the Middle East, with Palestine as their KwaZulu.
Palestinian hopes that a settlement will be based on UN resolutions
and pre-July 1967 borders - as they could expect if Israel complied
with international law - have been betrayed by both their occupiers
and their leaders. This is not what self-determination means.
Third, in return for these "generous" concessions, Palestinians are
expected to end all historical claims they have against Israel. What
this means for refugees, whose right of return with compensation is
acknowledged in UN General Assembly resolution 194 (1948) remains
unclear.
For ordinary Palestinians, self-rule has been a humiliating disaster.
Seven years after Oslo, they are still living under occupation. The
basic means of a decent human existence, which acknowledges their
distinctive culture, history and suffering, is denied to them. When
not completely withheld, their basic rights and entitlements are
represented as concessions generously granted by their overlords.
Meanwhile their leaders, frightened of losing their elite privileges
and affluent lifestyles, collude with Israel in their betrayal.
If there is a lesson to be learned from East Timor's liberation, it is
the refusal of brutalised people to reconcile themselves to occupation
and humiliation, regardless of the odds stacked against them. An
enduring Middle East settlement cannot be built upon the capitulation
of one side, no matter how many times it is mislabelled the peace
process. Just as the East Timorese were told that the time for
independence had passed, so too will Palestinians be informed that
their struggle is over once Arafat signs the agreement drafted for him
in Tel Aviv and Washington. No one should believe it.
Scott Burchill is a lecturer in international relations at Deakin University.
