Date: September 2nd 2009

Liberation, not a fictitious Palestinian "state"

By Hasan Abu Nimah and Ali Abunimah

The Electronic Intifada
2 September 2009

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10748.shtml

Late last month, Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian
Authority (PA) prime minister in Ramallah, made a surprise
announcement: he declared his intention to establish a
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before
the end of 2011 regardless of the outcome of negotiations
with Israel.

Fayyad told the London Times that he would work to build
"facts on the ground, consistent with having our state
emerge as a fact that cannot be denied." His plan was
further elaborated in a lengthy document grandly titled
"Program of the Thirteenth Government of the Palestinian
National Authority."

The plan contains all sorts of ambitious ideas: an
international airport in the Jordan Valley, new rail links
to neighboring states, generous tax incentives to attract
foreign investment, and of course strengthening the
"security forces." It also speaks boldly of liberating the
Palestinian economy from its dependence on Israel, and
reducing dependence on foreign aid.

This may sound attractive to some, but Fayyad has neither
the political clout nor the financial means to propose
such far-reaching plans without a green light from
Washington or Tel Aviv.

Fayyad aims to project an image of a competent Palestinian
administration already mastering the craft of running a
state. He boasts, for instance, that the PA he heads has
worked to "develop effective institutions of government
based on the principles of good governance, accountability
and transparency."

But what is really taking shape in the West Bank today is
a police state, where all sources of opposition or
resistance -- real or suspected -- to either the PA
regime, or the Israeli occupation are being systematically
repressed by US-funded and trained Palestinian "security
forces" in full coordination with Israel. Gaza remains
under tight siege because of its refusal to submit to this
regime.

In describing the Palestinian utopia he hopes to create,
Fayyad's plan declares that "Palestine will be a stable
democratic state with a multi-party political system.
Transfer of governing authority is smooth, peaceful and
regular in accordance with the will of the people,
expressed through free and fair elections conducted in
accordance with the law."

A perfect opportunity to demonstrate such an exemplary
transfer would have been right after the January 2006
election which as the entire world knows Hamas won fairly
and cleanly. Instead, those who monopolize the PA
leadership today colluded with outside powers first to
cripple and overthrow the elected Hamas government, and
then the "national unity government" formed by the Mecca
Agreement in early 2007, entrenching the current internal
Palestinian division. (Fayyad's own party won just two
percent at the 2006 election, and his appointment as prime
minister by PA leader Mahmoud Abbas was never -- as
required by law -- approved by the Palestinian Legislative
Council, dozens of whose elected members remain behind
Israeli prison bars.)

From 1994 to 2006, more than eight billion US dollars were
pumped into the Palestinian economy, making Palestinians
the most aid-dependent people on earth, as Anne Le More
showed in her important book International Assistance to
the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt; Wasted Money
(London, Routledge, 2008). The PA received this aid
ostensibly to build Palestinian institutions, improve
socioeconomic development and support the creation of an
independent state. The result however is that Palestinians
are more destitute and aid-dependent than ever before,
their institutions are totally dysfunctional, and their
state remains a distant fantasy.

PA corruption and mismanagement played a big part in
squandering this wealth, but by far the largest wealth
destroyer was and remains the Israeli occupation. Contrary
to what Fayyad imagines, you cannot "end the occupation,
despite the occupation."

A telling fact Le More reveals is that the previous
"programs" of the PA (except those offered by the
Hamas-led governments) were written and approved by
international donor agencies and officials and then given
to the PA to present back to the same donors who wrote
them as if they were actually written by the PA!

Everything we see suggests Fayyad's latest scheme follows
exactly the same pattern. What is particularly troubling
this time is that the plan appears to coincide with a
number of other initiatives and trial balloons that
present a real danger to the prospects for Palestinian
liberation from permanent Israeli subjugation.

Recently, the International Middle East Media Center, an
independent Palestinian news organization, published what
it said was the leaked outline of a peace plan to be
presented by US President Barack Obama.

That plan included international armed forces in most of
the Palestinian "state"; Israeli annexation of large parts
of East Jerusalem; that "All Palestinian factions would be
dissolved and transformed into political parties"; all
large Israeli settlements would remain under permanent
Israeli control; the Palestinian state would be largely
demilitarized and Israel would retain control of its
airspace; intensified Palestinian-Israeli "security
coordination"; and the entity would not be permitted to
have military alliances with other regional countries.

On the central issue of the right of return for
Palestinian refugees, the alleged Obama plan allows only
an agreed number of refugees to return, not to their
original homes, but only to the West Bank, particularly to
the cities of Ramallah and Nablus.

It is impossible to confirm that this leaked document
actually originates with the Obama administration. What
gives that claim credibility, however, is the plan's very
close resemblance to a published proposal sent to Obama
last November by a bipartisan group of US elder statesmen
headed by former US national security advisors Brent
Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Moreover, recent press
reports indicate a lively debate within the Obama
Administration about whether the US should itself publish
specific proposals for a final settlement once
negotiations resume; so there is little doubt that
concrete proposals are circulating.

Indeed there is little of substance to distinguish these
various plans from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's concept of "economic peace" and a
demilitarized Palestinian statelet under overall Israeli
control, with no right of return for refugees. And, since
all seem to agree that the Jordan Valley -- land and sky
-- would remain under indefinite Israeli control, so would
Fayyad's airport.

Similar gimmicks have been tried before: who remembers all
the early Oslo years' hullabaloo about the Gaza
International Airport that operated briefly under strict
Israeli control before Israel destroyed it, and the
promised Gaza seaport whose construction Israel forbade?

There are two linked explanations for why Fayyad's plan
was launched now. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has
repeatedly defined his goal as a "prompt resumption and
early conclusion" of negotiations. If the kinds of
recycled ideas coming from the alleged Obama plan, the
Scowcroft-Brzezinski document, or Netanyahu, are to have
any chance, they need to look as if there is a Palestinian
constituency for them. It is Fayyad's role to provide
this.

The second explanation relates to the ongoing struggle
over who will succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the
PA. It has become clear that Fayyad, a former World Bank
official unknown to Palestinians before he was boosted by
the George W. Bush Administration, appears to be the
current favorite of the US and other PA sponsors.
Channeling more aid through Fayyad may be these donors'
way of strengthening Fayyad against challengers from
Abbas' Fatah faction (Fayyad is not a member of Fatah) who
have no intention of relinquishing their chokehold on the
PA patronage machine.

Many in the region and beyond hoped the Obama
Administration would be a real honest broker, at last
bringing American pressure to bear on Israel, so that
Palestinians might be liberated. But instead, the new
administration is acting as an efficient laundry service
for Israeli ideas; first they become American ones, and
then a Palestinian puppet is brought in to wear them.

This is not the first scheme aimed at extinguishing
Palestinian rights under the guise of a "peace process,"
though it is most disappointing that the Obama
Administration seems to have learned nothing from the
failures of its predecessors. But just as before, the
Palestinian people in their country and in the Diaspora
will stand stubbornly in the way of these efforts. They
know that real justice, not symbolic and fictitious
statehood, remains the only pillar on which peace can be
built.

Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of
Jordan at the United Nations.

Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is
author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).

A version of this article first appeared in The Jordan
Times and is reprinted with the authors' permission.

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