YellowTimes.org ,
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat recognized Israel on 78% of the land of Palestine in hopes of being allowed an independent state on the remaining 22%. Many “deals” since then failed because, as Amnesty International puts it, they fail to recognize the importance of human rights. The media is now trumpeting the latest in this line of agreements: the Geneva understandings. Guided by an imbalance of power, Palestinians would be asked to abrogate the right of return to their homes and lands and to recognize Israel not as a state of its citizens but as a state “for the Jewish people.”
In short, this blatantly violates international law and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What it means is that the victims of Israeli colonialism are expected to certify that it is OK for Israel to remain the only country in the world that identifies its lands as belonging not to its citizens but to “Jewish people everywhere.” This means that the Palestinians accept that Israel caused the largest remaining refugee problem in the world and can break international law and basic human rights and refuse to allow them to return to their farms, businesses, homes and lands. The Palestinians must recognize that Israel can remain the only country in the world that gives members of a particular religion, including converts, automatic rights (citizenship, land, homes, subsidies) that supercede and mostly replace those of “citizens” and native people who belong to other religions. Israel grants automatic citizenship to any individual who has one Jewish grandparent while denying citizenship to native Christians and Muslims simply for being of the wrong religion.
Israel is the only country in the world whose legitimacy does not flow from rights of self-determination of natives but Zionist claims of biblical authority. Of course, there was a U.N. general assembly resolution in 1947 which called for partition of a native land to give 55% to Jews who at the time represented 30% of the population and most of them were new settlers/colonists who owned 7% of the land. Native Jews actually were not Zionists for the most part and rejected such partition. The resolution was unfair and could not be accepted any more than Algerians were willing to split their country with French colonists. It was accomplished by much arm-twisting by the U.S. and the USSR. Yet the resolution rejected any population transfer and included internationalizing Jerusalem, an economic union and free movement of people. All these provisions where unacceptable to the Zionist movement and are denied in the Geneva accords.
The foreign policy of the only remaining superpower was hijacked by Ariel Sharon's clones in Washington (Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Wurmser and other “neoconservatives”). They are content to lead us into endless “preemptive” wars for “securing the [Israeli] realm” (as Perle and company put it in a 1996 document submitted to the Israeli government).
Israel has violated over 70 U.N. Security Council resolutions and was protected from 35 others by U.S. vetoes. Yet Israel receives billions of dollars in tax-funded aid in direct violation of U.S. law. Speaking of “eventually” having a Palestinian demilitarized mini-state is analogous to South Africa speaking about having mini-states for blacks (what became known as bantustans or large ghettos). The only difference is that South Africa never insisted that the appointed quisling rulers of those bantustans recognize South Africa as a state “for the white people.” Yet, unless annihilated (a difficult task in the 21st century), no native people has ever succumbed to oppressors, however powerful.
If we want democracy in that part of the world, we should start with our own client states and cut off massive U.S. taxpayer subsidies to Israeli apartheid and boycott it until it evolves into a democracy for all (Jews and non-Jews alike) and implements international law. Apartheid and walls can be no more solution here than they were in South Africa.
[Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh is a member of Arab Media Watch (http://www.arabmediawatch.com) and the chair of the media committee of The Palestine Right to Return Coalition (http://www.al-awda.org).]
