There is no peace in Palestine

Word is that Washington and the other Western and European powers are happy that former PA president Mahmoud Abbas will be involved in what they are calling indirect talks with Israel. What a sham. Mahmoud Abbas is no longer president of the PA and is barely holding onto power in Fatah, where he was threatened with ouster just months ago. Abbas is a Palestinian leader who has the unique distinction of being drenched in the blood of his own people, on whose behalf he will pretend to negotiate. In fact, one might suspect that his being drenched in Palestinian blood makes him the perfect peace partner for Benjamin Netanyahu, who we all know is also drenched in Palestinian blood. That blood includes the fresh blood of Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Mabhouh, who was assassinated in January by an Israeli hit team in Dubai. This has obviously upset Abbas so much, that his participation in indirect talks will supposedly begin this week, rather than after Dubai’s police chief issues the arrest warrant he has pledged to issue for Netanyahu’s arrest in relationship to the Dubai murder.

The fact that the two peace partners are not men who care the least bit about Palestine and who could care even less about the Palestinian people is not the biggest problem with the so called indirect negotiations. The biggest problem is that they are again claiming to be negotiating peace, when everyone knows there is no peace to negotiate in Palestine. Israel, knowing that Abbas was chomping at the negotiations bit, even though he pretended to hold out for an Israeli halt to illegal settlement building which everyone knew was not going to happen, has been very busy preparing for the talks by grabbing up more Palestinian land, even laying claim to Christian and Muslim holy sites under the false claim that the sites are part of the Jewish heritage of Israel. Netanyahu knows what Abbas ignores, and that is that whatever he takes prior to negotiations is non negotiable, and Israel’s European and US patrons will never force or pressure Israel to give up anything of the land that it claims as its Biblical right, even if that land is under the religious sites of other faiths, whose existence dates back centuries ago.

With Netanyahu doing everything in his power to confiscate as much land as he can prior to the so called indirect talks, Abbas’s role is already limited. What will he negotiate? It’s obvious that these talks are not about Palestinian land, or even a state, all things that Israel has either already taken or already refused. So what is the point of these indirect negotiations? The purpose of these indirect talks is to decide how to complete the continued ethnic and religious cleansing of the West Bank and Jerusalem through a negotiated agreement with Mahmoud Abbas, and his Fatah movement whose membership now includes two Zionist Israeli Jews who have inroads into the Israel government.

Netanyahu has said that he wants Jordan to be involved in all subsequent talks which means that he is ready to introduce John Hagee’s and the other Christian Zionist’s proposed solution to the crisis in Palestine, which is to further ignore the Geneva Conventions and to transfer the Palestinians from the West Bank and Jerusalem to Jordan. Funny don’t you think how Jordan keeps popping up in these final solutions proposed by Israel for their land grabbing schemes? First Palestine, then Iraq, and now back to Palestine. Makes one wonder why Israel thinks Jordan is willing or even interested in becoming an Israeli proxy authority over Palestinians and Iraqis displaced by Israel’s maneuvers to reconstruct what it deems Greater Israel.

It’s also important to note that the Palestinian people themselves are not interested in either direct or indirect talks with Israel. Most, if not all of the other Palestinian factions, who represent two or three times the number of Palestinians represented by Fatah, and who feel that they are not represented adequately by the PLO, are opposed to any negotiations with Israel. The people who make up and support these factions remember that every round of negotiations with Israel ends with a massacre as punishment for refusing Israel’s demands. They already know that regardless of the lies Abbas will tell, or what promises he makes, knowing that he cannot deliver anything, the Palestinian people must prepare to fight, and to survive more crippling and devastating pressure, resulting from the schemes Israel and the traitorous Arab governments will employ to deny Palestinians statehood, the right of return, and anything of meaning, and only transfer.

This also explains why Israel is desperate for the US to impose crippling sanctions on Iran, going so far as to request that the US attempt to blockade Iran to prevent Iran from being able to move its ships outside the Persian Gulf, should Iran decide to come to the rescue of the Palestinians. Israel realizes that the only thing that can foil its wicked plan is the Islamic movement and it is working desperately to do what it can to prevent any of the countries or groups that have taken an Islamic position on the crisis in Palestine from coming to Palestine’s assistance. With the approval of the Arab League for Israel’s final solution, communicated slyly as its “approval” of indirect talks between Abbas and Israel, Israel feels that its future as a Jewish only state that has captured all of historic Palestine is finally within sight. If it can either neutralize or defeat Syria, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hamas and the other resistance groups in Palestine, its dream of complete capture and control of historic Palestine, and normalized relations with its traitorous Arab neighbors will have come true. If this scenario plays out as Israel hopes, all of the murder, torture, lies and violations of the law will have paid off and perhaps forgiven or ignored by a world that is weary of this problem and perhaps willing to take whatever solution it can get, even at the expense of Palestinian life, rights, hopes and homeland.

There is no peace in Palestine and none will be found until Abbas resigns, the PA is dissolved and the people of Palestine allowed to elect their own representatives and to present to the world, their own demands for freedom for Israel’s brutal and illegal occupation. No amount of fake negotiations will lead to peace, in fact everything that is now being put in place by the US, EU, Israel and the traitor Arab states will be a cause for war. It will be war because Israel and the traitor Arab states will never again be left to torture and torment the Palestinian people as the world looks on and does nothing. Neither will they be allowed to transfer the Palestinians to Jordan. Israel and its lackeys east and west, have miscalculated the strength of those who are determined that Israel will not succeed, and that the blood, hopes, lives, homes and the rights of the Palestinian people, will not be a casualty of Israel’s sick and demented fantasy of greater Israel and a Jewish only state, nor a casualty of the religious fanaticism of the Christian wrong who are attempting to force the world into Armageddon, or their cowardly sycophants in the governments of the EU and the US.

Peacemaking in Palestine

Anisa Abd el Fattah

Palestine seems to be at that place in history where things can go delightfully right or miserably wrong, based upon a single decision to either re-engage with Israel in peace negotiations, or not. Of course the use of the word peace is deceptive in this respect, because negotiations as far as Israel is concerned are not really a quest for peace as one might imagine. Israel is not interested in peace as in withdrawing to its pre war 67 borders, and removing its illegal checkpoints, stopping military raids, kidnappings, and ending apartheid, the siege on Gaza etc. In fact these issues have never been negotiable as far as Israel is concerned. Keep in mind also that Israel has never lived up to a negotiated agreement.

It seems that at least as far as Israel is concerned, the word peace is little more than a way to express a desire for Palestinians to decide whether they will submit to being displaced through a process of negotiated agreements, or if they prefer to be displaced forcefully. In other words, Israel seems to believe that through negotiations it will determine how the cleansing of Palestine will take place. In the past, whenever Israel failed to get what it wanted at the negotiating table, it has punished the Palestinians with violent massacres and brutal military assaults.

For those who think this opinion is too cynical let’s look at the facts. The Knesset could vote to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and peace, as understood from the traditional definition, would be immediate. After all, Palestinians are not attacking Israel, or Israelis. They are not shooting them, bombing them, confiscating their land, demolishing their homes, destroying their farms, killing their livestock or literally chasing them from their homes and moving into them. The Palestinians mostly threaten to retaliate in return for Israel’s acts of violence, but seldom do. If we were to look only at the facts and ignore Israel’s incendiary rhetoric, it would become quite cleat that Israel is the reason that there is no peace, and they are the only people making perpetual war. The reality is that negotiations are not required for there to be peace, and no violence is required for peacemaking. Israel could withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, remove its checkpoints, buy out the illegal settlers, ( and all are illegal) then relocate them to Israel proper. What would be left to be negotiated after that might be water rights and security arrangements that would prevent Israel from breeching its borders again, and attempting to confiscate the natural gas and oil reserves that belong to Palestine.

Unfortunately, neither Mahmoud Abbas nor any of the PLO team has suggested to Israel that if Israel wants to have meaningful negotiations, there should first be peace, at least in the sense that all Israeli violence against Palestinians should end as a gesture of sincerity. That, to most people would be more important and urgent than an end to settlement building which is really almost meaningless when we consider that anyone can live in those buildings, but no one can bring the Palestinians that are being murdered almost daily back to life. The lives and security of the Palestinian people would be the priority in the real world. Only in this conflict are the rights of the illegal occupier and war criminal more important than the rights and protection of its victim.

It is not difficult to understand why the US is pushing for renewed negotiations. The US is bankrupt and simply cannot afford to sustain Israel’s appetite for violence and weaponry much longer. On top of that, the US, which is fighting two other wars for the sake of Israel, cannot take any more risk that blow back from these Zionist inspired misadventures will manifest on America’s shores, or against its interests abroad. The US might be ready for that theoretical Clean Break that is the underlying purpose for all of these wars, occupations and violence. The Clean Break, as far as the US is concerned can’t be realized except through a negotiated process that saves face for Israel who would rather be seen as a top flight negotiator and peacemaker than a violent warmonger, even though in the past Israel has only been successful at war, and these wars were carried out and victories realized with the help of the US and other world powers who are committed to Israel because of religious fervor and fanaticism, and not based upon any logical, strategic or even remotely just idea.

The trouble in Palestine will only be resolved when the Palestinians themselves stop playing Israel’s game and figure out what their own unique interest is. What is their objective?

The Palestinians must realize that they will never be free of Israel without a decisive victory, either military or diplomatic that will force Israel to abandon the idea that it can achieve its desire to take all of Palestine militarily should Israel not get what it wants through negotiations. That means that Palestinians must accept that they cannot be free of Israel without a fight, unless some power that can balance the influence of the US, Israel and the EU gets involved and commits to Palestinian security with the same enthusiasm that the US and EU has committed to Israel’s. Iran, Turkey, Russia and China can do that, but will they?

The Palestinians must also be willing to state what issues are negotiable and, limit those issues to those not already the subject of UN resolutions, or issues that can be resolved by adhering to international laws, conventions and treaties. In other words, Israel should not be allowed to evade the law, or rewrite the law through negotiations. This is in fact prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Only issues that are not addressed by law should be subject to negotiation and it might be worth it for Palestine to create a commission to review all relevant conventions, laws, treaties and resolutions in an effort to determine what can be legally negotiated and what cannot, and should not be included.

Last but not least, Palestine must decide what it wants as a reasonable gesture of sincerity from Israel before agreeing to renewed talks. I would suggest that it be that all violence against Palestinians, including kidnappings, raids, torture etc. end immediately, without exception, along with land confiscations, home demolitions and settler violence. I would suggest that Israel be put on notice that a single act of settler violence will end all negotiations. I would also demand that Israel end its illegal siege on Gaza. Minus any of these changes, there would be no negotiations.

The trouble in Palestine stems from either an unwillingness or inability of the Palestinians to identify and act in their own interests without feeling obligated to please either the US or the EU.

There is also without doubt, some fear based upon past experience, that just as the US pretends to play peacemaker, it is equally capable and has also played war maker, providing tacit approval and providing weapons and also financing for Israel’s illegal attacks on Palestine, carried out as punishment for refusing Israel’s advances at the negotiating table. The US is not an honest broker in this conflict and the Palestinians know it, but really haven’t been able up to this point to do much about it. The only way to solve this problem is for other players to become involved who are capable of leveraging Israeli, US and European power, taking the side of the Palestinians. These must be countries who have the capacity and are willing to exact punishment on Israel, and also the US and EU if and when they carry out acts of illegal and unjust violence, and aggression against Palestine.

The way to make and sustain peace is to balance power, and the way to negotiate is to limit negotiations to your own, not your opponents interests, to the extent possible. In respect to Israel’s illegal military occupation, those issues related to its withdrawal, its borders, etc., have already been addressed, either by UN resolutions or the law, and Israel should respect and conform to the law. What would be left in that case is for Israel and Palestine to work out the terms for sharing the land in ways that are fair, just and that sustain peace. This is the real purpose of peace negotiations and a legitimate peace process. This would take real Palestinian leadership and cannot be carried out by people who are only interested in pleasing the US and Israel, or who are seeking power and money, and fame, or who fear displeasing the US and Israel.

While waiting for the Palestinians to prepare for such negotiations, Israel should end all violence against the Palestinian people, including settler violence, home demolitions, destruction of agriculture and livestock and confiscation of land, and also its excavation under Al Aqsa mosque. Israel must also end its illegal embargo of Gaza, and remove the illegal settlers from the West Bank and prepare for complete withdrawal.

Those who are really interested in peace between Palestinians and Israel need to encourage and assist Israel in conforming to the numerous UN resolutions that address the illegal occupation, Israel’s persistent violence, the illegal economic siege on Gaza and settler violence, etc. The Geneva Conventions and other international laws provide guidance and limits for both the Palestinians and the Israelis that can clear the pathway to a negotiated agreement explaining how these two people will share the land in real peace once the illegal occupation has ended and the people are clear that they are preparing, or rather being prepared for co-existence, and not the domination of any group of people over the other.

Palestinian reconciliation should be guided by Palestinian basic Law

If anyone were to ask what has been the most complicating aspect of the Palestine/Israel conflict, most observers would perhaps say that the complete departure from international law as a context for all negotiations and agreements has kept this dispute alive for 60 years. It is the deliberate attempt to resolve issues that are as much legal as they are political, by negotiating the wants and desires of either side, agreements that in some cases actually violate international laws, that has made past agreements mostly meaningless, difficult to understand, unjust and never adhered to. Indeed many might argue that without a legal basis or context, most of the negotiated agreements such as the failed Oslo Accords were counter intuitive and could never have succeeded, since the entire premise of a negotiated settlement that would seek to rewrite or to undermine international law would at some point be rejected by a majority of people whose concept of justice has been shaped by centuries of legal philosophy, and no where is this more true than in the Arab/ Muslim world.

Whereas very few of the Arab or Muslim countries have adopted Shariah or Islamic law as their primary law, Muslims without doubt have internalized Islamic legal philosophy and our ideals of right and wrong, what is just and unjust, and what is good and bad are shaped by the Qur'an, the Seerah of the prophet Muhammad (sa) and also by hadith litertaure. The Islamic legal philosophy is so much a part of the Muslim and Arab culture, that when confronted with choices to be made between secular civil laws and Islamic laws, many will adopt the Islamic way with full conviction that the choice they have made is both right and just, in spite of the fact that the secular civil law might have given them some advantage. To atheists and those who do not believe that there is an overarching moral authority that sets laws for humanity, this idea may sound abstract, or even superstitious. Yet, when considered objectively, it becomes somewhat obvious that such faith in what are perceived as the laws of God are no more superstition ridden than belief in laws made by men who believe in God, or to abide by laws that have been inspired by religious or other sacred scriptures such as the Ten Commandments, Talmudic law, or even the legal philosophies of men like Thomas Aquinas. In other words, there is no escaping the fact that our modern ideas of law, and its objectives and ways are not necessarily modernized by a departure from our traditional beliefs. Modernization of law might be our acceptance of the idea that law and justice are not merely intellectual creations that lend themselves to utility and expediency. For our laws to have meaning for us, and to compel us, they must satisfy our sense of justice so that once defined, our laws become our way of life. When adhered to they become our guides, our inspiration, and also our guards against our passions and our imperfections.

It may not matter that groups of people have different laws, if we can agree that on some level, laws that are accepted by a majority of people as a legitimate law, and adopted by those people as their law, should be respected, and always taken into consideration. It seems that to do otherwise will cause us to continue to repeat the mistakes of the past that should have taught us by now, that no amount of imposition, whether it be through secular education, public censure and condemnation or isolation and criminalization, can remove the natural laws of justice from the heart of the human being, even if we are able to distort these laws with relativism, or to inject into the heart such dangerous poisons as racism, supremacism and Darwinism, which by definition is a fear of extinction due to imperfection.

When two groups that each have their own legal codes by which they live find themselves in a legal and political dispute, choosing a law to guide negotiations and to serve as a context for any subsequent agreements is necessary in my view. Both parties engaged in negotiations should first agree upon which law will be adopted as the guide for what is legal, not legal and legitimate or illegitimate in respect to identifying an authority, and the rights of that authority. This might be especially important when there are also political questions to be resolved. Since politics is primarily concerned with the distribution of power in relationships between people, we cannot escape the suggestion that any negotiations that involve politics must have a clearly defined and accepted legal dimension, and description of legitimate authority. The Palestine/Israel conflict is a prefect example of how we fail when we ignore the unique legal culture of groups, and their laws.

In respect to the Palestinian internal dispute between Hamas and Fatah, there is a need to recognize that Hamas is an Islamic organization. It has presented its ideals and activism to the international Muslim community through the prism of Islamic law and culture, and is accepted and loved by most Muslims, Arabs and others based upon this presentation. This means that Hamas is legitimized not only by the majority votes of the Palestinian people, who voted Hamas into political power. Hamas is also legitimized by popular international support of people of various religions, ethnicities and political affiliations, and it is accepted by these supporters as an Islamic organization, since it has never swayed in its claim of Islamic authenticism. It's demand that the world recognize the natural right of all people to resist genocide and to resist being ethnically cleansed from the land, and also to the right to exist is an appeal for legality, and not for merely political power.

Negotiations between Hamas and the secular Fatah movement, guided by the secular Egypt, that is already playing the role of Israeli facilitator in the illegal economic siege on Gaza imposed by Israel, will be complicated just as negotiations between the secular liberal Fatah and the Talmudic Judaic society that calls itself Israel have complicated and perplexed every opportunity for peace between Palestine and Israel.

In my humble opinion, Hamas and Fatah, before seeking to reach any substantive agreement on reconciliation, must assert the relevance and the legitimacy of their own Basic Law, and the tenets of that law, including the legal timing for the end of Abbas's term as President, without exception. The negotiations should not become a pretext for undermining the Basic Law, the very same Basic Law that confers legitimacy upon Hamas, not only as a political party, but also as an organized Palestinian resistance, organized for the purpose of liberating the Palestinian lands under illegal occupation, and defending those lands that are not, and most importantly the Palestinian people themselves. International law and the Palestinian Law, which does not violate in any way the Islamic law, nor insults the Islamic sensibilities and legal culture of the Muslim people, should be the guiding laws and context within which a Palestinian reconciliation is realized.

Just as over the years, Israel has used the arbitrary nature of negotiated settlements to stave off peace until it achieves the advantage in facts on the ground, and until it has beaten down its adversary's spirit for resistance and made opposition appear hopeless, negotiated agreements about power sharing and reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah have this same potential for abuse unless they are guided by the Palestinian Basic law, and Islamic legal culture. Any terms of reconciliation or power sharing that offends the moral and legal sensibilities of the Palestinian people and the international Muslim community are not likely to succeed.

The believing people must always keep in mind the promise found in the Qur'an in Chapter 24, verse 55, where God says,

“ God has promised to those among you who believe and work righteous deeds, that He (God) will of a surety, grant them in the land, inheritance as He granted it to those before them. That He (God) will establish in authority their religion, (law and culture) the one which He (God) has chosen for them. And that He (God) will change their state, after the fear in which they lived, to one of security and peace; “They will worship God alone, and not associate anything with God. If any do reject faith after this, they are rebellious and wicked.”

So establish regular prayer and give regularly in charity, and obey the prophet that you may receive mercy.

Never think that the unbelievers are going to frustrate God's plan on earth. Their abode is the fire, and it is indeed an evil refuge.”