Of 'Symbolic' Victories And Real
Defeats: Alarming To The US, Israel And, Of Course,
The Traditional PLO Leadership
30 November 2012
By Ramzy Baroud
A small group of students affiliated mostly with
leftist Palestinian factions meandered through the
streets of the small town of Birzeit near Ramallah in
the summer of 1993. It was an impromptu political
rally.
They denounced what they understood as the
relinquishing of basic Palestinian rights in exchange
for meagre returns: Self-autonomy governed by some
Palestinian political body, future negotiations
without any guarantees and a hollow Israeli
recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO).
The hastily organized protest was prompted by earlier
news that an agreement Declaration of Principles on
Interim Self-Government Arrangements was reached in
Oslo and that an official signing ceremony would soon
be held at the White House.
The agreement had hallmarks of what promised to be a
mockery that merely attempted to reintroduce an
Israeli-American version of self-autonomy as opposed
to real independence. Many such shams were introduced
and soundly defeated by the Palestinian people and
their leadership.
This time, however, it is the leadership itself that
was involved in repackaging past failures as national
triumphs. Intentionally, overlooking similar
US-Israeli quests to undermine Palestinians rights
for example, the Roger Plan, Camp David, The Village
Leagues and others Yasser Arafat's Fatah leadership
spoke of an astounding moral victory of historic
proportions. Many Palestinians celebrated the "peace
of the brave".
They danced in the streets and hailed Arafat and his
men as liberators. Those who had doubts were told that
"it was a step in the right direction," that Israel's
recognition of yesterday's freedom fighters was an
unparalleled triumph which would soon be crowned by an
independent state. Indeed, the Palestinian flag was
made legal by Israel. There were no fines to be
exacted and no jail terms for repeated offenders who
insisted on owning one.
However, a few Birzeit students were still not
convinced. Those who opposed the dubious agreement,
however, could not agree on unifying their efforts by
holding one single rally. Hamas held its own and the
leftists, barely 30 or so, did the same.
I joined the leftists, partly out of solidarity
because of their small number, but primarily because
they spoke a language with which I could identify.
There were no sharp slogans and, frankly, no full
understanding of what had transpired, for, after all,
Oslo was shrouded in secrecy. (Late Palestinian chief
negotiator in Madrid, Dr Haidar Abdul Shafi revealed
to me in an interview that he learned about Oslo from
his hotel's radio, as he, and few Palestinian
intellectuals and academics were still negotiating a
just peace agreement in earnest, before being
sidestepped by Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas and a few
others.)
For nearly two-decades after that fateful day,
Palestinians find themselves subsisting in a
progressively shrinking landscape, cut off from one
another and surrounded by a gigantic and growing
matrix of Jewish-colonies, Jewish-only bypass roads
and Israeli military security zones a reality much
worse than that which existed when Oslo was signed in
1993.
More than 42 per cent of the West Bank has now been
effectively conserved for that ever-growing colony
apparatus and more land is being stolen on a daily
basis. The so-called Israeli "Separation Wall" is
eating up its share of Palestinian farmland.
Between the Wall, illegally occupied Jerusalem, the
Jordan Valley, numerous colony structures, no-go zones
and racially prejudiced roads, Palestinians now live
in a system that is similar, if not in some ways much
worse than South Africa's Bantustans, which were
reserved for black people.
However, it is not the vices of Oslo that deserve
urgent contemplation, but the dangerous phenomenon of
branding political moves particularly those without
any hope as symbolic victories, moral victories and
other imagined victories that seem to never translate
into any tangible gains.
Thousands are once more dancing in the West Bank and
Gaza, hailing yet another more recent "victory" scored
by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) at the UN.
Palestine has become a "non-member state" at the UN.
The draft of the UN resolution beckoning what many
perceive as a historic moment passed with an
overwhelming majority of General Assembly members: 138
votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions.
Of course, there are reasons to permit a degree of
hope no thanks to the very entity that guarded
Israeli interests in the Occupied Territories for all
of these years. It is simply gratifying to witness the
global show of solidarity with the Palestinian
struggle, one which has always existed, but was
overshadowed by futile "peace talks" and US-hegemony
over all Middle Eastern conflicts.
Moreover, the support that Palestine' has received at
the UN must be heartening, to say the least, for most
Palestinians. The overwhelming support, especially by
Palestine's traditional allies (most of humanity with
few exceptions) indicates that the US dominion, arm
twisting and Israeli-US propaganda were of little use
after all.
However, that should not be misidentified as a real
change of course in the behavior of the PNA, which
still lacks legal, political and especially moral
legitimacy among Palestinians, who are seeking
tangible drive towards freedom, not mere symbolic
victories.
In fact, since the late 1970s, when the US, along with
its arbitrators in the Middle East, began co-opting
the PLO leadership, it has been one symbolic victory
after another. When it emerged that Arafat was the
PLO's "strong-man" a major clue for US foreign
policy specialists a decade-long charade commenced.
Empowered by Arab support at the Rabat Arab League
summit in October 1974, which bestowed on the PLO, the
ever-opaque title of "the sole legitimate
representative of the Palestinian people", Arafat was
invited to speak at the UN General Assembly.
Despite the fervor that accompanied the newly-found
global solidarity, Arafat's language singled a
departure from what was perceived by western powers as
radical and unrealistic political discourse and
territorial ambitions.
The rise of the PLO's acceptability in international
arenas was demonstrated in its admission to the UN as
a "non-state entity" with an observer status on
November 22, 1974. The Israeli war and subsequent
invasion of Lebanon in 1982 had the declared goal of
destroying the PLO and was in fact aimed at stifling
the growing legitimacy of the PLO regionally and
internationally.
Without an actual power base, in this case, Lebanon,
Israeli leaders calculated that the PLO would either
fully collapse or politically capitulate. Weakened,
but not obliterated, the post-Lebanon war PLO was a
different entity than the one which existed prior to
1982.
Armed resistance was no longer on the table, at least
not in any practical terms. Such change suited some
Arab countries just fine. A few years later, Arafat
and Fatah were assessing the new reality from its new
headquarters in Tunisia.
The political landscape in Palestine was vastly
changing. A popular uprising (Intifada) erupted in
1987 and quite spontaneously a local leadership was
being formed throughout the occupied territories.
Equally important, new movements were emerging from
outside the traditional PLO confines. One such
movement is Hamas, which has grown in numbers and
political relevance in ways once thought impossible.
That reality proved alarming to the US, Israel and, of
course, the traditional PLO leadership. There were
enough vested interests to reach a "compromise". This
naturally meant more concessions by the Palestinian
leadership in exchange for some symbolic recompense by
the Americans.
Two major events defined that stage of politics in
1988: On November 15, the PLO's National Council (PNC)
proclaimed a Palestinian state in exile from Algiers
and merely two weeks later, US ambassador to Tunisia,
Robert H. Pelletreau Jr., was designated as the sole
American liaison whose mission was to establish
contacts with the PLO. Despite the US' declared
objection of Arafat's move, the US was in fact pleased
to see that the symbolic declaration was accompanied
by major political concessions.
These events were the real preamble to the Oslo
accords a few years later. Since then, Palestinians
have gained little aside from symbolic victories,
starting in 1988 when the UNGA "acknowledged" the
Algiers proclamation. It then voted to replace the
reference to the "Palestine Liberation Organization"
with that of "Palestine". More symbolic victories
followed.
While the rally of Birzeit students seemed
ill-prepared and unclear on its objectives, those men
and women should take comfort from the fact that they
did not sing and dance as their national project was
about to be methodically crushed by both Israel and
the Palestinian leadership. It is strange how
"symbolic" and "moral" victories can usher many years
of unmitigated defeats.
Ramzy Baroud (ramzybaroud.net) is an
internationally syndicated columnist and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father
Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto
Press, London).
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