16 September 2010 By Ramzy Baroud A picture is not always worth a thousand words. The
recently released photographs of Palestinian and
Israeli leaders in Washington during their first
direct talks in many months certainly don’t say
anything new. It was the status quo at its best, a mere
procession of regional and US leaders before hungry
cameramen. The leaders promised “not to spare any
effort” and praised the undeniable altruism embedded
in the very concept of “peace”. Israeli Prime Minister
repeated the martyr-like emphasis of past Israeli
leaders regarding the “painful” compromises and
sacrifices required to defeat the many obstacles
standing before them. Mahmoud Abbas – with his expired
presidency over a corrupt Palestinian Authority -
smiled, shook hands and spoke unconvincingly about his
hopes and expectations. Jordanian and Egyptian leaders also attended. Their
presence was purely an endeavor to mark a difference
between this event and the last failed attempt at
reaching a peace agreement. When late Palestinian
leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s Ehud Barak were
herded into Camp David under the auspices of then
President Bill Clinton, Arafat was left to fend for
himself without any Arab backing. This left Barak,
fully backed by the US, with all the cards. The
process was a mockery then, as it is now. Today’s badly staged talks are actually much less
promising than the ones of July 2000. Barak had a
considerably serious mandate, while Netanyahu runs a
discontented coalition of largely rightwing fanatics.
Arafat, although his popularity had dwindled, also
represented a moral authority and a unifying figure
among all Palestinian factions, including Hamas. Abbas,
on the other hand, sits on the helm of hugely
discredited and ineffectual band of contractors and
self-serving politicians. More, Abbas operates with an
expired mandate, and his cabinet members are
handpicked to replace the democratically elected
government of Hamas, whose members are either under
siege in Gaza or held in Israeli prisons. Needless to say, this latest round of peace talks
is seriously lacking in legitimacy and goodwill. Firstly, Israel has no interest in guaranteeing any
positive outcome. It is hell-bent on carrying on with
its colonization of the already disconnected West Bank
and East Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s government intends on
speeding up such efforts once the temporary settlement
construction freeze expires, only a few days after the
second round of negotiations resume on September
14-15. On the very first day of talks, Israeli troops
also invaded parts of northern Gaza and expanded the
so-called buffer zone by around 300 meters. As for Abbas, the problem is compounded. His power
is truly feeble in comparison to Israel’s political
supremacy both in Tel Aviv and Washington, and also
its near total control of Abbas’ own domain in the
West Bank. Knowing this, one cannot be both realistic
and still hope for ‘painful’ Israeli concessions.
Still Abbas continues to hang around. He might feel he
has no other option, as his absence would both chip
away from his miniscule political worth and risk
raising the ire of Washington, his greatest
sustainer. But even if the one-year-long talks miraculously
yield an agreement, Abbas will not be able to sell
this agreement to his own people. The aging leader is
barely capable of uniting his own party, which is no
longer the main player in Palestine’s political
milieu. Today’s Fatah is a different Fatah to the one
under Arafat in 1993. Its corruption has grown to the
extent that it now functions as a self-serving welfare
organization, whose members get richer through
international handouts and business monopoly
orchestrated by Israel. Equally significant is the fact that yesterday’s
‘enemies of peace’ have become the legitimate parties
that should actually be involved in any substantial
talks with Israel. They are dismissed because they
insist on a paradigm shift in how talks with Israel
are conducted. They argue that any meaningful talks –
especially between vastly unequal powers - must take
place with a clear frame of reference, involving an
even-handed third party, and predicated on the concept
of ‘justice’ - not Kissinger’s deceptive ‘peace
process’. The talks must also guarantee the welfare
and security of the Palestinian people in the interim,
through a long-term truce guarded by the United
Nations. Peace talks held at gunpoint while the
population is forcibly starved and besieged hardly
promises any positive outcome. What we can be sure of is that that the halfhearted
peace attempt will garner nothing good. If an
agreement is somehow concocted, it is doomed to fail.
The Palestinian people, the absent but real party in
any lasting solution, will simply not allow it. The
Palestinian collective has the tendency to watch
charades to their end, and then react at the opportune
moment to defeat them. Almost every Palestinian revolt
in the past has resulted from similar processes, the
Second Palestinian Uprising of 2000 being the most
pertinent example. When Arafat was being humiliated
and forced into submission to US-Israeli diktats,
Palestinians of all parties and from all sections of
society rose in anger. Israel understood the revolt as
a Palestinian attempt at extracting concessions and
used unprecedented violence to quell their revolt.
Many thousands were killed and wounded, and the rest
is history. If violence spirals this time around, it promises
to be much worse than before. Those who cling to
resistance in Palestine have been bolstered by the
success of Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.
More, they are emboldened by their political
legitimacy as a result of the democratic elections of
2006. Predictably, Netanyahu will not shy away from
interpreting Palestinian protests as a conspiracy to
intimidate Israel. The problem with violence is that
once it reaches a new threshold, it rarely retreats to
old parameters. What took place in Gaza at the hand of
the Israeli army in 2008-09 was frighteningly
genocidal in its scope. Future violence is likely to
stay within this category. To avoid this, Washington’s strategists really need
to reconsider the long-term consequences of their
government’s policies. Obama’s choreographers might
succeed in getting a few leaders to stand in perfect
order before a crowd of reporters, but they will fail
to contain the political chaos that will ensue when
the talks fail, as they surely will. - Ramzy Baroud (www.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), now available on Amazon.com. Comments 💬 التعليقات |