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Words are powerful - Thoughts shape - Ideas have consequences

Sean Gannon
Journalist - Irish & Israeli Affairs

Several Steps Back

“This is a government that must be accepted and dealt with by the entire international community, if there is justice in this world.” So said the new Palestinian Information Minister, Mustafa Barghouti just hours after the inauguration of the new Fatah-Hamas unity government on March 17th. However, the new policy program announced by President Mahamoud Abbas utterly fails to satisfy the three conditions which the international community has stipulated must be met before it will ‘review its position’ on dealing with any Palestinian government; namely that it recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previously-signed agreements.

For example, despite Javier Solana’s March 8th declaration that the unity government must recognize Israel in a manner “sufficiently clear that [it] can be read and not only imagined,” its policy program mentions neither Israel nor a two-state solution. It does state that the “key to peace and stability is contingent on ending the occupation of Palestinian lands” but does not specify the “lands” to which it refers - those captured by Israel in 1948 or in 1967. This cultivated ambiguity actually represents a retreat from the position taken in last year’s National Conciliation Document which called for “an independent state … on all territories occupied in 1967.”

Barghouti’s statement that his government’s “goal is the establishment of an independent, sovereign and democratic Palestinian state in the 1967 borders” must be read against those of the Hamas leadership which repeatedly emphasize that a “1967” state will constitute, not the beginning of the end of the conflict but merely the end of the beginning in that its establishment will be just the first phase of “a gradual and transient solution” which will result in eventual Palestinian sovereignty from the river to the sea. Such thinking, identical to Fatah's 1974 “strategy of stages” which sought to ‘liberate’ the land through incremental territorial gains, is consistent with the Hamas Charter which, in designating the entire area as “an Islamic trust consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day,” stipulates that the creation of a state on one part of Palestine cannot involve the sanction of non-Moslem sovereignty over another. As Hamas lawmaker Salah al-Bardawil said last year “when we say we accept a state in 1967 … we do not say we accept two states.”

The unity government’s insistence on a “right of return to … lands and property inside Israel” represents a further rejection of the two-state solution in that its demand that 3.5 million Palestinians be allowed settle inside Israel would, if granted, destroy the Jewish state through a process of demographic subversion. This extreme formulation repudiates the position reached by Fatah during the Oslo era when it acknowledged the need for a more practical formulation if peace was to be achieved. It then accepted that the main solution to the problem lies not in the refugees’ repatriation but in restitution, rehabilitation within a future Palestinian state and resettlement in third countries. Such alternatives formed the basis of negotiations on the issue from the 1995 Beilin-Abu Mazen discussions to the Taba talks of 2001, a fact acknowledged by the 2002 Arab League initiative whose call for “a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem” was left vague enough to accommodate them. The unity government’s position explodes this consensus and rules out any possibility of future compromise.

The new government has also failed to satisfy the demand that it accept past Israeli-Palestinian agreements. Mustafa Barghouti has claimed that “we are recognizing and accepting and honoring the existing agreements” but the policy program itself promises only to “respect” them. And Hamas has clarified that it sees a clear difference between respecting and fulfilling agreements signed by the PLO; while it acknowledges them as established facts, it will not implement their provisions unless they serve “the higher national interests of the Palestinian people.” And while Barghouti has said that Mahmoud Abbas “is assigned - and will be supported - by the government to negotiate with Israel,” the policy program’s stipulation that any final offer will have to be ratified by the strongly rejectionist PNC means that the type of compromise deal necessary for peace will be next to impossible to attain.

Finally, the policy program also repudiates the requirement that the “Palestinian government must be committed to non-violence.” On the contrary, it pledges “loyalty” and “devotion” to terrorist leaders Ahmad Yassin, Fathi al-Shiqaqi and Abdul Abbas, and declares that “the resistance [which Ismail Haniyeh quickly clarified means “all forms of resistance” – i.e. terrorism] is a legitimate right of the Palestinian people.” Halting this ‘resistance’ depends on “ending the occupation and achieving freedom, the right of return and independence” which, given the program’s definition of ‘the occupation,’ means terrorism will continue until the conflict is settled on maximalist Palestinian terms. And while the unity government also speaks of “consolidating the current calm and expanding it to become a comprehensive reciprocal truce,” Egypt’s weekend arrest of a Hamas suicide bomber on the Sinai-Israel border and Hamas’s shooting of an Israeli electrical worker near Karni two days later demonstrates the hollowness of any such commitment to peace. Furthermore, its undertaking to “support” and “encourage” efforts to free captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, must be read against its promise “to work diligently for the sake of liberating the heroic prisoners from the Israeli occupation prisons” which is essentially code for more kidnappings. Indeed, just last week the media reported the attempted abduction of an Israeli at the Eli intersection by three Hamas members who hoped to use him to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners. Given that, however disingenuously, Fatah did commit to a non-violent solution to the conflict, the unity government’s sanctioning of armed struggle represents a serious retreat from previously agreed positions.

“The Palestinians have made so many steps forward and we expect reciprocity,” said the Palestinian Foreign Minister, Ziad Abu Amr, last week. But in repudiating the international community’s three conditions, what Condoleeza Rice has called “the foundational principles of peace,” the Palestinian government’s policy program represents, not “so many steps forward,” but several steps backwards instead.

© Sean Gannon 2007 Reprinted with Permission

Seán Gannon graduated in history from University College Dublin and works as a freelance writer and researcher on Irish and Israeli affairs, publishing mainly in Ireland, Britain and Israel. He is currently preparing a book on Ireland's relationship with the state of Israel since 1948. He is a prominent advocate for Israel, being a featured writer with the Israel Hasbara Committee and chairman of the Irish Friends of Israel, a media response group which endeavors to correct the bias and error in the reporting of the Middle East conflict in Ireland.