The present leadership of the Palestinian people is divided; the myopic PA President Abbas has been dancing to the tunes of Tel Aviv and Washington for long. A growing number of the suffering people of Palestine regard him a traitor and puppet of the US and the Israeli Zionists.
The talk of peace and peace negotiations under the various US administrations served only Zionist expansion and further colonization of the occupied Palestine. If President Obama had any intention to stop Israel’s ever-increasing expropriation of the Palestinian land then he has failed miserably. Obviously, Secretary Clinton, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby struck at his intentions and nullified him.
Where can the Palestinians go from here? The question of establishing a viable state is in the doldrums. The occupied land has been eaten up by Israel. That leaves the possibility of one-state solution the only alternative for the Israelis and the Palestinians.
But if Israel turns its back on its previous history of colonization and expropriation, accepts the UN resolutions and reverts to the pre-1967 borders by vacating all its illegal settlements then the two-state solution has a chance to materialize. But this is more of a long shot in the dark.
Yesh Prabhu’s advocacy of declaring an independent state by Palestinians can be instrumental in breaking the present impasse. At least, the Palestinians will not lose anything. On the contrary, it can take the matters out of the hands of Washington and Tel Aviv and this may create a new momentum. But one major hurdle remains: the divided Palestinian leadership of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. If Abbas disappears then even worse traitors like Mohammad Dahlan may be waiting for a complete sell-out to Washington and Tel Aviv.
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Declare Independence of Palestine Now
Yesh Prabhu, A Sane Voice For Peace Blog, Nov. 10, 2009
It is now abundantly clear that the stalled negotiation for peace in the Middle East is now dead.
During Secretary of State Clinton’s recent short sojourn through the region, in her joint press conference with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem, she effusively praised Netanyahu’s intransigence regarding Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The peace process died when she bizarrely described as “unprecedented” Mr. Netanyahu’s paltry concession to slow down the feverish tempo of building illegal housing units in the occupied territories. Even though she hastily tried to back-track, the damage to the peace process had been done. It was as if she had given the peace process a death blow. The Palestinian negotiators were deeply shocked. Did not President Obama, and even Mrs. Clinton herself, say only a month ago that the Israeli settlements in the occupied land were illegitimate? It dawned on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the peace process was dead, and so he announced that he will be resigning from his position soon. He had threatened to resign a couple of times on previous occasions, of course, but this time it seems that he means to carry out his threat.
Tags: Arab regimes, Dahlan, Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Israeli Zionists, Netanyahu, Palestinian people, PM Salam Fayyad, President Abbas, President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, srael’s illegal settlements, the two-state solution, United States, Yesh Prabhu, Zionist expansion and colonization
1 comment:
Thank you very much, Dr. Khan, for your comment. I agree with you that the two Palestinian factions, the Fatah and the Hamas, must reconcile their differences and forge a unified party. By splintering, the Palestinians have weakened themselves, and they have only helped Israel and enabled the USA to dictate terms to them: what Palestinians can or can not do.
In fact, seven months ago, on Wednesday, March 25, 2009, I posted an article titled, “The Primary Requirement for Peace in the Middle East” at my website http://asanevoiceforpeaceinthemiddleeast.blogspot.com In it I wrote, “The primary requirement for peace in the Middle East and the creation and establishment of Palestine is that the two major factions of Palestinians, the Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA), unite and speak with one voice. The Israelis have succeeded in occupying Palestine and controlling the Palestinians because they have learnt, from the British, I suppose, that the principle “Divide and Rule” always succeeds. Isn’t it true that the saying “United we stand, divided we fall”, is true to this day? The British were able to rule India from 1858 to 1947, a country twenty-five times the area of England and fourteen times the area of the entire Great Britain, by meticulously adhering to the rule: Divide and Rule.”
I was thrilled to read in the Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper today, 11/13/09, a very gripping article titled, “Abbas must unilaterally declare Palestinian state”. In it columnist Yossi Sarid wrote: “But before Abu Mazen quits, he has just one more job to do: He must declare, unilaterally, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. Palestine now. Both sides have a right to act unilaterally. Abbas owes it to his people, to himself, and to us. This week, there were reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds this possibility very scary, and he expects the Americans to nip it in the bud. But his nightmare is our only chance for an end to the occupation in our time.”
He goes on to say that, “This week, I phoned Abbas, after not having spoken to him for at least four years. I told him everything that I am writing now. I also told him something else: What happened to the wall in Berlin 20 years ago, and to apartheid a few months later, would also happen to the occupation: It will collapse, even if attempts are made to reinforce it with nails.”
Yesh Prabhu, Plainsboro, NJ
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