Palestinian bid for statehood

As anyone who follows these things will know, the Palestinian Authority leadership is intending to make a bid for statehood at the UN. Quite honestly I can't say what it all means but I have grave misgivings about the exercise because I don't see how a state with no land and no power differs from the situation for the Palestinians now. Of course the PA has nominal power in the West Bank but it is considered by many to be hopelessly corrupt both financially and criminally and so in thrall to Israel as to be an appendage of the Israeli state. So, if the UN recognises such an entity as a state can't zionists carry on expanding, colonising, segregating, ethnic cleansing and slaughtering business as usual only at the same time as saying that the Palestinians have what they wanted?

That was just off the top of my head but there are also warnings coming out of Palestinian quarters to the effect that the PA does not represent the entirety of the Palestinian people so the statehood bid would not enhance the rights of the Palestinians but curtail them. The PA does not represent the Palestinians in Israel, Gaza or the diaspora. It doesn't even truly represent the Palestinians of the West Bank. This means that the PA doesn't have the required authority to make the bid but also any state emerging from the bid would have the same lack of authority but would be assumed by many to have authority, even to write off the rights of the bulk of the Palestinian people.

There's a statement here from the Palestinian Youth Movement titled Statement on the September 2011 Declaration of Statehood.  Here's a little chunk:

This declaration serves as a mechanism for rescuing the faulty peace framework and depoliticizing the struggle for Palestine by removing the struggle from its historical colonial context. The attempts to impose a false peace with the normalizing of the colonial regime has only led us to surrender increasing amounts of our land, the rights of our people, and our aspirations by delegitimizing and marginalizing our people’s struggle and deepening the fragmentation and division of our people. This declaration jeopardizes the rights and aspirations of over two-thirds of the Palestinian people who live as refugees in countries of refuge and in exile, to return to their original homes from which they were displaced in the 1948 Nakba (Catastrophe) and subsequently since then. It also jeopardizes the position of the Palestinians residing in the 1948 occupied territories who continue to resist daily against the ethnic cleansing and racial practices from inside the colonial regime. Furthermore, it corroborates and empowers its Palestinian and Arab partners to act as the gatekeepers to the occupation and the colonization of the region within a neo-colonial framework.

Still, The Guardian's main resident zionist, Jonathan Freedland, supports the bid, and why wouldn't he?

Unity until.....?

Guardian editorial on the reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas:

The Arab spring has finally had an impact on the core issue of the region, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It came in the form of a draft agreement between Fatah and Hamas which took everyone by surprise. There are three chief reasons why, after four years of bitter and violent conflict between the rivals, Fatah acceded to all of Hamas's political conditions to form a national unity government.

The first was the publication of the Palestine papers, the secret record of the last fruitless round of talks with Israel. The extent to which Palestinian negotiators were prepared to bend over backwards to accommodate Israel surprised even hardened cynics. The Palestinian Authority found itself haemorrhaging what little authority it had left. The second was the loss to the Palestinian president, Abu Mazen, of his closest allies in Hosni Mubarak and his henchman Omar Suleiman. While they were still around, Gaza's back door was locked. But the third reason had little to do with either of the above: Abu Mazen's faith in Barack Obama finally snapped. For a man who dedicated his career to the creation of a Palestinian state through negotiation, the turning point came when the US vetoed a UN resolution condemning Israel's settlement-building. In doing so, the US vetoed its own policy. To make the point, the resolution was drafted out of the actual words Hillary Clinton used to condemn construction. Fatah's frustration with all this has now taken political form.

Israel's politicians reacted darkly to the news of reconciliation. From right to left, they shared an assumption which is out of date. It is that they retain the ability – and the right – to dictate what sort of state Palestinians will build on their borders. Having spent years fashioning the environment, the penny has yet to drop that a future environment composed of free Egyptians, Jordanians and even possibly Syrians could well fashion Israel's borders. Even after Mubarak fell, the consensus was that Cairo was so preoccupied with internal problems that it lacked the energy to make foreign policy.

Not so. Yesterday foreign minister Nabil al-Arabi announced that Egypt would shortly be lifting the siege of Gaza. These events pose a direct challenge to the status quo that Israel, the US and the EU have fashioned. Do they now subvert the will of the Egyptians they claim to champion? Does the US do what it did the last time Fatah and Hamas reconciled at Mecca, and pull the plug on the unity government? Do the Quartet threaten to withdraw the PA's funds, because, as is very likely, Salam Fayyad will no longer be there to disburse them? The US could twist Fatah's arm, but Fatah might just sign on the dotted line all the same.

Comments are still open. I wouldn't say they're free, but they are still open.

Palestinian solidarity with Egypt from the River to the Sea

Bitter-sweet stuff happening in Palestine over the rising in Egypt.  Both the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza have suppressed solidarity demos only to yield to popular demand eventually.   Both Hamas and the PA appear to be fearful of their own people as far as spontaneous demonstrations go.  Meanwhile Israel's "demographic threat" can really shake its booty:

As long as they don't keep having children...

PA helping the occupation

This Comment is free article highlighting collaboration between the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas and the State of Israel with specific regard to the occupation of the West Bank is nothing new but it is well put and it's been well received in the comments section:

The Fatah leadership running the PA has been unwilling to make the concessions necessary for national unity, while simultaneously the PA security forces (western and Jordanian trained) continue arresting and torturing those tied to resistance, primarily Hamas-connected. These days the political establishment in Ramallah has expressed a far greater interest in retaining western support than resolving national division and leading a unified resistance to the occupation.

Indeed, it seems that the western countries backing Israel and calling on Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table are also those turning a blind eye to the illegal arrests and torture. According to Wisam Ahmed, advocacy officer at Al-Haq – West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists – both PA and American officials have been notified about the widespread use of illegal political detention and torture by PA security, yet it has continued.

"Some of the third parties' interests are different from what we feel are the interests of insuring Palestinian unity," Ahmed said on 21 December. "Their main interest is to ensure that there is no change to the status quo."

It is a status quo that accommodates shifts in public face, provided there is no real shift in relationship and co-ordination on the ground. Regardless of whether official talks are happening or not, the PA operates in constant dialogue and co-ordination with Israeli occupation.

Last month, when I spoke to Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) prisoners' affairs representative Khalida Jarrar, she condemned the PA for continued political arrests of Palestinians and the maintenance of security co-ordination with Israel.

"The assassinations are a clear example of why [the PFLP] have a policy calling for the PA to end security coordination," she said in reference to the killings in Nablus last December.

Jarrar highlighted that both the security co-ordination and political arrests are part of PA compliance with the Quartet road map. "As Palestinians we have an opportunity to review our negotiations with Israel and our security co-ordination should stop. We should have a political overhaul of the process and this means a demand for the implementation of international resolutions and a relaunching of popular resistance," she stressed, illustrating the PFLP alternative to the current PA practice.

While Jarrar and her Marxist party have tapped into the common feelings on the West Bank street, the basis of power rests in the hands of the western countries keeping Abbas financially and militarily afloat. At the same time, Israel recognises the advantage of a policing partner in the West Bank that fuels internal Palestinian division, tolerating the rhetorical flourishes volleyed over the wall.

Joseph Massad has been writing about this stuff for several years now. A quick google search yields this, this and this.

The latest is titled Oslo and the end of Palestinian independence and it details what Massad calls the "classes" that benefit from this collaborationist fruit of Oslo:

The five main classes that the architects of Oslo created to ensure that the "process" survives are: a political class, divided between those elected to serve the Oslo process, whether to the Legislative Council or the executive branch (essentially the position of president of the PA), and those who are appointed to serve those who are elected, whether in the ministries, or in the presidential office; a policing class, numbering in the tens of thousands, whose function is to defend the Oslo process against all Palestinians who try to undermine it. It is divided into a number of security and intelligence bodies competing with one another, all vying to prove that they are most adept at neutralising any threat to the Oslo process. Under Arafat's authority, members of this class inaugurated their services by shooting and killing 14 Palestinians they deemed enemies of the "process" in Gaza in 1994 -- an achievement that earned them the initial respect of the Americans and the Israelis who insisted that the policing class should use more repression to be most effective......

Also: a bureaucratic class attached to the political class and the policing class and that constitutes an administrative body of tens of thousands who execute the orders of those elected and appointed to serve the "process"; an NGO class: another bureaucratic and technical class whose finances fully depend on their serving the Oslo process and ensuring its success through planning and services; and, a business class composed of expatriate Palestinian businessmen as well as local businessmen -- including especially members of the political, policing and bureaucratic classes -- whose income is derived from financial investment in the Oslo process and from profit-making deals that the PA can make possible. While the NGO class mostly does not receive money from the PA, being the beneficiary of foreign governmental and non- governmental financial largesse that is structurally connected to the Oslo process, the political, policing, and bureaucratic classes receive all their legitimate and illegitimate income from the PA directly.

At the time of writing, 18:42 GMT, comments are still open at Cif and you can write for publication to Al Ahram where Massad's piece appears.

With PA help, Obama moves Palestine one step closer to genocide

The Goldstone report was a milestone in demanding accountability from Israel. Unfortunately, to tear one's hair out, it is being buried with the help of the Palestinian Judenrat in Ramallah.

the Palestinian Authority, under heavy pressure from the United States, has withdrawn its support for a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution on alleged war crimes in Gaza, diplomats in Geneva said Thursday.

U.N. and European diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with reporters, said the Palestinian delegation's surprise turnaround means any resolution on the report would likely be delayed until next March. (AP)

This is exactly what Nadia Hijab predicted less than two weeks ago:

The Obama administration could send a strong signal by voting to submit the report to the General Assembly, or even by abstaining. But, despite its fine words on Monday, it is more likely to want to bury it. Otherwise, attention will focus on prosecuting an Israel it’s trying to nudge to the negotiating table. The problem it will face is that Third World countries dominate both the Human Rights Council and General Assembly and they traditionally support Palestinian rights. So it will seek an alliance with Egypt and the Palestinian Authority. If they indicate they do not want the report to go forward, the rest of the Third World would find it hard to go over their heads.

But could Egypt and the Palestinian Authority possibly want to stop accountability for war crimes in Gaza? Hard to believe, but they may have already done so earlier this year when Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, the General Assembly’s Nicaraguan president, tried to get the international community to stop the slaughter.

Father Miguel has named no names, but in his speech at the end of his one-year term this week, he left little doubt about what happened. He said he had tried to persuade “those who should have been most closely involved” to convene the General Assembly to help the Palestinians under fire. But “all I received was advice to give the process more time… we should do nothing that could endanger the success that was always just beyond our reach.”

And he went on to make a very serious accusation against “those who should supposedly have been most interested” yet “denied their support.” He said he hoped “that they were right and that I was wrong. Otherwise, we face an ugly situation of constant complicity with the aggression against the rights of the noble and long-suffering Palestinian people.”

If this complicity repeats itself at the Human Rights Council, the Goldstone Report will be sunk. The power of the state system (and a putative statelet) will have trumped the principles of international law and human rights -- unless human rights advocates act to make sure the right thing gets done. (Middle East Online)

I wish I am wrong, but I see this success of Israel at the Human Right Council as one major advance toward genocide. This won't happen next week. But the brakes are being cut one by one. The righteous fury is in place, the silent world is watching incapacitated, and all is made ready for the final push down the hill.

The PA committed to 'water down'

Sometimes the news from Israel are so sick that you can't even begin to paraphrase it.

...another, more substantive issue was recently added, when the Palestinian Authority appealed to the International Criminal Court. Security sources told Haaretz that this move, which was authorized by Fayyad and Abbas, incensed senior officials of the defense establishment, especially army Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazi has been kept busy by involvement in a holding action against the threat that Israeli officers would be brought before the court as a result of charges that the IDF committed war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Concern has intensified following the grave report that the Goldstone Commission released two weeks ago on behalf of the United Nations.

In Israel the argument is that the PA is being unfair, and that at the time of the operation in the Gaza Strip, last winter, its senior officials encouraged their Israeli counterparts to step up the pressure on Hamas, and even to attempt to bring its rule in the territory to the point of collapse. However, at a latter stage they joined those decrying Israel and its alleged actions in the Strip.

In light of this tension, the chief of staff conditioned his approval of a second cellular provider to the Palestinians' withdrawing their appeal to the court.

"The PA has reached the point where it has to decide whether it is working with us or against us," senior figures in the defense establishment have said. At the PA it is being said, in response to the Israeli demands, that Abbas and Fayyad will water down their appeal to the ICJ, though they will refuse to promise that it will rescinded entirely. (Haaretz)