The game-of-make believe surrounding the rumored near resumption of the so-called peace process is raising many eye-brows among Palestinians.
The reason is simple. Only a few weeks ago the PLO leadership in Ramallah was swearing it wouldn’t return to the negotiating table with Israel unless Israel met two key conditions: The first an Israeli undertaking that the talks would be conducted on the basis of the 4th of June 1967 borders meaning a Palestinian state on 100% of the West Bank including 100% of East Jerusalem and 100% of the Gaza Strip. The second condition is a total cessation of all Jewish settlement activities.
Well it seems sufficiently clear now that neither of these two conditions has been met. Which means that the PA-PLO leadership is effectively capitulating to Israel as there has been no Israeli “concession” whatsoever not even a “gesture” that would help Abbas et al keep face in front of disillusioned Palestinians who no longer believe the hogwash coming out of the Muqataa.
Unfortunately the shocking absence of PLO-PA credibility forces many Palestinians to turn to Israeli media to find out what is going on. True the Israeli media as is well- known is not a paragon of honesty and accuracy. However it is widely believed that many PA-PLO officials tend to voice their real positions when talking to Israeli media outlets while only communicating lies or half truths or experimenting with “balloon tests” when talking to the Palestinian media.
In any case one would have to be extremely intoxicated or hopelessly gullible to believe that a breakthrough in the moribund peace process is in the offing. This is because nothing has changed or about to change at the Israeli arena.
Indeed Israel continues to build settler units by the thousands all over the West Bank. Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian land all over occupied Palestine. Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes. Israel continues to Judaize Jerusalem. Israel continues to narrow Palestinian horizons and round up Palestinian activists without charge or trial. And at the top of all of this Israeli government officials continue to stress day and night that they won’t return to the 1967 borders or allow for the creation of a viable and territorially contiguous Palestinian state. And what makes Israeli statements more credible in comparison to Palestinian statements is the fact that the Israeli statements are already translated into facts on the ground.
Today many Palestinians are worried that the PLO leadership will make the same stupid blunders it did when it signed the disgraceful Oslo Accords more than 20 years ago. As we all remember the PLO then hastily if not enthusiastically recognized Israel rather unconditionally and without any reciprocal Israeli recognition of a Palestinian state.
The PLO then received vague nebulous and disingenuous American assurances which the PLO used to deceive and delude the Palestinian people. Eventually all these assurances evaporated into nothing.
Now the same PLO is being force-fed similar vague nebulous and disingenuous assurances from the United States Israel’s guardian-ally mainly for the purpose of luring the Palestinian leadership to return to open-ended but futile talks with Israel.
And like the previous assurances the new assurances will evaporate into nothing because the US government won’t be able even if willing to force a dignified peace deal on Israel given the tight stranglehold Zionist circles have on the American government Congress and media.
Needless to say the Palestinian people have an absolute right to know the truth about what is happening with regard to the so-called peace talks. After all this vacuous process is being done in the Palestinian people’s name. And the Palestinians are the main people who are going to lose and suffer as a result of this sham process.
Unfortunately and as we mentioned earlier PLO officials can’t be entrusted to tell the truth about the notoriously futile process. In the near past these officials set up red lines and national constants they swore they won’t violate.
Now they are returning to the same futile talks in utter disregard of every conceivable red line and national constant they used to invoke-from the paramount right of return to Jerusalem.
Some PLO officials including PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are now trying to alleviate the anger and frustration of the Palestinian public by pledging to hold a referendum on any peace deal with Israel.
Well who says that our legitimate and inalienable rights are subject to referenda? Is the right of Muslims to al-Aqsa Mosque subject to a referendum? Is the right of return for five million refugees uprooted from their ancestral homeland at the hands of Zionist invaders from overseas subject to a referendum?
In fact invoking referendums in such circumstances amounts to a shocking trivialization of the Palestinian cause.
A last word. The bankrupt PA leadership is trying to shield itself from historical responsibility by letting despotic Arab rulers who don’t even represent their own peoples to bless what could be a looming sell-out of Palestinian rights.
Abbas hopes that an Arab capitulation to American-Zionist hegemony would enable him to get away with a treacherous deal with the Zionist entity on the ground that “I can’t oppose Arab consensus.”
Really? but what consensus do these ignorant and unelected tyrants and colonels represent? The truth is that these little men don’t even represent their own families let alone their masses.
In the final analysis those who have usurped the will of their own peoples and who don’t hesitate to order their ignorant soldiers and paid-thugs to open fire rather indiscriminately on worshipers performing dawn prayers in their capitals are not fit to decide for the Palestinians or even offer advice to them.
We Palestinians are not a herd of meek sheep that we need the likes of Sisi or this or that corrupt king or sheikh or decadent emir to tell us to surrender to Israel. Let these impotent little men go to hell.
We won’t surrender to Israel and America even if we have to keep up the fight for two hundred years to come.
So let the conflict linger and linger for as long as it takes to get the slate thoroughly clean. In the final analysis our role model is Salahuddin not Mahmoud Abbas or Abdul Fattah Sisi or other little men.
