In statements reported Tuesday European Union (EU) ambassador to Israel Faaborg Anderson once again displayed characteristic western bias toward Israel.
Apparently trying to appease his Israeli audience Anderson demanded that Hamas the Palestinian Islamic Liberation group recognize Israel give up resistance to the brutal Israeli military occupation and accept vague and controversial agreements signed between Israel and the PLO.
Anderson totally ignored the fact that Israel doesn’t recognize Palestine. In fact important components of the Israeli government don’t even recognize the very existence of the Palestinian people yet this doesn’t prevent the Israeli government from embracing these parties and including them into the ruling coalition headed by Binyamin Netanyahu.
Hence it is dishonest and unconscionable to demand the Palestinians victims of Israeli aggression apartheid and ethnic cleansing to recognize an entity that not only refuses to recognize them but strives to wipe their national existence off the map.
Let no one argue that Israel would recognize Palestine if Hamas recognized Israel. This argument is naïve at best. We all know that the PLO recognized Israel even unconditionally in the context of the Oslo Agreement more than 20 year ago.
However Israel refused adamantly to reciprocate by recognizing a Palestinian state on the basis of the1967 borders.
More to the point Israel has ever since embarked on a frantic campaign of settlement building effectively killing any realistic prospects for a peace deal based on the two-state solution strategy.
Besides as a Palestinian who has been languishing under Jewish-Zionist oppression for 47 years I would beg His Excellency the EU ambassador to tell us the borders of the state he is demanding the Palestinian people to recognize.
Given notorious Israeli deception and prevarication we Palestinians can no longer agree to buy fish in the sea. The PLO did make a huge blunder 22 years ago by recognizing Israel without receiving a reciprocal Israel recognition beforehand. Hence Hamas must never ever make the same blunder again.
Besides it is really unethical to say the very least to hear European officials ask the rape victim to stop resisting her attacker. Indeed according to what logic and by which standard of morality are people languishing under a nefarious military occupation asked to stop resisting their tormentors.
Were the peoples who came under the Nazi occupation in Europe in the middle of the last century asked to stop resisting the Wehrmacht Gestapo and SS? We all know the answer. So why is it that the Palestinians of all people falling under a brutal foreign occupation are asked to submit to their oppressors?
I believe that Europe must not add insult to injury in connection to its historical betrayal of the Palestinian people. It was Europe after all that inserted the venomous snake into the child’s bed.
Europe cannot claim innocence. It can’t claim it didn’t know the snake was so poisonous and would bite the child. In any court of law that respects itself Europe would be declared guilty guilty and guilty for committing a crime against humanity by creating Israel and enabling it to carry history’s greatest crime.
We are not asking Europe to undo a long history of treachery and betrayal against Arabs and Muslims especially the Palestinian people.
But we are demanding that Europe try to atone for its past crimes against the Palestinian people by exercising some rectitude and fairness in dealing with the Palestinian plight.
Indeed by making manifestly impossible demands on the Palestinians who have barely survived the Nazi-like Israeli blitz while utterly ignoring Israel’s lebensraum policies in the West Bank the EU is effectively disqualifying itself from acting as “honest mediator” in the Israeli-Palestinian strife.
This is the message that the Palestinian people and their political forces must communicate to the EU.
Yes Europe is extending a helping hand to the Palestinians although this assistance is by no means altruistic.
But Europe should never expect the Palestinian people to trade their future and that of their children for European (or for that matter American) money.
Khalid Amayreh is a veteran Palestinian journalist living in occupied Palestine
