Abu Mazen's Bi-National State Veiled in Racism

 

by jonathan dahoah halevi  

The Palestinian Authority is under heavy international pressure, mostly American, aimed at facilitating the transition from proximity talks to direct negotiations with Israel. The written message recently sent by President Obama to Palestinian Chairman Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) indicated that the American administration is not content, to say the least, with the Palestinian leg dragging in the peace process, or with what is perceived to be a lack of appreciation for American pressure on Israel; this has lead PM Netanyahu to accept the two-state solution, and to temporarily freeze settlement activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

 

There is no obvious fundamental change in the Palestinian stance. The Palestinian Authority hesitates and refrains from explicit commitment to direct negotiations without any pre-conditions. Instead, it tries to weather the American demands by raising a new proposal to convene a triangle meeting of Palestine, Israel, and America to discuss the agenda of the negotiations, its legitimacy, and the settlement cessation.

 

Senior Palestinian officials have said they will also be satisfied if Obama manages to extract an Israeli commitment regarding these issues, or if PM Netanyahu acknowledges the Quartet declaration in Moscow.   

 

During the course of diplomatic activity, Abu Mazen divulged last week, while briefing the Egyptian media in Cairo, his version of the failure of the peace talks with former Israeli PM Ehud Olmert and his positions regarding the political settlement of the conflict.

 

Abu Mazen noted that he almost reached an agreement with Olmert, but the negotiations failed in the last moment because of a disagreement on the ration of the discussed land swap. Olmert proposed 6.5 per cent and Abu Mazen accepted to no more than 1.9 per cent.  Abu Mazen said that he demanded to divide Jerusalem, the eastern area of the city to the Palestinians and the western part to the Israelis, and insisted that the refugee problem must be settled in accordance with an Arab peace initiative from March 2002, and UN resolution 194.

 

Specifically referring to direct negotiations, Abu Mazen reiterated his demand that Israel accept the '67 borders, and to cease building in Jerusalem and West Bank settlements. He also stressed that he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

 

"I'm willing to agree to a third party that would supervise the agreement, such as NATO forces, but I would not agree to having Jews among the NATO forces, or that there will live among us even a single Israeli on Palestinian land," he was quoted by Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency (June 28).

 

Abu Mazen's remarks have not been made in a void. The American and European pressures on Israel with regard to the settlement freeze and Jerusalem has created an image of Israeli weakness and of an imbalance in power favouring the Palestinians. Abu Mazen has been playing the "no other alternative" card to the Palestinian Authority in Ramalla, and he endeavours to use the international community to elicit Israeli concessions without commitment to any compromise regarding the refugee problem. 

Thus, the Palestinians continue to pursue their strategy which enabled them, sometimes by armed struggle and other times by political means, to force Israel to concede most of its assets, originally supposed to be used as a bargain chips during the final stage of negotiations. 

 

This strategy, presented by the Fatah movement, the backbone of the Palestinian Authority, does not differ from Arafat's, or herald any change in the basic positions which resemble those of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations.

 

According to said strategy, the Palestinian Authority is ready to negotiate a peace deal only after receiving an Israeli commitment to withdraw to the lines of the '67 borders (with minor land swap), and when Israel loses its source of power in the negotiations.

 

The Palestinians then intend to demand the implementation of the UN resolution regarding refugees, from a Palestinian perspective, which gives the 5.5 million refugees and their descendants the right of return and to settle in the State of Israel.

 

Abu Mazen in his briefing to the Egyptian media expressed this strategy and denied the Jewish character of Israel. He maintains that Israel should, in fact, become a bi-national state, but on the other hand that Palestine must become a state "clean" of Jews.

 

The term "Israeli" used by Abu Mazen means "Jew," as the Palestinian authority sees the Israeli Arabs, Muslims and Christians alike, as an integral part of the Palestinian people. The future State of Palestine, according Abu Mazen, must resist any Jewish presence in its territory. In other words, the Palestinian Authority embraces a racist policy – Palestinian apartheid – directed at Jews, and based on denial of the Jewish history and the cultural and religious linkage of the Jewish people to the land.  

 

The anti-Semitism embodied in Abu Mazen's words refers also to his position towards the NATO observers' force that may be deployed in the West Bank to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement with Israel.

 

Abu Mazen is opposed to Jews being included in this force; meaning, he will ask Germany and all other partner countries in NATO to use their own forces in the West Bank, in an effort to the exclude any Jewish soldiers.

 

He didn't explain how these countries would determine who is a Jew, whether according the orthodox Jewish laws or just if one of the parents or grandparents was a Jew.  But even Saudi Arabia didn't dare to oppose the deployment of American Jewish soldiers on its land during operation Desert Storm (1990-1), and no one in Israel ever demanded to disqualify Muslim soldiers from serving in the international observers' forces in Lebanon, the Golan Heights and Sinai.

 

The racist language used by Abu Mazen is despicable in particular, as it doubts the loyalty of the Jews to their country. It is for this reason that a firm Israeli and European response is needed in this regard. 

 

Palestinian apartheid in its essence.

 

 

Jonathan Dahoah Halevi is a senior researcher and fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Director of Research at the Orient Research Group

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.