(News/Analysis, Crescent International, January 2009.)
For a few short weeks in the fall, after Palestinian president Mahmood Abbas announced that parliamentary and presidential elections would take place this month, and that he would not be standing for re-election, Palestinian politics seemed on the point of a radical shake-up. Last month, however, the various dislodged pieces settled back into a familiar, sterile pattern, and it quickly became clear that nothing had changed at all.
First, the elections were cancelled, a move that had been widely anticipated after the Independent Election Commission said that they could not be held because of the split between Gaza and the West Bank, which was itself confirmed by the failure of reconciliation talks once the US had made it clear that it would not allow Fatah to make any deal with Hamas. Then, on December 15–16, the Central Committee of the PLO met in Ramallah and — with no constitutional basis whatsoever — voted to extend Abbas’s term as president indefinitely.
That then settles the question of the structure of the Palestinians’ political leadership for the time being: more of the same. And in terms of the policy to be followed, there also appears little prospect of any change. In his major speech to the PLO Central Committee on December 15, Abbas offered little of substance, apart from reiterating that he would not return to negotiations unless there was a complete freeze on settlement activities. In an earlier interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Abbas had expressed frustration over the policies being pursued by the Netanyahu government in Tel Aviv, saying that it had even rejected an offer he had made to begin final settlement talks provided the Israelis froze settlement for six months.
These comments were mocked in Palestinian circles, with commentators suggesting that Abbas had lost touch with reality of he thought there was any prospect of peace talks within six months, let alone an agreement. Commentators such as Khaled Amayreh in the Al-Ahram weekly pointed out that nothing could change within six months, considering that Benyamin Netanyahu had already said in a high-profile speech at Bar-Ilan University in June that the only Palestinian state that Israel would accept would be one without Jerusalem and effectively controlled by Israel.
This Israeli stance makes a mockery of attempts by the US and other Western states to persuade Palestinians to return to negotiations without the Israeli settlement freeze once promised by Barrack Obama. On December 8, the EU issued a statement signed by the foreign ministers of its states urging a two-state solution, with a viable and territorial contiguous Palestinian State with Jerusalem as its capital.
This statement was dismissed as irrelevant by Israelis and Palestinians alike, Israelis because they have never had any intention of permitting any sort of viable Palestinian state, and Palestinians because it is so far from political realities that it is laughable. The fact that there is no other political proposal on the table just emphasises the fact that neither Israel nor its allies have any intention of pursuing an agreement of any kind, preferring instead to maintain the current status quo rather than having to make any concessions of any kind.
The current status quo, meanwhile, see Palestinians suffering from Israel’s policies in both Gaza and the West Bank, despite the global revulsion at Israel’s policies, particularly since its war on Gaza a year ago.
In the West Bank, where Palestinians are supposed to be reaping the benefits of Abbas’s collaboration with the Israelis, recent weeks have seen a massive intensifiction of settler attacks on Palestnians and their properties. On December 11, settler paramilitaries burnt down the main mosque in the village of Yasuf, south of Nablus. The ruins were daubed with Zionist slogans written in Hebrew. Local Palestinians have repeatedly highlighted the fact that the settlers attacks are encouraged by local rabbis who publicly proclaim the virtues of murdering non-Jews and destroying their property.
Although some Israeli figures condemned the arson, with Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yona Metzger, explicitly comparing it with Nazi policies against the Jews, nothing is likely to change on the ground in the West Bank, where the settlers enjoy the protection and cooperation of the Israeli military and occupation authorities.
In Gaza meanwhile, the situation one year after the Israeli attack remains desperate, with all reconstruction prevented by the blockade imposed by the Israelis and enforced by its allies, including Egypt. According to international aid agencies working there, only 141 trucks on building materials have been allowed to enter Gaza all year. The people are also teetering on the edge of starvation; only 275 trucks of aid were permitted to enter in November, the lowest monthly total of the year. Most Gazans have electrical power for only a few hours a day, and health problems caused by the lack of clean water have become endemic, with a massive rise in the infant mortality rate.
Given the total failure of political leadership in Ramallah, and the callous brutality of Israel and its allies, the reality is that nothing much is likely to change in the near future for the Palestinians of either the West Bank or Gaza.
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