This seemingly endless and ugly game of the peace process is now finally
over
The peace process is a sham. Palestinians must reject their officials and
rebuild their movement
By Karma Nabulsi
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 January 2011
It's over. Given the shocking nature, extent and detail of these ghastly
revelations from behind the closed doors of the Middle East peace process,
the seemingly endless and ugly game is now, finally, over. Not one of the
villains on the Palestinian side can survive it. With any luck the sheer
horror of this account of how the US and Britain covertly facilitated and
even implemented Israeli military expansion - while creating an oligarchy to
manage it - might overcome the entrenched interests and venality that have
kept the peace process going. A small group of men who have polluted the
Palestinian public sphere with their private activities are now exposed.
For us Palestinians, these detailed accounts of the secretly negotiated
surrender of every one of our core rights under international law (of return
for millions of Palestinian refugees, on annexing Arab Jerusalem, on
settlements) are not a surprise. It is something that we all knew - in spite
of official protests to the contrary - because we feel their destructive
effects every day. The same is true of the outrageous role of the US and
Britain in creating a security bantustan, and the ruin of our civic and
political space. We already knew, because we feel its fatal effects.
For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians, official Palestinian policy
over these past decades has been the antithesis of a legitimate, or
representative, or even coherent strategy to obtain our long-denied freedom.
But this sober appreciation of our current state of affairs, accompanied by
the mass protests and civil society campaigns by Palestinian citizens, has
been insufficient, until now, to rid us of it.
The release into the public domain of these documents is such a landmark
because it destroys the final traces of credibility of the peace process.
Everything to do with it relied upon a single axiom: that each new
initiative or set of negotiations with the Israelis, every policy or
programme (even the creation of undemocratic institutions under military
occupation), could be presented as carried out in good faith under harsh
conditions: necessary for peace, and in the service of our national cause.
Officials from all sides played a double game vis-à-vis the Palestinians. It
is now on record that they have betrayed, lied and cheated us of basic
rights, while simultaneously claiming they deserved the trust of the
Palestinian people.
This claim of representative capacity - and worse, the assertion they were
representing the interests of Palestinians in their struggle for freedom -
had become increasingly thin over the last decade and a half. The claim they
were acting in good faith is absolutely shattered by the publication of
these documents today, and the information to be revealed over this coming
week. Whatever one's political leanings, no one, not the Americans, the
British, the UN, and especially not these Palestinian officials, can claim
that the whole racket is anything other than a brutal process of subjugating
an entire people.
Why has this gone on for so long and at such high cost? And why haven't the
Palestinians been able to create the democratic representation so urgently
needed to advance their cause? Israel, along with those who share its
worldview, would assert that the problem lies with the Palestinians
themselves, being part of an Arab political culture that can only breed
either authoritarian governments or terrorists. Yet what these documents
reveal is the extent of undemocratic, authoritarian, colonial and, frankly,
terrifying coercion the US, Britain and other western governments have been
imposing upon Palestinians through this unaccountable leadership.
The unconstrained power of America, the global superpower that has (now on
record and in sickening detail) taken one party's side in this conflict, can
be seen on every page. Everyone is implicated, from the president to the
secretary of state, from the military generals who have created the security
forces to implement these policies to the embassy staff involved in the
daily execution of them. It also shows this policy is an absolute failure,
bringing ruination upon the Palestinians and increasing belligerency from
the completely unfettered, aggressive and erratic Israel, currently
practising a form of apartheid towards the Palestinians it rules through
force.
This uneven balance of power can only be successfully addressed in the same
way every national liberation movement has addressed it in the past: through
the unassailable strength of a popular mandate. Ho Chi Minh sitting down
with the French, or Nelson Mandela negotiating with the apartheid regime
embodied this popular legitimacy, and indeed drew their principles and
negotiating positions from it. The Palestinian leadership's weak and
incompetent posturing is the opposite of dignified and honourable national
representation, and proves useless to boot.
On the positive side, had such deals eventually come to light, Palestinians
would have rejected them comprehensively. But the worst betrayal has been
what this hypocrisy has bequeathed to the young generation of Palestinians.
These officials have led a new generation to believe that participating in
public governance is base and self-seeking, that joining any political party
is the least useful method to advance principals and create change.
Through their harmful example, they have alienated young Palestinians from
their own history of resistance to colonial and military rule, so they now
believe that tens of thousands of brilliant, imaginative and extraordinarily
brave Palestinians never existed or, worse, fought and died for nothing. It
cuts them off from any useful mobilising methods and techniques that they
might draw upon today - the democratic and collective mechanisms that are
needed more than ever. They have given young people the idea that there is
no virtue in collective organisation, the mechanism by which popular
democratic change is made and preserved.
The increasingly popular view that the Palestinian revolution was a failure
from its inception, always corrupt, driven from above and never from below,
is false - but it has gained credibility through the actions of the current
regime. Its behaviour has nearly erased the record of the contribution made
by tens of thousands of ordinary Palestinian citizens who, through the sheer
force of their devotion to public life, fought for principles and created
real and democratic self-representation under the worst of conditions. It is
our most valuable freedom, and one well worth fighting for: the release of
these devastating documents paves the way for its restoration.
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