- When Fatah and Hamas met by Saudi invitation at Mecca
in early February there was a momentary spurt of optimism for the Middle
East peace process. Hopefully, it was thought, if the Palestinians themselves
could just get together, especially stop fighting among themselves, peace
in the region could be advanced. But the wishful thinkers ignored the most
critical truth of the situation: Although the president, Mahmoud Abbas,
represented Fatah, the weight of Palestinian opinion lay with Hamas. That
decision had been demonstrated in a free and fair election in January of
2006. None of the outside-US, Israeli, European and UN--efforts to ignore
that outcome, and none of the infighting between Palestinian factions had
changed it. When the players met in Mecca, the first fact on the table
was that Hamas had to be accommodated in some fashion on all of the critical
issues.
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- Leading up to the Mecca meeting, the key onlookers, meaning
the Quartet (the US, the European Community, Russia, and the UN) and Israel,
had clearly specified the outcome they needed to bless the results: The
Palestinians had to (a) recognize Israel, (b) relinquish terrorist violence,
and (c) agree to honor all past Middle East peace agreements. For the
members of the Quartet there was no diplomatic meat on those bones except
open, indeed mindless catering to Israeli preferences. For Israel's Zionist
leadership, that posture fitted a habit of more than five decades: Never
make any material concessions to the Palestinians, and always lean on the
West to get the Palestinians into line.
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- For the Palestinians, the agenda was clear enough. Abbas
was under great outside pressure to meet the Quartet/Israeli agenda; he
was under heavy Fatah pressure to try to take the initiative away from
Hamas. But he had to know that if he succeeded only partially, he would
lose the backing of many, if not most Palestinians, and risk generating
new militant groups to take up the struggle. If members of the Quartet
and the Israelis did not see those prospects, their failure to do so merely
underscored their persistent blindness in reading the Palestinian situation.
There simply could be no agreement to those outsider demands that would
meet internal Palestinian requirements.
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- The Quartet posture in this situation needs careful examining.
If the members of the Quartet were members of the Israeli team, or merely
advocates for the Israeli-preferred outcomes, they could quite properly
behave as they do. However, if, as they assert, they are dedicated to
finding peace in the Middle East, meaning finding answers that serve the
needs and aspirations of both sides, then their one-sided view is both
inappropriate and self-deceiving. They must learn to step back, and promote
a fair and balanced approach to the situation that pursues with equal vigor
the rights and interests of both parties. They have not done that; nor,
to be fair to them, have they ever pretended to be doing that. They have
asserted, to be sure, that they are serving the peace process, but in deeds,
reinforced by even more words, they are serving as Israeli enforcers.
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- It is long past time that the Quartet members should
recognize that they are being hypocritical and dishonest. Granted, on Palestinian
rights the Quartet members are followers of a long tradition of hypocrisy
and dishonesty. As one looks at recent historical analysis, notably the
work of Israeli historian Ilan Pappe (see The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine),
it is clear there has been little honesty. The Balfour Declaration had
to have been written tongue in cheek, because its principal edict-that
the rights of the Palestinian people would not be infringed-was not observed
by the British, nor, after World War II, by the United Nations, and certainly
not by the Israelis. And once David Ben Gurion and his team of terrorists
(Irgun and Stern) plus the Hagana (the collective forerunners of Israel's
Defense Force) began the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948, they met
very little interference. Where one UN official, Count Bernadotte, intervened
to defend/insist on fairness for the Palestinians, the Israeli Stern group
assassinated him. Integrity in matters of defending Palestinian rights
was as much a victim of that crime as the Count.
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- Ethnic cleansing proceeds today, slowly but certainly,
through Israeli programs of new settlements, Israeli-only roads, and the
meandering wall that virtually everywhere grabs more Palestinian land.
Those acts are part of a reign of terror that routinely involves arrests,
raids, shootings, bulldozing of homes and businesses, land confiscation,
harassment at hundreds of checkpoints, and strip searches of women and
children. Over a period of sixty years those "facts on the ground"
have been persuasive with countless Palestinians, even though virtually
all governments have ignored them. Moreover, those facts on the ground
are the central cause of the creation and the activities of Palestinian
militants, insurgents, and acts of terrorism. It should be remembered
that Fatah, originally founded by Yassir Arafat, chose the path of militancy,
political activism and terrorism, before a combination of failure and corruption
reduced its utility.
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- Fatah went through this process because of a promise
of peace that never materialized. It has been convenient for outsiders
to blame that failure on Arafat. But despite his inadequacies, the real
cause of Fatah's failure has been Israeli intransigence. No peace negotiation
to date has involved real, meaning here/now Israeli concessions to the
Palestinians, only promises. But as the promises were widely touted in
international media, the process of ethnic cleansing has gone on, largely
below the radar of public interest. Under the media noise generated by
chaos in Iraq, Israeli occupation and ethnic cleansing continues. New
settlements creep into the margins of any would-be Palestinian state, and
the Palestinian people are powerless to stop it. Under the protective
umbrella of Quartet insistence on Palestinian concessions and good behavior,
the Israelis march briskly on, doing as they choose with the remainder
of Palestine.
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- Holding the Palestinians to the standard being demanded
by Israeli leadership and the Quartet is diplomatically naïve. How
naive is illustrated by the fact that US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice has said she will deal with Fatah and Abbas-the minority party in
the government, but not with the elected majority of the Palestinian government,
Hamas. In any other situation where the issues are of national or, in the
Palestinian case, of vital interest to the majority of people, the elected
majority leaders would be sought out. That would be so simply because
diplomatic agreements reached with minorities have a habit of failing.
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- Peace cannot be achieved in the Middle East, or even
facilitated by forcing the Palestinians to recite a catechism. That idea
is simplistic when it is recognized that (a) the Zionists will make no
promises they intend to keep, even if the catechism is recited, (b) the
creeping land grabs will continue at every opportunity, (c) any approach
to a negotiating table where real and well known interests of the Palestinian
people will be discussed seriously will continue to be put off into the
distant future, (d) the tiny plot of land that is the contorted area of
a possible Palestinian state will go on shrinking, (e) Israeli dreams of
a greater Israel will flourish, (f) the aspirations of the Palestinian
people will continue to wither, and (g) given the pattern to date, the
Quartet, the Zionists and others are likely to blame the failure to make
peace on the Palestinians.
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- Even many Israelis see the path being taken by the Quartet
as totally wrong. A few days ago, one of the most powerful figures in the
Israeli government stated publicly that the boycott of Hamas not only has
failed, it has worsened the situation and it has undercut even further
any real prospects for peace. Yuval Diskin, Israel's top international
intelligence chief, said the boycott has pushed the group toward Iran.
That, of course, is no surprise, since Israeli, US and European denials
of funds to the Palestinian government have created a desperate public
service, employment and health situation.
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- By leading the current Quartet posture against Hamas,
the Bush administration is further undercutting the integrity of long-standing
US support for democratic government. The election of Hamas to a majority
in the national assembly in January 2006 occurred in an election that international
observers declared open and fair. US refusal to deal with Hamas tells people
everywhere that Americans like democracy only when it elects people US
leadership wants in office. Hamas won that election because it earned the
respect and support of the Palestinian people for its posture on future
dealings with Israel. In that respect, the January 2006 election was a
referendum on the basic peace proposal suggested by King Abdullah of Saudi
Arabia and a vindication of the Hamas refusal to recite the catechism.
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- There is only one way out of this situation. Fairness
requires that the international community and the Israelis start dealing
with the Palestinian people as equals, people of equal merit with equal
rights. The second requirement is to grant the Palestinian people the
right to speak for themselves, to sort out their internal differences without
interference. The third absolute requirement is that Israeli leaders sit
down on the other side of the table prepared to make decisions and concessions
on the real issues at stake. There are no mysteries here; the Palestinian
needs in this situation have been obvious for decades.
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- It is time to end Israel's reign of terror in Palestine.
To do that the Quartet must start acting fairly. First of all it is time
for the Quartet to back away from self-righteous posturing. As much pressure
must be put on Israeli leadership to reach a real agreement as is being
put on the Palestinians. In truth, it is obvious to close watchers of
this matter that far less pressure need be put on the Palestinians than
on the Israelis to achieve progress. The case needs genuine diplomacy;
what passes for that in the Quartet or with Israeli leadership right now
simply will not serve.
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- **********
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- The writer is the author of the recently published work,
A World Less Safe, now available on Amazon, and he is a regular columnist
on rense.com. He is a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the US
Department of State whose immediate pre-retirement positions were as Chairman
of the Department of International Studies of the National War College,
and as Deputy Director of the State Office of Counterterrorism and Emergency
Planning. He will welcome comment at wecanstopit@charter.net
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