The Last Exile

The big story in Palestinian politics is that Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced he would not seek re-election in January. Now there are rumours that the delayed elections scheduled for this January (which should have been held last January), will be post-poned and Abbas will continue to run the Palestinian Authority until the next election. The common wisdom contends Abbas announcement of his ‘impending’ retirement is that it is merely a rouse to garner support for his leadership and to pressure the international community into forcing Israeli concessions – specifically maneuvering the US into taking a hard-line with Israel.

One of the ways the ‘Mid-East’ psyche deals with the successes of the Israeli state is to attribute every Israeli success to outside forces – usually American. This makes a certain amount of sense from the Palestinian perspective but it ignores one of the realities of the Israeli-American relationship which is that the Americans cannot afford to cut the Israelis loose and lose all influence. An Israel unencumbered to American interests is free to pursue relationships with countries which could potentially conflict or thwart international American interests.

The oddity of Abbas’ current position – a complete Israeli settlement freeze in exchange before sitting down to continue negotiations with the Israelis is a complete 360 degree turn and cannot be entirely explained as a result of a change in Israeli administrations. Even Arafat never demanded a complete settlement freeze prior to negotiations. Besides the Palestinian Authority has negotiated agreements with Bibi the last time he was Prime Minister; so why not now? I am not so sure about the ‘common wisdom’ given the Fatah convention held last August which is the only material change I can see. Abbas now has to answer and appease a very hard line Fatah central committee who blame Abbas for mismanaging the Fatah-Hamas divide and are pushing for a US-Israeli estrangement given Obama alleged sympathies for the Palestinians.

The majority of those elected to the Central Committee are serious old style PLO hardliners and with US President Obama unable to squeeze a complete settlement freeze from the Israelis; Abbas is stuck between a rock and a hard place. He can neither move forward or regroup as he has no base of support outside of Ramallah. He has never been an overtly popular leader who it is now rumoured cannot risk venturing outside of his inner circle in Ramallah in recent years owing to ’security considerations’ – and the risk isn’t what the Israelis will do but what his own people will do if given the opportunity to get their hands on him.

Threatening to resign works in Abbas’ favour in distinct ways. He shows the Central Committee hardliners he has the full support of the international community which is important as it is directly tied to the Fatah purse, and subsequently, he gets a little breathing room from the demands of the Central Committee. He also gets to post-pone elections which could potentially see an increase in Hamas’ West Bank support.

Lately, I have been doing a great deal of pondering the Middle East peace process. I admit I get a certain amount of perverse pleasure watching diplomats twist and tie themselves up like pretzels depending on who their intended audience is but it occurs to me we need a better word than ‘peace process’ to describe the state of Israeli-Arab relations or we will never get to the end of the so-called peace process. In fact, it’s not really a peace process but a ‘war process’. Abet a low level conflict, which now and then sparks into a wider and more deadly confrontation. There is a temporary ‘cease-fire’ with Hamas in the Gaza Strip which means a ‘lull’ in the fighting and not that the war is over. Not only are the Palestinians busy fighting a war against Israel but are at war with themselves; hence – the West Bank/Gaza Strip divide.

First step – ignore both the Israelis and Palestinians. Each has their positions and both sides have offered as much as they can afford to give without risking civil war within their own societies. Their respective positions reflect the current realities of how things stand on the ground – as in today and both positions are intractable. So what needs to be done is change the realities on the ground which can most fully influence those ‘intractable’ positions towards change or compromise. So the next step is to settle the Palestinian Refugee issue before anything else – including resolving the so-called ‘settlements’ issue in the Disputed Territories. Firstly, Palestinians living in the West Bank have been enjoying an economic prosperity the likes of which they have not enjoyed for years. Secondly, while the ‘settlements’ represent not only Israeli-Jewish homes but provide a livelihood to Palestinians from contracting and construction as while a thousand other little spin-off industries. No one is going hungry and the taxes raised from a working population keeps the Palestinian Authority’s coffers full. It’s all good people.

Secondly, the beauty of settling the Palestinian Refugee issue is that a solution to the crisis requires neither the consent of the Israeli or Palestinian leadership to resolve it but the world needs to recognize – neither the Israeli or Palestinian society can afford to adsorb and settle an influx of 4.5+ million people in this small physical area and in a region which is often stricken by drought. There is no possible way the infrastructure of either societies can handle providing the most basic human needs of 4 million plus people. Certainly, if nothing else, there is not enough water to provide for the most basic daily water needs of an influx of almost 4 million plus people.

While I recognize the Palestinian leadership will be outraged the bald-faced truth is that the Palestinian leadership has not done one damn thing to lessen or ease conditions for Palestinians condemned to live in refugee camps throughout the Arab world. And yes, I do mean ‘condemned’ and furthermore, the conditions are so often truly horrendous I wouldn’t let an animal live like let alone a fellow human being. Time to bring the big guns out turns them on onward the Arab world.

There is no Palestinian leader, alive or dead, who has enough political capital or cache with the Palestinian people to make a single or slightest concession on the so-called Right of Return at the negotiating table with the Israelis. The central rationale for the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was to enforce, by hock, by crook, and the blood of every last Jew in the world (if necessary) to assert the alleged right of Palestinians to return to the former British Palestine Mandate.

There really is one way to test the feasibility of settling the Palestinian refugee without either the consent of the Israelis or Palestinian Authority; hold a referendum within the refugee camps and let the people decide. If this Forward article correctly reads the pulse of the Palestinian refugees correctly; pushing for full citizenship rights or resettlement to a neutral third country could be the way forward. For all those who vote full citizenship rights or resettlement; let the Obama Administration take up their cause and bring out the big guns to negotiate with the various Arab governments to make full citizenship rights a fact or find a third neutral country for resettlement. For those who vote to languish indefinitely in the camps for umpteen generations in squalor – let them.

Hat tip to the Elder of Ziyon for this translated tidbit from the PalPress Agency:

Jerusalem – Palestine Press – The International Committee of the Red Cross in the Jenin today, a program of visits for the month of the people of the prisoners in July in all the Israeli jails.

The Committee noted that the visits would be as follows: 9.23 in the Ramle prison July, prisons and Hdereym 14.28 Hasharon in July, 8.22 Damoun in July, the prisons and Shatta Jelbua (security and civilian) 9.23 in July , and the prison will be a visit Jelbua 7.21 in July, and in Beersheba 1,15,29 / July, and Ramón Nfha 6.20 in July, and Ashkelon in the 12, 26 July, and Megiddo in the 13, 27 July, and the Negev prison 8,22,29 in July, and Ofer in the 19 July.

While the professional Palestinian apologistas bleep endless about the alleged open air prison which the big bad Israelis allegedly keep the good burghers of Hamastan confined to – keep this single fact in mind; the International Committee of the Red Cross has yet to secure one single visit, in the last three years, to see the true prisoner of Hamastan – Gilad Shalit.

And if you have room for another thought – Egypt has a border with Hamastan and the price of cement is cheaper in Egypt than in Israel; so why isn’t Hamas negotiating with Egypt and buying cement, children shoes and hair conditioner from the Egyptians?

One of the things I have learned about life is that most things are all a question perspective. A friend of mine first learned this lesson as a teenager at the family dinner table when she thought to monopolize the dinner time conversation whining about how horrible and depressing her day at school was.

Her father, a former Minsk woods partisan, wanted to know how many Nazis, how many bullets, and how many others were waiting around every corner to kill her just because she existed she encountered to make her day so terrible? He might not have won the ‘most warm and cuddly’ Father of the Year award but he did teach her a little about personal perspective and that every day you find yourself alive has the potential to be – a very good day indeed.

But really; is there nothing more obnoxiously adolescent than a self-aggrandizing peace activist publicly moaning over alleged horrific treatment and circumstances she finds herself in once she goes to circumvent Israeli law? Ynet News:

An Israeli citizen who was among 21 peace activists apprehended by the IDF en route to the Gaza Strip says she was held under conditions resembling a “horror movie.” Houida Araf, who was released on Wednesday, told Ynet that she and a fellow Israeli peace activist were separated from the group and taken to the Ashdod Port.

They put us in a warehouse, where we slept on a cockroach-infested cement floor, as armed soldiers were monitoring us,” she said. “They didn’t say a word to us. They confiscated all our personal belongings and phones, and they didn’t let us contact anyone. A day later they left us at the Ashdod central bus station without any money or belongings.”

“What they did to us is unforgivable, but we’re not the story here,” Araf said. “The fact they threatened us with violence because we wanted to transfer medical supplies and drawing equipment for children is simply absurd.”

How much do you want to be Gilad Shalit would give just about everything to be left at penniless and without his ‘belongings’ at the central bus station in Ashdod?

If Araf and cohorts were really well and truly concerned for the children and health of Gazans; they would have just dropped off their ‘medical supplies and children’s drawing equipment’ to either the UNRWA or Red Cross offices in Israel…but then, she and her cohorts, wouldn’t have their 15 minutes of whine. Although, I really do think it would be instructive if someone were to ask Araf to describe what she believes is the physical circumstances in which Gilad goes to sleep in every single night since July 2006.