Saturday, November 15, 2008
Happy Dependence Day, Palestine
Aah, Gaza. 1.5 million people, 80 per cent of them hanging on international aid, crammed into a small space, making it one of the most densely populated places on Earth. It is the very definition of a dependent territory, its airspace, borders and coastline under Israeli control. Since HAMAS seized control last year an Israeli siege has, according to the Red Cross, created a dramatic fall in living standards. Israel's authorities state that the blockade is for their security, and it will persist so long as their Islamist foes stay in control in the strip, while armed groups launch rockets across the border. This week Israel's 'security' needs apparently needed to extend to letting Gaza's electricity run out and shutting the crossings it controls so that no food can get in. Palestine could hardly be more dependent today. Happy anniversary indeed.
The only just and practical solution to this spiral lies with the plan proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 and endorsed by the Arab League. The Arab states will normalise their relations with Israel in response for its withdrawal from the territories of Palestine and Syria that it is occupying. Even HAMAS endorses it. But the ball is very much in the Israeli government's court. Frustratingly, the recently departed PM Ehud Olmert recently said Israel will have to give up the Occupied Territories, which isn't easy thing to say, even out of power. And the upcoming election will be contested between Tzipi Livni, from Olmert's Kadima party, who has disassociated herself from these comments, and Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, a stiff who would sooner shoot himself in the foot than accept the existence of any Palestinian state. Clear thinking needs to come from somewhere, though, for the benefit of the Palestinians and the security of the Israelis, politically intertwined as they are.
We have an anniversary. On 15 November 1988 the Palestinian National Council, belonging to the PLO, adopted the Palestinian Declaration of Independence from its temporary refuge and HQ in Algeria. The declaration, along with subsequent clarification, proclaimed a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, de facto recognising Israel in its boundaries before the 1967 war. It was this war in 1967 where the Israeli army seized the remaining Palestinian lands, which at that point were occupied by Egypt and Jordan since 1948. In all of this upheaval the Palestinian people themselves had no say. But after forty years of occupation the PLO were definitively stating that they would share the land with their enemy with two states sitting alongside each other. Things got better. Arafat renounced terrorism against Israel shortly after, and then met American conditions for negotiation by stating his support for previous UN resolutions on a two-state settlement.
There has now been sixty years of occupation, and if the news reports are anything to go by, things are not going well. Certainly not as well as they should be. Today 96 countries recognise Palestine. To put that in perspective, 52 UN members recognise Kosovo, a country feeling sufficiently stable to apply to participate in Eurovision next year. Across the world the Palestinians have a relatively high degree of sympathy, and the mission to liberate them is as fashionable as other 'right-on' causes like freeing Tibet, banning the bomb and saving the whale, if not more so. Two crucial countries that refuse to recognise Palestine, however, just happen to hold the keys to a lasting independent state: The honest broker, the USA and the hungry neighbour, Israel. In fact, despite claims that it is waiting for a true partner for peace, successive Israeli governments, be they Labour, Likud or Kadima, have carried out policies to try and ensure that an independent Palestine cannot come about. Since Israeli occupation in 1967 they have permitted the building of Jewish settlements and Jewish only roads to consolidate control, splintering the Palestinian land into an ungovernable patchwork of territories.
There has now been sixty years of occupation, and if the news reports are anything to go by, things are not going well. Certainly not as well as they should be. Today 96 countries recognise Palestine. To put that in perspective, 52 UN members recognise Kosovo, a country feeling sufficiently stable to apply to participate in Eurovision next year. Across the world the Palestinians have a relatively high degree of sympathy, and the mission to liberate them is as fashionable as other 'right-on' causes like freeing Tibet, banning the bomb and saving the whale, if not more so. Two crucial countries that refuse to recognise Palestine, however, just happen to hold the keys to a lasting independent state: The honest broker, the USA and the hungry neighbour, Israel. In fact, despite claims that it is waiting for a true partner for peace, successive Israeli governments, be they Labour, Likud or Kadima, have carried out policies to try and ensure that an independent Palestine cannot come about. Since Israeli occupation in 1967 they have permitted the building of Jewish settlements and Jewish only roads to consolidate control, splintering the Palestinian land into an ungovernable patchwork of territories.
Yet it is not just the authorities in Israel and the USA that are to blame. The sorry shape Palestine is in has in part been allowed to develop because the Palestinian Authority has used the international legitimacy it gained in the late 1980s to repeatedly sign what one might call dependence agreements with Israel. It signed a dependence agreement in 1993 with the Oslo Accords, which allowed Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza to be under full Israeli militray control. It then signed another dependence agreement in 2005 with the Agreed Principles for Rafah Crossing, which required an EU monitoring force to oversee the Rafah crossing into Egypt. This crossing in practice was closed temporarily whenever the Israeli Defence Forces deemed it necessary, and was then closed peremantly by the EU monitors after the HAMAS takeover because of the EU's policy of no contact with the Islamic party. The result was to trap Gaza's residents in a living hell with EU consent.
Aah, Gaza. 1.5 million people, 80 per cent of them hanging on international aid, crammed into a small space, making it one of the most densely populated places on Earth. It is the very definition of a dependent territory, its airspace, borders and coastline under Israeli control. Since HAMAS seized control last year an Israeli siege has, according to the Red Cross, created a dramatic fall in living standards. Israel's authorities state that the blockade is for their security, and it will persist so long as their Islamist foes stay in control in the strip, while armed groups launch rockets across the border. This week Israel's 'security' needs apparently needed to extend to letting Gaza's electricity run out and shutting the crossings it controls so that no food can get in. Palestine could hardly be more dependent today. Happy anniversary indeed.
The only just and practical solution to this spiral lies with the plan proposed by Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah in 2002 and endorsed by the Arab League. The Arab states will normalise their relations with Israel in response for its withdrawal from the territories of Palestine and Syria that it is occupying. Even HAMAS endorses it. But the ball is very much in the Israeli government's court. Frustratingly, the recently departed PM Ehud Olmert recently said Israel will have to give up the Occupied Territories, which isn't easy thing to say, even out of power. And the upcoming election will be contested between Tzipi Livni, from Olmert's Kadima party, who has disassociated herself from these comments, and Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, a stiff who would sooner shoot himself in the foot than accept the existence of any Palestinian state. Clear thinking needs to come from somewhere, though, for the benefit of the Palestinians and the security of the Israelis, politically intertwined as they are.
Until then, here's to another happy dependence day.
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