On Monday, June 2, Fatah and Hamas announced the formation of a national unity government. The 17-member government will prepare Palestine for presidential and parliamentary elections in 2015. This represents a major step toward Palestinian national reconciliation.
President Mahmoud Abbas said that "this government, like its predecessors, will abide by all previously signed agreements and the PLO's [Palestinian Liberation Organization's] political agenda." Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, said the new transitional government ends "the era of division and opens the door for participation in politics and decision-making."
This is indeed an important step for the participation of all Palestinians in the affairs of their lands under occupation. Instead of punishing Palestinians and demonizing Abbas and Hamas, Prime Minister Netanyahu should support the transitional government.
Not surprisingly, though, the Netanyahu government already denounced the new Palestinian government and took a number of punitive measures. It immediately barred the passage of three prospective ministers from Gaza to West Bank, decided to withhold the taxes it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, and called on the international community to reject the transitional Palestinian government. Netanyahu added, "Abu Mazen [Abbas] today said yes to terror, and no to peace. This is a direct continuation of his policy of refusing peace."
Ever since the start of the Oslo process in the early 1990s, Palestinians and Israelis have lost much time and squandered many opportunities. The successive attempts of Camp David in 2000, the Taba Summit in 2001, the Road Map for Peace in 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002 and renewed in 2007 and numerous other proposals in between have all failed to bring freedom to Palestinians and security to Israel. The devastating power disparity between Israel and the stateless and impoverished Palestinians has not been lost on the people in the region.
This power disparity has changed only to Israel's advantage and to the detriment of Palestinian lives in the occupied territories. Several generations of Palestinians have lived under Israeli occupation and hoped for a degree of normalcy, prosperity and dignity. Israel's never-ending excuses for security have not made life any better for Israelis and Palestinians. As I have stated here before, a false dichotomy has been established between Israeli security and Palestinian freedom and independence. Both goals can be achieved if rational policies are implemented with genuine political will.
But as Avi Shlaim stated after the Gaza war of 2008, the issue is not security. Rather it is the fact that "the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times."
The problem is the deepening occupation of Palestine. Despite protests from the U.S. administration and the Europeans, the Netanyahu government continues to expand the settlement project. But one statement after another over the years has identified the occupation as the main obstacle to peace. A joint statement signed by 135 global leaders and published in The New York Times and Financial Times on Oct. 4, 2006 summed it up as follows: "The outlines of what is needed are well known, based on U.N. Security Council resolutions 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973, the Camp David peace accords of 1978, the Clinton Parameters of 2000, the Arab League Initiative of 2002, and the roadmap proposed in 2003 by the Quartet (U.N., U.S., EU and Russia). The goal must be security and full recognition to the state of Israel within internationally recognized borders, an end to the occupation for the Palestinian people in a viable independent, sovereign state, and the return of lost land to Syria."
The Quartet Statement of June 26, 2009 underlined the same point: "The Quartet underscored that the only viable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and fulfills the aspirations of both parties for independent homelands through two states for two peoples, Israel and an independent, contiguous, and viable state of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security."
Before anything else, Palestine is an issue of justice – a point Israeli political leaders need to understand. This is deeply engrained in the modern political vocabulary of the Arab world and the Palestinian issue remains one of its key sources. The late Anthony Shadid, the former New York Times Baghdad bureau chief and an astute observer of the Middle East, once noted that the word 'adl (justice) commands a heavy presence in all political talk in the Arab world. It is a "concept that frames attitudes from Israel to Iraq. For those who feel they are always on the losing end, the idea of justice may assume supreme importance."
The future Palestinian state must be founded on the basis of the principles of political independence, territorial contiguity, institutional viability and economic self-sufficiency. Israel cannot hope to create a "fake" Palestinian state that would function like an Israeli colony and expect the Palestinians and Arabs to accept it. A fully functioning, independent and prosperous Palestine is in the interest of all.
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