Welcome to the Weekend Holyland Wrap. No glib and whimsical intro this week, as I’m not in the damn mood. Let’s just get to it.
By Rechavia “Rick” Berman
I’ve already outlined the technical reasons why recognizing Palestinian “statehood” would be a mere mockery (to recap: No control over own population registry, no control over own imports, to name just two bits and pieces of ludicrous), but in the run-up to the whole stupid UN wankathon, we got an inkling of just how disgusting, duplicitous and devoid of integrity the Paltustanian Authority really is.
In an interview to Lebanon’s Daily Star newspaper, the PLO’s Ambassador to that country (which is to say the Paltustanian Authority’s ambassador to that country) stated flatly that even if Palestine is recognized as a full UN member along the 1967 borders (the West Bank and Gaza Strip), it will not grant citizenship to refugees – not even those refugees living in camps within the borders of this state.
The implications of this declaration are inescapable. The Israeli Right has actually been right all along – the Palestinian leadership really does not want peace and a state of its own, and will use whatever it’s given not to do for its own people, but to continue to hammer Israel.
I understand that the ambassador was referring only to a situation in which the UN recognizes but nothing changes on the ground regarding the reality of occupation, and that an actual bilateral agreement could change that; but still, it’s very telling. If you declare a state but keep almost 700 thousand of your own people stateless and disenfranchised (not even counting the 1.1 million refugees in Gaza, which the PA doesn’t even control on a Bantustan level anymore, and of course not counting another couple million refugees abroad) – then you’re not at all interested in serving your people. If you really want statehood, then the moment you declare it, it applies to all your people, or at least all your people already in the area you pretend to control.
On the other hand, what Israel wants to do – keep the entire Palestinian population of the West Bank disenfranchised, occupied, molested and oppressed until they leave or break out in a bloody enough uprising to give “fog of war” cover to another Nakba – is equally heinous. Probably more. I lose count at such levels of stench.
Bibi made it absolutely clear (somewhere in between zoological observations) that he has zero intention of making an actual agreement resulting in an actually independent, contiguous Palestine. There are no security assurances in the universe that will make the specter of Qassams fired at Ben Gurion Airport less threatening – except massive overt and covert Israeli presence on the “Palestine” side of the border, rendering any pretense of independence a sham. Bibi wants troops along the mountains, in the (still being raped, thank you) Jordan Valley, and everywhere else that will put his Jid paranoia to a semblance of rest. Merely having the ability to re-invade and stomp Palestine into the ground at will in retaliation for such an attack wouldn’t be enough. He needs to already be there.
Cause, see, this whole UN bid is not about sovereignty, it’s about access to the International Criminal Court, and the ability to sue Israelis for the crimes of the occupation. While this is a worthy goal which I support, when you say “I hereby declare myself a sovereign state”, that’s gotta mean something. If you take a minimalist approach to your own sovereignty, don’t be surprised when others give it even less than that.
Meanwhile, while two corrupt, evil aging men in designer suits were blathering in front of a bunch of other crooks, a vehicle carrying a settler and his baby flipped over somewhere along an apartheid road in the apartheid occupied territories, killing both occupants. Israeli police have determined that this accident is connected to rocks being allegedly thrown at the car, but the story is not yet clear and even before the investigation began, the hard-core settlers vowed a pogrom in revenge. While this accident occurred, another possible accident occurred in which a Palestinian child was run over by a settler, and one outright murder took place as Essam Kemal Odeh, 37, was shot to death in his home village of Qusra during a protest. The IDF thugs have confirmed that they were using live ammunition and have promised to “look into the matter”, with the reigning officer in the area saying “there appear to have been some irregularities in the conduct of the forces” No shit, Sherlock? What tipped you off – the use of live ammunition where it’s supposedly not allowed, or did you give special dispensation for that in light of the UN-geddon?
These sorts of incidents, and not oral vomiting at the UN, is what reality in the occupied territories is about. And now that the dog and pony show is over for now, Palestinians will be free to succumb to disillusion and turn to violence – which is exactly what their enemy wants.
Now, the two-state solution is dead. There is no political will for it in Israel, poll results aside. Nobody is gonna stomach removing 300 thousand settlers, let alone another 300 thousand from East Jerusalem (and to think that in the 90’s Israel could have evacuated the rest of the WB and kept every single settler neighborhood in what it calls “Jerusalem” in place, and the world would have celebrated its sacrifice)
And to those of you waxing naïve about a democratic one state, please, for the love of all gods and goddesses, put the bong down (pass it here, actually…) and do the math, even assuming the democratic nature and functioning requisite institutions among the Palestinian population:
Tomorrow morning a OneState is declared, with the vote given to everyone currently living between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Elections are called. What will the results be? That’s right, you clever boys and girls you – deadlock. A very slight majority for Jewish parties, and zero possibility of any actual reforms that will give the Palestinians anything other than the vote. Like Martin Luther King said, it don’t matter if the negro is allowed at the lunch counter when he ain’t got the money to buy himself a burger there. And ALL the economic and military power will be in Jewish hands pending any reforms – which the above-proven deadlock will prevent.
To pretend otherwise is to believe that after making the immense concession of enfranchising the occupied Palestinians and dooming themselves to an electoral minority status within a decade or two, any significant number of Jewish voters will then, in the first unified elections, not feel that they have already conceded above and beyond, but will go on and vote for any sort of affirmative action to make up for decades of exploitation and discrimination.
So, we have one state, we have political deadlock, the lives of most Palestinians don’t get any better and no refugees are allowed back to where they or their granddaddy came from (because that requires changing laws in a democratic process). How long before inevitable civil war? Not long at all.
And for the last time – don’t talk to me about South Africa. In SA, all you had to do was give everyone the vote, hold elections, and voila! You had a single party with an absolute majority to make immediate reforms to ease the pressure. Here you don’t have that. That’s a decisive difference.
Therefore, to dream about a one-state solution is to imagine that the world will not only force Israel to enfranchise everyone, but having done so will not consider the task over, and will continue to force Israel to make the necessary reforms – and that Israel will actually succumb to this pressure peacefully and not go all Masada in response. That, my dear deluded friends, will never happen.
So the two-state solution (which I only ever believed in as an interim solution for a federation, which would then be formed by equal, sovereign entities) is dead, and the one-state solution is a guaranteed bloodbath. Continuing the occupation also guarantees a bloodbath.
So damn you, the current and any foreseeable government of Israel. Blast you, Fatah and the PA. A curse on both your houses – just try to hold it off till I scrounge the money to get my family the hell out of this doomed land. I love it, but while I personally don’t much care if I live or die anymore, I don’t have the right to adopt the same attitude for my children.