Palestinians stand firm on their land
By Ghassan Michel Rubeiz
Israelis and Palestinians remain trapped in a volatile, bloody cul-de-sac with little prospect of a way out, says Aaron David Miller, a seasoned (former) US state Department official
Recent history shows that air and land attacks on Palestinians will not stop their struggle.
Israel’s last week attack on Jenin’s refugee camp in the West Bank was not an exception toward ending the vicious cycletoward ending the vicious cycle.
With advanced weapons and powerful allies Israel has the upper hand. Jack Khoury observed that Israelis want to end Palestinian unrest without questioning its root causes: Every Palestinian is a potential danger to Israeli security and is therefore a legitimate target… Chosen People can rule forever, the Palestinians don’t deserve a future and Palestinian youth must accept the situation.( Haaretz, July 4, 2023)
International condemnation of Israel’s occupation remains weak but it is getting stronger as Tel-Aviv escalates land grabbing.
The Washington Post’s Todays World View column of Ishaan Tharoor with Sammy Westfall (July 7) discusses the failure of the US in handling Israel’s evolving militancy and theft of Arab land.
The question of how Palestinians should conduct their struggle is not an easy one. Among Arab heads of states, the support of Palestinian armed struggle waxes and wanes. Most Arabs tend to believe that what was taken by force should be returned by force.
Professor Hassan Nafa’a, a Cairo University political scientist, believes that eventually Palestinian fighters will achieve their goals. The Egyptian scholar identifies three factors which drive Palestinians to sustained resistance: Israel has closed doors to negotiations, international social justice has steadily eroded, and most Arab States have abandoned the Palestinian cause. (Alhewar, July 4, 2023- article in Arabic).
The three Gulf States, which signed the Abraham Accords (in September 2020) have lost interest in the Palestinian struggle for independence; they have adopted the US feeble position on Palestinian statehood.
For over five decades, the US has been engaged in an abusive partnership with Israel. Despite regularly expressing concerns toward building new Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, Washington remains in tacit agreement with Israel’s policy of ignoring an open-ended occupation of Arab land. While Washington is not in favor of continued expansion of illegal Jewish housing on Palestinian land, it supports the widening of the Abraham Accords circle.
Like some leaders in the Arab Gulf, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Selman (known as MBS) is not very keenly supportive of Palestinian rights, but he does not seem to be in a hurry to join the Abraham Accords. To discuss the possibility, MBS wants Israel to make progress on Palestinian statehood. He has other requests from Washington which are related to security and nuclear energy.
Since the Accords were signed three years ago, the new emerging alliances make Israel weaker and Saudi Arabia stronger. Saudi Arabia today is the new “Egypt” as a norm setter for the Arab world. The Saudis have reconciled diplomatically with Iran, Washington is negotiating a modest nuclear deal with Iran, and Netanyahu’s extreme rightwing Israeli cabinet faces an internal uprising aimed at restoring what is left of democracy. For a thorough analysis of Saudi prospects of normalization with Israel read Jake Walles:read Jake Walles:
It is my opinion that if President Biden pushes Saudi Arabia into a premature partnership with Tel-Aviv, he might be making as grave a mistake as Bush Junior made in his invasion of Iraq two decades ago. If Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Palestine are left out in the cold through a Washington-led regional Accord- with apartheid at its center- no one could figure out the implications for the Middle East and beyond. A suspiciously viewed ( by Tehran) Saudi- Israeli partnership could threaten the much needed diplomatic achievements recently made between Tehran and the Arab Gulf.
The US knows that the Israelis are not willing to offer significant concessions on the Palestine question. They have gone too far in settlement building and claiming entitlement. Yet the US State Department keeps trying to “square the circle”, by urging Riyadh to lower its expectations on Palestine and Israel to augment its concessions. Prime Minister Netanyahu is pushing hard to build Arab tolerance for Israel, but he is not sure what concessions to make. He leads an insecure government which has grandiose plans to annex the entire West Bank.
The White House has additional motivation to expand the Abraham Accords. President Biden is too eager for Riyadh to make peace with Israel as quickly as possible, in order to score a foreign policy win before the next presidential elections. While thinking of boosting his election prospects, Biden is misreading Arab public opinion. The Palestine question remains the Arab world’s open woundremains the Arab world’s open wound.
While the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco, are willing to join the Accords, in order to satisfy local short-term goals, the Arab people are not willing to do so. The recent events in Jenin and Nablus can only reinforce existing Arab suspicion of Tel-Aviv. And new Israeli settlements can only fuel existing Arab anger toward Tel-Aviv.
The people of Palestine may be divided and lack good leadership. But they have chosen to stay on the land and struggle for it with all that they have.
- Palestinians stand firm on their land - July 9, 2023
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