By Vacy Vlazna
In April, President Abbas, true to form, buckled under international pressure to sacrifice the integrity of the land of Palestine on the altar of another bogus ‘peace’ initiative by friends of Israel.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) had been circulating to UN Security Council members a draft resolution condemning Israeli settlements when the French government effortlessly convinced Abbas to cease and desist the demand to protect diminishing Palestinian land being razed for settlement expansion until after France held its Paris talkfest.
Well, the Paris shindig, attended by foreign ministers from Europe, Arab States and the US has come and gone with notable diplomatic irrelevance. It ended, heedless of the French request for urgent deadlines, with no set timetable for yet another pointless peace stunt later in the year.
Inevitably, Paris impotently administered CPR to the dead two state solution, tokenly stated that the status quo is not sustainable while maintaining the status quo, purposely minimised criticism of Israel, mouthed empty alarm at the violence on the ground, dodged the Right of Return, fantasised about a mythical peace à la Arab Peace Initiative. A further dead giveaway of the inanity of the Paris pretence. was its acknowledgement of the key role of the failed quisling Quartet.
And Paree was flush with anti-Palestine quislings. Of the 26 countries represented, 11* have not recognised the State of Palestine. The host, yes, was the very same France that has no diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine, and is tied with Germany as ‘Europe’s largest exporter of arms to Israel’ (Halper). Not one French bullet nor air-to-ground missile, not one Rafaele fighter jet, nor Mistral helicopter carrier was sold to Palestine. In 2014, during Israel’s monstrous assault on Gaza, France was the first in the world to ban pro-Palestine rallies, even posting details of rallies could incur a year’s imprisonment or a 15,000 Euro fine. France has criminalised BDS under the Lellouche law as an incitement to hatred and anti-semitism which violates the right to freedom of expression once defended popularly and hypocritically by the Charlie Hebdo issue.
Seemingly unfazed by Israel’s destruction (this year alone) of 150 European funded projects at a loss of a mere $74 million, EU foreign policy head, Federica Mogherini, ‘stressed that the aim of the summit was not to impose terms’. This fits snugly with the EU’s overlooking the terms of the settlement funding ban in the Horizon 2020 agreement with Israel involving, according to Halper, ‘the biggest single R&D budget in the world, which will make €80 billion of funding available over seven years (2014–20)’
The Arab turncoat delegation included the Arab League, Saudi Arabia (of killing Yemeni children and bombing MSF hospital fame), Egypt, Jordan, Morocco all of which are US pawns thereby no friends of the Palestinian people. The Saudis are France’s top arms client and Jordan, UAE and Egypt (plus Israeli defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman) are manoeuvring for Death-Squad-Dahlan to succeed Abbas ignoring that prison not presidency is Dahlan’s rightful fate.
Double-dealer Ban Ki Moon jibber-jabbered about the need for courageous leadership- a concept that is beyond his ken. UN leadership should have booted out Israel from the UN decades ago for violating international law and ignoring dozens of UN resolutions particularly UNSC Resolution 242 calling for the withdrawal of Israel armed forced from territories in the 1967 war and 446 that “Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”
The cherry on the top of the quisling pie, was the absent PA (Palestinian and Israeli officials were not invited – go figure!) carrying on the Arafat tradition of fiddling perks while Palestine dwindles. In the mere 6 weeks from the PA suspension of its anti-settlement initiative to the end of the French sham, the Zionists pushed on airbrushing, dunum by dunum, Palestine from the face of the world;
Early April Plan No. 901/20 ‘which states the construction of a new bypass road on lands of Beit Ummer, Halhul and Al Arroub’ was begun.
23-4-16 ‘The Israeli authorities delivered notices to the Palestinian village of Jalud in the northern occupied West Bank, alerting residents that 5,000 dunams (1,250 acres) of private land were slated for confiscation in what appeared to be the retroactive legalization of illegal outposts in the area.’
26-4-16 ‘The committee of sit-inners in Occupied Jerusalem warned on Monday of the seriousness of the Israeli settlement project to build 1,690 new housing units over Qalandya town’s confiscated lands in Occupied Jerusalem.’
1-5-16 ‘Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked’s plan to apply Israeli laws to Jews living in West Bank settlements,opens way to annex the settlements.’
9-5-16 ‘Israeli ministry of security decided to establish a new settlement close to Shilo settlement for those settlers who will be evacuated from Amona outpost.’
23-5-16 ‘Israeli bulldozers from Bado’il settlement on Sunday leveled Palestinian plots of land belonging to Deir Ballut town, west of Salfit province. ‘
24-5-16 ‘Israeli Meyashvei Zion association revealed that a new settlement project is scheduled to be built at the expense of the public park in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Occupied Jerusalem.’
26-5-16 Extremist settler, Yehuda Glick who aims to destroy the al-Aqsa mosque enters the Knesset.
26-5-16 ‘Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said that her government will continue settlement construction and expansion in the West Bank and that more settlers will reside there.’
31-5-16 ‘The Israeli Civil Administration re-mapped over 15,000 acres in the occupied West Bank in an attempt at justifying illegal settlement expansion inside the re-designated areas.’
31-5-16 ‘President Reuven Rivlin ..vowed the West Bank settlement of Ariel would forever remain under Israeli control, despite its location deep inside the West Bank.’
6-3-16 ‘Israeli government endorsed, in a session held in Occupied Jerusalem, the investment of 220 million dollars in settlement projects in Jerusalem over five years under the pretext of “city development”.’
Don’t fool yourself that the Abbas gang are naive or victims of a Zionist-international conspiracy to obliterate Palestine. Victims they are not. They are co-conspirators since signing the Oslo Accords and Paris Protocols in the early nineties.
The PA, intimately familiar with Western and Arab quislings, knew the French farce was doomed to fail the Palestinian people, though cynically on cue Mansour, Erekat, Ashrawi, al Maliki moaned and shed crocodile tears. Yet, a few days before Paris, on 28 May, at the Arab League meeting in Cairo, Abbas agreed in principle to land swaps which he knows are illegal even though there’s precious little left of Palestine to swap thanks to years of two-state negotiations that Abbas and Netanyahu are keen to resume.
Abbas knows that for 100 years to this very day (and beyond ) the Zionist goal, which has never been compromised, is a Zionist state on the whole of Palestine. It is this goal that drives the settlement facts on the ground rendering the two state solution an illusion, a deception.
And Abbas and Co hang in there by directing their vicious security militia to protect Zionist interests and expansion by crushing Palestinian resistance and fending off the main threat to Israel, and to fat-cat-PA self-interests— reconciliation i.e. Palestinian unity.
You may wonder why Palestinians in the West Bank don’t stage a coup against the the corrupt PA/PLO and bring them to trial for treason under the PLO Revolutionary Penal Code 1979 that still applies:
Article 144: Any person who provides the enemy with documents, or is considered to have harmed military actions, or the security of military sites and centres, or any other military institutions shall be punished by death,
Article 148: Any person who leads the enemy to the sites of the revolutionary forces, or the allied forces, or misleads these forces shall be punished by death.
Well, you can ask Hamas affiliated prisoners in Zionist gaols due to PA intelligence sharing with Israel. Or ask the grieving parents of Adel Jaradat, 19 who was killed on 7th June during a PA raid in Silat Harithya near Jenin. PA security forces, trained by the US, conduct raids identical to Zionist Occupation Forces- and kill identically. Or ask the widow of Omar al-Nayef conveniently assassinated in the Palestinian embassy in Bulgaria. Or ask Kefah Quzmar tortured and held in solitary confinement without legal representation by the PA for daring to dissent on Facebook, “Do you know why the mukhabarat [intelligence service] is a rotten agency? Because the entire PA is rotten. Seif al-Idrissi is under arrest! #FreedomforSeif”
Nevertheless, the 6.2 million Palestinians isolated and trapped in the Zionist and PA pincers of brutal oppression have friends. The Palestinian civil society call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel which champions Palestinian rights and freedoms is activated by international grass roots activism that has rapidly evolved into a powerful resistance structure that Israel is desperate to destroy.
A pan-Palestine BDS joining Palestinians inside historic Palestine with the 6.2 million free diasporan Palestinians, in the spirit of the Palestinian ‘rejectfenchinitiative’ , could achieve what the PA/PLO has abrogated.
*France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, UK, USA, Canada
Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.
14 June, 2016
Countercurrents.org