March 6, 2011

Israel’s continued colonization of what remains of historic Palestine makes a Palestinian state nonviable. The PLO’s early dream of seeing a bi-national secular, democratic Palestine collided with Zionist racism, which has always has chosen in favor of conquest and the exclusion of Palestinians. From there, the Zionists used the colonies to deplete resources and bring Jews into the conquered areas---in sum, putting the Jewish State of Israel ahead of any other consideration, which also makes the possibility of a circumscribed Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza unrealistic.

In 1988 in Algiers the PLO recognized Israel. Israel later recognized the PLO but not Palestine. For that reason, the Conference of Madrid and the Oslo Accords were done in bad faith, on Israel’s part. Before that, in between, and afterwards the settlements have continued, along with other attributes of Zionism. The same has happened with governments of Likud-labour Party members (of the Socialist International, the same that welcomed the party of Ben Ali, of Tunisia, by the way), Kadima or whatever they are. Also with Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr. and Obama. With the PLO of 1988, after the elections of Arafat and Abud Abbas or during the current period of decay. And also with Felipe Gonzalez, Aznar or Zapatero, Delors, Santer, Prodi, Barroso…

Of course, some of responsibility for this vacuum lies with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority’s own leaders, mainly those affiliated with Al Fatah, and also with the rest of the organizations that did not secure democratic structures representing the totality of the Palestinian people.

At a minimum, the Palestinian insistence to not continue negotiations on an unending, continually revised "Peace Process " if colonization deepens with new settlements and extension of the Wall in the West Bank, helps to reveal the actual state of the situation. Europe, the United States, Russia, the United Nations, the Quartet, and the godfathers of Annapolis remain silent. Israel builds new settlements or extends previous ones, simultaneously, with the evacuation and expulsion of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem and other places. The Palestine Authority has effectively built its own wall, while the sword of Israeli Zionism advances. And those of Obama, Alston Ashton and others remain as portrayed…

These days, public opinion, although mostly bored with an unending conflict, is assaulted by the events that exhaust headlines daily, making people forget the previous day’s news, and one goes from the refrain that negotiations exist (thanks to the deceit of friendly mass media of the status quo and western values) for which there is a Peace Process, to the knowledge that Israel, as always, (governed by one Zionist government or another) continues making conquest and expulsion its hallmarks of identity.

This perspective has made Palestinian overseers look for a third way that allows them to not "leave the table of negotiations" (that do not exist), to continue maintaining the farce that Israel wants and the Quartet fronts for, that is to say that yes, that no, that I will not meet, now the prime minister of the West Bank Fayyad meets with some Israeli, but without ruining the playing cards and revealing that the Palestine Authority is an empty shell that controls the police - when desired – of the Palestinian Bantustans, while at the same time keeping with a diplomatic strategy consisting of requesting the recognition of Palestinian State, if possible, within the borders of the 1967 cease-fire, which are different and smaller than those that determined the partition of the historical Palestine of 1947.

This tactic has seen a little bit of success. It symbolically reinforces the Palestine Authority and points to the Israeli occupation as the problem. The initiators of recognition of a Palestinian state were the Latin-Americans republics, beginning with Brazil, an actor that has entered on the international scene, is in the G-20, aspires to be a permanent member of the UN Security Council and has made other international movements of international autonomy like the Turkish Brazilian plan and the pursuit of the Iranian nuclear industry. Recognition of a Palestinian State has been accepted with a cadence that had an informative continuity: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile - without mentioning the borders …

The intention is to surpass the UN Security Council, in which there is fear of a veto by the United States and a rubber-stamping by the other Quartet members, and then go to the United Nations General Assembly in order to isolate Israel.

That is where the Palestinian tactic has its greatest problem. On November 15, 1988, when the PLO Congress of Algiers recognized Israel, 104 States recognized Palestine. Israel and the hypocrisy in the majority of those 104 governments (and the rest that did not do it) have achieved a "normalization" by making the occupation that Palestinians are subjected to compatible with an increase of those same governments’ relations with Israel and treatment of Israel as a "normal" state.

The same nations of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay (new recognizers of a Palestine State) have signed an agreement with Israel through Mercosur, which accepts the application of the "internal" legislation of each State in determining the origin of products. And that is actually nothing symbolic, except to accept the colonies.

Spain has elevated the rank of the Palestinian diplomat. But Spain’s normalization with Israel, in the sense that we noted above, is lubricated by the budgetary arm of the Sefarad House of Israel, the agreement in which Israel enters the OECD or the CERN, selling or buying arms and other military agreements, avoiding the international reports of its own diplomats or modifying the norms of universal jurisdiction to prevent processes regarding crimes against humanity, not protesting to Israel about the damages caused to its donations (the airport of Gaza, for example) or accepting that Israeli colonization is an element that disturbs ' negotiations' without taking a position as to how it affects their relations, camouflaging its cynicism and hypocrisy (as other states do) in which Israeli-Palestinian negotiations exist, and rejecting the fact that these are only an alibi to continue advancing colonization, while a Palestine elite camouflages its own impotence and well-being.

So, without diminishing the good news that there are governments that indicate what is obvious---that a Palestinian State should exist and that the marking of the 1967 borders would give it a minimum viability, civil society must ask for coherence in their governments in commercial, military, scientific, sport matters, preventing that an occupying state like Israel be treated as "normal." The Campaign of Boycott, Disinvestments and Sanctions, in the pattern of the struggle against racist South Africa is adequate. Not to buy Israeli products, to isolate Israel economically or in another areas is an adequate mechanism such that a catharsis in a society like that of Israel, that does not recognize the other---the Palestinian and his suffering, will take place.

Recognition of a virtual Palestinian State that only exists in Facebook does not worry Israel. If what is demanded, in practical terms, were the respect of the international rights, it would be the end of the occupation. And, yes, that is the objective.