Ik wilde jullie dit atikel niet onthouden. groet Trees<\/p>\n
We Miss the Caustic Voice of Edward Said
\nNo Middle East Peace Without Justice
\nBy ROBERT FISK
\nThe Independent<\/p>\n
So, the Palestinians will end their occupation of Israel. No more will Palestinian tanks smash their way into Haifa and Tel Aviv. No more will Palestinian F-18s bomb Israeli population centers. No more will Palestinian Apache helicopters carry out \u201ctargeted killings\u201d \u2013 i.e., murders \u2013 of Israeli military leaders.
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\nThe Palestinians have promised to end all \u201cacts of violence\u201d against Israelis while Israel has promised to end all \u201cmilitary activity\u201d against Palestinians. So that\u2019s it, then. Peace in our time.<\/p>\n
A Martian \u2013 even a well-educated Martian \u2013 would have gathered that this was the message, supposing he dropped in on the fantasy world of Sharm el-Sheikh this week. Palestinians had been committing \u201cviolence,\u201d the Israelis carrying out \u201cinnocent\u201d operations. Palestinian \u201cviolence\u201d or \u201cterror and violence\u201d \u2013 the latter a more popular phrase since it carried the stigma of 9\/11 \u2013 was now at an end.<\/p>\n
Mahmoud Abbas, who told a close Lebanese friend this year that he wore a suit and tie so that he would look \u201cdifferent\u201d from Yasser Arafat \u2013 went along with all this. Just which people were occupying the homes of which other people remained a mystery.<\/p>\n
Silver-haired and wisdom-burdened, Abbas looked the part. We had to forget that it was this same Abbas who wrote the Oslo Accords, who in 1,000 pages failed to use \u2013 even once \u2013 the word occupation and who talked not of Israeli \u201cwithdrawal\u201d from Palestinian territory but of \u201credeployment.\u201d<\/p>\n
At no point at Sharm el-Sheikh did anyone mention occupation. Like sex, occupation had to be censored out of the historical narrative. As usual \u2013 as in Oslo \u2013 the real issues were put back to a later date. Refugees, the \u201cright of return,\u201d East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital: Let\u2019s deal with them later.<\/p>\n
Never before have we been in such need of the caustic voice of the late Edward Said. Settlements \u2013 Jewish colonies for Jews, and Jews only, on Arab land \u2013 were not, of course, discussed. Nor was East Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
Nor was the \u201cright of return\u201d of 1948 refugees. These are the \u201cunrealistic dreams\u201d that were referred to by the Israelis.<\/p>\n
All this will be discussed \u201clater\u201d \u2013 as they were supposed to be in Abbas\u2019 hopeless Oslo agreement. As long as you can postpone the real causes of war, that\u2019s OK. \u201cAn end to violence,\u201d that has cost 4,000 deaths \u2013 it was all said, minus the all-important equation that two-thirds of these were Palestinian lives. Peace, peace, peace. It was like terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It was the sort of stuff you could buy off a supermarket shelf. If only.<\/p>\n
At the end of the day the issues were these. Will the Israelis close down their massive settlements in the West Bank, including those that surround Jerusalem? No mention of this. Will they end the expansion of Jewish settlements \u2013 for Jews, and Jews only, across the Palestinian West Bank? No mention of this. Will they allow the Palestinians to have a capital in Arab East Jerusalem? No mention of this. Will the Palestinians truly end their intifada \u2013 including their murderous suicide bombings \u2013 as a result of these non-existent promises?<\/p>\n
Like the Iraqi elections, which were also held under foreign occupation, the Israeli-Palestinian talks were historic because they were \u201chistoric.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice \u201cwarned\u201d Palestinians they must \u201ccontrol violence\u201d but there was, as usual, no request to \u201ccontrol\u201d the violence of the Israeli army.<\/p>\n
Because the sine qua non of the equation was that the Palestinians were guilty. That the Palestinians were the \u201cviolent\u201d party \u2013 hence the admonition that the Palestinians must end \u201cviolence\u201d while the Israelis would merely end \u201coperations.\u201d The Palestinians, it seems, are generically violent. The Israelis generically law-abiding; the latter carry out \u201coperations.\u201d Mahmoud Abbas went along with this nonsense.<\/p>\n
It was all too clear in the reporting. What was on offer, said CNN, was \u201can end to all violence\u201d \u2013 as if occupation and illegal colonization was not a form of violence. The Associated Press talked gutlessly about \u201ctowns that, for now, continue to be under Israeli security control\u201d \u2013 in other words, under Israeli occupation, although they would not tell their readers this.<\/p>\n
So Mahmoud Abbas is going to be the Hamid Karzai of Palestine, his tie the equivalent of Karzai\u2019s green gown, \u201cour\u201d new man in Palestine, the \u201ctsunami\u201d that has washed away the contamination of Arafat, whose grave Rice managed to avoid. But the tank-traps remain: East Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and the \u201cright of return\u201d of 1948 Palestinians to the homes they lost.<\/p>\n
If we are going to clap our hands like the Sharm El-Sheikh \u201cpeacemakers,\u201d we\u2019d better realize that unless we are going to resolve these great issues of injustice now, this new act of \u201cpeacemaking\u201d will prove to be as bloody as Oslo. Ask Mahmoud Abbas. He was the author of that first fatal agreement <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ik wilde jullie dit atikel niet onthouden. groet Trees We Miss the Caustic Voice of Edward Said No Middle East Peace Without Justice By ROBERT FISK The Independent So, the Palestinians will end their occupation of Israel. No more will … Lees verder