For the Zionists, Palestine was a "land without a people for a people
without a land (1)" and the indigenous people did not exist. ---- Byvoting for the partition plan on November 29, 1947, the UN gave more
than half of Palestine to the settlers who made up only a little more
than a third of the population. The idea of "two states" existed, but
it was particularly unfair. The Zionists and the Hashemite dynasty (2)
had agreed to share Palestine (3) and, after the war of 1948-49, there
would be no Palestinian state. The West Bank and East Jerusalem would be
annexed by Jordan. Gaza would be under Egyptian protectorate.
This denial of the existence, rights and dignity of the Palestinians
would continue after this war. Immediately after leading a premeditated
ethnic cleansing, David Ben-Gurion would declare: "We did not expel
anyone, the Arabs left of their own accord."
With the conquest of all of historic Palestine in 1967 and the beginning
of the colonization of what had not been conquered in 1948, the desire
to make Palestine disappear became clear. In Israel, the word
"Palestinian" does not exist and there is always talk of these "Arabs"
dissolving into the Middle East.
Oslo or the great illusion.
Only one thing was signed in Oslo in September 1993: "security
cooperation", that is, the obligation for the occupied to ensure the
security of the occupier. And this signature definitively transformed
the Palestinian Authority into a collaborating entity.
The key issues for Palestine, namely the occupation, colonization, the
Palestinian state, Jerusalem, prisoners, the right of return of refugees
..., were discussed and nothing was signed. During the 26 months between
the signing of the Oslo Accords and the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin,
the latter installed 60,000 new settlers and sent the Israeli army to
Hebron to protect the settlers. What peace was this? There were about a
hundred thousand settlers installed in the occupied territories in 1993.
Today, there are approaching 900,000.
The "international community" will play a detestable role. She will
claim that there is a "peace process" while the colonial steamroller is
developing. The "negotiations" (4) which are as many demands for
capitulation of the Palestinians on their rights will multiply.
Charles Enderlin recounts in "The Shattered Dream" how Ehud Barak and
Bill Clinton will try to push Yasser Arafat to capitulate at Camp David.
When Arafat refuses to sign, Clinton explains to him "that he is a dead
man" and "that he will be made to bear the responsibility for the
failure". And Barak declares: "we have made generous offers that Arafat
has refused. We no longer have a partner for peace". These famous
"generous offers" consisted of making the village of Abu Dis the
Palestinian capital, the occupier keeping Jerusalem and the main
colonies. And of course, there was no question of the return of the
refugees.
For 20 years, we have been in the most total hypocrisy. Officially, the
UN, the European Union and even the United States defend the "two-state
solution". Israel is against it, multiplies new colonies and
institutionalizes the occupation. And the "international community"
protects the occupier, criminalizes support for Palestine and even, in
the midst of genocide in Gaza, arms the genocidaires.
Two states? Not possible!
When you cross the "green line" (5), you instantly wonder "where is
Palestine"? You see the colonies, the wall and the "bypass roads" (6)
everywhere. All the major Palestinian cities and most of the villages
are surrounded. Le Monde Diplomatique published a map of the Palestinian
Archipelago a few years ago, to emphasize that the Palestinian
territories have no unity or territorial continuity. The archipelago has
become a few isolated spots.
Asked about the viability of two states in 2007, Victor Batarseh, PFLP
mayor (7) of Bethlehem, showed the situation in his city: there used to
be a beautiful forest between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Today there is
the gigantic colony of Har 'Homa whose buildings arrive in front of the
Bethlehem city hall. "The Palestinian State, where do you put it?" "
There have been evacuations of Israeli settlers in history: about ten
thousand at the time of the evacuation of the Sinai after peace with
Egypt (8) and about 8,000 during the evacuation of the Gaza colonies (9)
decided by Ariel Sharon. The settlers in the West Bank and East
Jerusalem number in the hundreds of thousands. Among them, there are
many members of the religious extreme right and they are armed. There is
no realistic possibility of evacuating them without great violence.
The economies of Gaza and the West Bank have been destroyed by the
impossibility of producing or trading normally, by the transformation of
these territories into captive markets forced to consume Israeli
products that are often of poor quality. Tens of thousands of
Palestinians have in the past been immigrant workers in Israel,
precarious and underpaid and above all regularly dismissed at the whim
of the occupier.
In short, to think that what remains of Palestine could be transformed
into a viable state is a dream.
Two States? Not desirable!
Zionist ideology is initially a theory of separation, stating that Jews
and non-Jews cannot live together, neither in the homeland nor in the
future Jewish state. Separation led to settler colonialism, the
murderous concept of an ethnically pure state, and now fascism. Two
states means the preservation of the Jewish state. A state that is not
that of all its citizens is an apartheid state and is not legitimate.
Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, there are
approximately 7 million Israeli Jews and 7 million Palestinians. The
former have everything: military power, wealth, rights. The latter have
been fragmented into several different sub-statuses of domination and
have nothing. Even assuming that the evacuation of the settlers is
possible, in the name of what would we give 78% of the territory to the
former and 22% to the latter (10)?
The main reason why the "two-state solution" is totally unjust is the
question of refugees. The founding crime of this war is the premeditated
expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948. Their descendants today number
more than 10 million. Nearly 6 million Palestinians have UNRWA cards,
the United Nations agency that takes care of refugees. It is
understandable that the "two-state solution" sacrifices them. No just
peace can forget the Palestinians' right of return that the UN has
recognized (11). Today, 75% of the refugees are in Gaza and 35% in the
West Bank; their return of course concerns Israel within its pre-1967
borders. And even if only half of the refugees assert their right of
return, maintaining a Jewish state no longer makes any sense.
In the book Gaza Chronicles (12), the few Gazans who say they are in
favor of the two states say, in essence: "The world is unfair, they will
give us a piece of desert that they will call a Palestinian state and we
will be so weak that we will be forced to accept." "And the refugees?"
"The refugees are a sacred cause. As long as the right of return is not
recognized, the struggle to obtain it will continue."
A state?
Some of the Jews who arrived in Palestine before 1948 came because they
did not know where to go and they had no plans to expel the
Palestinians. During the British Mandate (13), there was a
"binationalist" movement. In 1944, in the midst of the Nazi genocide, in
an internal election within the Yishuv (14), a list for a binational
state, led by the philosopher Martin Buber (15), won 45% of the vote.
But this movement disappeared as soon as the fighting began in 1948.
At the time of the vote on the partition plan, the "Arab Higher
Committee", which brought together all Palestinian political movements,
proposed to the UN a Palestine of all its citizens. The plan provided
that Palestine would welcome Jewish refugees. As Elias Sanbar (16)
explains in the film "The Chariot and the Olive Tree" (17), for Ben
Gurion, this proposal was a nightmare and it would be buried.
The PLO (18) will quickly come out in favor of "A single secular and
democratic state". This position will be abandoned in 1988 at the
Algiers Conference where the PLO will recognize Israel within its
pre-1967 borders. Yasser Arafat will be criticized by several left-wing
political parties (including the PFLP) and by personalities such as the
writer Edward Said (19). This abandonment will allow the signing of the
Oslo Accords.
In Israel, the far-left organization Matzpen (20), will also have as its
perspective the secular and democratic state.
A single state is surely the fairest. But it is clear that there is no
balance of power in the region to impose such a solution and especially
a solution based on "living together with equal rights".
When you ask Palestinians who are in favor of "one state," their vision
is a country called Palestine, with a Palestinian flag and in which
Israeli Jews who accept equality would remain.
The UN, a solution?
All Palestinians are outraged that international law is not applied to them.
International law is not the late League of Nations and it is not the
UN. In 1920, the League of Nations gave the British Empire the mandate
over Palestine, explaining that the Palestinians were not “mature”
enough to be independent and that they had to be guided towards
maturity. The UN
has violated international law on several occasions. The vote on the
partition plan in 1947 was obtained by buying the votes of several
countries. The UN had no right to this territory. In the 6 months
between the vote on the partition plan and Israel’s declaration of
independence (21), almost all of the 400,000 Palestinians living in the
Jewish state granted to the Zionists by the partition plan were
expelled. The UN is responsible for half of the Nakba (22).
In 1948, the UN voted on Resolution 194 on the return of Palestinian
refugees. Israel's response: a ban on this return, the confiscation of
the land and property of those who had been driven out, the destruction
of hundreds of villages and the erasure of traces of Palestine. Israel
was nevertheless admitted to the UN with the mention "respects
international law".
More recently, in 2019, ESCWA (23) asked lawyers Richard Falk and
Virginia Tilley for a report on the situation in Palestine/Israel. The
conclusion of this report was unequivocal: Israel was practicing a
policy of apartheid, as this concept is internationally defined. The
Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Gutteres, would prohibit the
publication of the report.
Even if today Israeli leaders call the UN an "anti-Semitic organization"
and even if a very large majority of UN member countries have recognized
the Palestinian state, the solution will not come from the UN.
International law.
It is essentially made up of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
of December 10, 1948, which supplements the Declaration of the Rights of
Man and of the Citizen of 1789.
What does this international law say for Palestine?
First, freedom: end of occupation and colonization, destruction of the
wall that scars the West Bank, end of the blockade of Gaza, release of
Palestinian prisoners (24).
Then, equal rights for all inhabitants of the region, regardless of
their origins, their real or supposed identity, their religion or
non-religion.
Finally, justice: since the founding crime of this war was premeditated
ethnic cleansing, it is the right of return of Palestinian refugees. It
is also the judgment of war criminals.
The Palestinian call for BDS (25) does not pronounce on one or two
States. It is based on these three points. At the same time, we
understand that the return of refugees is contradictory to the two-State
solution.
The application of this law is the guarantee for Israeli Jews to remain,
exactly as the end of apartheid allowed South African whites to remain.
It is clear that the idea that Israel will be able to impose itself
forever by force and violence is both criminal and absurd.
Neo-liberal or neo-conservative leaders find themselves in a dilemma:
until now, they claimed to defend the law and democracy against Russia,
Iran, Syria, China ... These Western countries, since October 2023, are
more than complicit in a genocide. Letting Netanyahu do what he wants is
to finish off any idea of international law, it is to return to the
law of the jungle, it is to finish off the destruction of international
institutions.
This war is being played out on two levels. On the one hand, to prevent
the destruction of Palestinian society and on the other, to force
Israel's accomplices to stop supporting this State and to sanction it.
It is fundamental to impose the fact that any negotiation must be done
on the basis of international law and only on this basis.
This law clearly means the end of the Jewish state and of Zionism.
There is no alternative to "living together with equal rights" either
there or here.
"From the Sea to the Jordan, equal rights!"
Pierre Stambul
Notes
1 It was the British writer Israel Zangwill, one of the first Zionists,
who uttered this sentence in 1901.
2 The future Jordan.
3 The Israeli historian Avi Shlaïm recounts this connivance and the two
meetings between Golda Meir and the King of Jordan Abdallah I.
4 These negotiations will take place in Taba, Camp David, Annapolis ...
5 This is the internationally recognized border, that is to say the
armistice line of the 1948-49 war separating Israel from the West Bank.
6 These are roads forbidden to Palestinians and reserved for settlers.
7 Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of the parties of
the Palestinian left.
8 1978-79.
9 In 2005.
10 The West Bank and Gaza represent 22% of historic Palestine.
11 This is Resolution 194, passed on December 11, 1948.
12 Sarah Katz and Pierre Stambul, 2016.
13 From 1920 to 1948.
14 The term refers to all Jews living in Palestine before 1948.
15 1878-1965.
16 Palestinian historian and former ambassador to UNESCO.
17 Film by Roland Nurier (2018).
18 Palestine Liberation Organization created in 1964.
19 1935-2003.
20 The word means "compass" in Hebrew. But the association only had a
few dozen members.
21 May 14, 1948.
22 This Arabic word means catastrophe, that is, the expulsion of the
majority of Palestinians in 1948.
23 Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia.
24 Nearly 90,000 Palestinians have been imprisoned since 1967.
25 Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions against the State of Israel. The call
dates back to 2005.
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4270
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