by Ali Abunimah
There are signs that the newest
tactic in the "peace process" will be for Israel to offer
new "concessions" on Jerusalem in exchange for getting the
Palestinians to explicitly renounce the right of return that is
guaranteed to all refugees under UN resolutions and international
law.
According to Yuli Tamir, an
Israeli cabinet minister close to Ehud Barak, Israel is considering
giving up its illegitimate claim to sovereignty over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple
Mount. But there is a price. According to Tamir:
"What is vital for us is to
obtain the most important thing, the renunciation by the
Palestinians of the right of return of refugees to territory under
Israeli sovereignty...This right of return is our greatest concern
because we want to maintain the character and the Jewish majority in
Israel and renouncing this right is the only way to achieve
that." ("Israel mulling renouncing sovereignty over holy
Jerusalem site: minister," Agence France Presse, December 19,
2000)
After failing to get Arafat to
renounce the Palestinians' rights in occupied east Jerusalem at the
Camp David summit, Israel may be ready to adopt a slightly more
realistic approach there. But the price that will be exacted is to
get the Palestinians to give up their other fundamental rights in
the context of a final settlement.
The current official Palestinian
position for a final settlement is for the establishment of a state
in the whole of the West Bank and Gaza, with east Jerusalem as the
capital, with some room for mutually agreed minor border
adjustments. This in the view of the Palestinians and much of the
world community would be an accurate implementation of UN Security
Council resolution 242 on which the "peace process" is
formally based. Israel rejects this, and wants to keep vast tracts
of the West Bank, including east Jerusalem and the areas around it,
and the whole of the Jordan Valley. This would leave the
Palestinians in small isolated bantustans under permanent Israeli
control.
It is important to recall that
the formula of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza plus
the right of return to former homes throughout Palestine already
represents the minimum that most if not all Palestinians could
accept. It already represents an a priori concession by the
Palestinians of the 78% of Palestine that Israel conquered in
1947-48 and an a priori concession of sovereignty over west
Jerusalem two thirds of whose properties are owned by Palestinians
and from which 30,000 Palestinians were forced to leave in 1947-48.
Any effort to find a "solution" that gives the
Palestinians less than the whole of West Bank and Gaza, including of
course east Jerusalem, plus the choice for refugees whether to
return their homes or receive compensation, is nothing more than an
attempt to achieve through "negotiations" what Israel has
tried and failed to impose by five decades of war and military
occupation.
Nevertheless we can expect the
usual chorus of fake consternation and outrage from US editorial
writers and commentators at any Palestinian reluctance to accept
these new 'even more generous and unprecedented offers' by Barak and
Clinton's politically bankrupt and exhausted regimes.
Nor by any means are all
Palestinians convinced that the PLO would stand by its formal
positions in another round of negotiations. It is true that many
were surprised that Arafat did resist the full pressure of the US
administration at Camp David, but this resistance may have been an
aberration after years of abject surrenders in the framework of the
Oslo accords. Recent reports about secret negotiations along the
lines hinted at in Tamir's comments have led many to once more doubt
the resolve of the PLO/Palestinian Authority negotiators.
The full implementation of the
right of return is the key to any peaceful future for Israelis and
Palestinians, however it is clear that many Israelis still believe
they can have an end to the conflict and forgiveness by the
Palestinians even while the results of the ethnic cleansing of 1948
and 1967 are allowed to stand, and millions of refugees still
languish in exile and misery while Israelis continue to enjoy and
flourish in their homes and land.
The right of return does not
belong to the PLO or to Israel. They have no right or authority to
bargain it away. It is a right which is granted to individual human
beings by UN resolution 194 and by the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. The role of the PLO and Israel is to negotiate how
this right will be implemented, not to negotiate on whether the
right exists. If they fail to do this, or if the PLO attempts to
relinquish the right of return then new Palestinian leaders will
surely emerge who do not abandon the fundamental rights of their
people simply to save their own skins and to talk another day.
Ali Abunimah
http://www.abunimah.org
Source:
by the same author:
Israel and South Africa in their own words
Peace Can't
be Built on These Fictions
Arafat's
Executions
Reproduction in whole or
in part without permission is prohibited.
