Global Issues
MIDEAST: There Just may Have to be a Partner
'We have no partner,' has been the mantra of successive Israeli governments, both right-wing and centre, ever since the outbreak of the Palestinian Intifadah in September 2000 in wake of the failed Camp David summit. That was the last time Palestinians and Israelis saw each other as potential peace partners.
Behind their security wall, nourished by their leaders, Israelis are comfortably cosseted in this belief. It partly explains why they brush off so easily the remarkable persistence of mainstream Palestinians to continue their pursuit of a negotiated settlement.
Battered from within (by Hamas) and from without (by Israel), Fatah had no other realistic option.
Still, what has happened over the past week at the sixth convention of the Fatah movement in Bethlehem on the West Bank keeps it firmly in the vanguard of Palestinian commitment to acceptance of the State of Israel.
On the surface, nothing seems to have changed from when Fatah took what was then a revolutionary position on the two-state solution - in Algiers by Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat in 1988, and the following year at the fifth Fatah convention in Tunis.
Then, as now, Israel minimised the landmark change though it has been re- enshrined de facto as the policy of the Palestinian Authority with which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under U.S. pressure to restart peace negotiations.
On Sunday, the Bethlehem convention underlined the Fatah conflict with Hamas and, collaterally, the ideological isolation of Hamas. It re-endorsed the movement's platform calling for a Palestinian state in the West Bank (including Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip, while reserving the Palestinian national right to resistance by taking up arms against Israel, if need be.
But at the same time, Fatah encouraged Palestinians to use peaceful means to pressure Israel, such as demonstrations and support for a boycott of Israel abroad. 'We are focusing on popular struggle,' said veteran Fatah official and former Palestinian Authority foreign minister Nabil Sha'ath, 'but the armed struggle is a right due us under international law.'
Another sign of the Fatah willingness to search for a way to live in peace alongside Israel is that the commitment to do so preceded the outcome of what has been a bitter battle between the old guard leadership and the generation that has grown up under Israeli occupation and aspires to take over the destiny of Palestinian affairs.
What's more, convening in Bethlehem was evidence that Fatah's centre of gravity now lies irrevocably inside Palestine - in spite of the Occupation - not in the Palestinian diaspora. There had been offers to hold that convention in neighbouring Jordan, but the Fatah leadership wanted to underline a message that they are ready for the future state to be created in only part of the historic homeland. By the by, it sent an incontrovertible message to Hamas that in the West Bank, Fatah is firmly in charge.
Still, most Israelis don't get the message of moderation that has emerged from the Fatah leadership. And, the Israeli leadership is making sure that their people remain convinced that Israel still has no partner, only an incontrovertible enemy.
Minister for Transport Yisrael Katz reflected the prevailing government sentiment. Speaking on Israel Radio, he said bluntly, 'The Palestinians say they will continue the armed struggle until Jerusalem is their united capital without any 'settlers'. Their position is entirely delusional. We have no partner.
'We should declare forthrightly that unless the Palestinians revoke their decision not to recognise Israel as a Jewish state, and give up entirely their demand for the right of return (of the Palestinian refugees), they cannot be considered a partner for political negotiations.'
Katz is a loyal Netanyahu lieutenant. The Prime Minister struck a strong rhetorical note himself at Sunday's cabinet meeting when he lambasted Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza exactly four years back, saying that it had brought 'neither peace nor security.'
'It is only natural for Israel not to accept the Fatah platform, just as the Palestinian leadership objects to the Likud (Netanyahu's right-wing nationalist party) platform,' said the liberal Haaretz in an editorial. 'But Fatah's approach to the peace process refutes the right-wing argument that there is no Palestinian peace partner.'
But in contrast to Haaretz, the views of most Israelis have hardened since the breakthrough Palestinian positions that were adopted in Algiers and Tunis. They cleave to the view that it's not enough for Palestinians simply to declare their readiness to accept Israel's existence; they demand that Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state, an Israeli euphemism for forgoing the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in what is, for Palestinians, 'accepted' Israel, and thus alter the Jewish majority of Israel.
In contrast, after a decade of pummelling by Israel, loss of Gaza to Hamas, the strengthening of the Hamas 'all-Palestine' ideology, and the U.S. failure to make Palestinian national aspirations for a state alongside Israel come true, it is quite remarkable that Fatah - and, by extension, the Palestinian Authority that rules the West Bank - has not shed its commitment to a two-state solution; and, that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas - whom former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon once disparagingly dismissed as a 'featherless fowl' - was re-elected with a resounding vote of confidence on the strength of his commitment to the two-states principle.
Netanyahu, like most Israelis, may simply wish to turn his back on the Palestinians and on the principle of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders. But he's up against something which may be too big for his ideology. He knows he cannot merely write the Palestinian Authority off, equipped as it now is with the renewed Fatah challenge of the two-state solution.
Like it or not, the Israeli leader knows he will soon be put to the test to see if the Palestinians have a partner.
Getting Abbas and Netanyahu to confront each other on the grounds of who really is the non-partner will be the primary test of the Obama Administration's upcoming peace initiative.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service