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"Palestine in Pieces" Why Palestine Needs To Become an
Internationally Recognized State for Peace Negotiations to
Succeed
By mickielynn on 2011-05-19 19:41:12
[caption id="attachment_2480" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Loss of Palestinian Land 1946 through 2007"]
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President Obama has delivered his second major speech about the Middle East, aimed at domestic and international
audiences. My expectations are very low. Although his Cairo speech said all of the right things, US actions in the entire
Muslim world have continued to contradict all of that rhetoric. Increasing war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Waiting until the
last minute to support popular uprisings during the Arab Spring. Criticizing and sanctioning only leaders that aren’t our
strong allies. The world can now clearly see that there is still little or no actual support of democracy and peace, or of the
genuine opening up of abusive and dictatorial societies.
Deeply at the root of why the US is so distrusted is the continuing policy of ignoring Israeli abuse and mis-treatment of
Palestinians. Israeli Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit this Friday will give him a chance to meet with the
President and to address the US Congress. While Palestinian reconciliation to create a stronger representative position for
negotiations has been criticized and financially penalized by both the US and Israel.
Current chair of the PLO and the president of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas has to rely on an op-ed in
the New York Times to express his point of view. “The Long Overdue Palestinian State’”” Mahmoud Abbas, New York Times,
May 16, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17abbas.html
President Abbas basically said that “Palestine's admission to the UN would pave the way for the internationalization of the
conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one... It would also pave the way for the Palestinians to pursue claims against
Israel at the UN, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”
He went on to say: “The Palestinians go to the UN now to secure the right to live free in the remaining 22 percent of their
historic homeland because they have been negotiating with Israel for 20 years without coming any closer to realizing a state,
Once admitted to the UN, Palestine stands ready to negotiate all core issues of the conflict with Israel. A key focus of
negotiations will be reaching a just solution for Palestinian refugees based on Resolution 194, which the General Assembly
passed in 1948...”
I agree that allowing Palestinians to negotiate from a place of more equal power as a recognized state is the only way that
peace could actually proceed. It would force Israel and the United States to confront the mistreatment of an entire group of
people, which might eventually lead to more justice and eventually to peace.
Continued, unchecked, unconditional, settlement building and the decades long failure of the US government to respect both
sides in this dispute dooms current negotiations to failure. It’s no wonder that George Mitchell, who negotiated a successful
disarmament and peace settlement between Northern Ireland and Britain, resigned as the chief negotiator of an
Israeli/Palestinian peace process.
The quartet of maps displayed at http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/photos/maps_media/2242 graphically shows the
progression of land transfer in historic Palestine between 1946 and 2007. (You can find more maps and other historical
resources on the website http://www.annainthemiddleeast.com/photos/maps_media/2242 )
Some summarized statistics about Palestinian displacement shared during this year’s massive, international, non-violent
Palestinian resistance during the 63rd Nakba commemoration:
In 1948, over 760,000 Palestinians, estimated at approximately 4.7 million today, with their descendants, fled or were
driven out of their homes in the conflict that followed Israel's creation. Many took refuge in neighboring Lebanon, Jordan,
Egypt and Syria. Some still live in refugee camps. About 160,000 Palestinians remained in what is now Israeli territory.
These Arab Israelis total around 1.3 million, or some 20 percent of Israel's population.
Recently I heard a speech by Kathy Christison, who worked as a for CIA political analyst, dealing first with Vietnam and
then with the Middle East. Since leaving the CIA, she writes and lectures. She’s the author of "The Wound of
Dispossession," "Perceptions of Palestine," and co-author of "Palestine in Pieces." Here’s some of what Christison had to
say:
There are some 500,000 Israelis living in settlements on what is almost universally regarded as Palestinian land
. The first houses went up in the late 1960s and have continued under both Labor and Likud governments. They
are the "facts on the ground" Israeli leaders said they wanted to create. There are freezes, partial freezes, and
temporary halts in construction. But the trend in more and more building continues. The stalled peace process
goes off track. Road maps are redrawn. The Obama administration vetoes UN resolutions condemning Israeli
policy. Benjamin Netanyahu once proclaimed, "Semantics don't matter." You can call a Palestinian state "fried
chicken." Land for a Palestinian state has been cut into unconnected bits and pieces without much water. Many
people say the settlements pose a serious obstacle to peace and a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
At this year’s commemoration of the Nakba something very different happened. A non-violent form of protest against the
displacements took place on every border (except Egypt where it was prevented by the military). Here’s part of the
... The Palestinians in Syria, Lebanon and the occupied Palestinian enclaves of Gaza and the West Bank
approached Israeli gun positions on Sunday without arms of their own. If some teenagers threw rocks, a protest
leader said they had apparently failed to attend the workshops on nonviolence the organizers arranged in what
they call a new paradigm for the conflict. The aim, which appears to be building support, aims to re-cast the
Palestinian-Israel conflict on the same terms that brought down dictatorships in Egypt and Tunisia. Massive
non-violent protests are aimed at winning international sympathy for the Palestinian perspective, and as a result,
forcing Israel to pull out of territories its army has occupied since 1967. As the dust settled Sunday, senior
Israeli officers acknowledged their vulnerability to the approach, which dovetails with the strategy of
Palestinian leaders to ask the UN General Assembly to recognize a Palestinian state in September...
Another planned creative, non-violent protest against the continued blockade of Gaza is the June 2011 return of the flotilla
to Gaza. Why We Must Sail To Gaza A year ago, solidarity activists tried to break the blockade of Gaza with an
international flotilla of ships. They failed, in the sense that the Israeli government attacked the flotilla, took control of the
ships,and brought the ships to Israel. They succeeded, in the sense that the flotilla and the Israeli attack brought attention to
the Israeli-U.S.-Egyptian siege of Gaza, dramatically increasing political pressure on the three governments, leading to a
partial easing of the siege. Now an even larger flotilla, with the participation of more ships and more activists from more
countries -- including, crucially, the U.S. ship Audacity of Hope -- is preparing to set sail in June.
http://www. truthout.org/why-we-must-sail-gaza/1305382992
