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Credit: Wikimedia Commons Palestinian president Mohmoud Abbas

BY FAREED MAHDY*

IDN-InDepthNews Service

ISTANBUL (IDN) – Things are further worsening in the Middle East. The U.S. is now openly indulging in a dangerously misleading doublespeak — saying to Israel that its settlements are legitimate, and telling the Palestinians that they are not. With that, Washington would be contributing to the “creative chaos” that the previous White House occupants wanted for the region.

For the Palestinians this situation is apparently no longer sustainable. “It is time for Palestinian president (Mohmoud Abbas) to tell his people the truth,” Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Nov. 4 in Ramallah, occupied West Bank.

The truth is to announce the “end of two-state hopes”.

“Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements in the occupied territories”, Erekat stressed.

The two-state solution being “no longer an option”, he added, the alternative left for Palestinians is to “refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals”.

Nevertheless, such and alternative is clearly condemned to failure. Israel has repeatedly rejected the idea of integrating the Palestinians as citizens, alleging that they represent a “demographic time-bomb” which would transform Jews in a minority.

Moreover, since he took office last February, the right/far right Israeli government, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, has officially proclaimed Israel as a “Jew State” where only Jewish people can live.

But why have Palestinian leaders reached this state of ‘no-hope’?

THE AMERICAN “U TURN”

In his speech “for a new beginning”, which he delivered at Cairo University on Jun. 4, U.S. President Barack Obama, officially announced his new administration’s policy in the Middle East.

He clearly talked about the “two-state” solution as the only one viable, where “Israeli and Palestinians live alongside in peace”.

Since then, all U.S. top officials, from special envoy George Mitchell to secretary of state Hilary Clinton, and above all Obama himself, have reiterated over and again that they are committed to achieving the “two-state” solution.

In a further stage, and with the public support of European leaders, the U.S. has also repeatedly called on Israel to freeze its expanding settlements activities in the Palestinian occupied territories, as well as its ongoing “Jewishisation” plans in occupied East Jerusalem.

Israel has systematically refused those plans and these calls.

All of a sudden, in her recent Middle East tour, Secretary of State Clinton, praised while in Israel, as “unprecedented” Netanyahu’s offer to temporarily limit construction of West Bank settlements. She has also expressed U.S. understanding of Israeli settlements policy as essential to its security.

However, once in Cairo on Nov. 4, Clinton called for a complete freeze in Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank. Moreover, she called the settlements “illegitimate”, after talks with Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

However, Clinton neither called for dismantling such “illegitimate” settlements, nor for cancelling Israeli ongoing plans to transform Jerusalem in the Jewish capital of its Jewish state.

“We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future would be preferable,” she said.

NO HOPE

Interpreting unambiguously this U.S. stand, Erekat said: “Clinton was only opening the door to more settlements.”

The alternative left for Palestinians, he revealed, is to “refocus their attention on the one-state solution where Muslims, Christians and Jews can live as equals”.

“It is very serious. This is the moment of truth for us.”

Palestinian chief negotiator also said that Netanyahu’s concept of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel, with limited sovereignty and an uncompromising position on the future of Jerusalem, implies a ‘diktat’ rather than readiness to negotiate.

Netanyahu told Abbas “that Jerusalem will be the eternal and united capital of Israel, that refugees won’t be discussed, that our state will be demilitarised, that we have to recognise the Jewish state, that it’s not going to be the 1967 borders, that the skies will be under his control”, Ereket informed.

“This is dictation and not negotiations”

According to the UN Security Council resolutions, Palestinians have the ‘inalienable right’ to establish an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza occupied territories, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and based on borders standing before Israel occupation in 1967 war.

“Anything short of that is a non-option for us,” Erekat said.

THIS IS A ‘N0-GO’

While Netanyahu’s stated plan to ‘temporarily’ freeze new settlements in the occupied West Bank has been so highly appreciated by Clinton, no Israeli restrictions would be placed on 3,000 buildings already under construction.

Erekat also revealed Israeli plans to control of West Bank settlements, adjacent land, and the territory’s eastern Jordan Valley border.

“If the Israelis believe they want to partition the West Bank with us, this is a no-go. This is a non-starter,” chief Palestinian negotiator said. (IDN-InDepthNews/05.11.09)

*Fareed Mahdy is special correspondent of IDN-InDepthNews Service

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