One More Betrayal of the Palestinians

The history of the Palestinians is a history of betrayal.  In the wake of World War I, Britain and France redrew the map of the Middle East to suit their own ends.  They created countries with artificial borders, which led to unrest and uprisings.  They had concluded a secret agreement during the war—the Sykes-Picot agreement—that dashed Palestinian hopes of independence.  The following year, the Balfour Declaration called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in what was then Palestine.

Israeli independence in 1948 led to the forced removal of more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes. Their families had lived in Palestine for hundreds of years. Indeed, Palestinians had lived beside Jews in Palestine since antiquity.

Many of the Palestinians, who were evicted in1948, have lived ever since in refugee camps in Gaza, Lebanon, and Jordan.  I visited several of these camps in the 1970s and 1980s; they were horrific in most cases.

In 1956, Israel secretly joined the British and the French invasion of Egypt for control of the Suez Canal.  This convinced Arab leaders that Israel was part of the European colonial movement to maintain power and influence in the Middle East.

In 1967, Israel acquired all of Jerusalem and the West Bank in the Six-Day War. Israel falsely described its invasion as a preemptive attack, although there was no evidence that the Arab states were on the verge of using force against Israel.  The strongest Arab state at that time was Egypt, which was in no position to attack Israel since its best ground forces were in Yemen where there was a civil war taking place. The fact that Egyptian fighter planes were parked wingtiip-to-wingtip, vulnerable to Israeli attack, was another indicator of Egypt’s lack of readiness for war.

The Oslo Peace Accords of 1993 envisioned a greater role for the Palestinian Authority to govern the occupied territories.  However, Jewish settlers in Gaza and the West Bank moved quickly to create illegal settlements in these territories.  The sad fact is that Israel illegally settled these lands after its military successes. The Israeli government had no plans to allow the creation of a Palestinian state. and tacitly approved and expanded the settlements.  Israeli governments helped the settlers take Palestinian land, and never considered using these territories as leverage to create a genuine peace in the region.

In 2009, the UN released a 575-page analysis of the Gaza conflict that documented the most numerous and most serious violations and war crimes committed in the region were carried out by Israel, and that Israel’s blockade of Gaza amounted to “collective punishment.”  The report called Israel’s actions a “deliberate policy of disproportionate force aimed at the civilian population.”  It stated that a competent court would find that the crime of persecution, a crime against humanity, had been committed.  Sadly, the United States backed Israel’s rejection of the report as it has backed virtually all Israeli policies of aggression.

And now we have a “peace plan” that is treated by the mainstream media as a “visible path to a generational accomplishment.”  The leader of the Israeli opposition, Yair Lapid, and others even support giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump.  But there is still no peace and there should be no prize.

Once again, the Palestinians have been betrayed.  It is certain that the plan will not lead to a Palestinian state.  Benjamin Netanyahu has made this clear, and the plan itself only refers to Palestinian self-determination as an “aspiration.”  The extent of Israeli occupation of Gaza is uncertain, but the continuing loss of territory on the West Bank is certain,  Reconstruction of Gaza is also uncertain because Israel will continue to control the reconstruction materials that will be allowed into the region.  Who will supply the funds and resources?  Who will take part in the operation that will costs tens of billions of dollars.

Neither Palestinians as a whole nor the Palestine Authority were  consulted on any of the terms of the agreement, and the Arab mediators from Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates didn’t press for a serious mediation role and didn’t protect the interests of the Palestinians.  The US unwillingness to provide a diplomatic visa to the leader of the Palestine Authority for his annual visit to the United Nations, and its continued denial of funding to the leading Palestinian human rights organizations demonstrates the lack of any objectivity on the part of the Trump administration. As a result, the plan’s reference to “deradicalization” appears to mean nothing more than the continued denial of any real role for the Palestinians in Gaza.  The betrayals continue as does the continued persecution of the Palestinians.

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