"It is time for them to act like they have some sense. They have been offered peace terms far more favorable than they will ever get by war or resistance."
dear joe:
do you know what the peace terms offered them at camp david actually where? would you encourage people to buy a stock, not for a trade, but for a lfetime hold, without reading the annual reports in detail and talking to independent geologists who have walked the ground?
do you know, for instance, that when the palestinians were offered 'jerusalem', they were actually being offered a village 6km outside the centre of the town, which happens to bear the same name in admininstrative arabic, and that the offer would not have included free access to the holy places in the old city (both christian and muslim)? do you know that the borders of the state proposed by barak would have deprived them of 90% of the currently unexploited potential water resources in the west bank, where there has been NO water development since 1967 (no new palestinian wells in the western aquifer, and all existing wells running on reduced quotas under israeli supervision), which would have made it more or less impossible for the palestinians to develop their own economy, let alone supply water to gaza, which has virtually no resources of its own?
palestinians currently obtain around 25% of their water needs from israel, even tho most of the aquifer recharge from which that water is drawn occurs within the 1967 borders of the west bank, and the barak peace deal would have completed the process of confiscating that resource, by annexing the only economicallly feasible exploitation zone to israel. palestinians pay around 6 times as much for the water which israel supplies to them as do israelis. (israeli farmers, who use 60% of the country's water supply, pay around 1/10th the rate of other consumers. since most agriculture is for export, israel is effectively exporting palestinian water, at a huge profit to a tiny, subsidised and politically protected minority, known here as 'sharon's farmers'.)
i think if the oslo peace process was a natural resource stock, anyone who had bought it on the basis of the headline news and failed to do their DD would have been laughed off this board by liz, or gently chastised by claude for believing the most optimistic versions put out by the promoters.
here is a link to a book written by an israeli, and based almost entirely on official israeli sources and media reports (not on palestinian 'propaganda'), which documents the fact that there was no sustainable peace on offer at camp david II:
tau.ac.il
you may well be right, in that the palestinians will fail to get more favourable terms by continuing to resist. but i think that when the terms on offer effectively condemn you to living in a bantustan for the rest of your life, in a state of total economic and political dependency, most people would not do the 'sensible' thing, because we would feel instinctively that life without some degree of honour was not worth living.
as to how we would resist tho: that is another matter. the militarised initifadah of the last three years has been a huge strategic disaster for the palestinians, IMO, as well as a human tragedy for all those killed on both sides. but to say then that it is their fault for not submitting to the terms dictated to them is to miss the point: if arafat had signed the peace deal at camp david, he would have unleashed a wave of violence even greater than that which we see here today: not because his people are intrinsically violent; but because, like all of us, they hate being played for idiots by politicians.
to say the arab leaders do not want peace is also a misconception: the arab leaders indulge in rhetoric and posturing to try and distract their own people from the fact that they are not free, either. none of them would dream of moving against israel since egypt was bought off under sadat, and became the second largest recipient of US aid in the world. none of them, in particular, would lift a finger to help the palestinians. this is not 1948, this is not even 1967. the balance of power in the region is utterly changed. the only people with an interest in pretending that is not the case is the israeli political establishment who need to keep their people scared, so that they can continue to prosecute their war in which a few hundred jewish deaths a year is deemed by sharon and mofaz an 'acceptable' price to pay for an ethnically cleansed (say, 60%) judea and samaria.
the israeli plan is not to make peace: the plan is to weaken and humiliate the palestinians to the point where they lose the will to resist any more. when their land is reduced to 42% of the 28% left them after 1967, and half the population has left for the usa or for lebanon or for a reconstructed iraq, and only the old, the corrupt and the incompetent are left, then israel will make peace. but it is israel that is calling the shots, not arafat, for all his many faults. to read it any other way is just naive IMO. and to say that they should do the 'sensible' thing and accept a peace deal which reduces them to vassals on their own lands is, if you'll forgive me, insulting.
i dont think any freeborn american would have accepted a peace deal with the english on the terms offered by the israelis in 2000: why should you expect the palestinians to be any less proud and independent than you? or does realpolitik only apply to other people?
with respect,
peter |
