This upcoming weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to give a speech announcing a change in his (personal) position on Palestinian statehood. If reports in The Washington Times and Foreign Policy about Netanyahu’s speech are accurate, and if his allies like Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force for Palestine are successful in misrepresenting the Palestinian people (see page 2), then Palestine will soon be a province of Israel.
Observers should be vigilant to make sure that this formula of Palestinian autonomy without sovereignty is not characterized as Palestinian independence. While some people are framing this as a change of position on Netanyahu’s behalf, it is more like a change in vocabulary without a change in substance. For example, Netanyahu’s Likud party platform has never advocated Palestinian sovereignty. Netanyahu’s party platform states:
“The Government of Israel flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan river [the West Bank]. The Palestinians can run their lives freely in the framework of self-rule, but not as an independent and sovereign state. Thus, for example, in matters of foreign affairs, security, immigration, and ecology, their activity shall be limited in accordance with imperatives of Israel’s existence, security, and national needs.”
The disturbing thing about this platform position is that it concerns the “final status” of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. While the Oslo Accords of the 1990s established a regime more or less following this formula, it was only envisioned as a temporary 5-year framework that would lead to full sovereignty for the Palestinians. Over 15 years later, Israel has done everything to stall and violate the spirit of the agreements. It has expanded settlement construction vastly to preempt negotiations by creating “facts on the ground.” It has had the advantage of a corrupt and incompetent Palestinian Authority to blame for its continued encroachment on Palestinian land. And now Netanyahu is continuing this trend. Netanyahu’s conditions, if accepted, will make the Oslo process (and not the Oslo goal) permanent.
If the Washington Times’ reports are accurate, we cannot accept the rhetoric about a “change” in position. This is not a change. It is a consolidation of the interim governing structures that Oslo created. Netanyahu’s conditions sound like a checklist of everything that will make Palestinian independence and sovereignty impossible. And the naivete and opportunism of ATFP will only enable this permanent subjugation of the Palestinian people.
Under this formula, Israel has the right to defend itself and its security is paramount to Palestinian freedom, let alone Palestinian human rights. Palestine has no such right to defend itself with a military charged with protecting its people. Palestinians’ right to self-rule and independence is only by virtue of an agreement with Israel, while Israel’s overrides all Palestinian concerns. This is supposed to be an agreement between two equals? Why should Palestinians accept something that Israelis never would? Would anyone in the world accept this for their people? Have Palestinians really been resisting Israeli hegemony for 60-years for this end?
As a side note, Ibish and the ATFP actually support this bankrupt position: “The Task Force advocates the development of a Palestinian state that is… non-militarized.” I don’t say that Palestinians should have an army, only that they should have the right to decide independently whether they want one. They should not be required to obtain the permission of their former colonizers to defend themselves and their independence.
Netanyahu’s second condition: “Palestinians may not sign treaties with powers hostile to Israel.”
Control over foreign policy is the very meaning of independence and sovereignty. Without this right, Palestine will be a sub-state of Israel. Just as California cannot sign agreements with foreign governments, Palestine will not be able to conduct a foreign policy that is not approved by Israel first. Hussein Ibish of the Task Force idiotically agrees with this proposal, giving the terrifying impression that the Palestinian Authority might actually be stupid enough to formalize Israeli control over Palestine permanently: “Ibish… said he thought it was reasonable to expect Palestinian negotiators to agree to a demilitarized state that did not enter into agreements with countries hostile to Israel.” What kind of weak negotiator gives in to such an intolerable condition before negotiations even start? Not a surprise, perhaps, since as the elected leader of no-one, he signed a peace agreement with Israel just last month.
Netanyahu’s third condition: Israel controls the skies and borders.
“A Palestinian state must allow Israeli civilian and military aircraft unfettered access to Palestinian airspace, allow Israel to retain control of the airwaves, and to station Israeli troops on a future state’s eastern and southern borders.”
I’ll carry the analogy one step further. Because of the previous condition, Palestine will always be treated like a sub-state of Israel with no independent foreign policy. Because of this condition, it will literally and geographically be surrounded by Israel on all sides. How is Palestine an independent state if Israel controls its borders? This is, once again, directly from the framework of the Oslo interim governing authority, which gave fake semi-autonomy to some Palestinian bantustans, but let Israel keep full authority over the borders with Jordan and Egypt. This would only consolidate that condition as permanent and legitimate. The time for Palestinian leadership is now, as the pathetic incompetence and obeisance of the Palestinian Authority cannot be trusted to stave off these threats to the Palestinian people.
Netanyahu’s fourth condition: Israel is Our Home, Palestine is theirs.
Frankly, I’m a little shocked by all the critical attention that Avigdor Lieberman has gotten for his positions, as if he were an abnormality. Lieberman is solidly a supporter of the two-state paradigm. His platform explicitly advocates the transfer of Arab-populated land in Israel for the illegal settlements in the West Bank. It explicitly states: “Israel is our home, Palestine is theirs.” That is more or less the logic that frames the apartheid two-state solution. That people like Ibish and the ATFP can support this anachronistic form of ethnic nationalism is beyond me. Netanyahu’s fourth condition is more or less a formalization of this principle: “Palestinians must accept Israel as a Jewish state,” thus selling out the human and civil rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel who make up 20% of Israel’s population.
That Netanyahu is calling for these conditions is not surprising. It is in line with Likud’s formula of self-rule without independence or sovereignty, as well as the Israeli track record for the past two decades.
What cannot be taken in stride, however, is the nonsensical and public support people like Ibish and the ATFP give to Netanyahu’s government, all the while claiming to speak for a majority of the Palestinian people. It is time that this chimera that relies on polls about a two-state solution be put to rest. While it is true that polls indicate support for the idea of two separate states, there is no evidence to support the claim that a majority of Palestinians support Ibish and the ATFP’s specific proposals of statehood without sovereignty, without a right to self-defense, without rights for Palestinian refugees or citizens of Israel, and without control over its borders. They should stop hiding cowardly behind these ambiguities, because while it is true that most people generally support a two-state framework, it is not true that they support two un-equal states, let alone a Palestinian state that is a province of Israel.
If Netanyahu’s speech is successfully characterized as a “change in position” even while it is transparently a non-starter for Palestinian independence, it will be a success of Israeli propaganda enabled by the incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and its cheerleaders in the US. Ibish and the ATFP are exacting severe damage on the rights of Palestinians by terming Netanyahu’s conditions as reasonable or acceptable, even when they are so obviously intolerable and must be called out as such. In their negotiations with Israel, Palestinians have the upper hand, especially in what UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Richard Falk has called the “war of legitimacy.” Any leadership that does not believe this does not deserve to be in power, or has narrow interests in mind besides those associated with Palestinian freedom.
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