Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January-February 2008, pages 13, 17

Jerusalem Journal

Why Palestinians Protested Against Annapolis

By Samah Jabr

Palestinian security forces argue with demonstrators in Nablus protesting the Annapolis conference, Nov. 27, 2007. One man was killed as Palestinian police violently broke up demonstrations throughout the West Bank. (AFP Photo/Jaafar Ashtiyeh).

AS WORLD LEADERS MET IN ANNAPOLIS on Nov. 27, Palestinians demonstrated against the conference. It’s not that the protesters don’t want peace—they certainly weren’t calling for death and destruction. They just want a peace that will assert our common humanity with the occupier and bring liberty and dignity, instead of surrender, segregation and endless wars.

The demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza, by a wide range of Palestinian political and social groups, are an indication of the concern that the conference is laying the ground for an outcome that the Palestinian people cannot and will not accept.

The Palestinian Authority’s attempt to ban any demonstrations, and its subsequent use of batons and bullets against peaceful demonstrators, only reflect its weakness and insecurity. Its police killed 36-year-old  Hisham Al Baradei from Hebron, fractured the arm of an al Jazeera journalist, arrested hundreds and injured dozens. While the leadership extends its hand at Annapolis, it uses its other, armed hand against its own people at home. No wonder it inspires such disaffection.

Those who opposed the Annapolis viewed it as a carnival intended to mollify world public opinion and at the same time subject Palestinians to new lies.

Certainly Israel has not made a strategic decision to make peace with the Palestinians. Instead it demands to be recognized as an exclusively Jewish state, which will exonerate it of the crime of al-Nakba and further legitimize its discrimination against the state’s Muslim and Christian Arab citizens. Israel insists on bilateral negotiations in order to further bribe, bully and blackmail the Palestinian Authority into making more concessions.

Indeed, just prior to Annapolis, the Knesset approved a bill barring any agreement to divide Jerusalem. Moreover, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has stated that returning land Israel seized in 1967 does not mean complete withdrawal from the occupied territories.

According to the ambiguous declaration that was the result of Annapolis, both parties will undertake negotiations for a treaty “resolving all outstanding issues, including all core issues without exception.” None of these issues are named, however. Given Israel’s history of slanted and twisted interpretation of international resolutions, further theft and murder could be seen as consistent with the peace process—and undertaken with the West’s benediction and Palestinian Authority help.

“Implementation of the future peace treaty will be subject to the implementation of the road map, as judged by the United States,” the declaration states. So much for the rule of international law and human rights as a basis of any prospective resolution, and the involvement of the other Quartet members, Russia, the EU and the U.N. Instead a dishonest broker with predatory ambitions in the region is given the sole right to decide whether the provisions of the road map are being met.

The Annapolis declaration only confirms the pattern whereby Washington continues to make no demand that Israel would find unacceptable, while insisting that, as a precondition for any settlement, the Palestinian Authority crush all resistance to Israeli military occupation. This renders the freedom of each and every Palestinian dependent on guaranteeing the security of any and every Israeli.

While reaffirming the proverbial two-state solution, the Bush administration is only allowing the Palestinian state to consume the leftovers of the Israeli state, drink its stagnant water and breathe what Israel exhales.

When, in his opening remarks, President George W. Bush declared that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, he dismissed all claims to the Palestinians right to return as outlined by various U.N. resolutions. When he added that “a battle is under way for the future of the Middle East and we must not cede victory to the extremists,” he issued a call for war, not peace.

The Palestinian delegation to Annapolis lacked the mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians, composed as it was of those swept out of office nearly two years ago, in the January 2006 parliamentary elections. With Israeli approval President Mahmoud Abbas deployed hundreds of extra police officers to Nablus as part of a “security” campaign. He has closed dozens of charities, fired preachers, and arrested hundreds of opposition activists. Shortly before the Annapolis conference, he publicly called for the overthrow of the elected Hamas government in Gaza. What the U.S. and Israel sought at the conference was no less than a PA clampdown on armed resistance and the repression of all Palestinians who reject the abandonment of our rights. Let’s hope that Abbas doesn’t decide to re-enter Gaza on an Israeli tank.

The Palestinian delegation put no conditions on negotiating with Israel, while placing absurd conditions on a meeting with Hamas—all without bothering to consult other opposition parties. 

At the conference, Olmert pledged to enter continuous negotiations with the Palestinians in an effort to complete an agreement by the end of 2008—the morning after the media cited Israeli sources declaring that “a deal cannot be reached in 2008.” Meanwhile, a dozen members of Hamas were killed in an Israeli air raid on Gaza, thousands of Israeli troops and dozens of tanks were stationed on the border with Gaza, ready to invade it, and Israel's highest court upheld a government decision to reduce fuel supplies to the Strip. How disappointing to see Arab countries reach consensus on meeting with Israel, but not on ending the siege of Gaza.

But the false promises are not the only reason why Annapolis won’t work.

The speeches emanating from Annapolis presumed a false parity between Palestinians and Israelis—in terms of power as well as moral claims. The Israeli prime minister spoke about Israeli suffering—when it is Israel that is the occupying force; again we heard the names of the three Israeli soldiers held by the Palestinians and the Lebanese—but not the name of a single Palestinian prisoner, not even our kidnapped members of parliament. There was  not even a whisper of Palestinians living within the Green Line, right of return, the criminal siege of Gaza, or Israel’s apartheid wall.

For ordinary Palestinians, the question of dignity is more important than a piece of land. No solution is possible without Israel admitting its historical and moral responsibility for all the suffering it has inflicted on us.

Two days after the conference was the 60th anniversary of the partition of Palestine by U.N. Resolution 181, passed by the General Assembly (and hence nonbinding) on Nov. 29, 1947. Sixty years ago the Palestinians refused to accept this unfair partition, which allocated 56 percent of Palestine to the new state for Jews—containing at the time 200,000 people with Palestinian citizenship and 400,000 immigrants—and 42 percent to the Arab state, home to 1.3 million Palestinians. The resolution also declared the City of Jerusalem, the remaining 2 percent, to be an international open city. Why would they accept it now?

Because silence implies consent, Palestinians took to the streets despite the Ramallah government’s ban. This is also why, despite the toll of uninterrupted oppression, we continue to support the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation. Liberty in our homeland is our inalienable right—and our obligation for those who passed before and those who will come after us. We can do no less than negotiate to secure our rights—not surrender them bit by bit.

Samah Jabr is a psychiatrist practicing in the West Bank and her native Jerusalem.

< Prev		Next >