Whilst the illegal occupation of Palestinian land continues, along with the blockade of Gaza, there can be no peace in the region. It is not for us to decide who the Palestinian leaders should be but to recognize who they consider to be their own representatives. Clearly there are those who have compromised themselves so much that they are no longer considered worthy by their own people. Such is the tragedy of the PLO leadership.
In the meantime, Palestinians continue the struggle for their liberation from Zionist oppressors. The Two state solution was never an option. The struggle in the region from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and elsewhere raises once again the international issues requiring solidarity with all those fighting for their liberation from Imperialism and colonialism.
The PLO's Total Capitulation - Tariq Ali
This is from the LRB blog.
The ‘Palestine Papers’ being published this week by al-Jazeera confirm in every detail what many Palestinians have suspected for a long time: their leaders have been collaborating in the most shameful fashion with
Israel and the
United States. Their grovelling is described in grim detail. The process, though few accepted it at the time, began with the much-trumpeted Oslo Accords,
described by Edward Said in the LRB at the time as a ‘Palestinian Versailles’. Even he would have been taken aback by the sheer scale of what the PLO leadership agreed to surrender: virtually everything except their own salaries. Their weaknesses, inadequacies and cravenness are now in the public domain.
Now we know that the capitulation was total, but still the Israeli overlords of the PLO refused to sign a deal and their friends in the press blamed the Palestinians for being too difficult. They wanted
Palestine to be crushed before they would agree to underwrite a few moth-eaten protectorates that they would supervise indefinitely. They wanted Hamas destroyed. The PLO agreed. The recent assault on
Gaza was carried out with the approval of Abbas and Hosni Mubarak in
Egypt, not to mention Washington and its EU. The PLO sold out in a literal sense. They were bought with money and treated like servants. There is TV footage of Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton at
Camp David playfully tugging at Arafat’s headgear to stop him leaving. All three are laughing. Many PLO supporters in
Palestine must be weeping as they watch al-Jazeera and take in the scale of the betrayal and the utter cynicism of their leaders. Now we know why the Israel/US/EU nexus was so keen to disregard the outcome of the Palestinian elections and try to destroy Hamas militarily.
The two-state solution is now dead and buried by
Israel and the PLO. Impossible for anyone (even the BBC) to pretend that there can be an independent Palestinian state. A long crapulent depression is bound to envelop occupied
Palestine, but whether
Israel likes it or not there will one day be a single state in the region, probably by the end of this century. That is the only possible solution, apart from genocide.
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