Annapolis
Summit: Tragedy or Farce?
Sometimes, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. So it was following the November 27 Annapolis
peace summit, convened by George Bush as part of his administration’s attempt
to assert some controlling role for the Americans somewhere in the Middle East.
In many ways, the gathering was a farce from the start. The government elected by the Palestinians
two years ago in what all observers declared to be free and fair elections
(with the exception of restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation) was
absent from the talks. Ever since its
election victory both the United States and Israel have categorically refused
to negotiate with Hamas and have instead anointed Mahmoud Abbas as what they
consider to be the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian
people. As such, Abbas
came to Annapolis with no mandate and no ability to implement a single thing he
said.
At the same time, Ehud Olmert’s presence at Annapolis was violently opposed by the
growing neo-fascist movement in Israel along with several members of his
fragile coalition government. Tens of
thousands of Zionist fanatics demonstrated in Jerusalem the night before the
summit opened, proclaiming that they would not cede one inch of territory to
the Palestinians.
From this meeting of Olmert and Abbas, George Bush announced, would come not a settlement
or agreement but yet another “process” to reach an agreement, this time with a
deadline of 2008. Ironically, in 2008
Palestinians around the world will celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Naqba
– of their expulsion from their ancestral lands and the ethnic cleansing and destruction of over 500 of their villages following the
formation of the State of Israel in May 1948.
The summit itself opened two days before a significant
anniversary. Sixty years ago, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations General
Assembly voted to partition Palestine into two parts, with 55 per cent of the
land to be handed over to Zionists for the creation of the Jewish state. For 60 years since then the Palestinians have
struggled for their right to exist as a people.
Despite every possible reason to give up on this struggle they have
persevered, but unfortunately still to no avail.
A full 16 years after the negotiation of the Oslo Accords,
followed shortly after by Yasser Arafat and Yitzkah Shamir’s so-called
“historic” handshake at the White House, American and Israeli promises at
Annapolis that the Palestinians would have their state could only have sounded
plausible to the deluded or those openly in the service of U.S.
imperialism.
Since the Oslo Accords, not only has not a single square inch of
territory been granted to the Palestinians but the Israeli occupation has
intensified. Settlements have expanded
in both the West Bank and Jerusalem. The
construction of the so-called Israeli security wall has clawed back even
further the small amount of territory – the 22 per cent of the land partitioned
by the UN in 1947 - promised to the Palestinians. Despite almost 20 years of
promises, the only settlements that have been dismantled by the Israelis were
those in the Gaza Strip where, despite the rhetoric, the occupation has not
ended. Gaza today is an open-air prison
for 1.3 million Palestinians, whose very existence depends on the mercy of
Israeli control of land, air and sea borders.
In the 40 years since the occupation began not a single promise
made by the Israelis has been kept. Not a single promise made by Israeli
politicians since Oslo has been kept.
Indeed, successive Israeli governments have bragged openly about
entering into negotiations as a way to buy time while expanding what George
Bush referred to in 2004 as the “facts on the ground” – the settlements and the
infrastructure of occupation.
In an interview after leaving office, former Israeli prime minister Yitzak Shamir said he participated in peace
negotiations simply because it assisted him to continue his expansion of the
settlements unopposed. “I would have carried on autonomy talks for ten years
and meanwhile we would have reached a half million people in Judea and Samaria”
he acknowledged. In the same vein, Dov Weissglas,
advisor to Ariel Sharon on the Gaza withdrawal, predicted in 2004 that the Gaza
disengagement “supplies the amount of formaldehyde that is necessary so there
will not be a political process with the Palestinians.” This, he argued, would “prevent the
establishment of a Palestinian state” as well as ensuring there could not be “a
discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”
Indeed, there is no Israeli plan for a Palestinian state nor has
there ever been one. The only plan the
Israelis have has remained the same as the one articulated by David Ben Gurion,
Israel’s first prime minister, in 1938:
“After the formation of a large army in the wake of the establishment of
the state, we shall abolish partition and expand into the whole of Palestine.”
Which is why it was hard to know whether to laugh or cry when
Bush declared, at the end of the Annapolis conference: “Now is the time to show
Palestinians that their dream of a free and independent state can be achieved
at the table of peace and that the terror and violence preached by Palestinian
extremists is the greatest obstacle to a Palestinian state.” Bush also warned that without forgoing
“extremism” (meaning abandoning Hamas), “a generation could be lost.”
However, the reality is that several generations have already
lost out on a Palestinian state. Instead
of a state they have had expulsion, ethnic cleansing, occupation and empty
promises. The fact remains that the only
obstacle to a Palestinian state is the refusal of Israel, backed fully by U.S.
imperialism, to allow such a state to exist.