Presidents Abbas and Olmert are presently meeting in Jerusalem to explore parameters for the upcoming meeting on the Middle East scheduled in Washington on 15 November. The signs are not good as both parties bring different priorities and bona fides to the table. Meanwhile, Syrian President Assad says he won't attend the Washington conference unless what is to happen to the Golan Heights is on the agenda. The Saudis have called for Israel to at least temporarily cease the ongoing building of settlements in the West Bank as a pre-condition of attending the conference.
So, the signs of the conference even getting underway aren't all that good. In the meantime the position of the Palestinians is verr more fraught as Sonja Karkar, founder and President of Women for Palestine - in Melbourne, Australia - highlights in a piece, "Right to Exist", published on CounterPoint:
"It is a curious phrase this "right to exist". Israel wants the world to accept its "right to exist" as a state, but it denies the indigenous Palestinians their right to exist as a people in their own land. International relations only acknowledges the rights of people, not states. [1] States exist because of the formal recognition afforded them by other states, and now that Israel is recognised as a state, it in fact exists. It makes no sense to demand that a political party recognise Israel's "right to exist", much less punish 4 million Palestinians because a majority voted the Hamas Party into government. Yet, these are the very words that are holding the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, to an impossible ransom.
For the outside world, Israel's demand for the "right to exist" seems a natural enough request and easy enough words to say. However, most people have no idea of the real import of those words for the Palestinians. For them to accept the "right to exist", effectively means that they accept their own dispossession. That dispossession is still going on after 60 years and there are now some 6 million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return home or even a modicum of compensation. And, that is not counting the 4 million Palestinians under Israel's occupation who daily see more of their land taken from them while they are squeezed and contained in what remains, or the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens in Israel whose rights are being increasingly compromised and denied. As long as the Palestinians exist, Israel will always see them as an obstacle to its ultimate quest for an exclusively "Jewish state" in a greater Israel.
Israel's demand that its "right to exist" be recognised, is constantly fluid. Israel refuses to accept any demarcated borders and certainly not the internationally-recognised Green Line of 1967 and is the only nation in the world without declared borders. [2] As far back as 1948, Israel determined that its territory had to be more than the 55 per cent given it by the UN partition and wasted no time in its ruthless expropriation of Palestinian land--driving out the Palestinians or simply forcing them to live under Israel's occupation. The 78 per cent of Palestinian land that it amassed is now recognised as Israel, and it is that area that was painfully acknowledged by Palestinian Chairman Arafat in 1988 as "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security". His crucial mistake was to ask for nothing in return. He should have demanded that Israel recognise the right of Palestinians to exist as a free people in the remaining 22 per cent. Israel, of course, accorded no such right to the Palestinians who continued to live--and still do - without any peace or security under Israel's occupation. The grave injustice of Palestinian dispossession has never been redressed."
So, the signs of the conference even getting underway aren't all that good. In the meantime the position of the Palestinians is verr more fraught as Sonja Karkar, founder and President of Women for Palestine - in Melbourne, Australia - highlights in a piece, "Right to Exist", published on CounterPoint:
"It is a curious phrase this "right to exist". Israel wants the world to accept its "right to exist" as a state, but it denies the indigenous Palestinians their right to exist as a people in their own land. International relations only acknowledges the rights of people, not states. [1] States exist because of the formal recognition afforded them by other states, and now that Israel is recognised as a state, it in fact exists. It makes no sense to demand that a political party recognise Israel's "right to exist", much less punish 4 million Palestinians because a majority voted the Hamas Party into government. Yet, these are the very words that are holding the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, to an impossible ransom.
For the outside world, Israel's demand for the "right to exist" seems a natural enough request and easy enough words to say. However, most people have no idea of the real import of those words for the Palestinians. For them to accept the "right to exist", effectively means that they accept their own dispossession. That dispossession is still going on after 60 years and there are now some 6 million Palestinian refugees who are refused their right to return home or even a modicum of compensation. And, that is not counting the 4 million Palestinians under Israel's occupation who daily see more of their land taken from them while they are squeezed and contained in what remains, or the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens in Israel whose rights are being increasingly compromised and denied. As long as the Palestinians exist, Israel will always see them as an obstacle to its ultimate quest for an exclusively "Jewish state" in a greater Israel.
Israel's demand that its "right to exist" be recognised, is constantly fluid. Israel refuses to accept any demarcated borders and certainly not the internationally-recognised Green Line of 1967 and is the only nation in the world without declared borders. [2] As far back as 1948, Israel determined that its territory had to be more than the 55 per cent given it by the UN partition and wasted no time in its ruthless expropriation of Palestinian land--driving out the Palestinians or simply forcing them to live under Israel's occupation. The 78 per cent of Palestinian land that it amassed is now recognised as Israel, and it is that area that was painfully acknowledged by Palestinian Chairman Arafat in 1988 as "the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security". His crucial mistake was to ask for nothing in return. He should have demanded that Israel recognise the right of Palestinians to exist as a free people in the remaining 22 per cent. Israel, of course, accorded no such right to the Palestinians who continued to live--and still do - without any peace or security under Israel's occupation. The grave injustice of Palestinian dispossession has never been redressed."
Comments