Monday, May 2 2011|Yossi Gurvitz<\/p>\n
The Palestinian leadership realized the sham of the Oslo Accords, and is moving on
\nIf any proof was necessary to understand Palestinians must leave the old paths and strike their own way, the response of Finance Minister Steinitz to the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah provided it. Steinitz announced (Hebrew) he is withholding transferring of tax funds to the Palestinian Authority \u2013 taxes which are collected by Israel for the Palestinians, which it is beholden to provide \u2013 as a protest. This isn\u2019t the first time Israel uses this schtick, of stealing Palestinian funds and then holding to ransom; it managed to annoy even George W. Bush.
\nWhat does Steinitz say? He says Israel has a veto over Palestinian politics. He says Avigdor Liberman may serve as a foreign minister in Israel, and that Israel\u2019s science minister may award prizes to leading Jewish Brotherhood leader Shmuel Eliahu \u2013 but that what is allowed for Israelis, is forbidden for Palestinians. Their government may contain only people acceptable to Israel, or, to use a less pleasant term, whose collaboration is certain, assuming enough pressure is applied.
\nAnd where do the leaders of Israel take this authority from? Ask them, and they\u2019ll point to the Oslo Accords. Once you understand that, the Palestinian policy becomes clear: Ending the fa\u00e7ade of the \u201cpeace process.\u201d In the coming September, they\u2019ll push the Oslo Accords six feet under, and gain recognition of their independence from a large majority of the world.
\nThat this September will mark 18 years to the Oslo Accords is not accident. These documents, in which so much hope was vested, served, when all is said and done, as a regulation tool of the third phase of Israeli occupation, the one following the first Intifada. The accords said not a word about the evacuation of settlements \u2013 or, for that matter, about the creation of a Palestinian state. These matters were to be negotiated.
\n18 years later, the number of settlers in the West Bank more than doubled, and no one seriously considers their evacuation. The government is unwilling and the military is the settlers\u2019 collaborator, providing automatic security services for each outpost. Yesterday, the government informed the Supreme Court (Hebrew) it will not demolish the house of the family of Eliraz Peretz, built on stolen private Palestinian land, because he was killed while fighting the Palestinians as a soldier, and it\u2019s a well known legal precept that the blood of the bandit cleanses the theft retrospectively. While it was at it, the government further informed the courts it will also legalize outposts built on \u201cstate lands\u201d, i.e. confiscated Palestinian lands. All of this, of course, happens because the Israeli government is so worried about the fate of the peace process.
\nThe reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas is also derived, of course, from the earthquake shaking the Arab world. Neither leader wants to finish his days as a Mubarak. The Palestinian public wants unity, and it shall have it, or at least a fa\u00e7ade thereof. This is not a good time to piss off your population. The agreement between the factions also speaks about elections, to be held within a year, which will legitimize the newly elected leadership.
\nIt seems pointless to waste words on the Israeli doublespeak: On one hand, a hypocritical complaint from Liberman saying that as long as the Palestinians lack unity, there is no point in carrying on the \u201cpeace process\u201d (which he has already described as DOA); on the other, hysterics from Netanyahu about the reconciliation; on the one hand, Israeli claims \u2013 correct, as far as they go \u2013 that, in the absence of elections, there is no legitimate Palestinian government; on the other, opposing any elections. It is pointless to waste words on Israeli officials; yet some must be dedicated to Shimon Peres.
\nOur dear president attacked (Hebrew) his Palestinian colleague, Abbas, and said reconciliation was a \u201cfatal error\u201d which will \u201cprevent the creation of a Palestinian state.\u201d As if a Palestinian state was some prize awarded obedient children and denied from others; as if the right of existence of both Israel and Palestine is not intertwined in each other, and in the same UN declaration of 29 November 1947; as if the Palestinian president was Peres\u2019 vassal.
\nJudging by a recent report (Hebrew), Shimon Peres has already given up on settlement evacuation, and thinks legal mumbo-jumbo on \u201c1967 territories\u201d versus \u201c1967 lines\u201d \u2013 which means the dismembering of the future Palestinian state into Bantustans which no longer pretend to be anything but \u2013 is what we\u2019ll save us.
\nA talking point of the Israeli right wing \u2013 a good one, admittedly \u2013 is asking why was Arafat\u2019s peace prize not withdrawn. Peres\u2019 latest statements remind us that he was the main conspirator in the 1956 Sinai invasion; The person who created the Israeli nuclear project while ignoring international treaties; Who started Operation Grapes of Wrath in Lebanon \u2013 which culminated in the Qana massacre \u2013 in order to stir his sagging election campaign in 1996. One wonders when the same question would be directed at Arafat\u2019s prize partner.
\nPalestinian PM Salam Fayad has already announced the Palestinians will continue towards reconciliation, regardless of whether Steinitz will transfer the funds or not. And that\u2019s how it should be. Israel\u2019s double game, its hand rattling a sword while its mouth sings hymns of peace, must be stopped. Hopefully this is what will happen in September: A Palestinian state will come into being, 63 years too late. And maybe \u2013 one may hope \u2013 with this historical process behind them, Palestinians will stop taking victimizing lessons from Israelis, and begin the much harder project, which Abbas has termed \u201cthe great jihad\u201d: The rebuilding of a civil Palestinian state.
\nGod knows we failed.<\/p>\n