Untold Facts

Palestine: A turning point?

One day before the first anniversary of the barbaric Israeli assault on Gaza that massacred 1434 Palestinians, the Israeli armed forces killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents in Gaza and the West Bank.

The 1.5 million people of Gaza continue to be under one of the most inhuman, unjust sieges in recent times — a siege that began eighteen months before the assault on Gaza on 27 December 2008. From all accounts, everyday is a struggle to survive; the most basic necessities of life are not readily available to the vast majority of the populace.

This Israeli imposed blockade will now be tightened through the construction of a bombproof steel wall by the Egyptian authorities along the Gaza border. The wall, demanded by Israel, is being built with the assistance of US money and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The situation in the West Bank is also grim. The multitude of checkpoints remains. For all intents and purposes, Israeli settlements are expanding and the Wall that attempts to separate Israeli settlements and West Bank aquifers from the Palestinians is as formidable as ever.

To make matters worse, Fatah, in charge of the West Bank, and Hamas, dominant over Gaza, are still at loggerheads.

If there is a silver lining, it comes in the form of the systematic expose of Israeli inhumanity and the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians contained in two highly regarded reports presented to the UN in the course of the last nine months. In March 2009, Richard Falk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories described Israel’s Gaza assault as ” a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law,” in a report to the UN Human Rights Council. Richard Goldstone who headed a UN fact-finding mission to Gaza criticized Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza during the 22-day assault in his September report.

Though the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone Report, there has been no action against Israel at the international level. The reason is obvious. The United States government and its European allies are determined to ensure that the Israeli government will never be in the dock. Other powers with some clout, obsessed as they are with their own interests, are not prepared to stick their neck out for the Palestinian cause. Most Arab and Muslim governments — rhetoric and UN votes aside— are afraid to antagonize the US partly because they are so dependent upon the latter for their political survival or their economic well-being.

This is why at the end of the day we have to rely upon elements within global citizenry to carry the Palestinian cause forward. After Gaza, groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Oxfam and Amnesty International have become much more vocal in their condemnation of Israel’s ruthless behavior in occupied Palestine. Individual journalists have also adopted a principled position in articulating the rights of the Palestinians. Malaysia’s Shahanaaz Habib is one such journalist.

In Britain, the Sussex University Students’ Union has voted to boycott Israeli goods. This is part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign directed at forcing Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. It is the first time that a student body in Britain has made such a move.

Even in Israel, groups like Physicians for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence, comprising veteran Israeli soldiers, have accused their government of violating international law and transgressing the Geneva Conventions in the Gaza assault.

However, the most significant citizens’ initiatives since Gaza have come from the Gaza Freedom March (GFM) and the Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza. The first comprising 1400 individuals from more than 40 countries plans to march to the Erez border-crossing between Israel and Gaza to demand an end to the siege. The second made up of 220 vehicles hopes to deliver ambulances, food, medicines and other supplies to the people of Gaza. Two brave, young Malaysians, Juana Jaafar and Ram Kathigesu, are part of the convoy. In both instances, the Egyptian government is proving to be a hurdle.

Whether the two initiatives succeed or not, they may emerge as a critical turning point in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. They may set into motion an array of other moves aimed at mobilizing and galvanizing the people of the world behind one of the noblest causes of our time.

Author: Chandra Muzaffar

Palestine Federation? Why not?

I recall my last conversation with Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound a few weeks before his death. It was he who brought up the idea of a threefold federation - Israel, Palestine and Jordan. “And perhaps Lebanon, too. Why not?” Lately, the term “federation” has come into fashion again. Some people believe that it can serve as a kind of compromise between the “two-state solution”, now a worldwide consensus, and the “one-state solution” that is popular in some radical circles. “Federation” sounds like a miracle: There will be both “two states for two peoples” and a single entity. Two in one, one in two.

The word “federation” does not frighten me. On the contrary, I was already using it in this context 52 years ago. On June 2, 1957, my magazine, Haolam Hazeh, published the first detailed plan for an independent Palestinian state that would come into being next to Israel. The West Bank was then under Jordanian and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian occupation. I proposed helping the Palestinians to get rid of the occupiers. According to the plan, the two states, the Israeli and the Palestinian, would then establish a federation. I thought that its proper name should be “the Jordan Union”.

A year later, on Sept. 1, 1958, there appeared a document called “the Hebrew Manifesto”. I am proud of my part in its composition. It was a comprehensive plan for a fundamental change of the State of Israel in all its aspects - a kind of complete overhaul. Among its authors were Nathan Yellin-Mor, the ex-chief of the Stern Group, Boaz Evron, Amos Kenan and several others.

I was responsible for the chapter on Israeli-Arab peace. It proposed that a sovereign Palestinian state would be set up next to Israel, and that the two states would establish a federation, which would gradually assume more and more jurisdiction. On the morrow of the Six-Day War, after which the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan was under the control of the Israeli Army, a new political movement called “Israel-Palestine Federation” called for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. The founders were, more or less, the same people who had composed the “Hebrew Manifesto”.

When this historic opportunity was missed and with the occupation becoming gradually more and more oppressive, I abandoned the use of the term federation. I sensed that it frightened both parties.

It should be remembered that the original partition plan adopted by the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, did envision a kind of federation, without using the term. It provided for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state, and a separate entity of Jerusalem, administered by the UN. All these entities were to be parts of an economic union that would cover customs, the currency, railways, post, ports, airports and more. This would have, in practice, amounted to a federation.

Basically, a federation is a pact between different states, which decide to unite on agreed terms. The United States is, theoretically, a voluntary association of states. The states have many rights, but the federation is headed by a single president with immense powers. In practice, this is one state. Russia, too, is officially a federation, but its use of the term has a very different content. Moscow appoints the governors of the provinces, and Vladimir Putin rules the country as a personal fief. When Chechnya tried to secede from the “Russian Federation”, it was crushed even more brutally than the confederacy in the American Civil War.

Germany defines itself as a “federal republic (”Bundesrepublik”). It is composed of “L?nder” that enjoy a large measure of autonomy. Switzerland calls itself a confederation in French and Italian (”Eidgenossenschaft” or “Oath Association” in German) and its cantons enjoy their autonomy. But it is also a very unified country.

It is generally supposed that a “federation” is a tighter association, while a “confederacy” is a looser one. But in reality, these differences are very blurred. It seems that Americans and Russians, Germans and Swiss, identify themselves first of all with their united state, not with their own particular province. (Except for the Bavarians, of course.)

THE new Europe is for all practical purposes a confederacy, but its founders did not name it thus. They chose the less definite “European Union”. Why? Perhaps they thought that terms like “federation” and “confederacy” were outdated. Perhaps they considered such terms too binding.

It makes no sense, therefore, to discuss the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian “federation” in general terms, without defining right from the beginning what is meant by this. I recently saw a plan for a federation here in which every person would have the right to settle anywhere in either state while holding the citizenship of one of them. I can hardly imagine that many Israelis or Palestinians would embrace that. The Israelis would be afraid that the Arabs would soon constitute the majority within Israel, and the Palestinians would worry that Israeli settlers would take possession of every hilltop between the sea and the Jordan.

In any discussion of federation, the matter of immigration looms large as an ominous bone of contention. Would millions of Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israeli territory? Would millions of Jewish immigrants be allowed to submerge the State of Palestine? The same is true for the matter of residence. Could a citizen of Palestine settle in Haifa? Each one of us who considers the idea of federation must decide what he or she wants. In practice, a federation can come about only on the basis of a free agreement between the two parties. This means that it can be realized only if both - Israelis and Palestinians - consider it as advantageous to themselves and compatible with their national aspirations. In my opinion, a practical way to realize the idea could look like this:

Stage 1: A sovereign Palestinian state must come into being. The occupation must end and Israel must withdraw to the Green Line (with possible mutually agreed swaps of territory.) That goes for Jerusalem, too.

Stage 2: The two states establish a pattern of fair relations between them and get used to living side by side. There will be a need for real steps toward reconciliation and the healing of the wounds of the past.

Stage 3: The two states start negotiations for the establishment of joint institutions. For example: the opening of the border between them for the free movement of people and goods, an economic union, a joint currency, a customs envelope, the use of ports and airports, coordination of foreign relations, and so on. There will be no automatic right for citizens of one state to settle in the other. Each state will decide for itself on its immigration policy. The two parties can jointly decide whether to invite Jordan as a third partner to the proposed treaty. Such a negotiation can succeed only if the population in each of the partner states is convinced that the partnership will bring it positive benefits. Since Israel is the stronger economically and technologically, it must be ready to make generous proposals.

Stage 4: The more trust between the parties develops, the easier it will be to deepen the partnership and to widen the powers of the joint institutions.

Perhaps, at this stage, conditions may be ripe for the founding of a wider association of the entire region, on the lines of the European Union. Such an association may include the Arab states, Israel, Turkey and Iran. This is a vision for the future, and it can be realized. To paraphrase Barack Obama’s slogan, even if it has lost some of its luster: Yes, we can!

Author: Uri Avnery
(Source: Arab News. Uri Avnery can be contacted at avnery@actcom.co.il )