Abbas Concedes from 44% to 22%

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

A great many people are waiting for what has come to be known as the “September entitlement,” believing that deliverance is near and that the Palestinian state has become imminent, whatever America and Israel might think of it. Some people even ask, in earnest, about the great achievement to be realized in September, as if they had never before been through promises, wishful thinking, and fine words — as if they did not know that the United Nations is the very body that ratified the Western conspiracy against the people of Palestine, and that it is the instrument of the powerful states, the United States chief among them, for legitimizing wars and aggression against others.

In September, Mr. Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) will head to the United Nations to bring us a state. Of course, Abu Mazen will bring nothing at all, although if he does go, it will cause some diplomatic and media annoyance for the Zionist entity and the United States; and afterward he will begin thinking up some new maneuver to amuse himself and the advisors around him, and to distract his people with.

Abu Mazen will go to the United Nations to request a state on the territory occupied in 1967 — that is, the West Bank and Gaza Strip — land equal to about 22% of the area of Mandatory Palestine. Meanwhile, there already exists a United Nations resolution establishing an Arab state on 44% of the area of Mandatory Palestine, a resolution that was never implemented. In 1947, the General Assembly issued the illegitimate Partition Resolution, rejected wholly and in every detail, Resolution 181, concerning the partition of Palestine, which called for the establishment of two states: a Jewish state on about 54% of the land, and an Arab state on about 44% of it.

And a reader of the Declaration of Independence issued in 1988 will find that it establishes a Palestinian state over the whole of Mandatory Palestine, in accordance with Resolution 181. Note that this Declaration of Independence is itself illegitimate, since it never first repealed the declaration of independence issued by the Palestinian National Council convened in Gaza on 1 October 1948, which established a parliamentary government called the All-Palestine Government.

[…] believed that the United Nations would deliver anything for him, then he ought rather to demand that it implement its own 1947 resolution first. What he is actually doing is leaping over a resolution that grants him a right, in order to give it up in favor of a mirage. He knows, just as those applauding him know, that the establishment of a genuine Palestinian state will never come by way of the United Nations, and that all they will actually achieve is to void the international legal effect of the right granted by the 1947 Partition Resolution. He is going there to say that he does not want 44% — he will settle for 22%.

What Abu Mazen is doing here expresses a poverty of means, and an unwillingness to walk the path that liberation actually requires. Establishing the state and liberating Palestine certainly demands far more than this — indeed, it demands staying well away from the United Nations, which is the instrument of the powerful colonizing states. His act is entirely consistent with the tradition of Palestinian leaderships turning their backs on the covenants and pledges the Palestinians bind themselves to, and swear to uphold. We have already trampled on the Palestinian National Charter again and again since 1969, to the point that the Palestinian National Council, which is supposed to be the guardian of the Charter, adopted resolutions in 1988 flatly contrary to its provisions. Our leaderships have already signed the Oslo Accord and begun implementing it despite its glaring violation of the Palestinian National Charter. Even the covenants between the factions themselves have gone unrespected, such as the 2005 Cairo Agreement and the 2007 Mecca Agreement. So is it really too much to ask of Abu Mazen that he trample on two declarations of independence and a 1947 UN resolution as well? (Go on and trample, my dear fellow — our necks have long grown used to submission.)

Nor are the Palestinian factions innocent of what is happening, or of the trampling upon the neck of the Palestinian people. Some of them are silent factions, simply waiting; others are factions actively encouraging it.

In any case, we must not forget that the salary has come to matter more than the homeland, and that the words of whoever pays us that salary have become nothing less than orders.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “عباس يتنازل من 44% إلى 22%” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.