The Price of Entering the International Back Rooms

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

By “international back rooms” I mean the various secret and public meetings, gatherings, and conferences, and the discussions and deliberations that take place within them between different parties, along with whatever understandings and agreements may result. Such back rooms exist all over the world, but their heat rises with the size and power of the states and parties involved in them.

For instance, we do not expect the back rooms of Eastern European states to carry a global echo capable of fundamentally affecting international peace and security. But the back rooms of the great powers, and some of their proxies in the Arab region, concerning the Palestinian cause, are marked by a far wider echo, with real repercussions for conditions of peace and war across the Arab region.

Regarding the Palestinian cause, there exists an environment, with its own back rooms, imposed by the powerful within the region and the powerful states of the world from outside it. This is an environment shaped and defined, in its features and characteristics, by the powerful — and only those who accept its elements, its diplomatic atmosphere, and the requirements of admission into it may join. The most important of these elements and requirements is the adoption of the same international political values embraced by the very architects of that environment.

If there is a party that wants to impose its own environment, as Iran is attempting to do, its acceptance within the existing order is simply out of the question. The PLO, by contrast, was admitted into this environment after it crossed the Palestinian red lines and constants and accepted the conditions set by the colonial powers and the Zionist entity. The PLO remains a weak player, but a welcomed one, within the political and diplomatic framework drawn up by colonialism and occupation.

Hamas and the international back rooms. Hamas tried to court the Europeans after the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections. Having won those elections, Hamas assumed that the democratic legitimacy that had carried it into forming the Palestinian government would earn it forgiveness in European eyes, and that it would be accepted within the diplomatic and political environment prevailing in the region regarding the Palestinian cause. But it was not accepted, and remained rejected as a partner in the search for what is called a just and comprehensive peace in the region. The European bloc confronted it through various individual statements issued by European states, all affirming that Hamas must meet the demands of the international Quartet before anyone would sit down with it.

The international Quartet — composed of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia, and the United States — stipulates, first, recognition of the Zionist entity; second, an end to the practice of “terrorism,” meaning an end to Palestinian national struggle and the laying down of arms; third, recognition of the agreements signed between the PLO and the Zionist entity; and of course, the dismantling of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.

Over time, Hamas became convinced that its chances of being recognized as an essential player in the political efforts shaping the region’s future were going nowhere, and that the colonial powers and the Zionists want to fashion the region’s future according to their own aspirations, and according to their own will, which demands that the peoples and governments of the region remain forever subject to it.

Hamas’s efforts toward the United States did not differ from its efforts toward the Europeans; it is the Americans who control the international Quartet, and they are the most hardline of all against the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people.

The search for a truce with the Zionists. Efforts are now underway to find a de-escalation between Hamas and the Zionist entity, and it appears that Egypt is leading these efforts, trying with both sides to reach a period of calm or a truce lasting several years — one that, in all likelihood, will not be written and signed, as is usually the case when such understandings are reached. And behind the scenes, colonial powers, particularly from Europe and America, are participating in these efforts. The people of the West are interested in a truce because of the severe hardship Gaza is enduring, hardship that could explode in the Zionist entity’s face.

The West wants calm on the Gaza front, and is not looking for further escalation that might end in a new war. In other words, the West is searching for a truce so that the people of Gaza do not express the hardship they are living through by escalating matters to the point that the Zionists launch a ground war on Gaza — which would place the entity before fresh international criticism from states and non-governmental organizations, and would also confront the Zionist army with yet another failure, one that would greatly damage its prestige and its deterrent power. The Zionist army has already failed in three successive wars on Gaza, unable to advance on the ground inside the Strip despite the enormous scale of killing and destruction it inflicted on the civilian population.

The West now sees the people of the Strip insisting on continuing the Great March of Return, which powerfully reminds the world of the Palestinian refugee cause. And even though the people of the West are keen to erase the refugee cause by focusing on the so-called two-state solution, the return marches attempt to bring the Palestinian cause back to its roots. This is uncomfortable for the people of the West, and uncomfortable for many Arab countries as well, Egypt among them, which participates forcefully in the siege of Gaza and the squeezing of its people.

Egypt wants to rid itself of the suffering of the people of Gaza by dragging Hamas into an environment that does not fit with its own platform for liberating the Palestinian homeland. And the efforts currently underway may well reveal what we have affirmed in many previous articles: that Egypt does not hold sovereignty over the Rafah crossing, and that it does not open the crossing except with Zionist approval. And indeed, we now find that among the supposed merits of the truce being discussed is that the Zionists will agree to open the Rafah crossing permanently.

The stick and the carrot. The Western states and the Zionists are playing the game of the stick and the carrot. Some Europeans are now talking about allocating large sums of money to improve living conditions in the Gaza Strip and to fund reconstruction, while at the very same time the Zionists continue their destructive assaults on the Strip — and Hamas is left to choose between the money and the bombing. The West now appears as though it were humane, its tears flowing copiously in sorrow for the people of Gaza. It is lying — it is the West that incites the Zionists to tighten their military grip, precisely so that the people of Gaza will decide to fall in line for the carrot.

But the carrot is not free — it has a price. And if anyone imagines that the Zionists and the people of the West will accept a de-escalation while the resistance still exists, that is nothing but illusion and wishful dreaming.

The Zionists will not accept a truce that does not explicitly freeze the military situation in Gaza in a way that assures them the resistance is not receiving smuggled weapons and that no materials important to military manufacturing are entering the Strip. The Zionists will demand that Gaza’s military situation be placed under monitoring to make sure the resistance abides by its commitments. And if the resistance were to do that, it would have sentenced itself to a liquidation that would inflict tremendous harm on the Palestinian cause. And since the resistance will not accept that, the truce will not happen.

The Zionists do not honor their commitments. Since when have the Zionists honored agreements or understandings? From 1948 until today, the Zionists have violated understandings and broken agreements and covenants. This has been their record with Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. The Zionists do not believe in written, signed understandings; they leave matters open to their own interpretations, which allow them to violate whatever they have agreed to. The two closest examples before us are the Shalit prisoner-exchange deal, which the Zionists have still not honored to this day, and the ceasefire agreement reached under Egyptian sponsorship after the 2014 war.

In that agreement, the Zionists agreed to the establishment of a seaport and an airport in Gaza, a gradual lifting of the siege, and an expansion of the fishing zone. None of what was agreed upon was ever implemented, and the Arabs never said a word about it. And now they are talking about a truce under which the Zionists will permit a seaport and an airport.

So if the Palestinian resistance in Gaza wants to reach a truce agreement, it must, before committing to implement anything itself, secure the Zionists’ implementation of what is required of them. Otherwise, we must not fall into the same deception for the thousandth time, only to end up, once again, the losers and the ones left with regret.

Source: Originally published in Al Jazeera on 2018-08-16. Translated from the original Arabic, “أثمان الدخول في الكواليس الدولية” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.