The Failed Negotiations Continue

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

The Palestinian side in the Zionist-Palestinian negotiations has said that the negotiations are in danger because of Israeli practices, settlement construction especially. The Palestinian negotiator has long repeated that Israel’s continued assaults threaten the negotiations, yet settlement construction and the assaults continued, and the negotiations continued along with them. The American side, for its part, has noted on several occasions that the negotiations are passing through difficult turns, but will continue, and it worked with every possible effort to resume them when the Palestinian side halted them. The Zionist side, meanwhile, has always said it is searching for a courageous partner willing to make the difficult decisions needed to save the peace process. In other words, all the parties participating in the negotiations have expressed their eagerness for the negotiations to continue and succeed.

The negotiations are now passing through a deadlock, and the parties await April 29, 2014, the end of the current round of negotiations, to see what fate awaits.

All Parties Cling to the Negotiations

Despite the pessimistic phrases we hear from time to time about the futility of the negotiations and the possibility of their collapse, all parties — Palestinians, Zionists, and Americans — are interested in their continuation, regardless of the prospects for success or failure. The Americans are interested in their continuation because they have many interests in the Arab-Islamic region, and do not want these interests to remain under the threat of continuous tension between Israel and the Arabs. Resolving the Palestinian cause would spare them a great deal of concern and effort, and would contribute to the stability and deepening of their interests. They cannot turn their backs on the negotiations and leave the field to become a stage for others, and if Kerry threatens to halt American mediation, this is merely a threat lacking rationality, going beyond the balance of American interests. The Zionists, for their part, are interested in the negotiations’ continuation because they have constituted, for them, a green light to continue their traditional policies of land confiscation and settlement construction without anyone standing in their way. The negotiations even provided them with the appropriate environment to assault the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound without restraint. The negotiations also provided them with the appropriate climate to inflict moral, psychological, social, economic, and security harm on the Palestinian people in the territory occupied in ‘67 — harm that direct occupation itself was unable to inflict, but which the Palestinian Authority, acting as a security and administrative agent for the occupation, has succeeded in inflicting.

As for the Palestinian side, it would find nothing to do if the negotiations stopped, and would find itself absent from the media and international activities were they to stop. The Palestinian side treats negotiations as a matter of doctrine, not merely as a method that might lead everyone to a non-violent solution, which is why the president of the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly said he is for negotiations, and that if they fail, he will negotiate, and if that fails too, he will negotiate again. The Palestinian side has no options and is not searching for options, and does not want to do anything other than negotiate. It is putting up a little resistance right now, but we will find it pliable again as the days go by.

Signing International Treaties

The Palestinian side tried to send a message that it has the option of activity on the international stage, and the president of the Authority signed applications to join international treaties. But is this a vital option that could help recover some Palestinian rights from Israel? As a matter of principle, Palestinians ought not to be absent from the international stage, and should be present in the corridors of the United Nations and international conferences, in order to remain present before the representatives of states, to respond to Zionist claims, and to clarify the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people. This international presence will not liberate Palestine, and will not force Israel to restore rights to their owners, but it constitutes a factor of media pressure on Israel, and positively influences world public opinion in favor of the Palestinian cause, if Palestine’s representatives handle it well.

Activity on the international stage constitutes a supporting factor, not a primary factor, in recovering Palestinian rights. That is, there could be resistance to the occupation that draws on international activities, or a mobilization of Arab military efforts against Israel that draws on international movement, but relying on international activity alone, without any action to confront Israel, will not bring desired results. Moreover, the step the president of the Palestinian Authority took in signing international treaties is a symbolic step that does not harm Israel in any way and does not constitute a pressure factor against it. Joining treaties such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the rights of women, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights will have no impact on the Palestinian reality or on the reality of the negotiations, and if Israel showed anger at this step, it is lying, or it is merely calculating the implications of Palestine joining international courts. Even joining the International Criminal Court is a double-edged sword, since Israel could file complaints against Palestinians and Palestinian factions, and it has the advantage in this field, because the bodies capable of enforcing international decisions are biased in its favor against the Palestinian people.

The Blocked Negotiating Horizon

From the very start, the negotiating horizon was never wide enough to promise the negotiations’ success, for objective reasons standing in the way. On the Palestinian side, entering negotiations lacked the objective and professional conditions that lead to progress, because of Palestinian weakness. The Palestinian went to the negotiating table without holding any cards to play at that table — indeed, the Palestinian side would sometimes obtain information about Palestinian areas from the Israeli side itself, as happened regarding the Al-Nuwei’ma and Tell al-Fit areas. The negotiating table is historically governed by the balance of power between the parties, and each party usually obtains benefits and interests proportional to the cards of strength it holds. Perhaps the Palestinian negotiator went to the table relying on American power, but he did not precisely weigh which way this power leans. The Palestinian fell into the trap of the sweet American tongue. He went to the table relying on his enemies’ charity, entrenched behind his own weakness, and this does no good, since weakness has never been a means of wresting rights. Over the years, the Palestinian side never tried to search for sources of strength — on the contrary, it worked to destroy what could have been a source of strength, pursuing the Palestinian resistance, hunting down national weapons, and its practices ultimately led to a deep rift in Palestinian society, and to a decay in the various fabrics of public life — moral, economic, security, and political. Israel grew stronger, and Palestinians grew weaker.

The Palestinian side presents demands to the Israelis that do not match the strength it holds, or the positional strength it could develop, while the Israeli side has remained reassured that the Palestinian side trades on its own weakness, which is why Palestinians cannot obtain anything of their fixed national rights.

The Israeli side, for its part, wants to prolong the negotiations without offering the Palestinians anything. It wants to keep everything in exchange for the Palestinians losing everything. Israel wants to buy time to work on confiscating land, building settlements, pursuing Palestinians, controlling their fate, dominating their resources, and Judaizing the West Bank, and does not want to offer them anything beyond carrying out security and administrative agency tasks in its favor. Israel allowed the establishment of a Palestinian authority in order to employ Palestinians as its agents, covering for its occupation and making it a very cheap occupation, free of international objections — this has been its demand since 1968. Within this Israeli mentality, the Palestinian side cannot possibly meet all of Israel’s demands. It responds on certain matters, but Israel continues to burden it, humiliate it, and trivialize it before the people, until it has become unable to justify its own concessions.

The American side, meanwhile, wants the negotiations to succeed through its complete bias toward Israel. It continues offering every kind of support to Israel, security and military support especially, and prevents Palestinians from possessing even a single bullet unless their weapon is for thuggery, hooliganism, and abusing the people of Palestine. The American side decided in advance not to be an honest broker, constantly affirming its strategic alliance with Israel and its concern for Israeli security. The American side has never once uttered a single sentence in defense of Palestinian security, or of the refugees’ right of return, which falls under the most basic human rights. The American side wants to succeed through bias and by ignoring standards of justice, and this is a farce.

In other words, the parties participating in the negotiations are not armed with the elements needed to achieve success — on the contrary, they are doing what is necessary to cause the negotiations to fail. This is why the negotiations have failed to achieve progress over twenty years, and will not achieve progress even if they continue for another twenty years. Such objective negotiating conditions produce nothing but failure.

The Arab-Islamic Dimension

There is a firm objective truth that all parties to the negotiations overlook: Palestine does not belong to Palestinians alone — it is Arab and Islamic land, which Palestinians do not have the freedom to dispose of however they see fit. And if the Arab regimes express, from time to time, their non-interference in Palestinian affairs, this does not reflect the historical position of the Arab and Islamic nations, nor of the nation’s masses. Palestine is a great responsibility, greater than the scope of Palestinians’ own responsibilities, and if Palestinians were to make concessions, they would risk internal collision, and collision with Arab and Islamic parties outside Palestine. Palestine is not a game in the hands of a small group of negotiators, and it is not merely a piece of land subject to bargaining — it is a sacred land guarded by hundreds of millions of eyes, with millions of arms ready to defend it and fight for it. And if anyone thinks Palestine is an easy morsel that can be swallowed in exchange for millions of dollars given to Palestinians, he is deluded, and does not truly know the standing of Palestine and Jerusalem in Arab minds and hearts, and in Arab-Islamic culture. And if some Palestinians have permitted themselves to toy with the Palestinian cause, it is only because they are protected by Israel and the Arab regimes — and if conditions change, and they will change, the masses of the nation will trample on every agreement.

Neither Israel nor the United States grasps the scale of the affliction Arabs and Muslims are suffering, and if Israel thinks it can guarantee its existence and continuation through arrogance, it needs to read history well.

The conditions of the Arab-Islamic region have changed to a great extent, and will change further in the future in a way that serves the Palestinian cause, and if Israel finds, today, Palestinians and Arabs willing to serve it, it will find it difficult to obtain servants in the future.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “استمرار المفاوضات الفاشلة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.