The Palestinian Authority and Its Endorsement of Settlement

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

A television anchor was taken aback when I told him, in an interview, that the Palestinian Authority endorses settlement construction, and that what I hear in the media matters less to me than what I see on the ground. It was clear the order of his questions had been thrown into disarray, and he was forced to explore this view with me.

It was not to be expected that the anchor would simply accept my view, since the media is abuzz with news about the negotiations, and about settlement as a Zionist activity obstructing the continuation of negotiations, and he perhaps saw in this view an unbalanced accusation, or a way of distorting the Palestinian Authority’s image.

I still hold this view, and here are my arguments:

First: the distortion of facts in the Arab arena. It is not wise for a person to take news from the Palestinian arena seriously and consider it accurate, because much of it is imprecise, concerned only with reporting the news without returning to the background or the logical reasoning governing it.

Most people are affected by news even when it is not the product of an actual event, falling into the pitfalls of daily news not grounded in analysis or scholarly argument.

Here I offer examples. An Arab leader once gave a speech at an Arab summit conference, calling for overcoming Arab disputes and reconciliation so that Arabs might enter a new era.

The media spoke of the speech for over a month, and other media outlets went to great lengths analyzing the speech and praising it and the great leader’s wisdom, but none of them spoke of the fact that this leader lacks free political will, and cannot achieve any actual reconciliation without American approval. It is no surprise, then, that the reconciliations never happened, and quarrels between the Arab regimes continued.

Another example concerns the Camp David negotiations of 2000, which the media discussed at length, and which Palestinians supporting the Authority spoke of extensively as an example of the Palestinian leadership’s steadfastness and adherence to Palestinian fixed principles.

No media outlet ever presented a single document about those negotiations, nor about what was proposed to Arafat, or what he rejected — it was all media talk unsupported by documented information, and it later turned out that no negotiations actually took place over the course of about two weeks, and that the parties never sat together for more than an hour in a non-negotiating session.

A third example concerns that Palestinian leader who was leaving a bar in Beirut and declared that the PLO would destroy American interests in the Gulf. The media flared up with reactions at the time, while the leader was drunk, and did not actually possess any capacity for destruction to begin with.

This means the Arab arena is not a democratic arena, scholarly research does not enjoy freedom of access to information, and the Arab is subjected to a great deal of manipulation and lying by his leaders and by the media, and a person must develop great capacities to fortify himself against the brainwashing and distortions he is exposed to.

Neither Palestinian media nor the Palestinian leaderships are exempt from this phenomenon, and the best evidence of this is that the various slogans raised by the leaderships across multiple periods of the Palestinian cause’s history have all collapsed, and that all the bluster and posturing of manliness accompanying them were nothing but bubbles that dissipated.

Second: negotiating under the shadow of settlement construction. The Palestinian Authority has been negotiating since 1994, and settlement construction has never stopped.

Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic voices, and voices from the West too, have risen saying settlement construction eats away at the land and leaves no room for establishing a Palestinian state, and that negotiation loses its meaning and substance — but the Palestinian Authority has not stopped negotiating, contenting itself with statements to the effect that settlement construction negatively affects the negotiations. Whoever continues negotiating under the spears of settlement construction cannot absolve himself of the charge of endorsing settlement.

The Palestinian Authority’s position, over long years, has not differed from the American position, which has long repeated that settlement construction constitutes an obstacle in the path of peace, without this ever developing into a practical measure forcing Israel to stop settlement construction. Settlement construction continued under various Zionist governments, and the negotiations continued.

Third: Obama entangled the Palestinian side. The Palestinian Authority did not announce it would not negotiate unless settlement construction was completely frozen until after American President Obama announced his opposition to settlement construction in his famous speech at Cairo University — as though the Authority wanted to catch up with Obama’s caravan, which it thought would be capable of stopping settlement construction. In other words, the matter was simply seizing an opportunity, so the Authority would not appear to be in a position weaker than the American position on settlement.

My opinion, from the very start, was that Obama would not hold firm to his words, and that the Palestinian Authority would return to negotiations without settlement construction stopping.

Fourth: the continuation of the “frozen” settlement construction. Zionist settlement construction in Jerusalem and across the West Bank never stopped at all after the Israeli prime minister announced its freeze. Construction of new housing units continued in various areas of the West Bank, and settlement activity was visible to people generally, especially those passing near Zionist settlements.

Despite this, the Authority returned to indirect negotiations and then to direct negotiations. It seems the matter of linking negotiations to a settlement freeze was political charlatanism and manipulation, since security coordination between the Palestinian Authority and Israel never stopped.

Fifth: the most important point in all the agreements with Israel, and in the practical applications on the ground, is security coordination, under which the Palestinian side commits to pursuing terrorism and terrorists, and commits to Israeli security requirements.

Security coordination is the true measure of the extent of the Authority’s commitment to Israeli demands, and it is what its existence and the flow of funds to it are tied to — this is the crux of the matter for Israel when signing any agreement with any Arab party, and it is not prepared to sign unless the Arab side commits to standing guard at its gates.

Israel does not care about negotiations concerning Arab rights, and only achieves its goal when the Arab side commits to its security and to pursuing Arab citizens who want to resist or are even considering it. This is why Israel sees in direct or indirect negotiations with the Palestinian side nothing but a means to consume time and deceive Palestinians into believing it might offer them something someday.

Accordingly, the Palestinian side’s seriousness regarding settlement is only demonstrated if it stops security coordination, and there is no seriousness or benefit in stopping negotiations while security coordination continues. Stopping negotiations while security coordination continues is a deception of the Palestinian people, and a way of misleading all Arabs and Muslims into believing the Palestinian Authority is against settlement construction.

Stopping negotiations has no value as long as the Palestinian security apparatuses arrest Palestinians because of their connection to the resistance or because of their intentions. All talk against settlement construction in such a situation cannot be convincing, especially when one observes that the Palestinian security apparatuses work against anything that might disturb the settlers’ sleep.

Sixth: security in exchange for bread. Since 1994, the Palestinian Authority has been spinning in a single circle: substantive negotiations over Israel’s security in exchange for negotiations over the Palestinian people’s livelihood rights.

It is true that the fixed national rights of the Palestinian people have sometimes been touched upon, but this was marginal, and the substance of the negotiations remained centered on employees’ salaries, or removing checkpoints, or releasing detainees, or opening the way for Palestinian workers to work in Israel.

Even the fixed national rights, represented only by two constants — the right of return and the right to self-determination — have not received serious treatment from the Palestinian Authority, which has focused essentially on establishing a state. It is well known that establishing a state is not among the fixed rights, since it is a specific Palestinian choice that emerges from the right to self-determination.

The Palestinian Authority has not, since 1994, sought to free the Palestinian people from the financial enslavement of the donor states, keeping the people — government employees especially — dangling from the tail of the donor states, which ultimately take their orders from America and Israel. Whoever clings to the tail of his enemy’s money cannot possibly be opposed to this enemy’s policies, foremost among them settlement construction.

The Palestinian Authority says it is against settlement, and that it has options for negotiating, explaining that its option is to go to the Security Council to resolve the crisis.

This option is, without doubt, naive, even if well-intentioned, because America constitutes a fundamental axis on the Council and holds veto power — meaning fleeing from America to the Security Council is essentially throwing oneself into the American embrace.

Real options do not exist within the single option expressed by the president of the Palestinian Authority and his chief negotiator, but rather outside it. An option that circles within the same circle is not an option at all — it is merely a detour that leads back to that very same circle.

In any case, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said he will negotiate if the negotiations fail, and will negotiate if that fails too, and will negotiate if the failure of the failure fails, and his chief negotiator wrote that “life is negotiations.”

It has never happened, in human history, that negotiation became a way of life rather than a tool or mechanism, except among Palestinian political philosophers.

This means Palestinian negotiating philosophy never deviates from continuing to negotiate, and if settlement construction is to continue, failure does not mean stopping negotiations.

Some Arab regimes have appeared frequently on screen regarding the matter of returning to indirect and direct negotiations, the reason being that Americans, Palestinians, and Israelis needed a way for Palestinians to extricate themselves from entangling themselves by announcing a halt to negotiations.

It would not have been appropriate for Palestinian officials to simply swallow their words without some kind of fanfare making them appear cooperative with others rather than stubborn, and the Arab regimes served as the tool providing cover for the return.

The Arab dimension is not a dimension for wagering on the future of the Arab nation — it is usually used to push through external agendas or programs, since most Arab regimes are installed by others, lack free political will, and cannot decide for themselves on their own.

The Palestinian Authority threatens to stop negotiations if Netanyahu returns to settlement construction — negotiations will stop, but only temporarily, and will resume as long as the Palestinian situation remains as weak, submissive, and surrendering as it is.

And if a return to negotiations does not happen quickly, security coordination will continue, and settlement construction will continue with it. Israel wants nothing more than the current state of affairs, and if there is anything preoccupying it, it is certainly not the Palestinian Authority.

Whoever does not want to negotiate must take practical steps to prove their positions, such as: stopping security coordination, changing alliances, replacing funding sources, changing internal conditions including the cabinet and institutional administrations, freeing the resistance’s hand, and returning matters to Palestinian national unity on the basis of liberation.

As for talk against settlement construction amid conditions of defeat and submission, it is pointless and useless, and means only one thing: that the Palestinian Authority endorses settlement construction in practice while rejecting it in the media.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “السلطة الفلسطينية وتأييد الاستيطان” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.