2014: Failure of Palestinian Authority, BDS Success to Continue
07 January 2014
By Ramzy Baroud
2013 was a year in which the so-called peace process
charade was allowed to continue, leading Palestinians
on yet another futile journey of broken promises.
Meanwhile, the Israeli colonial project in the West
Bank and East Jerusalem carried on unabated. But it
was not entirely a year of doom and gloom either, for
the global boycott campaign (BDS) has taken off like
never before, surpassing the capricious Palestinian
leadership and its confined political platforms.
Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is
an unsuccessful leader, to say the least. But a much
harsher judgment can arguably be made. When he out
rightly rejected the boycott of Israel in an interview
while attending the service of South Africa's iconic
leader Nelson Mandela, many Palestinians went on to
describe his words as an act of treason. "We don't ask
anyone to boycott Israel itself. We have relations
with Israel, we have mutual recognition of Israel," he
was quoted.
The irony is that an international boycott movement
was another facet of the anti-Apartheid struggle in
South Africa. For Abbas to reject boycotting in the
Palestinian context - of the very country that is
responsible for military occupation, countless war
crimes, the siege on Gaza, violation of numerous
international laws, the Apartheid Wall and for much
more - while attending Mandela's funeral is a
testament to Abbas' own political and moral
bankruptcy.
Yet merely two weeks after Abbas' statement, his chief
negotiator, Saeb Erekat, was once more threatening to
take Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC)
if it carried on another settlement expansion scheme
in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Erekat is understandably angry that the rightwing
government of Benjamin Netanyahu plans to build
another 1,400 homes for illegal settlers in several
colonies, including 600 in Ramat Shlomo, which is
located in the West Bank but was illegally annexed
into occupied East Jerusalem. 800 other homes will be
built in various settlements in the occupied West
Bank, which Israel plans to keep in any future
agreement.
"We strongly condemn this and consider it damaging for
the peace process", said Erekat. He described
Netanyahu's move as "a war crime". Even by the ever
tolerant standards of the PA, its officials have
invoked the term ‘war crimes' on so many occasions,
and threatened to resort to the ICC, a threat that, of
course, was never carried out.
Yet, there is no serious drive championed by the
Palestinian leadership calling for punitive measures
against Israel, only a halfhearted step that was taken
in November 2012, when Palestine exacted international
recognition in the UN, becoming a non-member state.
Faced by Israeli obstinacy and a growing resentment
among Palestinians of Abbas and his authority's
mounting corruption and failures, the Palestinian
leader had no option but to seek anything that could
be promoted by his jubilant supporters in the occupied
territories as a ‘victory'. Abbas returned home to be
greeted as a liberation hero by his loyalists in
Ramallah, a stunt that didn't fool many.
But in theory, the recognition also meant that if the
PA agreed to sign up to the ICC's Rome Statute, it
could finally take Israel to the criminal court. Other
practical steps could have also been taken, whereby
Palestine could join dozens of international
organizations, and hold Israel accountable for its
continued crimes to whichever capacity possible. None
of that took place to the dismay of Palestinians and
their supporters.
What did happen is that last July, Abbas and his
negotiators were dragged back to yet another round of
useless and unconditional negotiations. And as they
negotiated, the Israeli government had in fact sped up
construction in its colonies in the West Bank and
tightened the siege on Gaza. It was such a mockery
that on Nov 13, the entire Palestinian negotiation
team had resigned in protest.
But since "the man in charge" – according to a senior
US administration official, quoted in CNN – is Saeb
Erekat, then, such resignation meant very little.
"We've seen Saeb Erakat do this before where he'd
threaten to resign because he's not happy with the way
talks are going but ... he ends up taking it back and
continuing with the negotiations."
It is an embarrassing spectacle, really, and the PA
doesn't seem to notice, or perhaps care. Instead of
marching to The Hague with utter resolve, and putting
Israel on the defensive for once, Erekat continues to
use the same worn out tactic, used by Abbas himself in
the past, of empty threats, which don't seem to even
register on the Israeli or US radar.
There is no question that the PA is in a much weaker
position than Israel. The latter, aside from its
military strength and total domination over every
aspect of Palestinian life, is unconditionally
supported by the US administration. While the Obama
administration did dare choose a course of action
regarding Iran that is not consistent with the wishes
of the Zionist lobby in Washington, and its ever
enthusiastic supporters in Congress, it remains
beholden to the wishes of the lobby regarding
Palestine.
US Secretary of State John Kerry has proved once again
that it is not individuals, but established policies
that control US behavior in the Middle East. His
latest proposal, based on the work of 160 US
officials, including retired US Marine Corps Gen. John
Allen, went as far as Netanyahu had hoped for to
ensure Israel's ‘security', should a Palestinian state
be established. According to the rightwing Israeli
daily, the Jerusalem Post, Kerry's ‘ideas' in the
proposal include Israeli control over Palestine's
borders with Jordan, and continued Israeli military
presence in the Jordan Valley.
The Americans are bending over backwards for Israel as
they have no reason not to: the lobby still has the
upper hand in shaping US foreign policy regarding
Israel and Palestine, and the PA is proving to be as
accommodating as both Israel and the US expect of it.
Disappointingly, the few available outlets that could
in fact empower the Palestinian leadership such as
supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)
movement, and resorting to such international bodies
as the ICC, are either shunned out completely or
simply used as a tactic of empty threats.
There is no evidence that the PA plans to change
course in 2014. The sorry legacy of Oslo will
continue, as well as Israeli's illegal colonial
projects, the American peace process charade, and all
the rest. But what will continue to change is that the
BDS movement is moving ahead with or without Abbas and
Erekat, whose claims to leadership are merely that of
titles and hollow prestige.
- Ramzy Baroud is an internationally-syndicated
columnist, a media consultant and the editor of
PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is "My Father
Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story" (Pluto
Press, London).
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