Re: Abbas isn’t going anywhere, Nov. 23. (http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Abbas+going+anywhere/2254816/story.html)
Barry Rubin’s statement in his opinion article that Mahmoud Abbas’ “real motivation” is to be seen as a hardliner is acceptable only if one is oblivious to the Palestinian reality in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Rubin evades all responsibility on Israel’s part, placing the entire burden of failure on the Palestinians. He complains that Palestinians see themselves as “perpetual victims” (aren’t the Israelis?). He adds the tired accusations about Palestinians’ “strategy of seeking Israel’s destruction,” omitting that Israel is a military giant, protected by the first military power in the world, and the occupier. No military occupation is benign.
Rubin mentions that Palestinian President Yasser Arafat refused a good deal in Camp David.
Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, published extracts of the Israeli proposal, which offered Palestinians a vassal, not a sovereign state, a protectorate to legitimize the Israeli occupation.
Robert Malley, member of the U.S. delegation, rejected the “generous offer” view in an article co-written with Hussein Agha. In 2004, he stated that “Camp David as a metaphor for Palestinian rejectionism … distorted both U.S. and Israeli policy and badly undermined confidence in a peaceful settlement of the conflict.”
Settlements represent a breach of international law. Hillary Clinton may have qualified Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s concessions as “unprecedented” (not “huge”), but she also stated that “the Obama administration’s position on settlements is clear and unequivocal. It has not changed. The U.S. does not accept the legitimacy of continuing Israeli settlements.”
To Palestinians, instead of providing substantive and positive gains to show for, the trading of land and principles have made their lives a daily challenge through what Israeli Jeff Halper calls the “matrix of control” that Israel established since Oslo.
Rubin’s thesis is that Palestinians do not want to negotiate a just and lasting peace.
Facts speak louder than words. The number of illegal transfer of Israeli citizens to the Occupied Palestinian Territory has doubled to about 500,000 settlers since the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu rejects sharing occupied Jerusalem and has allowed building more homes for Jews only in the Arab sector that is slated to be the capital of the future Palestinian state. Who rejects peace, pray tell?
Bahija Réghaï,
Ottawa
Réghaï is a former president of the National Council on Canada-Arab Relations.
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