Dismantling the Palestinian issue
The cause has become extremely ambiguous due to mixed internal, regional and international viewpoints. Peace as a path to resolve it has lost ground, a lot of factors have taken a blow and the US position has shifted
Has the Palestinian issue reached a stage of a complete dismantling? Have the principles that governed it faded away in favour of other principles that set the stage for both new and perilous arrangements? Are we about to close the Palestinian cause through solutions based on imposing a de facto situation or external pressures?
There are several phenomena, transformations, and developments that give rise to such questions; such as the racist Jewish Nation-State Law. The law refers to Israel as a Jewish state or a state for the Jewish people, which carries serious implications regarding how Israel views the Palestinians and their rights, as well as the border of the state of Israel itself according to the Biblical Jewish perspective that speaks of the Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Euphrates. Further, there are several proposals that neglect the two-state solution and eliminate practically the establishment of the Palestinian state. This also includes the decision of US President Donald Trump to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to [occupied] Jerusalem, which has legitimatised the Israeli control over the entire Holy City while occupied East Jerusalem is supposed to be the capital of the Palestinian state. Moreover, the US administration has turned the two-state solution from an established and unquestionable principle of the peace process, since it was first launched in the Madrid Peace Conference in 1991, into an issue subject to the consent of the two parties, or more precisely to Israel’s approval.
Funding stopped
Furthermore, there are talks that Washington may deny Palestinian refugees’ right to return, an established right reiterated in the resolutions of international legitimacy on which the peace process is based. Additionally, Washington has stopped funding of the Palestinian National Authority and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), and it has closed the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) office in Washington. In addition, the Palestinian cause is no longer at the forefront of Arabs’ interests; it has sharply lost priority in light of the challenges, threats, and problems that are faced by countries of the region, altering their list of priorities as well as their perception of threats to their national security and the position of Israel within these threats compared to other threats posed, primarily by Iran, Hezbollah, and terrorist groups, among others.
Why did all this happen? How has the Palestinian cause reached this stage?
To answer that it is necessary to trace the history of this cause because there are deep-rooted, complex and intertwined reasons that have brought the Palestinian cause, a central issue for Arabs, Muslims and the entire world for long, to this stage. I will try to briefly list them in the following points.
1. The beginning of the collapse of the Palestinian cause was in 1990, when the Palestinian leadership, led by the late Yasser Arafat, committed a grave mistake. It made a decision I consider one of the most irrational and unwise decisions ever — to support the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which was one of the strongest supporters of the Palestinian cause and the starting point to establish the Fatah movement and the PLO. Additionally, Palestinian leadership, under Israeli occupation, ought to have been the last to support the occupation of any other country. The decision triggered serious consequences, at the top of which was losing Arabs’ unanimous support.
2. Some Arab regimes have manipulated the Palestinian cause to serve their own interests, either by playing the Palestinian card in their relations with other Arab countries, seeking to assume leadership of the Arab world, or as a means to gain internal legitimacy. This was clearly manifested in the aftermath of the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty in 1979 when countries such as Iraq, Syria, and Libya competed for Arab leadership using their support of the Palestinian cause as leverage, raising slogans of confrontation, resistance, insisting on preserving Palestinian rights, and refusing peace as an option. Consequently, the Palestinian cause reached the current situation.
3. Intervention of non-Arab powers, namely Iran and Turkey. After the revolution of 1979, Iran adopted the slogan “Death to Israel” and defence for Palestine as a mechanism for pressure and conflict-management against Arab countries, and as a tool to gain support of Arabs and Muslims. However, Iran’s motives were neither genuine nor sincere. Iran also strengthened sectarian powers affiliated with it, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. Turkey adopted the slogan of supporting the Palestinians in 2002, when the Islamist Justice and Development Party, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, came to power.
Turkey too manipulated this slogan in an attempt to gain Islamic leadership and as a means of political leverage in its relations with Arab countries. Meanwhile, Turkey consolidated its ties with Israel, and also contributed to deepening the internal divisions in the Palestinian scene, by aligning with the Brotherhood’s Hamas movement. Another evidence is the Al Houthis in Yemen, who turned against legitimacy, aligned with Iran, and attacked Arab national security; like the others, the Al Houthis raised the slogan “Death to Israel.”
4. Internal Palestinian divisions. This is one of the most serious reasons, especially the split between Fatah and Hamas. In 2007, Hamas resorted to armed force to take control of the Gaza Strip; since then all attempts to bridge the gap have failed. Indeed, the division between Fatah and Hamas remains the most prominent on the Palestinian scene; yet, there are further splits resulting in a large number of Palestinian factions. This division allowed Israel to justify its refusal to abide by the principles of peace because of the absence of a single Palestinian party to negotiate with.
5. Many regard the underlying reason behind the deterioration of the peace process to be Benjamin Netanyahu becoming prime minister of Israel for the first time in 1996, and his slogan “peace for peace” instead of the slogan “land for peace” on which the Madrid peace process was based. However, I believe the situation is much deeper. Undoubtedly, Netanyahu has adopted hardline positions against peace; nevertheless, he publicly expressed Israel’s real strategic attitude. His predecessors adopted tactics to hide their real goal, which is to liquidate the Palestinian cause.
Since the Madrid conference, Israel has adopted a negotiating tactic based on two elements that have decisively contributed to putting the Palestinian cause toward liquidation. The first is wasting time, so that negotiation becomes an end in itself and not a means to reach final agreements. In other words, negotiations for the sake of negotiations. And Israel has been successful.
Failure to rein in Israel
The second element is imposing a de facto situation — to change the situation, whether through the large expansion of colonies, through the Judaisation of Jerusalem, or even by dividing the Palestinian territories. Therefore, the Palestinian negotiator finds nothing to negotiate with regard to the Palestinian land, the status of Jerusalem, or other issues that were supposed to be discussed in the final phase of negotiations.
6. Another important reason is the failure of the international community and its main powers, which should guarantee the continuation of the peace process, its stages, and dates between Palestine and Israel. The US, Russia, the EU, and the United Nations did not assume their responsibility. Instead, they allowed Israel to back out of its commitments, break its promises, and manipulate the peace process until it became meaningless.
7. The major powers share a great responsibility for the current situation. The US, the main supporter of Israel, has granted Israel protection over the past years in the UN and other international organisations. Now it introduces ideas for peace that are far from the vision of a two-state solution and eliminates all references on which the peace process has been based since 1991. It is well-known that the US is the only power that can exercise real pressure on Israel, thus the only country that can make a viable and lasting peace.
The dismantling of the Palestinian cause will lead to a lack of confidence in the peace process as a means of obtaining Palestinian rights, thus encouraging violence and extremism. This will result in a threat to regional and global security and stability. The liquidation of the cause can put more pressure on some Arab countries, primarily Egypt and Jordan, to accept certain formulas for settlement at the expense of their sovereignty, such as the proposal for the confederation between the West Bank and Jordan or the Deal of the Century, reported to be based on the exchange of land, the creation of a Palestinian capital on the outskirts of [occupied] Jerusalem, and other details far from the perceptions on which the peace process was originally based.
Israel may think that dismantling the Palestinian cause and ending the two-state solution is all good for Israel. However, the truth is that Israel will face an existential threat because the end of the two-state solution will cause a serious problem. The one-state solution will resurface, meaning the disappearance of the Jewish identity of the State of Israel because of the demographic imbalance in favour of Palestinians. The Israeli right-wing, which opposes the two-state solution and has worked for the complete annihilation of the Palestinian cause, presents a populist speech that satisfies its supporters and other hardliners in the short term, but ignores the seriousness of the situation in the long term.
All the above asserts that the Palestinian cause has become extremely ambiguous due to mixed internal, regional, and international views on it. In addition, peace as a path to settle the cause has declined; a lot of the givens that were part of it for decades have taken a blow and US position toward it has shifted.
■ Dr Jamal Sanad Al Suwaidi is a UAE author and director-general of the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research.