Letter from Palestine by ISMAIL RABBAH

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Israel’s foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that ‘the Palestinians should not be allowed to hold negotiations with Israel on a local level while fighting against it in the international sphere,’ referring to the Palestinian Authority’s step of advancing the Goldstone Report for a further vote.

The Palestinian Authority had to work on the report seriously after President Mahmud Abbas had taken a lot of flak for postponing the voting on the report.

Early this month (October), Mr Abbas had unilaterally and silently – without reverting to any of the Supreme Committee of the PLO, the Palestinian Parliament or the Palestinian factions – postponed forwarding the report to the General Assembly of the United Nations, citing what he said were political gains as his justification for the step.

Avigdor’s statesmen, issued on Friday October 23 by his office, according to the Israeli paper Haaretz, implied that the Palestinian Authority had breached a significant item in the signed treaties, which forbids incitement against the Jewish state, considering the UN report as an encouragement to anti-Semitism.

This is not the first time Israel has protested against PA national decisions.

Israel has always protested against any decisions or ideas by the PA that carried lenience on or even a little benefit for the Palestinian people, giving the sense that the PA is no more than a company that has been contracted by Israel for some services, and that any breach in the job contract would make Israel entitled to punish this company.

However, in the recent case, the Israeli protest was of a completely different kind: it was not against a Palestinian decision or some ideas being discussed here or there.

It was against a UN report backed by the international community.

And to one’s surprise it has asked the PA to boycott the report in a commanding tone that implied that the PA was a bellboy working for it.

So President Abbas has to chose between either doing Israel’s bidding or losing his job as a president.

But this time Mr Abbas is stuck between a rock and a hard place as the choice is so difficult.

In all the previous occasions the choice was too easy because he had to choose between reconciling with Hamas or falling from Israel’s grace, basking in the pro-Fatah feeling to support his choice.

Now the choice is being set between the whole Palestinian people and Israel.

Mr Abbas’ justifications were far worse than his scandalous move.

He has always justified his cowardly, unpatriotic decisions as sacrifices for keeping the peace process and negotiations with Israel, advocating this as a policy that will eventually bear fruit.

But the Palestinians now have lost faith in his policy more than ever, because they have been the ones who have had to pay, concede and sacrifice since signing the Oslo Agreement in 1994, at the time when Israel is in control of everything and occupies the land, the waters and the airspace.

And this is one of the main reasons that makes the Palestinians burn up with questions about why the have-nots should give up for the haves who have originally usurped their lands and properties.

After signing the Oslo agreement, the number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem has insanely multiplied, the victims from the Israeli attacks have started to be counted in thousands and the apartheid wall built by Israel has gobbled up half of the West Bank lands whose streets are also cut off by Israeli roadblocks.

On the other hand, the different American administrations which assumed power after the Oslo Agreement have never been serious when it comes to the Palestinians’ right of establishing an independent state on the lands occupied in 1967.

They either resort to procrastination or give dates beyond their terms, exactly what George W Bush did.

And in the most recent example, all of us could see how President Barak Obama dropped his calls for Israel to dismantle the settlements in the West Bank shortly after Israel had rubbished these calls.

And in spite of all these facts, President Abbas is still hanging on to talks with Israel and is unwilling to halt negotiations, whatsoever the circumstances might be.

The Palestinian people have now recognised that the so-called peace process and the promises of establishing an independent, viable Palestinian state are no more than a dummy pushed into their mouths to distract their attention from the Zionist enterprise.

This sense is surely increasing not decreasing, and I believe that President Abbas should either change his policies or brace himself for a powerful kick in the backside that will send him flying into the dustbin of history.