ISRAELI Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday endorsed for the first time the creation of a Palestinian state, provided it had none of the basic characteristics of a state, and was in reality a Bantustan.
He demanded that such a state must not have an army, and must not have any control over its airspace. He demanded that the Palestinian ‘state’ must accept Zionist settlements that had been built on its territory and allow for their ‘natural expansion’, and that it must accept that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.
Further he demanded that the Palestinian state must accept that Israel is a Jewish state.
The implications of this racist connotation are obvious. The first is that Palestinians have no right to live within the Israeli boundaries, and that Israel has the right to eject them into the Palestinian state once it is established, or into Jordan or Egypt if it isn’t.
The second implication is that not a single Palestinian has the right to return to his home inside Israel, from which he or she was driven by armed Zionists terrorists in the 1948 bout of ethnic cleansing through which the ‘Jewish state’ was established.
Next door to the demilitarised Palestinian state is to be the ‘Jewish state’. This will remain 100 per cent militarised with over 200 nuclear bombs at its disposal, and huge well-equipped armed forces that have already killed very large numbers of Arabs in the last 60 years.
Israel is to remain a nuclear power and be armed to the teeth with all kinds of weapons from banned chemical weapons to cluster bombs.
All Palestinians have quickly condemned Netanyahu’s speech which was declared in advance to be a speech making ‘concessions’ to President Obama’s ‘two-state’ policy, to allow a peaceful diplomatic settlement, so that Israel would be able to establish normal relations with all of the Arab states. Instead it was a dose of concentrated racism.
President Abbas’ spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudaynah said Netanyahu’s speech ‘torpedoes all peace initiatives in the region. It hobbles all efforts to save the peace process, in a clear defiance of the US administration.’
The democratically elected Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip condemned the speech as reflecting a ‘racist, extremist’ ideology that denied Palestinian rights. ‘This speech is the reiteration of the policy of his government, which aims at transforming the Palestinian people into a tool to protect the occupation.’
President Mubarak of Egypt commented that ‘The call to recognise Israel as a Jewish state complicates things further and scuppers the possibilities for peace.’
The Syrian Al Thawra newspaper said that Israel appeared to be far from thinking about peace. The Israeli leader’s speech ‘shows it is useless to await any change in the programme of Netanyahu or the Israeli government.’
However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement that Obama ‘welcomes the important step forward in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech.’
Obama ‘believes this solution can and must ensure both Israel’s security and the fulfilment of the Palestinians’ legitimate aspirations for a viable state, and he welcomes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s endorsement of that goal,’ a statement said.
The ‘principled’ Obama is unable to recognise the difference between a viable Palestinian state, and a Bantustan that will be dominated by, and live in fear of its US-armed and supported, bullying neighbour.
All over Palestine, the Palestinian masses are extremely angry after Netanyahu’s speech.
Many said that the only answer to it was to launch the Third Intifada to establish by revolutionary means the Palestinian state with no settlements, with Jerusalem as its capital, and with refugees having the right to return.
In the last month both President Mubarak and King Abdullah of Jordan have said that if Israel refuses to play its part in organising what Yasser Arafat called the peace of the brave, there will be another Arab-Israeli war. This is what Israel is now preparing for.
The trade unions in the UK and the EU must give real support to the Palestinian struggle for a viable, independent state.
This means that they must call mass demonstrations of support for Palestine, and must also establish a worldwide boycott of all Israeli goods and services, and their transportation by land, sea and air, and keep such a boycott clamped on until the state of Palestine is established with East Jerusalem as its capital.
