The chief negotiator of the Palestinian Authority, Saeb Erekat, stated that peace negotiations with Israel had come to an end and therefore the following steps to be taken should be decided, referring clearly to unilateral measures.
Few journalists, analysts or members of the government have asked the following question (at least publicly) Do Palestinians really want to have their own State? Do they really want to live in peace next to their neighbour Israel?
If these were the objectives, which attitude would their leaders adopt? Where does the position of not negotiating with Israel lead? And my favourite question, if you were a Palestinian Leader, would that be your plan of action?
Our Western logical way of reasoning indicates that if we want to agree on a solution, we need to negotiate, that if our aim is to live in peace, we must be willing to pay a reasonable price to achieve it. Do Palestinians really want peace?
Israel always tried to negotiate directly as a means of settling a dispute, and in those negotiations all subjects could be treated without setting prior conditions.
On the contrary, Palestinians first refused to negotiate and then agreed to it, but always having third countries acting as mediators.
Later they demanded countless conditions in order to start direct negotiations.
The fact that they demanded conditions from the Israeli Government only to start negotiating is nothing but a trick to avoid doing it.
It is evident that the Palestinian Authority knows its weakness, is afraid of any change, and does not want to modify the current status quo at all, in order to perpetuate itself in power. It is not willing to compromise in order to get any type of advantage from Israel, (exactly the same as Arafat), since regardless of its importance, many would consider it a defeat or a relinquishment and ould be ready to resort to any weapon to destabilize the government and oppose any sort of understanding.
It resorts to unilateral measures so as to create the optical illusion that something is moving forward when in fact it is stagnant. These measures engage the world’s attention, and while they attack the legitimacy of Israel in every international forum and implement boycotts against it, it manages to escape the responsibility of representing their people in serious negotiations.
Formally it demands, as a prerequisite, that every construction in Eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank be stopped. It is only natural to wonder what the consequences would be if Israel refused to comply with such demand. The immediate effect would be, in the first place, a lack of progress towards mutual understanding, and secondly, the constructions they supposedly try to prevent would become more vigorous.
So, is the aim really to prevent construction? In 63 years full of missed opportunities on the part of Palestinians to reach a peace agreement, there is much that has been built. Any future peace agreement must take into consideration this fact and the demographic and urban changes that have taken place.
At the end of 2009, Netanyahu’s government ordered a freeze in construction for 10 months. When the period was about to expire, some three weeks before, the Palestinian leaders decided to sit at the negotiating table, but obviously their first demand was that the freeze be postponed.
If they really had in mind prioritising the well-being of their people, the creation of an independent State, building schools, roads, economic structure, etc, wouldn’t they have agreed to negotiate with Israel before the expiration of the period?
The President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, stated that he might come to an agreement with Israel in two months if Netanyahu, were willing to accept a new freeze.
Knowing the difficulties Netanyahu’s government would face to approve a measure like that again (with no results achieved) Abbas is, on the one hand trying not to progress at all towards any kind of solution and on the other , not less important, to attribute all responsibility to Israel for the lack of progress.
If I were Palestinian, or, to be more precise, if my aim were to create an independent Palestinian State, I would be willing to pay the price of letting the constructions go on while the negotiations were carried out, after so many decades of endless and growing construction. If, in fact, the fate of all the Jewish settlements was a crucial topic , a hot-button issue to be approached and decided in any project of final agreement.
No Palestinian actions pursue the objective of fostering the return to negotiations. On the contrary, they are only tricks to blame Israel for not wanting peace.
When Bosnia Herzegovina replaces the USA in the Presidency of the Security Council of the U.N. the Palestinians intend to call a special meeting and vote a resolution to condemn the Israeli settlements. Apart from the exercise of the possible veto by the Americans, this statement will not be a great advance in the daily life of the Palestinian people.
The encouragement of the virtual recognition of their State by Latin American countries is an action in the same direction. It is not an achievement or a change in the facts; on the contrary, it places Israel in an uncomfortable diplomatic situation.
If the Palestinian cause raises so much sympathy around the world, is it likely that it may have a well-meaning friend that could suggest the adoption of a more pragmatic attitude and once and for all face up to the challenge of starting the construction of their own State?