Palestinian predicament

Developments on the Gaza-Egypt border have exposed a number of myths; from now on things will not be the same again, writes Ayman El-Amir*

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The recent Palestinian breakout from the beleaguered Gaza Strip into Egypt has provided temporary relief from the collective punishment imposed on the Palestinian population by Israel that remains, in effect, the occupying power. Egypt has behaved responsibly and with humane restraint towards the forced and sometimes violent influx of desperate Palestinians who are starved of food, fuel and medical supplies. However, the predicament of the Palestinians is not an exclusive Egyptian responsibility. A new plan for collective Arab intervention, perhaps apt for March's Arab summit meeting in Damascus, will be needed to save the Palestinian factions from themselves, from Israeli monstrosity, and to stave off a third Intifada that would be disastrous for all.

In 2007, three fallacies were debunked: that the Arab land-for-peace initiative had taken any root in Israeli or US thinking; that the Palestinians are united in their approach to solving the conflict with Israel; and that United Nations resolutions and the edicts of international law are of significant relevance to the settlement of the Middle East conflict. Two months ago, the US effectively sabotaged the Arab peace initiative by way of the farcical Annapolis conference, with full Arab complicity. True to all expectations, the conference produced nothing and was followed by nothing. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's blind bet on the US fulfilling Palestinian expectations drew a blank. For each affectionate kiss he embossed on the cheek of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert he got two Palestinians killed, mainly in his imaginary Palestinian state of the West Bank. A fourth lie that has been debunked is that the tottering coalition government of Ehud Olmert and the lame-duck administration of President George W Bush are serious about engaging in core peace issues with the Palestinians.

In last week's Egyptian-Gaza border breach, Egypt was caught between a rock and a hard place. If it used brutal force to stem the tide of hundreds of thousands of deprived Gazans seeking food and medical relief outside Israel's stranglehold, the government could face Egyptian popular outrage and possible consequences that it needs the least. Or it could face Israeli charges of breaching the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty and its security provisions, and the 2005 understanding on the Rafah crossing point. Egypt can easily rebut this by accusing Israel of causing the Gaza turmoil by its inhuman blockade. Egyptian authorities balanced the situation by allowing some temporary relief for almost one week, but then imposed restrictions on the inflow of Gazans from the impoverished Strip -- an area slightly more than double the size of Washington, DC, with a population of 1.5 million.

By blowing a wide-open hole in the Egyptian border fence, the Hamas-dominated "former" government in Gaza put the stalled Arab-Israeli-Palestinian peace process on the spot. By now, Arab officials in all countries President Bush recently visited, where he was lavishly welcomed with expensive gifts and sword dances, know there is little hope that his administration can achieve any progress towards a Palestinian-Israeli settlement. President Bush, for whatever knowledge he has gained from his Middle East trip, realises that there is little his lame-duck administration can do in an election year, considering all the other challenges it faces in the volatile Middle East region. And Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's government has more important domestic problems to worry about than to pursue a just and lasting settlement with the Palestinians.

On the Palestinian side, the firing of Qassam rockets into Israel is more of a morale booster for the Palestinians than a real threat to Israel. But Israel kills Palestinians anyway, almost on a daily basis. Abbas's hope of becoming the first president of a make believe Palestinian state is fast fading. Egypt, meanwhile, is under more serious pressure than ever as Israel tries to toss Gaza back to it as the previous administrator/ custodian, and a country that has played the major role in war and peace in the Arab-Israeli conflict. This would slice Gaza off the potential territories that would constitute the minuscule Palestinian state that President Bush has promised to create before the end of his presidency -- another blank drawn.

The residents of Gaza will eventually go back to their families in the Israeli-besieged territory, but not to the status quo ante. The rift between Abbas's PA and Ismail Haniyeh's deposed government is a serious breach of Palestinian ranks that renders Abbas more malleable under US-Israeli pressure. Since the Annapolis conference, Israel has sent Abbas three clear signals that define its position: no total withdrawal from the territories occupied in the 1967 War, including East Jerusalem; no dismantling of Israeli settlements which previous US administrations had pronounced "illegal and an obstacle to peace"; and no return of the 1948 Palestinian refugees. As an occupying power, Israel -- with US backing -- has quietly unburdened itself of any international commitment that previously governed the settlement of the Middle East conflict, having been emboldened by the Bush administration's policy that UN resolutions and international law provisions are "outdated". Despite all of Abbas's kisses, Israel still detains an estimated 11,000 Palestinians, imposes blockades of choice on the West Bank and Gaza, and kills Palestinians as a matter of routine. Israeli commitment to a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict does not inhibit it from committing some of the most heinous war crimes that many of Nazi Germany's high officials were prosecuted for at the post-war Nuremberg trials. Collective punishment of the Palestinian civilian population, transfer of tens of thousands of Israelis to occupied territories, abetting acts of genocide at the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut in 1983, gross violations of human rights in the occupied territories, expropriation of Palestinian land and demolition of dwellings and changing the demographic nature of the occupied territories under its control, particularly in East Jerusalem, are all part of standard Israeli policy.

Many a pro-Israeli European or US official will blame it all on Palestinian terrorism. Yet confronting with force the elements, institutions and installations of foreign military occupation is legitimate resistance under international law. This principle was introduced into international law not by the Arabs, but by the allies of the World War II Western axis, to legitimise and support la Resistance in France and other countries under Nazi Germany's occupation. Israel is guilty of the same pre-meditated war crimes Nazi Germany committed during World War II, but is getting a different treatment from the US -- one of the high contracting parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention that is the cornerstone of international humanitarian law.

PA President Abbas and senior representatives of the deposed Hamas government are in Cairo this week to negotiate new arrangements that would make the Rafah border crossing point permanently open as an international exit and entrance for Palestinians, without Israeli veto power. Israel claims that opening the crossing point without its supervision, and without the presence of European Union observers, would facilitate the smuggling of weapons into Gaza. This canard should not intimidate the Egyptian government. Palestinians will continue to resist Israeli occupation no matter what. Israel would do well to remember that the first Palestinian Intifada consisted of Palestinian children hurling stones at Israeli tanks.

Arab leaders are scheduled to meet in Damascus for their annual summit conference. If the US does not succeed in influencing its "moderate" partners to make the conference an exercise in futility, the Palestinian problem could be treated with urgency and not reduced to a humanitarian assistance issue. Collectively, Arab countries have much more power than they are willing to use, and Israel has taught them that it understands only the language of power. For one thing, they can re-impose more strictly the boycott of Israel in all fields and ensure that Israel feels the pinch. Secondly, they should find ways of arming the Palestinian resistance to neutralise the superiority of US-supplied Apache gunship helicopters and F-16/F-18 missile-strafing bombers the same way Hizbullah neutralised the legendary Israeli Merkava tank during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in July-August 2006. To reduce Israel's sense of invincibility is the only way to start serious negotiations, as the 1973 October War and the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese war have demonstrated.

The Palestinian dispute between the Fatah and Hamas governments, which Israeli has happily manipulated, will be overcome. Fissures are not unusual in national liberation movements fighting to overthrow foreign military occupation. It happened during the Liberation War in Algeria, the National Liberation Front having many self-inflicted casualties. It happened during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa between the African National Congress and the Pan-African Congress of Azania.

Finally, there is one more victim of the Israeli blockade of hungry, ailing and vulnerable Palestinians -- the Israeli myth of Jewish humanism.

* The writer is former Al-Ahram correspondent in Washington, DC. He also served as director of United Nations Radio and Television in New York.