Publish date21 Jun 2020 - 12:00
Story Code : 466682

Israeli Annexation Plan Shows Its Time for Replacement of "Aging and Corrupt" PA Leadership: Palestinian Author

Interview by Alireza Hashemi
Palestinians must move to replace their current leadership in the face of threats by Israel to annex big parts of the West Bank, otherwise the Zionist regime will be emboldened to move forward with other annexation plans, a Palestinian-American author says.
Israeli Annexation Plan Shows Its Time for Replacement of "Aging and Corrupt" PA Leadership: Palestinian Author
Palestinians must move to replace their current leadership in the face of threats by Israel to annex big parts of the West Bank, otherwise the Zionist regime will be emboldened to move forward with other annexation plans, a Palestinian-American author says.
Ramzy Baroud, a well-known journalist who has been writing on Palestine and the wider Middle East for over 20 years, made the statement in an interview with Taghrib News this week on the consequences of an Israeli annexation plan.
The journalist was referring to a plan announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to annex the Jordan valley and Zionist settlements in the West Bank to Israel.
The annexation, unveiled last September, is planned to take effect on July 1.
Baroud, who has founded the PalestineChronicle.com, said he believes Palestinians must take the opportunity to revitalize their long-running struggle to return to their home, since the Palestinian response to the annexation plan will most likely determine the course of developments in the conflict in the next years.
 
Q: Why does Netanyahu insists to annex the Jordan Valley and the Zionist settlements now?
 
A: Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that he is presented with an historical opportunity, in which there is no accountability whatsoever for his actions, not even a gentle reprimand by Washington.
 
Equally important, as of last February, Israel became armed with an American political tool that is no less significant than the Balfour Declaration when, in 1917, the Zionist movement was granted a promise for a ‘homeland’ in historic Palestine by the British Government.
 
The American decision which, again, flouted international law, paved the way for further Israeli colonial annexations of occupied Palestine. It brazenly threatens Palestinians that, if they do not cooperate, they will be punished severely. In fact, they already have been, when Washington cut all funding to the Palestinian Authority and to international institutions that provide critical aid to the Palestinians.
 
The Palestinian Authority is now presented with the proverbial carrot and stick. Last March, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, told Palestinians that, if they did not return to the (non-existent) negotiations with Israel, the US would support Israel’s annexation of the West Bank.
 
For nearly three decades now and, certainly, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in September 1993, the Palestinian Authority has chosen the carrot. Now that the US has decided to change the rules of the game altogether, Mahmoud Abbas’ Authority is facing its most serious existential threat yet: either bowing down to Kushner or insisting on returning to a dead political paradigm that was constructed, then abandoned, by Washington.
 
The crisis within the Palestinian leadership is met with utter clarity on the part of Israel. The new Israeli coalition government, consisting of previous rivals, Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, have tentatively agreed that annexing large parts of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley is just a matter of time.
 
Q: Netanyahu said Palestinians living in the Valley would not be offered a chance to become Israeli citizens. Why? Are they setting a precedence so that they can take the whole West Bank and push all the Palestinians out of it in the future?
 
A: From the very start, the debate among Israel’s political elite has been concerned with the so-called ‘demographic bomb’. Their aim is to acquire all Palestinian land with a minimal number of Palestinian inhabitants. Notice how the land that is in the process of being annexed is sparsely populated compared with the rest of the West Bank.
 
By not granting citizenship to the 50,000 or so Palestinian inhabitants of the annexed land, Netanyahu aims to send two messages, one to the Palestinians and one to the Israelis:
 
To the Palestinians, Netanyahu wants to make it clear that a one-state solution is not in the offing, that by annexing Palestinian territories, Palestinians will have no legal status to demand equal rights in accordance to a democratic inclusive constitution.
 
His message to the Israelis, especially his supporters within the Likud and other ardent ultra-nationalist and religious parties, is that the Palestinian ‘demographic bomb’ is still not a threat and that Israel’s Jewish citizens will continue to constitute the majority of the population.
 
Q: How will the annexation affect the entire conflict? Will we witness a third Intifada or some kind of rebellion any time soon?
 
A: It is quite difficult to discuss with any degree of clarity what will happen once Israel moves forward with its annexation plan. The lack of clarity is related to the complexity within the Palestinian political context and the lack of tangible Arab solidarity with Palestine, at this critical historical juncture.
 
The Palestinian Authority has long served as a security buffer for the Israeli army and illegal Jewish settlements. In fact, the political justification of the Palestinian Authority’s existence in the eyes of Israel, the US, and their Western allies, is precisely that:  providing security for Israel. All previous talks of state-building and good governance amounted to nothing in the end. In my opinion, there was never a true intention for the West to facilitate the establishment of a Palestinian state.
 
On May 19, Abbas declared that his Authority was canceling all agreements with Israel and the US. We still do not fully understand what such a decision means on the ground. If the Authority, itself, is the outcome of these agreements, and if all donor countries’ support has poured in into Abbas’ coffers - based on the understanding that the Palestinian Authority merely exists as a provisional fulfillment of agreements signed between the PLO and Israel - then, why should the Palestinian Authority continue to exist? What role does it still serve? And is it not more logical for the PLO, the more representative Palestinian political body, to be resurrected?
 
It can be argued that Abbas has canceled the agreements without following his decisions by any meaningful action on the ground, in anticipation of the Palestinian protests that will surely follow Israel’s annexation of nearly 30% of the West Bank and the whole of the Jordan Valley. When Palestinians take to the streets, chanting against Israel and the US, condemning Arab silence and duplicity, will they also condemn the Palestinian Authority and Abbas for their numerous sins and unmitigated failures?
 
Abbas and his cronies are desperately hoping to reposition themselves as part and parcel of the Palestinian collective anger at Israel. But the Palestinian people, highly educated and politically savvy, fully understand that Israel would never have been able to sustain its occupation and expand its illegal Jewish settlements with relative ease, without Abbas’ direct contributions.
 
If Israel annexes parts of the West Bank, and the Palestinian protests are eventually contained without resulting in a serious overhaul of the Palestinian leadership, then Netanyahu will be further emboldened to take other steps, including further annexation of Palestinian land.
 
Netanyahu’s annexation plan is a moment of reckoning, not just for Israel, which is putting its final touches to its colonial project in Palestine, and for Arab governments and the international community - which either turned a blind eye or, in fact, facilitated Israeli colonialism - but for the Palestinians, as well.
 
It has been proven, time and again, that the current political formula - a two-state solution championed by an aging and corrupt Palestinian ‘leadership’ - has completely failed.  It has also been made clear that no future vision that discounts the centrality of the Palestinian people, in Palestine and throughout the ‘shataat’ (Diaspora), could possibly survive, let alone lead to a true just peace. The Oslo Accords, the Geneva Initiative, the Arab Peace Initiative and the Quartet Road Map are only a few of the numerous such failed attempts.
 
The Palestinian response to the Israeli annexation plan will clarify the nature of the struggle against Israeli colonialism and apartheid in the coming months and years.  I strongly believe that Palestinians are ready to move on, past the Palestinian Authority, Abbas’ useless rhetoric, factionalism, and the futile search for Arab governments’ solidarity.
 
While, in Netanyahu’s mind, the end-game is drawing near, his annexation scheme could possibly lead to the reordering of the political game altogether, with the Palestinian people finally pushing themselves to the center of the political equation.
 
Whether the Palestinian collective response to annexation leads to another Intifada, or manifests itself in any other form, there is no escaping the fact that the Palestinian people have been long marginalized and that the time has come for them to reclaim the mantle of struggle once more.
 
https://taghribnews.com/vdcbw0ba5rhb00p.4eur.html
Your Name
Your Email Address
Security Code