A better alternative for the Palestinians

by Hasan Abu Nimah

Many observers worldwide are watching with great interest the current efforts of newly-elected Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. He is struggling, no doubt with a lot of sincerity, to secure agreement from the Palestinian resistance factions to cease any attacks against Israelis. Not only has Abbas, for long, declared himself against violence and against an armed uprising, but he is also required by a large international audience to declare the ceasefire, seen by many as a necessary prerequisite for resuming the stalled peace process.

This course seems to be fraught with dangers, and indeed difficulties. The resistance factions have always demanded, and are already again demanding, that any ceasefire should be total, in the sense that it should commit the Israelis as well. That is very difficult for Abbas to promise his people, knowing full well the Israeli position, which considers attacks on occupied Palestinians as part of the Israeli war on terror, and as "legitimate" self-defence. Even when the Israelis agree to any form of pacification they exclude action in case of a "ticking bomb." Israel has always justified its violations of previous ceasefires on that basis. There is no reason why that should not happen again and destroy any possible future ceasefire agreement.

Aware of all that, Abbas seems to be counting instead on pressure from Washington, the European Union and the Quartet, to be exerted on Israel to move forward towards meaningful negotiations once his efforts succeed in achieving a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire.

The other more serious problem of this Palestinian course of action is that it involves adverse implications for Abbas, for his leadership, for his strategy and for the Palestinian position as well. By negotiating with other Palestinian opposition factions Abbas admits, although perhaps implicitly, that his authority as elected president of all Palestinians is seriously compromised. Acting in this manner is tantamount to sharing his presidential authority with other factions, as if he is only representing the organisation, (Fateh) which supported him in the elections, rather than exercising his full authority on behalf of all the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. That is not how he should handle his mandate.

Another, no less serious implication, is that by turning first to the Palestinians to secure their commitment for ending violence, Abbas endorsed the misleading notion that the entire responsibility for blocking the road to peace lies solely on the shoulders of the Palestinians. If they fail to secure the peace and security their oppressors and occupiers need, they will be blamed again for letting down their elected president, and for missing another opportunity to reach peace; and they will be consequently denied any sympathy from the international community for the misery the continued occupation is causing, or can still cause them.

A third implication is that this strategy is short-term as well as shortsighted. It is short term in the sense that its entire success or, possibly, failure rests on the very thin hope of a ceasefire that will hold for as long as the negotiations that may follow will need to last. This is a very shaky foundation on which to base any viable strategy, knowing the large numbers of ceasefires that collapsed quickly in the past. And it is shortsighted because it reduces the entire peace process to a mere security-for-Israel project and hence it hardly invokes the long-called-for implementation of the roadmap. It succumbs instead to the futile exercise of who succeeds in keeping the ball longer in the other side's court, reducing the cause of peace to a mere game. The maximum such a strategy can secure for the Palestinians, if they fulfil all that is required of them, is temporary exemption from the responsibility of obstructing peace. But when the occupation continues and its harsh atrocities and practices press the Palestinians to "misbehave " and rebel, they will be blamed again.

Was there a better course for Abbas to follow? Indeed there is. A better course would have been for the Palestinian president to exercise his constitutional authority after he was sworn in, calling on the Quartet to take immediate steps to implement the roadmap, and declaring at the same time, on behalf of all the Palestinians, (opposition resistance factions included), his readiness to respect and implement all that is required of the Palestinian side, without any reservation, including "an immediate and unconditional ceasefire to end armed activity and all acts of violence against Israelis anywhere", as required by phase one of the roadmap.

But phase one also demands from the Israelis at the same time to call for "an immediate end to violence against Palestinians everywhere". This way an Israeli commitment to end violence will not be a favour the Israelis do the Palestinians to reward their good behaviour, nor would it be the result of American or possible European pressure, as Abbas hopes to achieve; it will be an obligation. And that will duly make it highly unlikely for any Palestinian to oppose such a strategy. The main problem with the current Abbas strategy is that it requires unilateral Palestinian action without an Israeli parallel, and this would be avoided in the framework of the roadmap.

Demanding the immediate implementation of the roadmap is indeed the safest course for the Palestinians. Not only because they do not have one single problem with any of its elements, but because it has basic advantages such as (amongst other things) the dismantling of Israeli settlements erected since March 2001, and the freezing of all Israeli settlement activity, including natural growth.

The roadmap is by no means an ideal document, but under the present difficult circumstances, it would provide semi-international protection to a fragile Palestinian situation. By acting alone, and in this way, Abbas is shouldering a huge responsibility which, while he strains under, the Israelis watch and wait for his inevitable failure for which he or his people will be blamed. Much of the "concerned" world will also continue to watch the ball flying from one court to the other. The roadmap, on the other hand, will at the least distribute the responsibility for the success or failure of peace, on all sides. Not only the Palestinians and the Israelis, but the Quartet and many other parties as well. Why should the Palestinians alone shoulder this collective responsibility?

It is time that serious efforts towards justice and peace replaces manoeuvres and games

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The writer is former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations.

This article was published in the Wednesday, January 26, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.