Everything You Need to Know About the "Peace Conference"

Here's your portrait of the Annapolis "Peace Conference". I'm sure there will be many more such portraits to come, knowing that the "Road Map" to destruction has been signed by all parties. Maybe that's why Hamas split off from Fatah - people are tired of their homes becoming mere "photo ops" like the one at left.

There was a photo op in Annapolis. As usual, Israel Antoinette took the cake. Palestinians, as usual, got screwed. Everybody's smiling.

But wait! If you want to know the truth, the very big hard truth, behind the facade, read Heathlander's post on this subject. As usual, it's well worth every minute of your time.

This paragraph succinctly points out the pointlessness of such "peace process" exercises, and of Israeli's bad intentions towards the whole thing:

What this all amounts to, then, is a demand that the Palestinians provide Israel with complete security while remaining under occupation. This is absurd - as a British MP recently put it, the Israeli position is akin to “that of somebody who stands on somebody else’s toes and says that they will get off only when that person stops screaming.” The idea that the Palestinian Authority - which, as the International Crisis Group points out, Israel has “all but destroyed” in the past seven years, to the point where it can barely move a hundred policemen from one town to another because of Israeli checkpoints - can provide Israel with security under conditions of occupation when the IDF, the fourth ranking military on the planet, is unable to do so is, as Daniel Levy puts it, “a nonsense”. It is an impossible demand, and deliberately so. It is designed to be unachievable in order to provide Israel with an excuse to string out negotiations indefinitely while continuing its colonial policies on the ground.

Heathlander further notes that: "it is particularly offensive to revert back to the roadmap like this given that Israel has been violating the agreement from day one."

He concludes:

That the Palestinian Authority and the Arab regimes have signed on to a process which ratifies the roadmap as the only framework for resolving the conflict in return for an agreement which addresses none of the core issues and which gives Israel a free hand to continue its oppressive and colonial policies in the Occupied Territories is nothing short of a betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

And then there's another view: In "Chasing a ghost," an article subheaded "Annapolis The 'viable Palestinian state' is an illusion, a deformed reality from which Palestinians must break free", writer Soumaya Ghannoushi says there are two basic limitations to this supposed peace conference:

The first of these is Bush's letter to former Israeli Prime Minister Sharon of 14 April 2004 which was ratified in both houses of the US Congress. The document confers full American backing for Israel's positions regarding refugees - who would be settled outside Israel's borders in contravention of UN resolution 194, which demands their immediate return to their homes - and illegal settlements, since as it states "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949." In other words, Palestinians should accept Israel's expropriations as a fait accompli.

The second is the demand that Arabs recognise the Jewishness of the Israeli state. This would effectively wipe out the existence of over four million Palestinian refugees. It would mean the legitimisation of the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians by Zionist gangs and militias in the lead up to, and after the establishment of the state of Israel and possible ethnic cleansing of the remaining 1.5 millions inside Israel.

So the right to a Palestinian State is not really that at all. In fact, as the author says, the tough issues are being sidetracked by a made-for-Israel "Palestinian Dream"...

Instead, we will hear much on the coming of the "viable Palestinian state", an amorphous shapeless and faceless notion devised to divert attention from the real issues on the ground. This is one of history's greatest fallacies; a "state" founded with no distinct boundaries, no coherent territory, no freedom of movement, no control over borders, water, airspace or communications, no economic viability, no military, and not even the right to forge alliances without Israeli permission.
A handful of scattered cantons enclosed by Israel from all sides, this "state" had been invented to fulfil a crucial task: the regulation of the indigenous population's movement internally - much like the colonial administrations of old. What it amounts to in the final run is a collection of security services devised to relieve the Israeli military machine of the Palestinian burden. Yitzhak Rabin used to wish that he would awake in the morning and find that Gaza had drowned in the sea. Oslo was his chance to do just that...

It is time they shook off the suicidal illusion of statehood. Had the Algerians, Vietnamese, or any of the nations whose lands were occupied throughout history viewed their reality through the prism of the "viable state", they would have never wrested land and sovereignty and never founded a state. Liberating land and freeing sovereignty are the way to the state and not the other way round.

But she does not say exactly what path should be followed next. And she shouldn't. If she did, I'm sure the map would be burned.