By Keeble McFarlane

After six decades of war and uneasy truce, uncertainty and unsettlement, uncomfortable and uneasy relations with their equally uneasy neighbour, intifadas and continual diplomatic to-ing and fro-ing, the dysfunctional consortium which rules over Palestine has gone for the big prize. It has thrown its case for recognition as a state before the United Nations Security Council, which, in one of its first significant acts after being founded out of the ashes of World War II, created the state of Israel.

There is probably no small patch of land more disputed and fought over during the course of history than Palestine, among the earliest sites of human collective activity. It is the birthplace of the three great religions tracing their origins to Abraham and is strategically situated between Egypt, Syria and Arabia. Thus it has had a long and tumultuous history as a crossroads of trade, politics, culture and religion. Going back into the dim recesses of time, the area has been controlled by a variety of peoples - ancient Egyptians, Canaanites, ancient Israelites, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, the Sunni Arab Caliphate, the Shia Fatimid Caliphate, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mameluks, Ottomans and the British before today's Israelis and Palestinians.

The modern dilemma of Palestine dates back to the late 19th century and the birth of the Zionist movement. Through the efforts of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion), 20 new Jewish settlements were created in Palestine between 1870 and 1897. This was the year when the Hungarian-born Theodor Herzl began promoting the idea of Zionism - the creation of a Jewish national home and cultural centre in Palestine by fostering the migration of Jews from places where they had been scattered over the centuries.

Like religious and cultural minorities everywhere, Jews came in for segregation and persecution, particularly in Europe which had large Jewish populations. They tended to gather in their own communities where they could worship and practice their own customs in familiar surroundings. Those who could read the signs in the 1930s fled Europe, with some taking the Zionist path and moving to hardscrabble Palestine, which was administered by the British under a mandate dictated by the League of Nations emerging out of World War I.

The game changed dramatically when Hitler unleashed World War II on the world in tandem with a horrendous campaign to eliminate Europe's Jews from the face of the earth. As the war ended Jews began flocking to Palestine and the British tried to stem the flow. Britain, which had built up the most extensive empire the world had ever seen, was now totally exhausted and had lost its appetite for war. The newly-minted United Nations took on the Palestine project and in November 1947 adopted a resolution setting out the parameters for a settlement of the Palestine question.

Resolution 181 noted Britain's planned termination of its mandate and recommended the partition of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The area around Jerusalem and Bethlehem would be under special international protection administered by the UN. The resolution prescribed in great detail the boundaries for each proposed state together with how they should relate to each other in the social, economic and religious fields. It called for the withdrawal of British forces and the establishment of the new independent states by October 1, 1948.

But it didn't work out that way. While the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine accepted the proposed plan, the Arab community, supported by the umbrella group of the Arab countries - the Arab League - rejected partition. They felt it was a total injustice to ignore the rights of the majority of the population of Palestine and formed volunteer armies that began infiltrating into Palestine before the ink on the resolution was even dry.

So the state of Israel was born in conflict and grew up in a state of nervous tension. Like a jittery animal in an unforgiving jungle, Israel is always on guard, rousing often from its deepest slumbers to sniff the air and survey the terrain for predators. In recent years this nervousness has led it to behave more like an oppressor than the oppressed.

At the same time, life has been a constant state of misery for the Palestinians. The Arab countries have used them as a weapon to badger Israel, whose existence they refused to recognise, but have grudgingly come to admit tacitly. In a few cases they did so officially and openly - notably Egypt and Jordan. But while Israel received the blessing of many European powers and the steadfast, substantial financial, commercial and military support of the United States, the rich and powerful Arab states have not matched that support for Palestine.

They, along with the Islamic fanatics who rule Iran, funnel money, arms and encouragement to disgruntled Palestinian groups to foment unrest, but have contributed nothing to building up the Palestinian nation. In fact, Palestinians who have spread out across the Arab lands to provide considerable brain and muscle power find it difficult — if not impossible — to become citizens even after generations of settlement. While in places like Gaza generations of Palestinians have grown up in makeshift settlements camps, other Palestinians have to cope with encroachment by Israelis, occupation of their cities, the introduction of an ugly, menacing, 10-metre wall and check-points operated by the Israeli army.

It's patently obvious that the Palestinians cannot now use force to secure their objective, as Israel has built up a formidable military which has successfully fended off repeated attacks by powerful assailants like Egypt and Syria. Round after round of discussions and negotiations in Madrid, Oslo, Camp David and several other locations have failed to achieve anything. The late Abba Eban, one of the founders of the Israeli state and an influential figure at the UN in the early years, once remarked that "Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". But it appears that now it's the Israelis who have chosen to "miss opportunities".

A year ago Barack Obama stood before the UN General Assembly and voiced his hope that "when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations - an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel". The Palestinians took their cue and renewed efforts at negotiation. Israel responded by refusing to freeze - even temporarily - its building of settlements in areas set aside for a Palestinian state. President Obama offered a US$3-billion arms deal but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected it.

In May Obama tried once again to give negotiations a boost, stating tha: "the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states." The Palestinians welcomed the suggestion but again, Israel rejected it. We should recall that Israel had repelled new attacks by Arab forces in 1967, this time occupying the rest of historic Palestine and other Arab territory. Shortly afterwards the UN Security Council declared, in the preamble to Resolution 242, that "it is inadmissible to occupy land by force".

Now seeing no other way out, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has chosen to go directly to the Security Council and seek recognition as a state instead of continuing with frustrating, sterile and unproductive negotiations. Israel doesn't like it and neither do the Americans, who have been doing all they could to avoid vetoing the application in the Security Council. Obama appeared at the UN on Wednesday, contorting himself into knots to stave off attacks at home by his Republican opponents and the Jewish lobby and finding himself in an uncomfortable embrace from Netanyahu.

"More negotiations" is the mantra of Israel, the US and their allies, but what Abbas now seems to understand is that Palestine has to take the same course the Zionists did: declare itself a state and begin behaving like one. Even if they have to settle at first for the status of an observer state, like the Vatican, the international community will have to treat Palestine as a fully sovereign and functioning state. It can still conduct negotiations with Israel, but this time it would be state to state and not as the occupied trying to negotiate with the occupier. It can now stop playing the mendicant squatting at the edge of a souq with hand outstretched and crying plaintively "Baksheesh, baksheesh!"

September 24, 2011

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