The elected leaders of the Palestinians – regardless of their party – are presented with 3 surreal demands:
One condition is that Hamas must abide by all past agreements entered into by the Palestinian government. This seems a very reasonable condition and is a basic principle of diplomacy, but why is Israel not also required to abide by all past agreements entered into with the Palestinian government? If they had followed the Oslo agreements then there would be an independent sovereign State of Palestine today next to an independent sovereign State of Israel with the “Green Line” as the mutually recognised borders!
A second condition is that Hamas must “renounce violence” while Israel continues the violent occupation, the violent collective punishments, the assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the destruction of all the infrastructure of Palestine. Of course it is reasonable to hold both sides accountable for attacks on civilians but it is hardly reasonable to hold only one side accountable! B’tselem, which monitors human rights in the occupied territories reports that in 2006 Israeli security forces killed 660 Palestinians including 141 children. At least 322 had taken no part in hostile acts. In the same period the number of deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis caused 23 Israeli deaths. As at November 2006, 9,075 Palestinians were being held in Israeli jails and this number included 345 minors. Of these 738 (including 22 minors) were being detained without trial and without knowing the charges against them. There is no occupation that does not seriously violate the human rights of the occupied!
Finally the third condition is that the Palestinians must recognise Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. That is, they must approve of the Zionist ideology of a state in their homeland which would privilege Jews over the majority Arab natives of the Holy Land. No other people in the world are asked to recognise the ideology of the states that they already recognise as having the right to exist as sovereign states within secure borders. The PLO and the Palestinian Authority have both recognised Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state within secure borders but Israel has not yet recognised her own borders! The Saudi Plan of 2002 offers full normal relations with Israel and integration into the region with universal recognition of Israeli sovereignty behind the Green Line. Israel has rejected this! Even Hamas knows very well that there is no realistic scenario in the foreseeable future where there is no Israel based on Zionist ideology, and their election platform and public statements accept that a sovereign independent Palestine would never be bigger than the West Bank with Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. People are starving to death in Palestine so it would be unconscionable for Hamas not to recognise Israeli sovereignty behind the Green Line in exchange for Israel and the US lifting their economic blockade of Palestine, but we all know that neither Hamas nor Fatah nor any combination of Palestinian parties will be offered such a deal by the leaders of Israel and the United States unless there is a remarkable shift in the US public perception. Fatah already recognised Israeli sovereignty behind the Green Line when they were in Government and it never stopped Israel’s occupation. Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians and Israelis of conscience must demand from their leaders that the siege upon the collective Palestinian nation must end.
Ultimately there can be no peaceful solution without mutual acknowledgement of the legitimacy of both peoples in the Holy Land. Whether with a two-state or an eventual one-state solution they can and must live side-by-side on a democratic basis with equal rights and access to resources for all.
