The Mitchell commission report on why the violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip erupted and why the peace effort broke down is the first official assessment of what has transpired between Palestinians and Israelis since late last September. And by dint of the stature of the five committee members, it does carry a certain authority that the parties should heed. But what can be done with it? The committee has been called toothless because it has no legal authority to do anything more than to make suggestions to the parties who have until tomorrow to respond to the report which will then be delivered with their responses to President Bush. Secretary Powell has said the US-led inquiry could launch a peace initiative.
The Palestinians dropped reservations about the report — primarily its concern that the commission did not recommend an international observer force and that it did not find Ariel Sharon’s visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Sept. 28 the cause of the uprising — because it was pleased that Jewish settlements and the criticism of Israel’s use of force were high on the list of complaints. The committee said unequivocally that it will be difficult to sustain any lull in violence if Israel does not freeze settlement construction.
Israel had been anticipating the usual criticism of its settlements but not a specific demand to end their construction. The Israeli government has repeatedly said it will not freeze settlement expansion. Indeed, Sharon is seeking almost $400 million in increased state support for the settlements, the request coming just one day after the report’s findings were made public. Israel was naturally quick to minimize the findings of the commission, claiming it had overstepped its mandate by addressing the issue of settlements and had erred in equating settlements and the Palestinian violence as the catalysts for the erosion of trust between the two sides. By the same token, however, the report finds no difference between the violence of an occupying power and the violence of a people under occupation. It thus condemns in equal measure the two sides.
The contrast between the scale, brutality and systematic nature of Israeli violence against Palestinians and Palestinian violence against Israelis is obvious. Yet it is denied in the report. The Palestinians are a people under military occupation by a foreign power, disenfranchised and denied the most basic rights accorded almost every other people in the world. But Sharon’s re-entry into politics has brought with it a conscious effort on his part to shift the scene back to 1948, to attempt to re-stage Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians as a battle for Israel’s very survival.
For the Palestinians, the meaning of this war consists in their being subjected to continual uprooting, in their transformation into refugees, on their own land and beyond, in an attempt, following the occupation of their land and history, to banish their existence. They will tell the world so tomorrow, May 15, the 53rd anniversary of the creation of the state of Israel and the beginning of the Palestinian disaster or nakba. The day will be marked by mass demonstrations throughout the Palestinian territories.
But tomorrow we shall see that the nakba-makers have not broken the will of the Palestinians or efface their national identity, not by displacement or massacres or the falsification of history. After five decades they have not forced the Palestinians into oblivion.
The memory of the nakba comes at the height of the Palestinian struggle in defense of their being and their right to freedom and self-determination on a part of their historical homeland. The irony of it all, most recently found in the Mitchell commission, is that truth and justice are on the Palestinian side but neither truth nor justice always prevail.
