Tomorrow, when the fourth anniversary of the Palestinian intifada is commemorated, the situation might look not much different from last year or even the year before. The complete standstill in negotiations, the continuing bloodshed and the prospects of any sort of peace agreement being reached, all looks so familiar. But the truth is that the situation is graver than that a year ago; indeed the current impasse is one of the worst in years.
The road map, inspired by the United States in June last year, never made it. It came to replace Oslo, Mitchell, Tenet and Geneva — but instead took a place by their side as agreements that would not be implemented. It is supposed to lead to an independent Palestinian state but there is nothing to prove that this will be accomplished. The Quartet that assumes responsibility for the road map’s success has conceded as much, unable to provide any movement, unable to force Israel into stopping its settlement building, a chief provision of the agreement. For its part, the United States has long ago stopped working on the road map and will not resume until it becomes clear who will lead the nation for the next four years.
Yasser Arafat remains a virtual prisoner in his headquarters or what remains of it in Ramallah. He has been called a traitor by Bush, and Sharon has promised that Arafat will get what he deserves, interpreted to mean either the PA president will be assassinated or expelled from the territories, although he is the legitimate leader of the Palestinians, a leader no less legitimate than any elected head of state, like Bush.
The wall of separation, which came into being the past year, continues to be built despite the ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel has no right to put up such a barrier. It is a land grab of immense proportions as it engulfs towns and villages that are Palestinian.
The other land grab is of course the one promulgated by Sharon and Bush in the now famous White House declaration made this spring giving Israel the right to remain forever in parts of the West Bank while canceling forever the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland. To leave thousands of settlers and their settlements in the West Bank was the ultimate prize for Sharon who had, in return, only to remove a much smaller number of settlers from Gaza, the piece of land much lesser in importance to Israel.
Sharon, who instigated the uprising with his visit to Al-Aqsa Mosque, has kept the intifada in perpetuation with his targeted killings of Hamas leaders including Sheikh Yassin and his deputy Rantissi, his incessant raids into Gaza that kill and maim scores of Palestinians every time, activists and otherwise, and offering nothing on condition that the Palestinians concede everything — all in an election year in which Bush has failed, or not wanted, to curb Sharon’s appetite for land and lives.
This is how the fourth anniversary of the intifada is being marked.
