The Sharm El-Sheikh summit held in Egypt on Feb. 8 was anything but a success, as far as Palestinians, the occupied party, and peace-seeking Israelis are concerned.
But before we cast judgment on the summit’s initial outcome we should examine the historic context of the Palestinian uprising.
Successive Israeli governments have pushed the Palestinians to the brink, through collective punishment, brutal military policies, house destruction and so on. The ultimate aim was the expropriation of Palestinian land in the occupied territories.
Naturally Palestinians resisted, violently and otherwise. The uprisings in 1987 and 2000 articulated a message that largely reflected their political aspirations: A truly sovereign Palestinian state in all territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem.
These demands frustrated Israel, who continued to claim that the lightly armed Palestinians posed a threat to the very existence of the State of Israel.
Of course, we’ve come a long way since the days when Israel refused to admit that a people called Palestinians even existed.
Nonetheless, reality on the ground still serves the same set of beliefs carried by past Israeli governments. For example, despite the frequent utilization of the term “peace” by Israeli officials on both sides of the political spectrum, especially after the signing of the Oslo accord in 1993, there has been an intensive Israeli campaign to drive Palestinians out of their land, expand the settlements, expropriate large chunks of the West Bank as “security zones” and completely fence off occupied East Jerusalem. The number of illegal settlements in the occupied territories has at least doubled since the signing of the “historic” Oslo agreement.
This means that Israel has never abandoned its ultimate objective. Then, why bother talking peace to begin with?
Israel has long reverted from its policies of mass expulsion. Such policies were simply bad publicity for Israel. They embarrassed devoted benefactors in Washington and helped Palestinians garner international attention, significantly slowing down Israel’s expansionist designs in the region.
The 1993 Oslo accord was meant to serve the particular purpose of removing the Palestinian-Israeli file from the more critical list of international conflicts and buffing up Israel’s tainted reputation. In the process it gave rise to a corrupt and self-consumed Palestinian leadership.
In 2000, the year of Al-Aqsa Intifada, two major factors again hampered the Israeli designs. First, Yasser Arafat refused to sign off Palestinian rights. Second, Palestinian masses rose in rebellion. Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon proved merciless in his response to both, and the rest is history.
Arafat’s death on Nov. 11, 2004 has indeed “revived hope.” But by hope Israel and its friends mean the hope of returning to the Oslo legacy and the status quo that defined the Palestinian-Israeli conflict for years. Oslo has yielded nothing but a few symbolic gestures to the Palestinians. On the other hand, it won time and vigor for Israel’s unilateral expansionist project. Thus, welcome to Sharm El-Sheikh, another Oslo but with an Arabian flavor. Palestinian political elite shall rule once more, and Israeli bulldozers will carry on with the construction of the illegal wall, and illegal settlements will “naturally expand”. Israeli troops shall ‘redeploy’, but snipers must maintain their position at tall buildings adjacent to every Palestinian town, village and refugee camp. Diplomatic ties shall be restored between Israel and its immediate neighbors — and maybe a few others and Sharon will be seen to have triumphed in war and peace.
The Sharm El-Sheikh summit was a “success” because it fulfilled the expectations of Israel and its American clients.
The summit failed to address the major grievances that defined the Palestinian national struggle for generations: An end to occupation, the right of return, and the removal of the settlements, among others. The summit was almost exclusively devoted to talks about Israel’s security. Perhaps this is the first time in history that an occupying power demands security from its captives.
The summit showed all the symptoms of Oslo, and will meet with the same fate. But by the time such a failure is recognized, Israel’s imperial projects, the wall and settlements and the calculated annexation of most of the West Bank, will have become accepted as “facts on the ground.”
Maybe then, PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the co-author of Oslo, will realize the price Palestinians will have to pay for his pragmatism.
