The number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli Army since the beginning of this month is more than 40, most of them civilians. That figure includes the Ghalia family, slaughtered while on picnic, on June 9. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has twice apologized for the growing number of civilian casualties resulting from Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza. The Israeli Army claims that the deaths of children are unintentional; it is an excuse that beggars belief. Firing missiles into congested streets will result in carnage among civilians because bombs, tossed right and left indiscriminately, do not pick and choose their victims.
The latest wave of killings briefly unified Hamas and Fatah leaders as they joined ranks in condemning the savagery. However, their respective positions about how to resolve differences and formulate a joint strategy on how to approach Israel are still far apart. The current exchanges Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh are said to be positive, if not particularly upbeat. That analysis would be judged fair as Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel has led to a power struggle between the two factions, including violence in the streets between armed Hamas and Fatah loyalists in recent weeks. That in turn has led to the continuing economic sanctions against the Palestinians and the Abbas ultimatum to Hamas — accept a statehood plan or the Palestinian people will be asked to approve it directly in a referendum scheduled for July 26.
The eventual inter-Palestinian scenario, like Israel’s Gaza response, is to be awaited. However, Israel has already warned that it won’t be bound by any inter-Palestinian agreement, saying that any Palestinian partner would have to abide by Israel’s own interpretation of the American-backed road map. That interpretation, unsurprisingly, is not only at variance with all outstanding UN resolutions pertaining to the Arab-Israeli conflict but fails by a long shot to meet minimum Palestinian aspirations — a full Israeli withdrawal to pre-1967 borders.
However, the Israeli convergence plan, a euphemism for the wholesale theft of Palestinian land, went unchallenged in the US during Olmert’s visit earlier this month, during which he received multiple standing ovations from a pliant Congress and managed to woo an almost equally flexible White House.
Olmert and Bush remembered to pay lip service to the effectively moribund road map, which needs constant artificial resuscitation to remain barely alive. They dutifully ignored the fact that Israeli actions in the West Bank, particularly the construction of the wall in the Palestinian heartland, have made the American-backed plan irrelevant. It also appears that Olmert has effectively made the Palestinians irrelevant, marginalizing them from taking any future decisions concerning their fate. Thus when Israel claims that there is no Palestinian partner it can talk to for the sake of peace it is, in a sense, telling the truth. This is all the more reason why the Palestinians need their viewpoints to converge as quickly as possible.
