From my inbox.

Interesting but disturbing trend.

Obama may just be another Bush in a different frame.

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Liberation – Not A Fictitious State
by Hasan Abu Nimah

Late last month, Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian
Authority (PA) prime minister in Ramallah, made a surprise
announcement: he declared his intention to establish a
Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before
the end of 2011 regardless of the outcome of negotiations
with Israel.

Fayyad told the London Times that he would work to build
"facts on the ground, consistent with having our state
emerge as a fact that cannot be denied." His plan was
further elaborated in a lengthy document grandly titled
"Program of the Thirteenth Government of the Palestinian
National Authority."

The plan contains all sorts of ambitious ideas: an inter-
national airport in the Jordan Valley, new rail links to
neighboring states, generous tax incentives to attract
foreign investment, and of course strengthening the
"security forces." It also speaks boldly of liberating
the Palestinian economy from its dependence on Israel,
and reducing dependence on foreign aid.

This may sound attractive to some, but Fayyad has neither
the political clout nor the financial means to propose
such far-reaching plans without a green light from
Washington or Tel Aviv.

Fayyad aims to project an image of a competent Palestinian
administration already mastering the craft of running a
state. He boasts, for instance, that the PA he heads has
worked to "develop effective institutions of government
based on the principles of good governance, accountability
and transparency."

But what is really taking shape in the West Bank today
is a police state, where all sources of opposition or
resistance -- real or suspected -- to either the PA
regime, or the Israeli occupation are being systematically
repressed by US-funded and trained Palestinian "security
forces" in full coordination with Israel. Gaza remains
under tight siege because of its refusal to submit to
this regime.

In describing the Palestinian utopia he hopes to create,
Fayyad's plan declares that "Palestine will be a stable
democratic state with a multi-party political system.
Transfer of governing authority is smooth, peaceful and
regular in accordance with the will of the people,
expressed through free and fair elections conducted in
accordance with the law."

A perfect opportunity to demonstrate such an exemplary
transfer would have been right after the January 2006
election which as the entire world knows Hamas won fairly
and cleanly. Instead, those who monopolize the PA leader-
ship today colluded with outside powers first to cripple
and overthrow the elected Hamas government, and then the
"national unity government" formed by the Mecca Agreement
in early 2007, entrenching the current internal Palestinian
division. (Fayyad's own party won just two percent at the
2006 election, and his appointment as prime minister by
PA leader Mahmoud Abbas was never -- as required by law
-- approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council, dozens
of whose elected members remain behind Israeli prison
bars.)

From 1994 to 2006, more than eight billion US dollars were
pumped into the Palestinian economy, making Palestinians
the most aid-dependent people on earth, as Anne Le More
showed in her important book International Assistance to
the Palestinians after Oslo: Political Guilt; Wasted Money
(London, Routledge, 2008). The PA received this aid
ostensibly to build Palestinian institutions, improve
socioeconomic development and support the creation of an
independent state. The result however is that Palestinians
are more destitute and aid-dependent than ever before,
their institutions are totally dysfunctional, and their
state remains a distant fantasy.

PA corruption and mismanagement played a big part in
squandering this wealth, but by far the largest wealth
destroyer was and remains the Israeli occupation. Contrary
to what Fayyad imagines, you cannot "end the occupation,
despite the occupation."

A telling fact Le More reveals is that the previous
"programs" of the PA (except those offered by the
Hamas-led governments) were written and approved by
international donor agencies and officials and then
given to the PA to present back to the same donors
who wrote them as if they were actually written by
the PA!


Everything we see suggests Fayyad's latest scheme follows
exactly the same pattern. What is particularly troubling
this time is that the plan appears to coincide with a
number of other initiatives and trial balloons that
present a real danger to the prospects for Palestinian
liberation from permanent Israeli subjugation.

Recently, the International Middle East Media Center, an
independent Palestinian news organization, published what
it said was the leaked outline of a peace plan to be
presented by US President Barack Obama.

That plan included international armed forces in most of
the Palestinian "state"; Israeli annexation of large parts
of East Jerusalem; that "All Palestinian factions would
be dissolved and transformed into political parties"; all
large Israeli settlements would remain under permanent
Israeli control; the Palestinian state would be largely
demilitarized and Israel would retain control of its
airspace; intensified Palestinian-Israeli "security
coordination"; and the entity would not be permitted to
have military alliances with other regional countries.

On the central issue of the right of return for Palestinian
refugees, the alleged Obama plan allows only an agreed
number of refugees to return, not to their original homes,
but only to the West Bank, particularly to the cities of
Ramallah and Nablus.

It is impossible to confirm that this leaked document
actually originates with the Obama administration. What
gives that claim credibility, however, is the plan's very
close resemblance to a published proposal sent to Obama
last November by a bipartisan group of US elder statesmen
headed by former US national security advisors Brent
Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski. Moreover, recent
press reports indicate a lively debate within the Obama
Administration about whether the US should itself publish
specific proposals for a final settlement once negotiations
resume; so there is little doubt that concrete proposals
are circulating.

Indeed there is little of substance to distinguish these
various plans from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu's concept of "economic peace" and a demilitarized
Palestinian statelet under overall Israeli control, with
no right of return for refugees. And, since all seem to
agree that the Jordan Valley -- land and sky -- would
remain under indefinite Israeli control, so would Fayyad's
airport.

Similar gimmicks have been tried before: who remembers
all the early Oslo years' hullabaloo about the Gaza
International Airport that operated briefly under strict
Israeli control before Israel destroyed it, and the
promised Gaza seaport whose construction Israel forbade?

There are two linked explanations for why Fayyad's plan
was launched now. US Middle East envoy George Mitchell
has repeatedly defined his goal as a "prompt resumption
and early conclusion" of negotiations. If the kinds of
recycled ideas coming from the alleged Obama plan, the
Scowcroft-Brzezinski document, or Netanyahu, are to have
any chance, they need to look as if there is a Palestinian
constituency for them. It is Fayyad's role to provide
this.

The second explanation relates to the ongoing struggle
over who will succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the
PA. It has become clear that Fayyad, a former World Bank
official unknown to Palestinians before he was boosted
by the George W. Bush Administration, appears to be the
current favorite of the US and other PA sponsors. Channel-
ing more aid through Fayyad may be these donors' way of
strengthening Fayyad against challengers from Abbas'
Fatah faction (Fayyad is not a member of Fatah) who have
no intention of relinquishing their chokehold on the PA
patronage machine.

Many in the region and beyond hoped the Obama Administr-
ation would be a real honest broker, at last bringing
American pressure to bear on Israel, so that Palestinians
might be liberated. But instead, the new administration
is acting as an efficient laundry service for Israeli
ideas; first they become American ones, and then a
Palestinian puppet is brought in to wear them.

This is not the first scheme aimed at extinguishing
Palestinian rights under the guise of a "peace process,"
though it is most disappointing that the Obama
Administration seems to have learned nothing from the
failures of its predecessors. But just as before, the
Palestinian people in their country and in the Diaspora
will stand stubbornly in the way of these efforts. They
know that real justice, not symbolic and fictitious
statehood, remains the only pillar on which peace can be
built.

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Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of
Jordan at the United Nations.

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