Monthly Archive for April, 2007

Ghassan Khatib

Reforms and aspects of good governance in general have always been relevant to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the relations Palestinians and to some extent Israelis have with the outside world. The Palestinian Authority was created in 1994 by the PLO leadership, which to a certain extent also filled its bureaucracy. In that way, the PLO leadership brought its own experience of running the PLO within an Arab context to its new task of running the affairs of the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories.

From the very beginning there was thus tension between the Palestinians of the occupied territories, who perceived elections as the source of legitimacy and were committed to the public good, including good governance, and the incoming PLO leadership. The elected Legislative Council, through its many special committees, exerted plenty of effort to criticize and try to correct what turned out to be the very controversial approach of the executive authority. But this came too late to avoid the association of bad governance with certain political positions and practices, namely those that were too accommodating to Israeli political demands during the peace process. It was only during the Aqsa Intifada, when the hardliners within Palestinian politics were empowered by their significant role in the resistance to the occupation, that we started to hear powerful voices criticizing bad governance and corruption and calling for reform.

The reformists called for an end to corruption and combined this with the aim to strengthen the Palestinian negotiating position and avoid unnecessary concessions. Together with their resistance this ensured their popularity. This internal shift in the balance of power coincided with an increase in pressure from the international community led by the United States against the Palestinian leadership under late President Yasser Arafat. One way of exerting of this pressure was to exploit the need for reforms. But it had different motives. Some of the international players, notably the US, wanted to reduce the powers of the president by creating the post of prime minister. Others, like the European Union, were pushing for reforms to make their financial contributions more effective.

Continue reading ‘Reforms and basic rights’

Remi Kanazi

The latest back and forth between Israel and the Palestinian unity government (and its regional interlocutors) will not bring peace to fruition. Many respected commentators in the Middle East have accused Israel of rejecting peace, primarily due to its refusal to fully embrace the Arab peace initiative. Yet this initiative, when entered into the international community’s trash compactor of “pragmatism,” will leave the Palestinian people with nothing more than an old, albeit neatly packaged, version of the Oslo Accords.

These commentators’ near-sighted, almost desperate view, which is predicated on the notion that anything is better than the squalor Palestinians are living in today, will only further devastate the Palestinian people. It is one thing to compromise on the implementation of the rights of Palestinians, but it is quite another to diverge from one’s principles based on “new realities” imposed on the conflict by one’s adversary. We must never forget the lessons of the Oslo period, nor can we forget that after 40 years of compromise and conciliatory action, Palestinian suffering has been exponentially magnified. The professed pragmatist line only diminishes the rights of the oppressed, strengthens the oppressor’s position, and makes a mockery of institutions (i.e. the United Nations) whose many functions ostensibly include the protection of persecuted peoples.

Many proponents of Palestinian rights naively argue, as is laid out in the Arab peace initiative, that all will be well once there is a full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. But territorially, Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip and yet the conditions inside Gaza reflect how autonomy alone is not independence. Israel continues to control Gaza’s imports and exports, its territorial waters, and its airspace—leaving 1.4 million people to suffocate in an open-air prison. Compounded by the sanctions slapped on 3.8 million occupied people, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem continue to economically wither away, while the world sits idly by. It is not enough to demand autonomy, the preservation of the right to self-determination, and the right of return. Policy must be put in place by Israel and the West that ensures economic sustainability for the Palestinian people. No people should be expected to recover after 40 years of imposed suffering without eventual restitution.

Continue reading ‘The perils of pragmatism in Palestine’

Incoming search terms:

• palestinian pragmatism

Ghassan Khatib

Throughout 40 years of occupation, the prisoners’ issue has always been a hugely important one in Palestinian society. Prisoners as a segment of society are highly credible in the eyes of a public that respects the acts of resistance to the Israeli occupation that put them in jail in the first place.

Until the signing of Oslo and the advent of the Palestinian Authority, Israel undertook such widespread arrest campaigns that it was exceptional to find families without relatives either in prison or who were ex-prisoners. The number came down with the Oslo agreement, which stipulated the release of all prisoners. Still, and in contradiction to Oslo, only half were actually released in the mid-1990s.

The number of prisoners increased again with the renewal of confrontations in 2000 and onward. The number now is roughly 11,000 and includes different categories of prisoners. Some are convicted either for their political activities or their armed resistance. There are minors, a number that always lies in the hundreds. Then there is the category of prisoners Israel calls “administrative detainees”. These are prisoners against whom no charges have been brought, for whom no trial is certain and whose sentence can be renewed six months at a time. Some administrative detainees stay incarcerated like this for several years.

The release of prisoners has always been at the top of the agenda of any Palestinian political party or government. It was President Mahmoud Abbas’ main promise to the public in his election campaign in 2005, and before that when he was prime minister.

Israel, however, has proven itself willing to release prisoners only in exchange for Israeli captives, dead or alive. This happened more than once, when Palestinian factions managed to capture Israeli soldiers during the first Lebanon war, or when Hizballah did the same and exchanged them for Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners.

This experience has taught Palestinian factions to pursue such a method in order to secure the release of prisoners. It is unfortunate that Israel is not willing to release prisoners in the context of peace agreements or as a confidence-building measure during negotiations.

Continue reading ‘Spurning a normal procedure’