Hudna
Or Not: Palestinian Rights
Must Be Preserved
By Ramzy Baroud
16 December, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Palestinian
groups have recently suggested a ceasefire, in exchange for a cessation
of Israeli violence. Ehud Olmert responded with a conciliatory speech,
cleverly timed with President Bush’s arrival to Jordan on November
29 for a two-day conference with top Iraqi officials.
Israel, then, accused Palestinians
of firing five rockets into Israel in violation of the ceasefire; a
Palestinian militant group said that the violation was in response to
Israel’s continuous military activities in the West Bank.
Meanwhile, standing side
by side with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, PA President Mahmoud
Abbas, yet once again, declared a deadlock in his talks with Hamas aimed
at forming a national unity government.
The media, once more, indulged
in analysing the recent developments, with the full confidence that
Olmert’s verbal commitment to ending the conflict was indeed genuine.
The ball, once again, was placed in the Palestinian court. All eyes
are now on Hamas: will it heed to the voice of reason and moderation,
as embodied in the character of Abbas? Or will it continue to nurture
its sinful alliance with Iran and Syria?
As western governments -
led or intimidated by the United States - rushed to punish the Palestinians
for their democratic choice, the media largely followed suit: exaggerating
Hamas’ military strength and its ability to ‘destroy’
Israel, its adherence to violence as the only means of struggle, its
religious fanaticism, and all the rest. Such a portrayal helped contextualize
the three unfair conditions imposed on the Palestinian government, to
unconditionally recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous
agreements signed between the former Palestinian Authority governments
and Israel, starting with the infamous Oslo Accords, reached in total
secrecy in 1993.
I took just 10 months to
consolidate such a discourse: where the Palestinians, as always were
forced on the defence, desperately trying to show that all the allegations
made against their government are untrue. Meanwhile, Israel was left
with the gift of time, a desperately needed factor in its colonial war
against the Palestinians: robbing more land, expanding its apartheid
wall, killing with impunity and so on. Though such means of repression
are commonplace tools in the ongoing conflict, exasperated in the last
six years of Palestinian Uprising or Intifada, the election of a Hamas-dominated
parliament introduced a newer element: starvation, plain and simple.
The Palestinian government,
armed with the popular support of its people, which is yet to fade despite
all attempts, refused to succumb to such pressure. It continued to argue
that recognizing Israel while the latter claims both historic Palestine
and the 1967 Occupied Territories as theirs is out of the question.
Who would so naïve as to accept the existence of its occupier,
oppressor, while the latter does its outmost to deny the occupied its
right to live or to exist?
Unconditionally renouncing
violence is equally abhorrent. In the last a few months, since the June
capturing of one Israeli solider, Israel has killed over 400 Palestinians.
The latest carnage was in Beit Hanoun, in the Northern Gaza Strip, where
in the course of two days, starting 1 November, nearly thirty civilians
were killed, a mosque was completed bulldozed and many houses and other
civilian infrastructure were destroyed. This was followed by the alleged
mistaken bombardment of a residential neighbourhood in the same town
that killed 20 people, 17 of whom were members of the same extended
family, all women and children. This was in response to the almost complete
cessation of violence from the Palestinian side, aside from crude home-made
missiles fired randomly from northern Gaza, itself an outcome of the
utter frustration with the siege and endless bloodletting; Hamas itself
has refrained from targeting Israelis outside the Occupied Territories
for over a year. As if the failure of the international community to
provide any sort of tangible means of protection to the Palestinian
people, in accordance to its commitment under the Fourth Geneva Convention
and other pertinent international treaties and laws, is not enough,
Palestinians are now pressured to renounce their right to defend themselves.
Ridiculous.
Most believe that the current
violence is intrinsically linked to failed agreements signed between
late President Yasser Arafat and the Israeli government. For Palestinians
the agreements delivered next to nothing, save a few symbolic ‘achievements’
- a flag, a postage stamp and the ‘triumphant’ return of
a few exiled Palestinians; but also the killing of over 4,000 Palestinians
- the vast majority of whom were civilians - in the six years of uprising.
Dr. Ahmed Yousef, a top advisor
to the Palestinian Prime Minister has recently proposed, on behalf of
his government, the concept of hudna, or truce. It’s more or less
consistent with the recent declaration of ceasefire, the latter perhaps
a prelude to a longer one. In an article in the New York Times on November
1, 2006, he wrote: “Typically covering 10 years, a hudna is recognized
in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract. It extends
beyond the Western concept of a cease-fire and obliges the parties to
use the period to seek a permanent, non-violent resolution to their
differences.”
However, it must be stressed
that this position should neither serve as, nor be understood as a personal
indictment; Palestinian violence is hardly comparable to that of Israel,
the fifth strongest army in the world; death tolls on both sides effortlessly
express the disparity of power. While proposing a hudna is maybe an
expression of the current Palestinian government's commitment to peace,
or perhaps a way out of a terrible bind; regardless, it should neither
override nor cancel out the Palestinian people's uncompromising adherence
to their just demands for freedom and rights, determined by a Palestinian
national consensus and cemented in international law.
Ramzy Baroud’s
latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s
Struggle (Pluto Press) is available at Amazon.com and in the United
States from the University of Michigan Press.
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