PLO-U.S.
Connection:
Time To Make or Break
By Nicola Nasser
15 July, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Several indicators have shown
recently how fragile has been the “connection” between the
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the United States. And because
Washington could deliver but won’t and the Palestinian people
could not be held forever hostage to waiting for the American Godot,
time seems ripe to make or break this futile connection.
To the disappointment of
the PLO leaders the “connection” never developed to a full-fledged
unconditional mutual recognition by Washington, let alone to normal
diplomatic relations between equals.
Of course breaking this futile
connection would be good news for the PLO’s protagonist, Israel,
which sought its best to prevent this connection while it was still
a burgeoning bud, but failed and would for sure be overjoyed to see
its U.S. strategic ally push back the PLO to its pre-1987 label of a
“terrorist” organization, unless this connection remains
reigning in the PLO as a hostage to the waiting for the American Godot.
Ironically however severing
this futile connection would also be good news to the majority of the
Palestinian people who have lost faith in their leadership’s betting
on the “good will” and the “good offices” of
the successive U.S. administrations, which an ever growing number of
them has come to identify not only as the military, financial, diplomatic
and the super power patron of the Israeli occupying power, but as the
partner to the Israeli occupation.
Both the Palestinians under
the Israeli occupation since 1967, who have been suffering and witnessing
their existence and their land slowly but systemically eroded, and those
who have braved it out in their miserable and rotten refugee camps in
exile since 1948 could no longer trust their leadership’s betting
on the U.S. vague, evasive, and un-kept promises.
And it was natural reaction
as well as legitimate endeavor for them to begin looking for alternatives,
both to their leadership and to the U.S. connection after more than
half a century of yelling their injustice to the deaf ears of the U.S.-led
western allies of their Israeli tormentor.
The Hamas’ landslide
victory in the January 25 legislative elections could only be seen within
this context, as a deafening NO to the status quo and an outcry for
political change internally and externally. It was the first explicitly
outspoken proof and rebellious rejection of the futile PLO-U.S. connection.
The warning came about one
and a half year earlier. No less than the veteran peace advocate, chairman
of the Palestinian Peace Coalition, co-author of the unofficial Geneva
Initiative, which is widely lambasted by Palestinian active factions
despite the un-public nod given to it by the former and present leaders
of the PLO, late Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, and the member of
the Executive Committee of the PLO, Yasser Abed Rabbo, wrote on April
18, 2004:
“The change of US policy
in the Middle East that took place on April 14th (2004) following the
meeting between (U.S.) President Bush and (Israeli) Prime Minister (Ariel)
Sharon has the potential to destroy the whole foundation of the Middle
East peace process.”
Abed Rabbo, a close confident
and adviser to both Arafat and Abbas, was referring to the “letter
of guarantees” Bush wrote to Sharon, in which he “adopted
fundamental Israeli demands that undermine international law, prejudice
permanent status issues and potentially pre-empt a negotiated settlement,”
and which gives “a boost to the expansionist policy” of
Israel and “deal a mortal blow to the Quartet Roadmap.
Abed Rabbo’s warning,
which in fact was representative of the PLO leadership, fell on deaf
U.S. ears. The Palestinians condemned Bush’s April 14 letter as
the “Second Balfor Declaration,” which has proved ever since
to be an Israeli-U.S. strategy and the basis of Israel’s current
unilateral approach to dictate by force a solution to the Palestinians.
This approach is dooming
the PLO leadership, the PLO-U.S. connection, whatever left of the so-called
peace process and the Oslo accords.
The Palestinian civilians
under occupation are now paying the price of this approach with their
blood, crushed by the overpowering Israeli war machine.
The deafening silence of
the Bush Administration on the daily Palestinian loss of life since
the Israel’s “Operation Summer Rains” was launched
on June 27, except for some shy remarks about the Israeli “disproportionate”
use of force, is pressuring the PLO-U.S. connection to the breaking
point.
Obstructing an Arab-drafted
resolution for the past two weeks because “we don't see at this
point any utility in council action at all,” U.S. Ambassador John
R. Bolton told U.N. Security Council “that a prerequisite for
ending this conflict is that the governments of Syria and Iran end their
role …”
Bolton's "prerequisite"
offers a justification for the Bush Administration to delay indefinitely
any resumption of America's once-powerful role in Middle East peacemaking.
This U.S. passive indifference
to Palestinian woes has no other explanation than Washington has already
written off the PLO, or at least has decided to do off with it unless
the PLO subscribes to coordinating with Israel’s unilateralism,
which would in fact be its political death certificate.
For too long now the Palestinian
leadership has held its decision-making hostage to the “good offices”
and “good will” of the U.S., with tragic consequences for
the Palestinian people and catastrophic results on the ground.
Symbolic of this hostage-connection
is the status of the PLO's office in the U.S., which is renewed by a
presidential order on a semi-annual basis and which Bush has recently
temporarily downgraded, then reinstated.
In a recent memorandum for
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush said he was imposing a
“downgrade in status of the PLO Office in the United States (for)
non-compliance by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority with certain
commitments.”
What are those “certain
commitments”? They are very well known to the Palestinian public
for they have been in place for too long as preconditions dictated to
the Palestinian leadership, any leadership.
When this leadership rejected
them it was denied any US-connection and recognition and the occupied
Palestinian territories were held hostage to the Israeli occupation.
When it complied its decision-making
was held hostage to U.S. un-kept promises.
The US still hasn’t
delivered. It could, but it won’t.
Moreover it is using involvement
or disengagement to protect the Palestinian people from the Israeli
atrocities and the ongoing policy of creating more facts on the Palestinian
ground as a tool to squeeze the PLO into accepting more Israeli-made
but US offered “concessions.”
To build a democratic Palestinian
regime under the Israeli occupation as a guarantee for Israel’s
security was the latest-invented Israeli-US precondition.
The PLO complied. And the
Palestinian people are now being collectively punished for their compliance
and denied recognition and connection until the newly-elected leadership
in its turn complies.
A full-page advertisement
in The New York Times, placed by the Council for the National Interest
on July 2, called for a “realignment” of the U.S.-Israel
relationship and urged the Bush administration to encourage Israel to
return to its pre-1967 boundaries and reconsider U.S. assistance to
Israel.
Just on time, not for the
administration to be forthcoming because President Bush on April 14,
2004 had opted to move exactly in the opposite direction, but for the
PLO to reconsider its leadership’s 20-year old overt connection
with the U.S.
The U.S. policy is once more
plunging the region into a mess of bloody violence and insecurity and
turning it into an incubator-environment for both Israeli state terrorism
and a counter individual terror, while in this process cornering the
PLO into seeing its leading role eroded by the day, to the joy of the
Israeli propagandists who have been promoting the lie that no Palestinian
partner exists.
It’s high time for
both sides to make or break.
Nicola Nasser
is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank. He is the
editor of the English Web site of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).