Sayigh and de Soto demonstrate that the Quartet’s roadmap was a farce. Elaborate in structure, hollow in substance. Israel was never going to make any concessions (consistent with its intransigence since the 1993 Oslo Accords). And the US was ensuring that Israel’s intransigence came up trumps. Sayigh diplomatically refers to ‘the international community’, but the US was and is dictating subservience to Israel’s agenda. Europe remained and remains abjectly obedient and Russia, briefly formally involved, remained indifferent and preoccupied elsewhere. But exposed behind the bureaucratic language of de Soto and Sayigh is the fact that Israel/US and its satraps have been strategically engaged over an extended period in ethnic cleansing of a subject people. This is an unspeakable crime, yet all authoritative organizations not directly responsible for the crime without exception blame the victims or look the other way. The UN itself and its organizations have de facto legitimized the ongoing crime. This, in spite of the fact that billions of dollars of UN funds have been devoted to compensating for the devastation wreaked by Israel – propping up crippled Palestinian institutions, provisioning desperate populations and replacing destroyed infrastructure (including UN infrastructure) while Israel has continued to treat the UN with contempt. Let us confront what the major powers and the international bodies were asking of Palestinian leadership in the Quartet roadmap. It (meaning Fatah, Hamas excluded by edict) was meant to clean up its inefficient and corrupt administrative structure and enforce security against Israel-directed violence. In return, funds would be disbursed with the hope of improving the Palestinian economy which in turn was intended to generate civility and pacificity amongst ‘the natives’. The Occupation, supposedly condemned at international law, is legitimized. The fundamental flaws of Oslo – ‘no prior agreement on Palestinian statehood, let alone on the so-called “permanent status” issues’ – are reinforced. It is demanded of the victims that they further debase themselves. And Israel is permitted, carte blanche, to defy what minor obligations it has and to cherish as indelible its systemic crimes against the Palestinians.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 01:25:07 +0000
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