Alan Hart

In laying out his plans to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIS, President Obama said this: “America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden. But as Americans, we welcome our responsibility to lead. From Europe to Asia, from the far reaches of Africa to war-torn capitals of the Middle East, we stand for freedom, for justice, for dignity. These are values that have guided our nation since its founding.”

There’s an old English, somewhat vulgar, four-letter word which in my view sums up that statement. CRAP. (The dictionary definition of it is “excrement, rubbish, dirt, worthless nonsense.”)

An informed visitor from another planet who listened to Obama would scratch his head and say, “Has the president not heard about the occupied and oppressed Palestinians and their long struggle for freedom, justice and dignity?”

In a recent Guardian article Avi Shlaim, one of the leading Israeli “revisionist” (meaning honest) historians, asked what Israel should do given its failure to break the spirit of Palestinian resistance. His answer was that “The beginning of wisdom is to admit mistakes and stop adding fuel to the fire.”

He concluded that Israel’s leaders are unlikely to adopt a desperately needed constructive policy “without strong external pressure.” And he added: “This is where the international community comes in. It must begin to hold Israel to account in a way that it has so far shamefully failed to.”

I agree 100 percent and then some. That is what the international community led by America should do, but as things are there’s no reason to believe that any American president will ever summon up the will and the courage to confront those in Congress, the majority, who do the bidding of the Zionist lobby and its so-called Christian evangelical allies – even when doing so would be in America’s own best interests.

So in my view THE question is this.

Is there anything that could be done to change the dynamics of the conflict in and over Palestine that became Israel in order to improve the prospects for America taking the lead in calling Israel to account for its defiance of international law and crimes?

My answer, which I have offered in previous posts, is that there’s only one way to change the dynamics of the conflict. It requires the occupied and oppressed Palestinians, joined by those in the Palestinian diaspora who are not too frightened to become politically engaged, to demand the dissolution of the impotent and corrupt Palestinian Authority and handing back to Israel complete and full responsibility and accountability for its occupation.

That development would impose significant security, economic and other burdens on Israel but, more to the point, it would make it much more difficult, and perhaps even impossible, for the major powers led by America to go on allowing Israel to defy international law in general and UN Security Council resolutions in particular.

Who would represent and speak for the occupied and oppressed Palestinians in the event of the PA being dissolved?

Initially it would have to be the PLO, preferably with new elections to its executive committee. But that would be only a first step.

If the Palestinians of the world could take a leaf out of Zionism’s book and put their act together, they would commit themselves to bringing the Palestine National Council (PNC) back to life, re-invigorated by elections to it in every country of the world where Palestinians live. Once upon a time this Palestinian parliament-in-exile was the highest decision-making body on the Palestinian side. Even Arafat was answerable to it, so much so that it took him 10 long years to persuade it to endorse his policy of politics and unthinkable compromise with Israel. His achievement on that front was a demonstration of Palestinian democracy (with some arm twisting) in action.

A re-invigorated PNC would enable the Palestinians of the world to speak to power with one credible voice.

There are some and perhaps many supporters of the Palestinian claim for justice who will say that what I am advocating is at best premature because only the PA (not the PLO or a re-invigorated PNC) has the possibility of referring Israel to the International Criminal Court in the Hague. My response is the following.

Even if the PA did succeed (after the upcoming American mid-term elections) in getting the ICC to consider whether or not Israel had committed war crimes, and even if the ICC subsequently reported that it had, nothing would change. Israel’s leaders would do their usual and assert that the ICC was biased against Israel and that they would therefore ignore its findings.

That could cause Obama or Kerry or both (after the upcoming mid-term American elections) to utter some guarded words of condemnation of Israel’s attitude but they would be only that – words, empty words.

I am now firmly of the opinion that unless the PA is dissolved Palestine will remain a lost cause. (And I am sick and tired of hearing our so-called leaders talking about a two-state solution. Though not yet formally buried it has long been dead, killed by Israel’s on-going colonization of the West Bank which amounts to ethnic cleansing slowly and by stealth).

UPDATE

Since I wrote the above it has become clear that under pressure from the Obama administration Palestinian “President” Abbas has no intention of referring Israel to the ICC. For some years past I have described him as an American-and-Israeli puppet. A quisling. If I was a Palestinian I would now regard him as a traitor to my cause.

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