Palestine WILL become a lost cause unless…..

January 7th, 2015 by admin

Initially the PLO Executive Committee would provide it but much, much more than that is required if the Palestinians are to be enabled to speak to power with one credible voice.

The need is for the Palestinian diaspora to become politically engaged and put its act together for the purpose of bringing the Palestine National Council (PNC) back to life.

Once upon a time this now side-lined parliament-in-exile represented Palestinians almost everywhere in the world and was the supreme decision-making body on the Palestinian side. It was not without flaws but it was more democratic than not and that’s why the authoritarian Arab regimes feared it. Even Arafat at the height of his power was accountable to the PNC. (It did, in fact, take him six long years to persuade a majority of PNC delegates to endorse his policy of politics and compromise with Israel. That happened towards the end of 1979. The PNC vote in favour of Arafat’s policy – the two-state solution – was 296 for it and only four against. From then on the Palestinian door was open to peace on terms which any rational government and people in Israel would have accepted with relief).

For the PNC to be brought back to life there would have to be elections to it in communities throughout the Palestinian diaspora as well as the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The composition of the Palestinian diaspora by countries and numbers of Palestinians resident in them is roughly the following. Jordan – 2,900,000; Israel – 1,600,000; Syria – 800,000 Chile – 500,000; Lebanon – 490,000; Saudi Arabia – 280,245; Egypt – 270,245; United States – 270,000; Honduras -250,000; Venezuela – 245,120; United Arab Emirates – 170,000; Germany -159,000; Mexico – 158,000; Qatar – 100,000; Kuwait – 70,000; El Salvador – 70,000 Brazil – 59,000; Iraq – 57,000; Yemen – 55,000; Canada – 50,975; Australia – 45,000; Libya – 44,000; Denmark – 32,152; United Kingdom – 30,000; Sweden – 25,500; Peru – 20,000; Columbia – 20,000; Spain – 12,000; Pakistan – 10,500; Netherlands – 9,000; Greece – 7,500; Norway – 7,000; France – 5,000; Guatemala – 3,500; Austria – 3,000; Switzerland – 2,000; Turkey – 1,000; and India – 300.

The prime task of a re-structured and re-invigorated PNC would be to debate and determine Palestinian policy and then represent it by speaking to power with one credible voice.

If the Palestinian diaspora does not become politically engaged to bring the PNC back to life I think it is more than possible that future honest historians will say that by default it betrayed the occupied and oppressed every bit as much as the Arab regimes have done.

Without a new strategy along the lines I have suggested above to change the dynamics of the conflict and how it is perceived in America and Europe I really do believe that Palestine will become a lost cause.

There will be some who will say (as a few Israeli Jews have said) that the Zionist state is in the process of committing suicide and that justice for the Palestinians is one day inevitable.

Perhaps, but just as likely, in my view more than likely, is that the coming years will see an exodus of Jews from Israel leaving behind a neo-fascist hardcore which will be prepared to threaten the region and beyond with nuclear destruction.

And on the basis of what Prime Minister Golda Meir said to me in an interview I did with her for the BBC’s Panorama programme, it would not be an empty threat. I asked her to clarify a point she had made. I said: “Prime Minister, I want to be sure I am understanding what you have just said. You did mean that in a doomsday situation Israel would be prepared to take the region and the world down with it…?”

Without a pause for thought she replied in her gravel voice, “Yes, that’s exactly what I am saying!”

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