For several days now, the news published in the world about the devastating effects of the Israeli siege imposed upon the Palestinian occupied territory have served to forge a new discourse: it has become the chronicle of an announced death, and commentators and analysts, some to warn and prevent, others to speculate on an aftermath, all announce the imminent collapse of the Palestinian national institutions and the instoration of “anarchy”.

On the Israeli side, one can understand the function of such a description: this is mostly wishful colonial thinking. There are those, among Israeli leaders, and among the journalists who echo their aspirations, who hope we’ll disappear. Who hope we’ll no longer be there, neither to resist, nor to negotiate, leaving them with no interlocutors at all, or with some alternative radical-religious leadership unknown to the international community, and which will, just like the Israeli government, refuse to “negotiate under fire”, that is to say refuse to negotiate under occupation, settlement and aggression.

It is true, as UNSCO Special Commissioner Tarjie Larsen rightly emphasized, in his Gaza Press Conference last week, that the economic blockade and total closure imposed upon the Palestinian people, the disruption of economic activity and the spectacular rise in unemployment, the cut in supplies in numerous fields of production and consumption and all the side-effects of the siege have brought our nascent economy down on its knees, and that it will take a long time to rebuild that which has been destroyed. It is true that the cost of the so-called security measures, in fact measures of collective punishment, adopted by the occupyer is much greater than the sum total of international assistance to the Palestinian people for the same period. And it is also true that our institutions and administration are on the verge of total bankruptcy. And it is true that the international community should take the measure of the gravity of our situation, with all the risks it involves.

But we are far from anarchy. Not only because our civil society – from family structures to voluntary associations, from religious clubs to chambers of commerce – is as vigorous as ever, and determined to pursue its long march towards statehood; but also because our institutions were never given the chance or the time to develop as a separate realm from that of political decision-making organs.

Of course, we are also as far remote as we have ever been from a full-fledged state. Our authority, already limited within the framework of unimplemented interim agreements, is now daily undermined by the lack of mobility, and the gross violation, by occupation forces, of all agreements signed. There is, unfortunately, still no sovereign Palestinian State, and there can therefore be neither security, nor Rule of Law for the citizens. The Intifada itself manifests the intervention of the street — the rank and file of national organisations — in the thwarted political process, and its will to march, on its own, towards negotiations and independence. But all these conditions and hardship do not mean in any way that we’re “losing control”. For before being the government of a state-in-the-making, the PLO-PNA is a national liberation movement, and its authority derives primarily from its legitimacy.

The PLO has already crossed many deserts: from the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 to the Black September of 1970 and to the siege of Beirut, from the siege of Tripoli and the “camps war” in Lebanon to the first Intifada. The Palestinian people, for its part, has emerged from and survived to the total disaster of 1948. Anyone looking at this historical perpective can see that the trend is upwards, that the Palestinian people is in the process of reasserting its national existence on its land, as it clear that the colonial archaism prevailing among Israeli politicians is doomed.

Let no one be deluded. We will survive this phase.

It is however likely that, in spite of our absolute readiness to negotiate the just and durable peace for which we have opted, the new government of Israel, whetever the outcome of the present attempts to form a wide coalition, will not go back to the table before having attempted and failed to impose a military solution. Unfortunately, mankind only recurs to rational solutions when all others have failed, and it takes both intelligence and humility to acknowledge failure. Hence the question of the cost, and of the delay.

The equation which binds military escalation on the ground and international intervention remains in vigor, whatever the new government in Israel. The responsibility of the international community is therefore immense. Complacency here borders on complicity. We send our warmest greetings to the Government of Belgium, who spoke with remarkable clarity and frankness with Sharon’s special envoy. Give a chance and judge on the acts cannot mean become ignorant, oblivious of past experience and hopelessly naïve.

After the cloud and smoke dissipates, and when the demagogic slogans of the Israeli war-mongers are drowned in their own failure, negotiations will resume. We’ll be worse off than today, our societies and opinions crippled and embittered, and legitimately angry at all the time and suffering gone by. But there will be no other way than to go back to international legality. Go back to UN Resolutions 242 and 338, the basic terms of reference of the Madrid Conference. Go back to the 1993 Declaration of Principles, and demand its implementation on the basis of Security Council Resolution 904, of February 1994. To Wye River, to Sharm El Sheikh 1 and 2. To Security Council resolution 242 (Inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by war) for the territory, to SC Resolution 338 (International Conference) for the mechanism, to the UN as a framework. After all, if, according to the new US administration, it is no longer appropriate to speak of the “peace process”, there is no more obstacle to replacing the whole negotiating process, and the efforts of the international community, within the UN framework.

Until then, and so that it can happen, several misconceptions must be dissipated:

  1. About negotiations and Israeli “generosity”: the percentage game in which Israeli negotiators have constantly indulged (90%, 94%, 96%, etc…) is meant to hide the simple fact that while negotiating on a mere 22% of the territory of historical, or Mandatory, Palestine, the occupyier wants to annex yet another fraction of the Land. There is no generosity in the offer to restitute 90% of 22% of a land wholly acquired by force.
  2. About Jerusalem and the Haram El Sharif: the Israeli insistence on sovereignty on the Haram El Sharif, unprecedented in the history of the conflict, makes any agreement on Jerusalem impossible. As a Holy Site, the Haram belongs to all Arabs, and to all Moslems, and they have all made it abundantly clear to the world that nobody was entitled to give it up.
  3. About the Right of Return: the right of all refugees to return to their homeland is a basic principle of international law. It is recognized everywhere. Resolution 194 was adopted in December 1948 to embody the recognition of this right for Palestinian refugees. There is no way to negotiate flexible and creative arrangements to solve this problem without starting with a solemn recognition of this right.
  4. About settlements and settlers: settlement and settlers are illegal. Their function is a military aggressive one, they are all at once conceptual, political and physical obstacles to peace. They must be removed, so as to allow for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state enjoying territorial continuity.
  5. About “violence” as an abstract, metaphysical category. There is a fundamental difference between the violence of occupation (military presence and coercion, control and repression) and colonization (armed robbery of the land) and that of the popular upheaval, which, on the whole, is both reactive and defensive. This qualitative difference condemns all symmetrical appeals to restore calm to inefficiency, or even to irrelevance. The Intifada will not stop until the Palestinian people see something moving on the ground.

    In the meantime, Israeli military aggression against our people goes on: siege, shelling, assassinations go on. The whole idea of peace has been made into a sinister joke, reconciliation has become the name of an abstract paradox. It is also the responsibility of the world as a whole to see to it that this spiral is stopped, and to help us put an end to this conflict.

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