Establishment of Palestine State, When?

by Dr. Abdul Ruff Colachal

(October 08, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) As it is known to the world, Palestinians are treated like slaves by occupying Israelis. Over 400,000 Israeli settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and the Israeli regime keeps expanding its settlement areas into Palestine and evacuating the Palestinians for settlement projects. The Israeli-occupied territories are the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. They are areas Israel captured from Jordan and Syria during the Six-Day War.Thousands and thousands of Palestinians have been butchered by occupying Israeli terror forces ever since Israel came into existence in 1947. Another 20,000 Israelis live on the Golan Heights plateau. Israeli leaders have been postponing the establishment of the promised Palestine state. Tzipi Livni is the 13 th Israeli premier elect after Ehud Olmert.

ONE

Israel knows well it has been ruing the Palestinians and unless it surrenders the lands stolen from Palestine, it cannot guarantee peace to its own people either. Outgoing PM Ehud Olmert says Israel must withdraw from almost all the land it occupied in 1967 if it wants peace with Syria and the Palestinians, including East Jerusalem. In a newspaper interview last week, Olmert said peace would mean Israel giving up control of the West Bank or equivalent territory as well as much of the Arab section of Jerusalem. He said this would include parts of East Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state. Olmert also said any peace deal with Syria would require an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. He gave few further details, but said he was prepared to go beyond previous Israeli leaders to achieve peace. "We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice we will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories. We will leave a percentage of these territories in our hands, but will have to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace," he added the withdrawals would include Jerusalem, the eastern part of which Israel occupied and annexed after the 1967 war, but which it has long proclaimed as its "eternal, undivided capital".

In her first foreign policy speech since winning the leadership of the governing party, Prime Minister designate Tzipi Livni said time is running out for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, “extremists” were gaining ground as talks faltered, she stressed her commitment to the US-backed talks that began last year. Ms Livni was asked to form a coalition after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert quit last month amid corruption allegations. She replaced Olmert as leader of Kadima, the largest party in the Israeli Knesset, and has until 3 November to build a coalition.

Tzipi Livni told a foreign policy forum that the peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, begun in Annapolis last November, would continue because "doing nothing has its own price". “Israel wishes to arrive at peace with all of her neighbors - the Palestinians, Syria, Lebanon and the Arab nations," she said. But Ms Livni, who has been serving as foreign minister in Olmert's government, said time was "not working in the favor" of Israel and regional moderates. She said Israel is dreaming of peace, but its feet are firmly rooted in a complex reality.

Ms Livni suggested the goal was a full peace treaty, endorsing the Palestinian view of the negotiations as an all-or-nothing affair, with no partial agreements on some issues but not others. Olmert favored agreement on a declaration of principles or a status report on areas of agreement. Also unlike Olmert, Ms Livni did not spell out the shape of an accord as she saw it.

TWO

The creation of Israel was the culmination of the Zionist movement, whose aim was a homeland for Jews scattered all over the world following the Diaspora. After the Nazi “Holocaust”, pressure grew for the international recognition of a Jewish state, and in 1948 Israel came into being o Palestinian lands. The division of the “British mandate” of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel in the years after the end of World War II have been at the heart of Middle Eastern conflicts for the past half century.

PLO founder and Palestine chief Yasser Arafat died an unhappy man struggling for the creation of a Palestine state which the USA and UN had promised him, but never took any serious steps towards realization of his legitimate dream. Arafat had trusted the UA and Israel, as PLO supreme and Fatah leader in West Bank Abbas is doing now, in establishing the Palestine, but they deceived him.

In 1979 Egypt and Israel signed a peace agreement, but it wasn't until the early 1990s, after years of an uprising known as the intifada, that a peace process began with the Palestinians. Despite the handover of Gaza and parts of the West Bank to Palestinian control, a "final status" agreement has yet to be reached. The main stumbling blocks include the status of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees and Jewish settlements.

Under Ariel Sharon’s unilateral settlement of Palestine issue, Israel evacuated its settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and withdrew its forces, ending almost four decades of military occupation. However, US-Israel duo played havoc to divide the Palestinians by asking present Abbas to remove the elected Hamas government leading to civil war between West bank and Gaza culminating in the elected Islamic group Hamas control of Gaza in June 2007. And as per the plan, Israel intensified its economic blockade of the Gaza Strip, causing severe problems for the defenseless Palestinians.

THREE

Israel’s official policy has been occupation, annexations and expansion of Palestinian territories, killing and enslaving of Palestinians and crushing the Arabs as far as possible with US support. In order to cover up its aggressive terror action n Palestine, Israel very tactfully has branded the innocent Palestinians struggling for their own home land back from the terrorist Jewish occupiers as “terrorists”. Jews promote anti-Arab and anti-Islamic leaders to pursue the expansionist and terrorist agenda. Hence Olmert’s statements irked the Israeli establishment concentrating on terror tactics to track the innocent Palestinians. The remarks, which immediately stirred controversy among Israelis, were published in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Former Meretz chairman Yossi Beilin said: "Olmert has committed the unforgivable sin of revealing his true stance on Israel’s national interest just when he has nothing left to lose." Reaction to Ehud Olmert's comments on withdrawal from occupied land is one of scorning attitude. Israeli leader hawkish Yuval Steinitz accused Olmert of gambling on Israel’s future. That is whole story about the Jews in Arab world.

Palestinians in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem, have lived under Israeli occupation since 1967. The settlements that Israel has built in the West Bank are home to around 400,000 people and are deemed to be illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. Although Hamas is increasingly isolated by the USA-led West that support a hegemonic and terrorist Israel in Gaza -- its 1.4 million people are sealed inside and the Hamas leadership has little international support -- it can still attempt to scuttle the peace process being pursued by Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert through armed attacks against Israel. Abbas was in Malaysia before arriving last night in Indonesia, the country with the largest number of Muslims in the world.

Gaza is suffering under the yoke of anarchy and the swords of thugs. In the course of the campaign thousands of people have fled their homes to escape Israeli artillery shells or advancing tanks. But even for those unscathed by the violence, Gaza has become a darker place. The Israelis bombed its only power plant, and now there is as little as six hours of electricity a day. There have been hundreds of Israeli air strikes, numerous ground raids and many days of incessant artillery fire over Palestinians.

The United Nations puts the poverty rate in Gaza at close to 80%. Palestinians are convinced that they are being deliberately strangled by Israelis. The Palestinian economy is being brought to its knees. The UN says that $30m worth of damage has been done in this poverty stricken place recently. Business activity of all kinds is continually hampered by the growing number of checkpoints and barriers and controls across the occupied territories. The worth of total destructions in Palestine by terrorist occupier Israel is of any body’s guess.

Olmert is acting as caretaker prime minister after resigning earlier this month. Many interested people, especially form security establishment say there is little likelihood that any peace deals will be agreed in his final weeks in office. The new premier might even go beyond mere talks and, like her mentor Sharon did, might actively purse the final settlement of the Mideast crisis once for all.

An Observation

Much of the history of the region since that time has been one of conflict between Israel on one side and Palestinians, represented by the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Israel’s Arab neighbors, on the other. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced, and several wars were fought involving Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

These days Israel is contacting the world leaders not to send weapons to Palestine and they should strengthen only Israel’s military capability. Olmert is on his way to Russia in one of his last foreign trips as prime minister to press Moscow not to sell advanced missiles and weapons technology to Iran and Syria. Olmert faces several corruption allegations, and police have recommended he be indicted over two of the inquiries. He is accused of misusing cash payments from a US businessman, and of double-billing government agencies for trips abroad. He denies any wrongdoing.

PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas has been making diplomatic efforts to find support for the peace efforts. Ahead of an anticipated November international peace conference in the US, while visiting Malaysia and Indonesia last year, seeking support from Muslim allies in South-East Asia, Palestinian President Abbas said that a final solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be in place before the end of 2008. But he also said that any peace process with Israel must include Hamas, the rival Palestinian political movement that split with Abbas's government following its armed seizure of the Gaza Strip. The US peace Meet convened by the US president did not settle the enduing Mideast conflict the false hopes it generated notwithstanding. But till now there is not much move either form the USA or from Quartet or from Israel to ascertain that. On the contrary, reports suggest the USA, annoyed with increasing oil prices and financial depression in USA, is not very keen to help create the Palestine state in the near future. President Bush made an anti-climax statement during his visit to Israel that it was not possible to create the Palestine state before he leaves the Oval house in January and that some frame work could be drawn and a road map would be ready. There have been plenty of US made roadmaps for Mideast resolution but the Palestinians continue to be killed by the arrogant Israelis in a sustained manner. But there is still a void in the finalization of the crisis. Saudi Arabia should continue work for the Palestine resolution. Hopefully, Ms Tzipi Livni would definitely play her positive role in the resolution by proceeding from where Arial Sharon left and considering the suggestion made by Olmert. World would like to see a free Palestine state in 2009 positively. - Sri Lanka Guardian