Newspaper
The Nation
Buenos
Aires, 21 March 2005
Palestine in front of the history (view)
By Suhail Hani
Daher Akel *
to THE NATION
It is comfortable to rest in other people’s armchair, to assume the Palestinian-Israeli conflict minimizing to the other one, to deny the millennial presence of the Semite Palestinian People in its land and to forget the 27 invasions that the Palestinian people had to resist from 1515 BC up to the current Israeli occupation.
There are those who try to replace, magically, the ancient right of the Palestinian people to his land, awarding it exclusively to Israel, without taking into consideration that the partition of the UN, in 1947, was within Palestine, and that its people was not consulted.
In that time, Palestine, which was coming out of the Ottoman-Turkish occupation of 397 years, remained under the British occupation and endured the Zionist Terrorism. In a honest way, the scientist Albert Einstein, who rejected to be the first president of the Jewish state, worried, asked to Jaim Waizmann, of the Zionist Agency: "¿What will become of the Arabs if Palestine is given to the Jews?" Waizmann answered: "¿What will become of the Arabs? That does not matter to us”.
All the oppressed peoples have the right to the memory. The Palestinian people, who suffers the injustice, the degradation and the humiliation of the occupant power, also has this right. It can not be ignored the tsunami imposed to the Palestinian people since the creation of Israel, 58 years ago, neither the occupation of 1967, up to the current tragedy, surrounded by apartheid walls, settlements which asphyxiate their geography, destruction of their homes and massive crimes. With the aggravation of the martyrdom of their father of the homeland and Nobel of the Peace, Yasser Arafat.
We evoke to Joseph Weltz, chief of the Agency of Jewish colonization, who wrote, in 1940: "Among as it must be clear that there is not enough space for both peoples together in this country..." In 1969, Golda Meir confessed to the Sunday Times: "There is nothing called Palestinians; they do not exist".
The foundation of Israel with the 78% of the Palestinian territory, bigger percentage than the 55% assigned by the resolution 181, is a violation of the original decree. The Israeli occupation in 1967 of the remaining 22 per cent of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, and the inability of halting the military volume of Israel, were the factors that kept the fire of the violence lighted. The Palestinian people did not stop in the time neither they tried to change the history. In spite of the painful concessions and the loss of a great amount of territory, they applied the Koranic prophecy: “It is wisdom of the life to tolerate with patience and to forgive”. They tolerated, they forgave, they recognized the other and the sought a worthy solution. For Israel that was not enough. It was necessary to demonize the Palestinian people and leadership. It was important to show from the altar of the confusion that Israel was not founded over Palestine, but rather the Israeli compassionate governments will allow the creation of a Palestinian State in a part of the Israeli land.
In front of the loss of Arafat, democratic president who won the first elections in January 1996, with the 88,1% of the votes, the Palestinian people under the occupation continued his legacy, voting, with the 63%, to the President Abu Mazen.
When, in 1993, was achieved the Oslo agreement, Ariel Sharon criticized it and he said that he would never get it underway. An Israeli terrorist murdered to our partner Yitzhak Rabin and the agreements and initiatives were a failure. The "Road Map" signed in June 2003 agreed a second ceasing of fire, but Israel violated it, adding 3,700 Palestinian martyrs, with more than 39,000 wounded and continuing with its heinous wall.
After 12 years of agreements converted into ink on paper by Israel, the bet for the Peace of the Braves, proposed by Arafat, kept Palestine firm. In Sharm El Sheij, on 8 February, President Abu Mazen offered his sincere hand to the Premier Sharon. Contrary to Abu Mazen, who asked the end of the occupation, Sharon did not include that expression in his speeches.
The auspicious third ceasing of fire was broken by Israel with 18 deaths, almost 200 wounded, demolition of houses and the annexation, on 19 February, of a seven per cent of the Palestinian territory, south of East Jerusalem. The London summit of support to the Palestinian leadership –which included to the UN, Europe, United States and Russia and which supported the idea of "an Israel safe and secure and an independent, viable and territorially contiguous Palestine, living side by side in peace and security"- and the convocation of peace of France, next July, are an incentive. But they will only be desires if the wall and the occupation are not over, absolutely, as it is demanded by the UN, and not in a unilateral and partial way, as Israel pretends.
* The author is Palestinian Ambassador in Argentina