Saeb Erakat, chief negotiator and author of the book Life is Negotiations. (Photo: EFE)
Opposing the “negotiations to return to negotiations,” a group known as “Palestinians for Dignity,” yesterday released a statement against the meetings between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The call is for a silent demonstration on January 14, in Ramallah, protesting the political leadership and demanding Palestinian National Council elections (in which exiled Palestinians also vote).
The statement follows another, earlier this month, from Leila Khaled and other Arab intellectuals opposing the “hostile framework” of the talks:
Continuing to rely on the path of negotiations, in light of the ongoing developments in occupied Palestine and the region, and amid the daily Israeli criminal policies and attacks on the ground, deeply damages all of the efforts being made to unify the internal Palestinian front.
The recent negotiations took place in Jordan. The parties explored reconvening the quartet, an international negotiating team comprised of the U.S., the E.U., the U.N., and Russia. The last round of talks dissolved in 2010 after failing to halt settlement construction. Moving away from this staled process, the anti-normalization group seeks to revitalize national rights and popular representation.
The full text of Palestinians for Dignity’s statement is published below:
Statement on the Return to Negotiations
12 January, 2011On the first anniversary of the ongoing Arab revolutions for justice, freedom and democracy, and the second anniversary of the Zionist Israeli aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip, Palestinian negotiators have again mistakenly returned to the negotiating table on January 3rd and 10th of this year. Counting on the same fruitless and failing process of the past two decades, the negotiations contradict past PLO statements that have explicitly rejected negotiations until settlement expansion is frozen, borders are clearly referenced and defined, and the fulfillment of the release of all political prisoners.
With dangerous disregard of the will and voice of the Palestinian people who have repeatedly protested these futile negotiations, failed Palestinian leadership is holding semi-clandestine meetings in Jordan.
By way of diversion, they have articulated that these meetings are merely “exploratory talks” when in fact they are negotiations to return to negotiations. Not only does this reflect the state of confusion and capriciousness on the part of the Palestinian leadership, but it also echoes its political weakness and lack of strategic vision.
While suffering daily at the hands of violent settlers, we continuously have more land swallowed by illegal colonies and an accelerated rate of the Judiaization of Jerusalem. Such negotiations have paved the way for 20 years of political subjugation and loss when their time should be spent on achieving unity and strengthening the peoples’ steadfastness to change the balance of power in favor of the Palestinian cause.
Therefore, we are calling on everyone to join us this Saturday, January 14th at 1:00 pm for a silent demonstration at the entrance of the Moqata (Irsal Street, Ramallah), to express our unequivocal refusal to these talks. Palestinian youth are fed up with illegitimate representation, a national consensus that does not unite them, and of a future state that does not guarantee the rights of the majority of the Palestinian people, in specific, Palestinian refugees in exile.
We will stand in silent protest to demand that these decision-makers adhere to the peoples’ will, withdraw immediately from these “exploratory talks,” and replace the current strategy with a strategy of resistance. We demand a strategy that is supported by political, economic, academic and cultural boycott of the Zionist entity, the strengthening of the steadfastness of the people, and preparation for direct elections to the Palestinian National Council (PNC) representative of Palestinians across the world.
Palestinians for Dignity
A cartoon of the I/P situation would show a small circle representing the Zionist entity surrounded by a much larger surrounding circle representing the millions of dispossessed Palestinians. Strong unified leadership of the Palestinians would build a more potent force to overcome the concentrated strength held by Israel and allow the spirit of the Arab Spring to energize their movement.
One must have sympathy with Palestinians for Dignity, they can see the Israelis have no intention of stopping settlement activity and can sense as can the Israelis the PA’s lack of will to resist Israel/US threats, sometimes they make a pathetic sight, still Israel/US have not threatened them with the nuclear option, taking their VIP passes off them, because they are needed to police the occupation,maybe I am being too pessimistic but all will be revealed on 26th January when the Israelis are supposed to reveal their proposals, don’t hold your breath, it would be unconscionable for the PA to be still talking after this date with no stop to Israeli settlement construction, If the Israelis do persuade the PA to continue negotiations after that date they could argue that any more progress at the UN or the ICC could not only end the negotiations and disappoint the King of Jordan but could be consrued as an act of war, and we may, and I hope not, be clambering onto that bus whose wheels continue to go round and round.
Now that Hamas has joined the PLO and clearly given Abbas the go ahead to proceed with negotiations, and taking into account that Fatah and Hamas are the two dominant political forces in Palestine, it’s strange to hear these folks talk about the will of the people.
The only way they can do it is be defining the ‘people’ as including many who can’t be physically present, millions of others living in a wide variety of circumstances. Take the refugees in Jordan – they vote in Jordanian elections. This group wants them to vote in Palestinian elections.
I can think of only one other group that insists on this kind of representation, where people should be represented twice, once within a state they don’t live in and a second time in the state where they reside.
Of course, I’m being hypocritical. As a dual citizen, I enjoy this privilege, though I can’t vote remotely in the Israeli elections as I could if I chose in the US elections.
But I get it. I personally would like to see the PNC have open elections in some fashion, perhaps modeled on the way the Jewish Agency elects delegates from the diaspora.
I’m not afraid of real democracy for Palestinians, Egyptians, or anyone. Democracy and self determination are strongly linked. The Palestinian nation deserves to have forums where being a Palestinian is enough to have a voice. I sure hope no one tries to get them to give up their dream of a Palestinian state that represents the Arab Palestinian people wherever they may live.