It has been reported in Ha’aretz that President Obama submitted a letter of commitment to the Palestinian side to get these indirect “proximity talks” off the ground. The letter notes, “Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967.” This is not the first time a US administration has used its creativity in creating new terminology to deal with the conflict instead of relying on the time-tested body of international law that provides the keys to real progress. In the past, in place of “independent state” the US has attached such adjectives to the word “state” as “contiguous,” “viable,” “economically viable,” “territorial continuity,” and the like. In his use of words, President Obama has just picked up where the failures of past administrations left off.

International law clearly defines what an independent state is and any attempt to redefine it is an act of bad faith.

Israeli failed state

The timing of the US move toward new talks is rather conspicuous as well. Israel is proving itself to be a ‘failed state’; a ‘rogue state’ which has become a liability to its allies. How are its leaders greeting this latest move?

None other than Israeli Ministry of Defense, Major General Ehud Barak, who was behind the failed Camp David peace talks back in 2000 and the 2008/2009 onslaught in Gaza, recently made a bold statement while addressing a policy conference in Israel. He said, “If, and as long as between the Jordan and the sea, there is only one political entity, named Israel, it will end up being either non-Jewish or non-democratic … If the Palestinians vote in elections, it is a binational state, and if they don’t, it is an apartheid state.” (Herzliya Conference 2/2/2010) Yes, even Israel’s currently serving top brass is using the “A” word. Only a short few years ago, any Israeli politician would shiver at someone making the comparison between Israeli actions against Palestinians and South African Apartheid.

Another round of US diplomatic acrobatics is just what is needed to introduce a new red herring.

Palestinian leadership

The Palestinian leadership has historically failed to understand that the US’ “special relationship” with Israel will require countering through much more serious mobilization, organizing, and activism to complement their diplomatic efforts. After the utter failure of the US-sponsored (and micro-managed) Oslo peace process, anyone treating the US as a neutral mediator must be suffering from some form of delirium, all the more so if they are Palestinians.

The US has armed Israel to the teeth, including allowing it to develop a deadly arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons, not to mention their turning a blind eye on Israel’s outright refusal to sign the non-nuclear proliferation treaty.

The US funds Israel to the tune of $7 million a day, every day!

The US has used its UN Security Council veto power in the service of covering up for Israeli war crimes spanning from Beirut to Gaza.

The US congress regularly passes non-binding resolutions that incite and provoke more violence against Palestinians. The most recent of these embarrassing resolutions was one that dismissed out-of-hand the findings of the UN’s fact-finding mission led by world renowned Jewish and Zionist Judge Richard Goldstone.

The US took sides in this conflict long ago and any backroom negotiations are bound to produce the same results as previous attempts — a reflection of the might is right equation on the ground today in the Holy Land. If anyone should know better, it should be the Palestinian leadership.

A Way Out

Negotiations do not always need to be doomed to failure. There is a way the US could play a positive role if they could free themselves from the bear hug the Israeli lobby has on the US political system.

The internationally recognized reference point of international law is the only guiding light that can produce an equitable (not necessarily just) resolution to the conflict. The occupation started in 1967 is merely one part of the problem. The refugees created when Israel was established in 1948 are another, as is the institutional discrimination against non-Jews in Israel. International law addresses all these problems.

For starters, before trying to find the button to solve all issues in one push (a strategy that has failed multiple times) the US could demand that those items that are absolutely clear in international law be acted upon.

All elements (and there are plenty) of the 1967 Israeli occupation that can be ended should be immediately ended. The siege on Gaza, Jewish-only settlements, the separation barrier built on Palestinians lands, draconian restrictions on Palestinian movement and access, etc., should be removed or ended immediately, so that genuine peace talks can begin in earnest to resolve this historic catastrophe once and for all.

Allowing Israel to hold every piece of the conflict hostage until some yet-to- be found final status resolution is reached is a recipe for more of the same death and destruction.

President Obama has taken the leap; let’s hope he finds some remaining Palestinian ground to land on. Given his new commitment, if he fails, I wonder if he is willing to lay blame where it duly resides for Israel’s continued rogue action—in Washington D.C.

Many see Netanyahu as culpable in the collapse of the Oslo Peace Accords, since he had rejected them from the outset. Some even found Netanyahu culpable in Rabin’s death by inciting public fears that the peace process left Israel at risk. This time around, post-Oslo, he is making history again by joining forces with another Israeli party leader who did well in Israel’s latest elections, Moldova-born Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s David Duke.

Lieberman has many problems with the Palestinians of the occupied territory, but is most conspicuously known for his desire to offload the Palestinians still residing inside Israel (one- fifth of Israel’s citizenry, albeit third-or fourth-class). In the pure Jewish state of Lieberman’s fantasy, these people contribute no added value whatever.

This is the man who will be the lynchpin of Netanyahu’s coalition.

For anyone yearning for an Israeli government with the courage and the will to end Israel’s 41-year military occupation of Palestinians, the long- anticipated appointment of Lieberman to Minister of Foreign Affairs leaves much to be desired. The former nightclub bouncer is referred to, only half in jest, by an Israeli friend of mine as “Doberman.”

For western onlookers, it was undoubtedly odd that the top vote-getter, Tzipi Livni, was marginalized in favor of the runner-up, said to be in a stronger position to form a governing coalition.

Livni rather quickly conceded, opting to join the opposition. She made a smart move as much of the world repudiates Israel’s dangerous drift to the right. Livni, at best, would have been a mere fig leaf for an extremist government. For Palestinians, meantime, none of the political acrobatics means much. Livni’s entire political history is just as violent toward Palestinians as Netanyahu’s, despite her peace-lexicon façade.

Palestinians find themselves in a familiar posture, waiting—or more like Waiting for Godot. I daresay even Beckett would have balked at this one. Palestinians have been dispossessed, occupied and brutalized year in, year out since 1948 by an Israel that continues to talk peace while waging war. The roster of political players changes, but Israeli intransigence remains.

One thing Palestinians are not waiting for is some enlightened Israeli prime minister who will step forward and end their misery; they’ve already seen all kinds: from Israel’s first prime minister, Polish-born David Ben-Gurion, who candidly said “We must expel the Arabs and take their places”; to Israel’s first woman prime minister, Ukrainian-born Golda Meir, acclaimed for her infamous remark that “There is no such thing as Palestinians”; to Israel’s first native-born prime minister Yitzhak Rabin who, during the first intifada, ordered his military to “break the [Palestinian demonstrators'] bones” and then went on several years later to sign the historic Oslo peace agreement—which was inordinately date-driven—only to announce a few days after signing it that there are no sacred dates. Palestinians have also been around the track once before with Netanyahu’s overly-sleek, propaganda-driven personality.

Now Netanyahu seems to have a new gambit: diverting our attention from the ever-more- entrenched military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with an “economy first” approach to peace.

The message, today, is clearer than ever before: Israel’s new government will let the occupied Palestinians live, but just barely, and in a political headlock. Netanyahu and Lieberman evidently forget one revealing chapter in their own history, a lesson accidentally taught, and at great cost to all, by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: There cannot be peace and security until Israel ends its occupation.

For true negotiations to begin, the Israelis must remove the boot of military occupation from the necks of Palestinians. Then and only then can these two Semitic cousins sit down and carve out a model for peaceful co- existence. If international law was respected, the framework for a final resolution to this pestering conflict is already on the books by way of dozens of UN resolutions dating back to 1947; however, today, the final number of states to emerge from peace negotiations is less important than making sure the Palestinian people survive to enjoy a post-conflict reality.

We are left with the central axiom Israeli prime ministers love to deny: There is no military solution to this conflict. Israel has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it cannot win by relentless military force, and the Palestinians—against all odds—refuse to lose the quest for their freedom and equal rights. One more campaign to cover up Israel’s continuing occupation and the attendant war crimes only sets the stage for more death, more destruction, and more fruitless waiting. The world must act rationally today to salvage what remains to be salvaged. President Obama has better roles to play than a 21st century Godot.

Rev. King would have recognized that without unfettered US arms, funds and political cover, Israel would never have been able to inflict the level of brutality it “proudly” inflicted on Gaza. Nor would it have been able to keep Palestinians in bondage so long.

King would have pointed to where the solution to this conflict lies: the United States of America. If President Obama is to be an historic leader, and not just the first African American elected to the presidency, he must not tolerate Israel’s continued slaps in the face, from restricting President Carter’s movements in the Mideast, to using US funds to build illegal Jewish-only settlements, to launching a one-sided “war” on Palestinian civilians in Gaza. He will instead deal with the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Palestinian people have been on the receiving end of the US-armed-and-financed Israeli military machine for over 60 years. This latest chapter of Israeli-sponsored state terrorism has claimed over 1,300 Gazan lives, mostly civilians, in just three short weeks. A similar Israeli attack on America would have caused over 260,000 deaths: 92 times the loss of life witnessed from the 9/11 tragedy.

Israel owes its existence to the United States. America’s vote was the key to establishing the self-proclaimed Jewish State. However, Israel’s existence is also threatened by the United States. Since President Truman, every US administration has indulged Israel while it has dug itself into deeper and deeper trouble. From expansionist adventures in Egypt-Syria-Palestine, to Jewish-only settlements, to caging Palestinians in their own cities and villages, America has paid the bill. To be sure, Palestinians also paid. But the ultimate cost will be borne by Israel. Its endless aggression (enabled by US warplanes, war technology, Apache helicopters, munitions, and so on) not only angers the world, but causes resistance to escalate.

More dangerous than weaponry has been America’s role in demobilizing international organizations created to rein-in countries like Israel when they act like rogue nations. The two most blatant examples are the Bush administration’s green-lighting of Israel’s military misadventure in Lebanon 2006 and its recent crimes against humanity in Gaza by delaying UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate ceasefires.

To stop further bloodshed, including inevitable revenge attacks against Israelis, President Obama must act immediately to create momentum for lasting peace.

First, he must stop the needless killing. It’s not enough to stop Palestinians from arming themselves. An arms embargo must be placed on Israel, too. No more weapons of any kind should be sent to it. Israel has shown time and again that increasing its military might just escalates the conflict, leading to a regional arms race. The Arms Export Control Act gives the President of the United States the authority to control the export of defense articles and defense services. He should use that authority. And, in due time, he should dismantle Israel’s nuclear capacity, too.

Second, President Obama must force Israel to end–totally–its 41-year military occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank (including East Jerusalem). It took Israel six days to occupy those areas. It would take less than six months to end the occupation, moving settlers violating international law back to Israel, were the will there. Then and only then can the world expect Palestinians to approach negotiations and reach final status agreements. To expect them to negotiate while Israel’s boot of occupation is on their neck (especially after the recent slaughter in Gaza), is a pipe dream.

To bring into reality the dream Martin Luther King envisioned and to avoid the nightmare of a Mideast in flames (which will not spare America), President Obama must focus on leadership. There is no time for posturing or second-term politicking. It’s time for him to make a historical correction that will make the world and America safe for years to come. He can begin by visiting Gaza and the West Bank for the same reason Martin Luther King, Jr. gave from his jail cell: “I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.”

I have a problem with this logic.

I am a Palestinian American based in Al-Bireh, the sister city of Ramallah in the West Bank. I can see how an observer from abroad could be blind to the facts, given the blitz of Gaza war propaganda orchestrated by the Israeli military. But I know better. Like all other Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, I am not an observer from abroad. We live every day under the bitter burden of Israeli military occupation and we know that this question, presented as rhetorical—did we really have an option? —has a rational answer. Allow me, from my vantage point as an economic development professional, to touch on some of the other options that could have been chosen. Moreover, many of them will be forced on Israel anyway, sooner or later, whether after the next “war,” or in the coming days under the ceasefire agreement and the Egyptian-sponsored implementation mechanism being discussed as I write this. Meaning: all this death and destruction could have been easily avoided.

Dear Israeli citizen, short of ending the occupation, you could have:

1. Opted to agree on how to disagree: There are two bodies of law that deal with international relations in this world, International Law and the Law of the Jungle. Until today, your government—and maybe you—refuse to accept the global consensus that the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are all militarily occupied territory. The occupying power is Israel—as attested in dozens of United Nations resolutions over the past four decades. By ignoring this fact that Israel is an occupying power, thus removing (unsuccessfully, of course) any internationally recognized baseline for the conflict, you have created an environment that can only be described as the “Law of the Jungle,” where might is right and where, as we see in Gaza now, anything goes. You could have accepted international humanitarian law, as stipulated in the Fourth Geneva Conventions regulating occupations, and avoided many of the seemingly impossible positions you find yourself in today: from the albatross of the settlement enterprise to the reality of missile attacks from the Gaza Strip.

2. Opted to allow for an international presence in the occupied territory: For over 30 years – yes, 30 years! – the Palestinians have begged the international community to create and maintain a serious presence in the occupied territory, something to stand between us and protect the civilians on both sides. Israel repeatedly refused to consider this. Instead your government chose to deal with the Palestinian territory as if it was its own, always behaving in line with its meta-objective: getting a maximum of Palestinian geography with a minimum of Palestinian demography. You could have avoided dealing directly with the natural reaction of any occupied people to resist their occupation, by allowing international players to get involved and serve as a sort of referee between you and those you are occupying militarily.

3. Opted to accept lawful non-violent resistance to your occupation: For over 40 years, Palestinians have tried everything to remove the Israeli boot of occupation from our necks (all documented, for anyone interested enough to do the research): tax revolts, general strikes, civil disobedience, economic development, elections, and on and on. Your response every time was to rely on violence, on control; your message was that you respect nothing other than your own desires. Your children on the front line in Gaza may be too young to recall, but you might remind them, so that they will at least be informed as they march ahead to your drummers: Let them know you deported duly elected mayors back in the 1980s; let them know that you closed down entire Palestinian universities for years on end; let them know that you have imprisoned over 650,000 Palestinians since your occupation began, creating a virtual prison university for the resistance movement and stunning any possibility for a new leadership to arise; let them know that even after Oslo you prohibit, to this day, Palestinians from building fully independent utilities—not only in Gaza, but in the West Bank as well. You could have tried a little harder to understand that people under occupation do not throw flowers and rice at their occupiers and resolve to surrender to a slow death.

4. Opted to accept the results of Palestinian democracy: For Palestinians, and believe it or not Israelis too, the best thing that happened in the recent past was when Hamas was chosen in peaceful elections to take over the governance of Palestine. Prior to those elections, where was Hamas? They were in their underground bunkers carrying out atrocities that were disrupting your daily agenda—and mine—with absolutely no accountability whatsoever. When they accepted the Oslo process and ran for office and were duly elected, they stopped, for all intent and purpose, attacking inside Israel (by which I mean, inside the Green Line). Your citizens become significantly safer! Your government (and the U.S.) responded by refusing to accept the results of our elections and imposed sanctions on the elected Palestinian government. This was long before any violent infighting took place in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah. How did the Palestinians react to your intransigence? They pressed Hamas to replace its Hamas-only government with a unity government that had all the significant Palestinian political factions represented. You were thus presented with an accountable body that encompassed all Palestinian political flavors. Your government again responded by refusing to accept the results of our elections and continued with sanctions against the Palestinian government, repeating over and over the mantra that “there is no partner.” Beyond that, the Israeli government intensified its campaign of assassinating and arresting Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and introduced a whole new range of draconian punitive measures against the Palestinian public at large. Like what, you ask? Well, one such measure was that your government began blocking foreign nationals—people like me—from entering or doing business in the occupied territory, thus hindering any real chance to create a new, forward-looking reality. You could have accepted Palestinian democracy instead of propping up your own version of a failed Palestinian leadership.

5. Opted not to interfere in Palestinian internal politics: When Hamas violently struck at Fatah in Gaza—for reasons that have been well documented elsewhere—your government chose to punish all 1.5 million Palestinians by installing a hermetic seal on Gaza and allowing only a trickle of normal traffic to go in or out, meeting only a small fraction of Gaza’s needs. Lest you suspect me of indulging in empty clichés, I shall explain. International agencies have estimated that Gaza’s daily basic needs amount to 450 truckloads a day. For 18 months prior to your aggression on Gaza, your government allowed 70 truckloads a day on average. Yes, seventy! And these were allowed to enter only when the border crossings that you control were open, which was only 30% of the time. You could have chosen not to use food, medicine, education, cement, water, electricity, and so forth, as tools of repression. If you saw yourselves accurately as the occupying power you are, you could have kept in place a lawful security regime on the borders without creating a humanitarian disaster which led to irrational acts (such as missiles being lobbed over the border) by those you tried to starve into submission. You could have made a firm distinction between your political desires and your humanitarian obligations as an occupying power.

This list could go on and on.

The fact of the matter is that you had a long list of options open to you! So many, indeed, that it boggles the mind that your government has apparently been able to blind you to all of them…so that today, as the bombs shriek over Gaza, you can say, and evidently sincerely mean it: We had no other option.

Nevertheless, even with all these options effectively invisible to you, there is nothing on this earth—not law, not politics, not even a desperate and lengthy campaign of rockets creating widespread fear and even some civilian deaths on your side of the border—there is nothing that can justify, by Israel or any other country on this earth, the decision to opt for a crime against humanity as your chosen response. Nothing!

You accepted your government’s path to separate unilaterally from occupied Palestinians; you accepted an illegal barrier to be built on confiscated Palestinian lands; you accepted a unilateral disengagement that simply redeployed your occupation from the heart of Gaza to its perimeter, on land and sea and in the air, rather than actually removing it; you accepted the continuing expansion of your settlements and their systematic harassment of their Palestinian neighbors while talking peace; you accepted, and sadly continue to accept, a consensual blindness to the fact that the majority of Palestinians live as refugees, far from your occupation (practically, not geographically), and feel much more rage than you have lately been creating in the Gaza Strip. I urge you to stop acquiescing in this policy of managed unreality. I urge you to open your eyes and wake up. If not for our sake, then for your own.

You may not see us over the Separation Wall you built; you may not see us from the cockpits of your F-16s or from the inside of your tanks; you may not see us from the command and control center in the heart of Tel Aviv as you direct your pilots to launch their ton of munitions over our heads. Still, I can assure you of one thing. Until you wake up and demand that your leaders choose a different path, a path toward a life as equals and neighbors instead of trampler-on and trampled-on, you and your warrior sons and daughters will continue to see us—all of us, living and dead—in your nightmares, where we will continue to demand peace with justice.

Shock and Awe is a US invention in the same way that the US flavor of “shrink wrapped” democracy is a US creation. As the Bush Administration failed to export its understanding of democracy to Iraq via the US military, the US’ second regional blunder was trying to impose US democracy in occupied Palestine by using a proxy governing body called the Palestinian Authority. The US’ weapon of choice for Palestine was to dangle millions of dollars as bait, there for the taking if the Palestinian leadership showed total obedience. While US and other donor countries channeled billions of dollars to ‘promote’ democracy and ‘build’ Palestinian security forces, Hamas was busy learning the intricacies of the US game of military shock and awe and imposed democracy. During the last 17 months, Hamas attempted both, successfully: they won democratically held elections, as confirmed by election observer President Jimmy Carter, and then went on to overrun Gaza by brute force.

One thing Hamas did not do during this short time was govern. Correctly blaming their inability to govern on the Israeli and US-led economic blockade and the blatantly illegal Israeli policy of arresting Hamas-affiliated ministers and lawmakers, Hamas was given a free ride — permitted to sit in the seat of authority without having to assume the full responsibility of governance. Instead of respecting the outcome of elections that one if its own past presidents monitored, the US allowed the Palestinian people to remain unable to define Hamas either as a legitimate governing body or as a failed experience. US meddling in other peoples internal affairs is the norm in the Middle East, but in Palestine, that norm was violently challenged last week in Gaza.

While Palestinian President Yasir Arafat was still alive, the US initiated the process of restructuring the Palestinian political system. The US forced Arafat to accept the creation of the position of prime minister, then they proceeded to demand that the bulk of the Palestinian President’s authority be transferred from President Arafat to the newly appointed Prime Minister. Then the US created a series of political hoops that Arafat would have to jump through to remain in the political game, of which the most relevant given today’s crisis was the restructuring of the Palestinian security forces. Millions of dollars and tons of equipment were dumped on the multitude of Palestinian security agencies and a high-profile US security ‘expert,’ U.S. Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, set up shop in Israel to make sure the Palestinian security forces were developing strategically, those same security agencies that were overrun in Gaza in a matter of hours. Then, Palestinians, under extreme pressure from the US, held legislative and municipal elections and when the results were not to the US’s liking, the Bush Administration mobilized the world to boycott the Palestinians — people and government alike.

While all of this was going on, Israel maintained its hypocritical posture of the past 10 years — talking peace while at the same time destroying any chances for a peaceful settlement. In the hopeful days of the Oslo Peace Accords, Israel accelerated its illegal Jewish-only settlement-building in the West Bank like never before. When a Jewish extremist assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Oslo framework was, for all intents and purposes, buried with him. To make sure the central Oslo principle of ‘land for peace’ would never be resurrected, Israel violently increased its attempts to bring about the collapse of Palestinian society via ‘targeted’ assassinations, home demolitions, uprooting of olive groves, over 500 military checkpoints, withholding $800 million in Palestinian tax revenues, nightly arrests, building of an internationally-proclaimed illegal separation wall on Palestinian lands, and on and on. This is the true context leading to the violence in Gaza. All of this — and the international community watched, while continuing to fund the status quo and, all the while, referencing Israeli obligations in the already buried Oslo Peace Accords.

Thus, today’s events did not drop out of the sky unexpectedly. A 4-part mixture of 40 years of Israeli occupation, a US-led coup to collapse a democratically elected Palestinian government, a shift in internal Palestinian power-sharing after over 40 years of a single-party monopoly on authority, and most importantly, the international community’s failure to uphold its obligations under International Humanitarian Law – the Fourth Geneva Convention to be specific: All contributed to bringing us to where we are today.

The international community has a clear decision to make, and the decision must be made now. Will the community of nations bring about an abrupt end to the four-decade-old Israeli occupation that has caused so much death and destruction to both Palestinians and Israelis? To end the occupation today would mean to do the near impossible task of salvaging a sovereign Palestinian state on all of the land that was acquired by force by Israel in 1967. Barring this, the international community will likely continue to appease the Israeli occupiers, thereby forcing the Palestinians to revert back to calling for possibly the only remaining viable solution, the formal creation of one state from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River for all its citizens.

Given the Israeli refusal, even today, to classify the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as “occupied lands” and the refusal to mark the Green Line (1949 Armistice Line) in most of the textbooks in their schools, all indications are that the Israelis have already decided that there is no room, on the ground, for another state between Israel and Jordan, although in cheap verbal discourse one may be led to believe that such a state already exists and that its citizens are squabbling over ministerial positions.

The US and Israel, drunk on power and addicted to war, have enlisted many in the region to do their dirty work. As the US and Israel try to distance themselves from their many colossal failures — from Iraq to Palestine — by engineering the creation of banana republics to serve their narrow self-interests, millions of common folk fall deeper into poverty and extremism.

Palestinians may be at a low point in their history and corrective action is undoubtedly on the horizon. The Palestinian people have a collective memory like that of an elephant, and as such the rampage and killings in Gaza by fellow Palestinians will not be legitimized or swept under the rug. Most likely, Hamas’ brutal actions in Gaza will mark the beginning of the end of Hamas as we know it today. With Hamas in the picture, or otherwise, the Palestinians will maintain a pluralistic society and political system that will continue to resist, as has been the case since the outset of this struggle, all foreign intervention in its internal affairs, be it Western, Iranian or Arab.

The present is volatile and the future is bleak, but one thing remains constant: When all the dust settles, there will still be an occupied and dispersed people — the Palestinians — and a colonial, military occupier — Israel. No Shock and Awe campaign, from Hamas or Israel, and no imposed democracy, from Fatah or the US, will change this equation. Until Palestinians are free — all Palestinians — the world would be well advised, for all our sakes, not to turn its back on our just struggle.