Does the advent of Barack Obama as president of the US signal a change in US policy towards Israel/Palestine? The US has presented itself as the ‘honest broker’ in attempts at settling the crisis from the late 1960s on, as the history narrated here of these initiatives demonstrates, yet all have foundered, not least on the rocks of Israeli intransigence and US partiality. With Israel’s continuing punitive policy towards Gaza, and insistence, despite US caveats, on building settlements in Palestinian areas, and new housing in Arab East Jerusalem, this article argues that the Palestinians are undergoing a second Nakba, subjected to a process of erasure as a legitimate national entity. Whether Obama’s Cairo speech, in its even-handed approach to both Palestinian and Israeli aspirations, marked a new beginning is proving ever more doubtful. It is time for Palestinians to abandon the pseudo-diplomacy of the past and develop a grassroots-based political struggle.
Literally ‘the Catastrophe’, referring to the ethnic cleansing of 1948 in Palestine. See Ilan Pappé, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford, One World, 2006).
2.
Naseer Aruri, Dishonest Broker: the US role in Israel and Palestine ( Cambridge, MA, South End Press, 2003), pp. 200-201; 233-4; 345-6.
3.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) was created as a transitional government for the Palestinians by the Oslo Accords. It consisted of a Council and a chief executive, who did not merit the title of ‘President’, but, rather, the Arabic title ‘Rais’ which means ‘Chief’. The role of the PA was to administer the Occupied Territories during the transitional period. It was representative of the Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, but not of the refugees. The PLO, on the other hand, had for some time achieved the status of national representation of the Palestinian people as a whole. See Naseer Aruri,The Obstruction of Peace: the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinians (Monroe, ME, Common Courage Press, 1995), chapter 9.
4.
Sharon’s role in war crimes committed in the village of Qibya on October 14, 1953, and in Sabra and Shatila refugee camps 17-18 September 1982, has been documented; he was indicted for ‘indirect responsibility’ in these massacres by the Kahan Commission <http://electronicintifada.net/forreference/keyfigures/sharon.html>. On 16 August 1995, Ohad Gozani in Tel Aviv, writing for the Daily Telegraph, in an article entitled, ‘Israelis admit massacre’, reported ‘how Israeli paratroopers [who] killed about 270 Egyptian prisoners of war 40 years ago are straining relations between the two countries. Egypt has demanded an investigation into the alleged atrocities, which date back to Israel’s involvement in the 1956 Anglo-French campaign to take the Suez Canal.’ Arye Biro, a retired army general, whose commanding officer was Ariel Sharon, admitted that forty-nine terrified prisoners were taken into a quarry and shot dead. He said: ‘We couldn’t take care of anything else before we got done with them. One escaped with bullets in the chest and in the leg, but came back on all fours because he was thirsty. He soon joined his [dead] comrades.’
5.
All the plans mentioned in this paragraph are discussed in Naseer Aruri, Dishonest Broker, op. cit.
6.
All discussed in ibid.
7.
The Shin Bet chief Yugal Diskin threatened Abbas: defer UN vote on Goldstone or face a second Gaza. Diskin, who reports directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, threatened to revoke the easing of restrictions on movement within the West Bank that had been implemented earlier last year. He also said Israel would withdraw permission for mobile phone company Wataniya to operate in the Palestinian Authority. That would have cost the PA tens of millions of dollars in compensation payments to the company <http://www.haaretz.com/ hasen/spages/1143038.html>.
8.
See <http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/abbas-to-obama-i-m-against-lifting-thegaza-naval-blockade-1.295771>. The Palestine Authority denied the report and accused Ha’aretz of spreading disinformation (Negotiations Affairs Department, Palestine Liberation Organization, 13 June 2010 ).
9.
Lara Lee, in San Francisco Chronicle , <http://culturesofresistance.org/op-ed> (5 June 2010).
10.
See <http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/06/15-3 >.
11.
‘Fact Sheet on U.S. Assistance to the West Bank and Gaza’, Washington, the White House, Office of the Press Secretary , 9 June 2010.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Lieutenant General Keith W. Dayton, United States Army, is currently the US Security Coordinator for the Israel-Palestinian Authority in Tel Aviv, Israel. He has also served as the Director of the Iraq Survey Group, as a senior member of the Joint Staff, and as US Defense Attache in the US Embassy in Moscow. For Dayton’s role in the effort to oust Hamas, see David Rose, ‘The Gaza bombshell’, Vanity Fair(April 2008).
14.
Mohammed Dahlan was a founding member of Shabiba, the youth association of Fateh, head of the Preventive Security Force in Gaza, cabinet minister, security adviser. He is an ally of Mahmoud Abbas and Keith Dayton.
15.
See text of Obama’s speech in White House Blog. ‘The President’s speech in Cairo: a new beginning’. Posted by Jesse Lee on June04, 2009 at 09:52 AM EDT.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Jason Koutsokis , ‘Obama refuses to meet Netanyahu,’Muslim Observer (18 April 2009).
18.
Roger Cohen, ‘Clinton’s Mideast pirouette’, Sunday New York Times (26 April 2009).
19.
Ibid.
20.
Giles Whittell and James Hider.‘Binyamin Netanyahu humiliated after Barack Obama dumped him for dinner’, Times online(26 March 2010).
21.
Ha’aretz (29 March 2010).
22.
The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 13 April 2010.
23.
Petraeus briefing: ‘Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story’. Posted by Mark Perry, 13 March 2010, <www.mideast.foreignpolicy.com >.
24.
‘General Petraeus: Conflict presents distinct challenges to our ability to advance U.S. interests’, Ha’aretz (17 March 2010).
25.
Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel , the White House, Office of the Press Secretary 6 July 2010.
26.
‘Bibi spills the beans’. Posted By Daniel Luban (17 July 2010, 7:36 pm), < http://www.anti-war.com/blog>;. See also Justin Raimondo, ‘Bibi Unmasked; caught on tape: what the Israelis really think of US’,< http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/07/18/bibi-unmasked/>. In 2001, Netanyahu paid a condolence call on a group of Israeli settlers in the village of Ofra, widows whose husbands had been killed in the Intifada: the videotaped conversation has just been leaked, and broadcast by Israel’s Channel 10. In it, Netanyahu describes how he will destroy the Palestinian Authority and, in addition to the remarks already quoted, claims: ‘Eighty per cent of Americans support us.’
27.
Jonathan Cook, reporting from Nazareth, wrote: ‘He [Netanyahu] dismisses the US as "easily moved to the right direction" and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel "absurd". He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats.’ ‘Netanyahu: I deceived US to destroy Oslo Accords’, < http://www.palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details. php?id=16147>.
