Opinion Editorials, December 2014

Voicing his frustration over the visibly moribund "peace process" between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has been making some interesting remarks of late. These remarks, however, seem to reflect not only American frustration, but also American inability to pressure Israel to end its decades-old occupation of Palestinian land.
 
Addressing the Saban Forum in Washington D.C. this week, Kerry claimed that there was still a chance for a peace settlement in the region, based on the two-state solution strategy.
 
He also reiterated  several platitudes pertaining to the American Middle Eastern policy, including reemphasizing unrestricted  support for Israel, despite the latter's recalcitrance and insolence, and denouncing Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic liberation movement, for resisting Israeli aggression and bellicosity.
 
Kerry also repeated calls on the weak PA to guard Israeli security, even as Israel continues to torment the Palestinians, seize their land, and build still more settlements, effectively decapitating whatever remaining chances for saving or salvaging the two-state solution strategy.
 
I don't really know what type of advisors Kerry listens to when deciding his approach to the enduring Palestinian plight. However, from the choice of words he has been using, it seems amply clear  that Kerry is sidestepping the truth, contenting himself with resorting to the same failed tactics employed by most of his predecessors.
 
Kerry thinks, erroneously of course, that if only the Palestinians terminated their resistance to Israel and if only Arab states normalized relations with the Jewish state, Israel would display generosity and everything would be fine ever after.
 
The truth of the matter, however, is that Israel would never ever give up the occupied territories and agree to the repatriation of Palestinian refugees unless it is pressured to do so.
 
Indeed, a country that truly desires peace with its neighbors doesn't build hundreds of colonies on occupied land.
 
A country that truly wants peace doesn't transfer hundreds of thousands of its citizens to live on a land that doesn't belong to them. Why doesn't Kerry understand these outstanding facts? Does he worry about losing his job due to Jewish pressure on the White House? I am invoking these questions because dealing with the Palestinian plight requires honesty, first and foremost. But, as we all know, honesty has always been and continues to be conspicuously lacking or completely absent from the American approach to the Middle East.
 
Indeed, the US tried every conceivable diplomatic feat to get Israel to agree to end its occupation of Palestinian land, but to no avail. In fact, the US effectively transformed Israel into a regional superpower in the hope that it would feel secure enough to end its occupation of Palestinian land. However, instead of getting Israel to walk in the path of peace, massive and unrestricted aid and backing served to enable Israel not only to consolidate the occupation itself but also to defiantly reject American peace efforts.

Thus, Israel continued to fly in the face of the international community, including its guardian-ally, using American tax-payers' money to bolster its lebensraum policy against her neighbors.  This is because Israel doesn't really take the U.S. seriously or seriously enough. Indeed, numerous Israeli officials admitted on several occasions that Israel took the U.S. for granted thanks to the almost complete domination of the American government, especially Congress, by the American Jewish lobby. We don't need to reinvent the wheel to prove America's ignominious subservience to "the shitty" apartheid state that endangers the security and stability of the world like no other state does.
 
Mr. Kerry: Let me communicate to you the following outstanding facts, which I hope will help you chart your plans in this troubled spot.
 
First, the two-state solution strategy is irreversibly over. Israel has simply decapitated this possibility once and for all, as there is no room left for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state, thanks to the ubiquitous expansion of Jewish settlements.
 
Second, the U.S. cannot pressure Israel to end the occupation due to domestic American considerations. Mr. Kerry probably knows this reality better than this writer does. However, we all know that there are serious limits to what American officials can say, especially in public. Words like "political incorrectness" and "political suicides" are often invoked when U.S. leaders and officials are demanded to tell the truth with regard to Israel and its disproportionate influence on successive American administrations.
 
Third, Hamas and other Palestinian resistance groups are no more than pretexts or "red herrings" used by the Israeli (hasbara) propaganda machine to justify Israeli intransigence and rejectionism. The PLO, which recognized Israel rather unilaterally and virtually unconditionally, more than 20 years ago, got absolutely nothing from Israel in return. Indeed, instead of obtaining a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, the PA (PLO) was effectively reduced to a vanquished supplicant that is much worse than a beggar.
 
Fourth, we must be honest, at least with ourselves. There is no political solution to the conflict in Palestine. Israel, with American complicity, simply killed this possibility.
 
The elimination of this possibility leaves us with two remaining alternatives: The establishment of a unitary state in all of mandatory Palestine where Jews and Arabs can live together in peace and equality in the context of a truly democratic state.
 
But human equality on the one hand and Zionism on the other are an eternal oxymoron, as the Zionist leadership would never accept to grant non-Jews equal rights since doing so would cause Israel to lose its Jewish identity, which leads us to the second and only remaining alternative: The open-ended conflict.
 
Today, the Israeli Jewish society continues to drift toward Jewish racism and fascism. In fact, a fleeting glance at the Israeli media, including the social media, is sufficient to discover that Israel in 2014 is very much similar to Germany in the early or mid-1930s.
 
Racist hatred of the native Palestinian is everywhere in Israel today and Israeli political leaders are trying to endear themselves to Jewish voters by shamelessly emulating the Nazi leadership's approach to Jews.
 
Three months from now, Israelis will go to the polls to elect a new government which is expected to be even more extremist and more fascist than the present one headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, a pathological liar by any standard of imagination.
 
This means that unless the world community adopts a meaningful and decisive stand against Jewish apartheid and its numerous evil manifestations, Israel could embark on the unthinkable against the unprotected Palestinians, including the possibility of committing genocidal ethnic cleansing.
 
I am sorry to give a gloomy description of the present situation in Occupied Palestine. However, I hope that knowing the truth would free people like John Kerry from the illusion that things are moving in the right direction.
 

 Khalid Amayreh is an American-educated Palestinian journalist and political commentator living in the West Bank                                     

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