The US and Israel think they can impose on Palestinian negotiators a
distorted peace that effaces all Palestinian rights. They cannot,
writes Mustafa Al-Barghouti*

One doesn’t need to be an expert in the so-called “peace process” to
know that Israel’s aim for the past 40 years has been to deny the
Palestinians their rights. Having failed to break the backbone of the
Palestinians and end their resolve to resist, Israel resorted to delay
tactics. When not postponing urgent issues, it tried to empty from them
all meaning. Thus the idea of an independent and sovereign Palestinian
state was diluted into that of creating a self-rule entity, shorn of
any real authority, over fragmented patches of land.

This is what the Oslo process managed to produce over the past 15
years or so. The number of settlers in the occupied territories has
doubled. A wall of racial segregation has been erected. The West Bank
has been cut off from Gaza. And Jerusalem is now surrounded on all
sides and stranded, with little or no connection to other Palestinian
areas. When negotiations resumed, Israel tried to impart legitimacy on
its major settlements, refusing to discuss the matter of the refugees
and insisting on postponing any decision on Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the
Israelis tirelessly tried to change the face of Jerusalem, building
settlements inside and around it, altering and Judaising it by the day.

Israel is now suggesting a Palestinian state with “interim
borders”. In return, it wants the Palestinians to give up, effective
immediately, the right of return of the refugees. Israel also wants the
Palestinians to cede claims to large swathes of their land — land that
has been gulped up by settlements, land surrounding the Dead Sea, land
in the Latrun villages (Imwas, Yalu, and Beit Nuba), etc. Israel is not
in a mood to discuss Jerusalem right now. But it is in a good mind to
build more settlements inside and around it.

Israel may be changing its rhetoric, but not its tactics. Instead
of opposing a Palestinian state, it is willing to accept a state that
has no sovereignty to mention. Instead of keeping every single
settlement it has created on Palestinian land, it is willing to pull
out 3,000 settlers, leaving 450,000 in place.

Everything Olmert and Barak have said so far suggests that they
want to transform Jerusalem beyond recognition. The Jerusalem we all
know is not the one they have in mind. The Jerusalem of Al-Aqsa Mosque,
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives, Salwan,
Al-Issawia, and other parts of the old town, is about to look very much
like the neighbourhoods that have sprouted all around it: Izariya, Abu
Dies and perhaps Beit Hanina.

Every time Palestinian negotiators give an inch, Israel takes a
mile; the Oslo Accords are but a case in point. It is fine to
negotiate, but not when negotiations undermine the very basis of
international resolutions and norms. UN resolutions — backed by
rulings from the International Court of Justice — state that all the
land Israel grabbed since the morning of 5 June 1967 are occupied
territories. This goes for the old city of Jerusalem and its
surroundings, the West Bank, Gaza, the Latrun villages, the Golan, and
even the Shebaa Farms.

Egypt insisted on taking back every inch of Sinai, just as Syria is
holding out for every inch of the Golan. The Palestinians cannot accept
less. We must insist on Israel’s withdrawal from all the occupied land,
instead of being talked into a risky land exchange. It is bad enough
that Israel took in 1948 half of the land the 1947 UN partition plan
gave to the Palestinians. We don’t need to make things worse.

And what exactly is going on in negotiations? It’s all kept under a
tight lid, except for the randomly leaked piece of info suggesting that
the issue of Jerusalem would be postponed, yet again. The Palestinian
people are left in the dark about what’s really going on. Given the
bitter experience of Oslo, when a done deal was hatched behind the back
of official negotiators, this doesn’t augur well.

Everyone knows that giving up Arab Jerusalem, or any part of it, is
not an option acceptable to the Palestinian people. Also, any interim
solutions, especially those postponing discussion of Jerusalem, are
highly risky if not an outright sign of capitulation.

The last thing we need is another deal that undermines our rights
and weakens our people. Those negotiating on behalf of the Palestinians
bear a huge responsibility in this moment. Anything they do can have
long-term consequences for us all.

* The writer is secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.