Imagine a man being held by a big bruiser while his smaller sidekick beats the helpless victim. And if he complains of his treatment and threatens to go to the police, he is told that he will be beaten even harder if he does so.

This is what the Palestinians are going through: after decades of oppression, when they finally applied to the UN Security Council to set a reasonable deadline to end the Israeli occupation of their land, they were warned by Israel’s patron, the United States, not to take this step. And when the Palestinian Authority went ahead, Washington used all its diplomatic muscle to force SC members to oppose the move, or to abstain. In the final tally, the PA failed by a single vote.

After this setback, the PA has applied to join the International Criminal Court as well as a number of other international organisations. This move has also angered the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. They fear that the Palestinians will lodge a complaint against Israel for violating the International Court of Justice ruling about the illegal nature of settlements on the occupied West Bank. Also, the killing of over two thousand civilians in Gaza in the recent Israeli assault will also probably be the subject of a complaint.

And while the ICC’s rulings will be ignored by Israel, international arrest warrants could be problematic for individual officials and politicians when they travel abroad. Already, Israel is facing increasing isolation for its policies towards the Palestinians. A number of European countries have voted to recognise the state of Palestine; and while these parliamentary votes have been mostly non-binding, they have heightened Israel’s siege mentality. The most recent setback to Israel’s foreign policy was the EU’s decision to remove Hamas from its list of terrorist organisations.

Had not a long succession of Israeli governments been given open-ended American support in the form of cash, arms and unwavering diplomatic support, it is entirely possible that Israel would have made compromises and achieved a real ‘land-for-peace’ deal with the Palestinians. However, the American blank cheque has made it possible for Tel Aviv to adopt an increasingly belligerent posture, and continue its repression and its illegal construction.

Even open-minded Israelis complain about Netanyahu and the right-wing being strengthened by unquestioning American support for the country’s intransigence. In fact, Netanyahu probably has greater support among American Jews and extremist Christians than he does among Israelis. And the fractured nature of Israel’s politics means that small parliamentary parties on the extreme right often call the shots, pushing the government further and further to the right.

Meanwhile, Mahmood Abbas is stuck in a quandary. After investing much of his dwindling political capital in talks that lead nowhere while giving cover to Israel to continue building settlements in the West Bank, he has finally concluded that the Americans are not going to apply pressure on Tel Aviv to make the necessary compromises. Ultimately, Israel wants both peace and territory. For years now, Israeli politicians have proved themselves adept at urging the Palestinians to stay engaged in the so-called peace process to placate international opinion, while continuing to gobble up occupied land.

There are now over half a million settlers in the West Bank, and they aren’t going anywhere. Even with notional land swaps, the reality is that the idea of a viable Palestinian state is now dead in the water. More realists on both sides are now talking about a single state that includes Jews, Muslims and Christians. But already, Arab Israelis are treated as second-class citizens; to think that suddenly Israelis will become more benign is to close one’s eyes to the daily humiliations Palestinians experience every day of their lives.

Also, such a solution poses a threat to the Jewish nature of Israel because not before very long, Palestinians will outnumber Jews. Clearly, such an outcome is unacceptable to most Israelis. Also, the international community views a Palestinian underclass ruled by Israelis as being akin to the kind of apartheid once practised in South Africa.

This, then, is Israel’s conundrum: how to hang on to the West Bank while still giving the impression of being interested in a peace deal that would see the emergence of a Palestinian state. So far, Netanyahu and his predecessors have kept moving the goal posts while building more and more settlements, thus making it impossible for the Palestinians to agree. They then complain that the PA is being unreasonable. By now, of course, there are so many exclusively Israeli roads connecting the settlements that the West Bank is now a collection of isolated areas and towns where movement is tightly controlled.

And while Israel enjoys solid support from the United States and other Western states, the Palestinians are not as fortunate with Muslim countries that pay lip-service to the cause, but do little in terms of actual help. Egypt under General Sisi has been positively hostile, helping Israel seal the tunnels that provided Gaza with a lifeline to the outside world. Other Arab states that had made generous promises of help in the reconstruction of a devastated Gaza have failed to actually hand over the cash. Countries like Nigeria, a temporary member of the Security Council, abstained in the UN vote after promising support.

Thus, Palestine’s tragic history has been full of betrayals and back-stabbings. Now, the US has threatened to cut off the $400 million in annual assistance it was providing to the PA if it goes ahead with its threat to seek justice at the ICC. Netanyahu, too, is threatening reprisals. Meanwhile, the Palestinians, friendless and weak, resist the occupation as best they can. They would help their cause a great deal if they could put their internal differences aside and present a common front to their foe.

Published in Dawn, January 6th, 2015

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