The resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly to give non-member observer status to independent Palestine has officially transformed the occupied territories into an occupied country. The idea of an independent Palestinian state having such a status at the UN was popular among the developing countries and it was widely supported by the Arabs. But the US regrettably voted against the resolution, and if it ever reverses its stand and recognises an independent Palestinian state it will be the last to do so after Israel. By refusing to adopt any position opposed by Israel, US policy towards the Palestinians has never been a matter of rational or logical decision-making, and US support for Israeli policies can unfortunately be expected to continue indefinitely. The Palestinians need Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, and recognition by Israel must not be a precondition for such withdrawal. The Palestinians as a nation can survive without Israel's recognition, but they cannot be free to govern themselves, shape their destiny, or build their own state while they are under occupation. The Israelis and their British allies never asked the Palestinians for permission to create the state of Israel in 1948, and the Palestinians should not wait for Israel's recognition to have their own state either. Under the best-case scenario from the Palestinians' perspective, in which Israel would withdraw to the 1967 borders, the Palestinians would still only receive 22 per cent of historic Palestine, a country that was 100 per cent theirs before the 1917 British Balfour Declaration. The challenge that the Palestinians face today is how to campaign to make Israel's military and civilian settlers withdraw from their state. It will be primarily the Palestinians' next move that will decide whether the UN recognition was a triumph or not. Their actions now will be critical for prospects of creating a viable Palestinian state in the future. Should they fail, the 2012 resolution will be yet another broken promise, like the 1947 UN partition plan, or the 2004 ruling of the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Israel's Separation Wall. A territorial state exists where there is a political entity in charge of making and enforcing laws to defend and protect the rights of the people on its territory. The Palestinian Authority (PA) that was created by the Oslo Accords is a rudimentary quasi-state that has the symbols of a state, including a president, the Palestine National Council (PNC) as a parliament, a prime minister, ministries and other administrative bodies, as well as a judicial branch. However, since the PA is a client of Israel and of its donor states, its powers are limited. It has no powers to police its borders; it does not have its own currency; it cannot negotiate trade agreements or grant citizenship; and it cannot defend and protect its citizens and their property from the Israelis. Most Palestinian fiscal revenue, critical for the survival of any Palestinian entity, is collected by Israel, allowing it to extract rents from Palestinian consumers and labour. The PA has been receiving such unsustainable external financial resources in exchange for accepting the so-called “peace process” with Israel. The only power it has is to monopolise the use of violence on its territories in order to maintain order among the Palestinian population and deliver security to Israel's satisfaction. The western powers have made Israeli security more important than the security and human rights of the Palestinians or strengthening good governance and PA democratic institutions. The Quartet's envoy, former British prime minister Tony Blair, planned to reform the PA institutions by financing, restructuring and training the Authority's security forces in order to put down any resistance against the occupation and without making any reference to the attacks on Palestinians by Israel's military and settlers. His plan called for granting the PA attorney-general and judiciary the power to try members of any “resistance movement”, and it appointed an American security coordinator, US general Keith Dayton, to improve the effectiveness of the PA's security forces. Once Palestine is proclaimed a genuine state, the Oslo Accords, Blair, and General Dayton should become past history and the PA as a client state of Israel should become the relic of a failed experiment. The highest duty of the Palestinian government should be to defend and protect its own citizens from the dangers arrayed against them by Israel. Statehood is a responsibility that no outside powers should be in a position to force sacrifices to. The Palestinians learnt their lessons the hard way in 1948 and 1967, when they looked to the Arab states for protection. Given the continued presence of the Israeli military in the West Bank and Jerusalem, the arrogance of the settlers, and the fact that the Palestinians lack meaningful sovereignty over their land and resources, Palestinian leaders cannot have the freedom needed to carry out the duties of government. The leaders of the Palestinian state cannot function under the occupation within the framework of control that was created under the Oslo Accords. As a result, the Palestinians should transform their Authority into a provisional government whose top leaders should reside outside the West Bank, preferably in Gaza, until Israeli withdrawal is achieved. Gaza is currently a large prison, with the Palestinians controlling more than 90 per cent of the space. Under the proposed structure, only junior-level officials would live in the West Bank, and the management of Palestinian daily life would be decentralised. The provisional government would work on freeing the state of the occupation, and its concern would be the defence of the national interests of the Palestinians inside and outside their state. After years of vain negotiation, the Palestinians have come to realise that Israel will not permit the creation of a Palestinian state. The Palestinian strategy for ending the occupation should therefore centre on making the occupation too costly, and it should aim to convince a significant sector of the Israeli public to support withdrawal. The strategy should aim to influence calculations of costs and benefits made by the Israeli public and decision-makers. Civil disobedience is the Palestinians' most effective weapon. In the First Intifada stone-throwing was the weapon of choice, allowing the Palestinians to win a three-year non-lethal struggle against the powerful Israeli military machine, even if they lost the war, so to speak, when the PLO leadership in Tunis signed the Oslo Accords and ended the Intifada. The Palestinians must have the discipline not to use weapons, which could lead events to spiral towards disaster. A non-violent uprising similar to the First Intifada is one form of resistance that may force the Israelis to reconsider their policies and think about withdrawal. As a result of such a strategy, people around the world will recognise the justice of the Palestinian cause and will stop referring to the Palestinians as “terrorists”. More Israelis are also likely to think about the benefits of withdrawal vis-à-vis the costs of keeping the Palestinians under occupation.
The writer is a political analyst and author of Is the Two-State Solution already Dead?
