Having bet one way all of his life, Mahmoud Abbas may be poised to accept what would amount to a historic setback, writes Sharif Elmusa* The word from Washington is that resolution of the Palestinian question rests on the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel, one that is peaceful and democratic to boot. This is a formula laden with codes and insinuations, for it is possible in theory to have a state with different geographic and political configurations that meet these conditions. But the state the US and Israel seem to have in mind is a weak Israeli dependency, a state inside of, not side-by-side with, Israel. To be sure, the three leading figures in charge of laying the groundwork for this state, Mahmoud Abbas, George W Bush and Ehud Olmert, all are in the twilight months of their tenure -- patients etherised on a table, to paraphrase the poet T S Eliot. Yet they keep hinting that they want to expire with a bang, not a whimper. Even a declaration of principles or a framework agreement for the creation of such a Palestinian state would count as a bang. But is this possible under the circumstances? It may sound cynical to say that the Palestinian state entertained by Washington and Tel Aviv is of the rump variety. But this is the conclusion that can be drawn from a cold look at the physical and political landscape. A Palestinian state inside Israel is what is left by the Israeli conquest of Palestinian land, the proliferation of Jewish settlements and highways, and the associated fragmentation of Palestinian political geography. It is also what is indicated by the "separation wall" that snakes, like a spectre of despair, through the West Bank, isolating Palestinian towns and villages and sealing in concrete a bizarre and unequal mode of co-existence. In principle, these physical structures could be dismantled. Yet, the state whose officials speak of making painful concessions and that must retreat in order to make peace frantically advances. The Jewish colonisation process proceeded faster this year than in any of the last 10 years. In Jerusalem, even President Abbas, a frequent visitor to Prime Minister Olmert in his headquarters, spoke of ethnic cleansing. The bulldozer has become the symbol of Israel's conquest, to the point where recently two Palestinian operators of bulldozers in the city could no longer bear the pressure and went on a rampage against Israeli pedestrians. The reported Israeli negotiations agenda itself consists of two broad thrusts. One is what Israel plans to take away from the West Bank. The second is how to control the Palestinian population in the leftover territory. Jerusalem, for example, would stay "united" under Israeli sovereignty. The Jordan Valley would be leased for many years to come, even though this region borders Jordan that has a peace treaty with Israel. The large settlement blocks will remain under Israeli sovereignty. So will the bypass roads, those arteries meant for Jews only and that in their modernity and wide berth leave the impression that history itself is bypassing Palestinian towns and villages. In spite of taking all of this, Israel represents itself as being forthcoming, as "offering" the Palestinians 90 per cent of the West Bank (in Israel's lexicon this does not include Jerusalem), as if the place is a cake that can be cut anywhere, not a political and economic geography being mutilated. The second thrust is control of the Palestinian population in areas that Israel does not retain. Israel wants to negotiate such items as "border crossings" and "air space", two essentials of state sovereignty. The border crossings include those between the putative Palestinian state and the outside world. Israel demands to have a hand there, as it does today at the Rafah crossing along the Egypt-Gaza border. It also asks for freedom of action for its air force over the West Bank and Gaza. In all, what has been created on the ground, and what the Israeli negotiators seek Palestinian acquiescence to, is an expanded, hegemonic Israel and a Palestinian state inside Israel with fragments that are non-contiguous or the contiguity of which is under the thumb of the Israeli military. We have not even mentioned the Palestinian refugees and their right of return to their original homes from which they were expelled in 1948. That right is enshrined in UN resolutions and human rights declarations, but Israel rejects it out of hand. The refugees, it maintains, may be allowed to return to the Palestinian state. But where will they find the space or water, after all that Israel is taking away? President Abbas was once reported as having said he had creative ideas for resolving the Palestinian refugee problem; with such a Palestinian state, he needs the inspiration of an extraordinary muse. Nor does the Israeli political system exhibit any signs of a shift of attitude. The two main competing figures for the leadership of Israeli politics, Benyamin Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni, are right-wing hardliners. Livni, the current foreign minister, describes herself as an acolyte of the political thinking of Ariel Sharon, the former belligerent Israeli general and prime minister. She recently told the Palestinians that if they wanted to establish a state they should expunge from their vocabulary the word Nakba (catastrophe) -- the Arabic term that signifies their dispossession in 1948. As for Netanyahu, who was prime minister before and is currently the favourite in public opinion polls for holding this job again, was known as an uncompromising and irascible interlocutor by the Clinton administration. In brief, Israel's extensive settlements in the West Bank, its negotiations agenda, and its political system make it all but impossible to end the occupation of this Palestinian region. Instead, they promise Palestinians a dependant state inside the state of Israel, not a viable, sovereign one by its side. Palestinian refugees would be left out in the cold. President Bush already endorsed these Israeli objectives in the spring of 2005, and subsequent statements by other US officials have not deviated from this position. Further, US policy is unlikely to change even if Barack Obama becomes the next US president. Obama has been reconfigured, compelled to make the unequivocal statements and symbolic gestures in support of Israel that the Israel lobby demands as price for not undermining American politicians. Some argue that with Obama this is only an election-year tactic. Perhaps, but Obama is not a mere individual; he is now the leader of the Democratic Party and must answer to it. And if he wins, he also would want to make sure he gets re-elected, which requires during the first term pleasing Washington's most powerful lobby. Will the Palestinians sign on to a rump state; more immediately, will President Abbas agree to a pertinent framework? We should not, I think, underestimate Abbas's flexibility. This flexibility may be abetted by the crisis facing the Palestinian national movement thanks to the split between Hamas and Fatah. The poet Mahmoud Darwish, who died while this article was being written, said, "You [Israelis] are steadfast in your victory, and we [Palestinians] are steadfast in our defeat." This ironic balance may soon break down as the ability of the Palestinians to stay steadfast in their defeat quickly erodes. Fatah itself, of which Abbas is a veteran leader, is plagued by factionalism, corruption, and loss of purpose. Hamas is being drained by the task of governing Gaza; its aim for the foreseeable period is not to resist Israel, but to lift its punitive siege on the pauperised population. Both Fatah and Hamas are losing ground among their sympathisers and risk forfeiting the moral authority to protest the torture of their own prisoners in Israeli jails as a result of their own abuse of Palestinian prisoners. The Arab regimes are decaying and preoccupied with saving their own skins, even if this means becoming neutral mediators between Israel and the Palestinians and serving US objectives in the region. A move by Abbas to endorse a weak agreement thus may not be met with much resistance. It must be kept in mind as well that Abbas was one of the main authors of the 1993 Oslo Accords. This treaty, which availed Israel the opportunity to continue expanding its settlements, was negotiated in secret at a time of Palestinian weakness. Abbas has no truck with "resistance", even if it is non-violent, and has put all the Palestinian eggs in the basket of high diplomacy. Yet he has reached the twilight of his presidency and his career with little to show for the efficacy of his strategy. Israel has reciprocated little by way of gratitude to his appeasement, and even recently handed Palestinian prisoners and the bodies of dead guerrillas to Hizbullah, not to Ramallah. Does this render the man desperate to sign an inferior agreement to vindicate his longstanding gamble? The Palestinians should be afraid. The end of Bush and Olmert's tenures may improve the fortunes of Israel and the US, but unless the Palestinian national movement shifts directions, the twilight of Abbas's leadership could signal a long night of splintering and apartheid for the Palestinian people. * The writer is an associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo.
