Fayyad''s plan
In what may be a novel departure for the Palestinians, PM Fayyad of the PA announced on Tuesday his Plan for peace that calls for building a Palestinian State rather than destroying the Jewish one. As a pragmatist and moderate, Fayyad avoided strident calls for the destruction of Israel or "armed conflict," but focused instead on the need for the Palestinians to build a State infrastructure and develop a transparent economy.
This approach is not entirely novel and has been called for by Quartet representative Tony Blair, as well as Pres Obama and PM Netanyahu. Since Fayyad is not a member of Fatah he is able to avoid the extremist rhetoric that was a feature of the recent Fatah Conference in Bethlehem, where the "old guard" and the "young guard" tried to outdo each other in their commitment to the former policies of Yasir Arafat and the PLO.
Fayyad seems able to circumvent such retrogressive nonsense and focus on the practical needs if the Palestinians are ever to actually have a State of their own. He emphasized that he intends to establish a State in two years irrespective of what happens to the so-called peace process and negotiations with Israel. In Palestinian parlance he stated that he will do away with the "occupation," whether Israel agrees or not, but he emphasized by "peaceful" means.
Note that Israel had all the organizations and structures required for a state to function prior to the actual establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, while the Palestinians have focussed for the past 60 years on trying to destroy Israel rather than building their own State structures. But, let's face it, a Palestinian State is not viable without Israel. Most of its economy goes through Israel, and it could not exist or function without Israeli agreement. Also, by way of international agreements, that the Palestinains regularly break, according to the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, no Palestinian State can be established without recognition by Israel, the US and the international community.. Nevertheless Fayyad's statement is a positive step and a hopeful sign.
But, you may not have heard about Fayyad's plan, since his press conference was not given extensive coverage, not even by Palestine TV. It turns out that Palestine TV is run by a Fatah loyalist, Muhammad Dahoudi, who failed to hype it. This infuriated Yasser Abed Rabo, the PA Minister in charge of media, so he fired Dahoudi. But, Dahoudi refuses to accept this decision, and since a previous incident of this kind lead to actual shooting between two groups of gunmen, this incident may yet cause another intra-Palestinian war.
Why has Fayyad come out with this "plan" now? Mainly because elections are supposed to be held in the PA next December, and he probably wants to run for President in place of Mahmud Abbas. Also, Pres. Obama is supposed to be presenting his own peace plan at the annual UN meeting in September, and both Fayyad and PM Netanyahu are scrambling to be ready for it.
Netanyahu is in Britain meeting PM Gordon Brown and US rep John Mitchell, and from there he goes to Germany to meet Angela Merkel. There are two items on his agenda, firstly to call for more severe sanctions against Iran, and second to defend Israel's right to continue to have "natural growth" of established settlements, while not developing new ones or taking any Palestinian land. He also defended Israel's position that Jeruslaem is Israel's capital and no part of it is a "settlement" and Israel has never and will never agree to any infringement of its sovereignty in Jerusalem.
So the question arises, will the international community bring stronger sanctions on Iran before Israel feels it must stop their development of nuclear weapons by military means, or will a new approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict bring progress in the not-too-distant future as Obama hopes? My betting is on the former rather than the latter, for two reasons; first Iran will never give up its rush to develop nuclear weapons and thus become the hegemonic power in the Middle East. Second, because Obama has had no positive response from the Arab States to his initiatives and Fayyad will never be able to drag the whole of Fatah and Hamas based politics of the Palestinians with him into a peaceful future.
This approach is not entirely novel and has been called for by Quartet representative Tony Blair, as well as Pres Obama and PM Netanyahu. Since Fayyad is not a member of Fatah he is able to avoid the extremist rhetoric that was a feature of the recent Fatah Conference in Bethlehem, where the "old guard" and the "young guard" tried to outdo each other in their commitment to the former policies of Yasir Arafat and the PLO.
Fayyad seems able to circumvent such retrogressive nonsense and focus on the practical needs if the Palestinians are ever to actually have a State of their own. He emphasized that he intends to establish a State in two years irrespective of what happens to the so-called peace process and negotiations with Israel. In Palestinian parlance he stated that he will do away with the "occupation," whether Israel agrees or not, but he emphasized by "peaceful" means.
Note that Israel had all the organizations and structures required for a state to function prior to the actual establishment of the Jewish State in 1948, while the Palestinians have focussed for the past 60 years on trying to destroy Israel rather than building their own State structures. But, let's face it, a Palestinian State is not viable without Israel. Most of its economy goes through Israel, and it could not exist or function without Israeli agreement. Also, by way of international agreements, that the Palestinains regularly break, according to the Oslo Accords and the Road Map, no Palestinian State can be established without recognition by Israel, the US and the international community.. Nevertheless Fayyad's statement is a positive step and a hopeful sign.
But, you may not have heard about Fayyad's plan, since his press conference was not given extensive coverage, not even by Palestine TV. It turns out that Palestine TV is run by a Fatah loyalist, Muhammad Dahoudi, who failed to hype it. This infuriated Yasser Abed Rabo, the PA Minister in charge of media, so he fired Dahoudi. But, Dahoudi refuses to accept this decision, and since a previous incident of this kind lead to actual shooting between two groups of gunmen, this incident may yet cause another intra-Palestinian war.
Why has Fayyad come out with this "plan" now? Mainly because elections are supposed to be held in the PA next December, and he probably wants to run for President in place of Mahmud Abbas. Also, Pres. Obama is supposed to be presenting his own peace plan at the annual UN meeting in September, and both Fayyad and PM Netanyahu are scrambling to be ready for it.
Netanyahu is in Britain meeting PM Gordon Brown and US rep John Mitchell, and from there he goes to Germany to meet Angela Merkel. There are two items on his agenda, firstly to call for more severe sanctions against Iran, and second to defend Israel's right to continue to have "natural growth" of established settlements, while not developing new ones or taking any Palestinian land. He also defended Israel's position that Jeruslaem is Israel's capital and no part of it is a "settlement" and Israel has never and will never agree to any infringement of its sovereignty in Jerusalem.
So the question arises, will the international community bring stronger sanctions on Iran before Israel feels it must stop their development of nuclear weapons by military means, or will a new approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict bring progress in the not-too-distant future as Obama hopes? My betting is on the former rather than the latter, for two reasons; first Iran will never give up its rush to develop nuclear weapons and thus become the hegemonic power in the Middle East. Second, because Obama has had no positive response from the Arab States to his initiatives and Fayyad will never be able to drag the whole of Fatah and Hamas based politics of the Palestinians with him into a peaceful future.
posted by Jack Cohen at 11:32 AM
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