ON 18 ly, pe Arabs end to the Gaza Strip.
January, Hanna Siniora, editor of Al-Fajr, specified how Israeli and Palesținian 'national rights' might be ensured at an international peace conference.
Jordan, and a Palestinian state like that of the Benchex countries -Luxemburg' 'Palestinians, inclüding Arafat, wonld accept Half l interim step toward independence, Siniora said. 'Autonomy is a step that would lead eventually to negotiations between the state of Israel and the PLO ending in a Palestinian state emerging as a result of those negoti iations.
An1or Secretary of State George Schultz in Washington 28 Japuary to discuss this United States always had one core objec tive: the cradication of the tall an resistanice In te aftermath of the recent Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza, a growing wing of the US ruling class has joined the call for the establishment of a Palestinian mini-state in the West Bank as a means toward accomplishing this objective and preventing the "destabilisation' of the entire Arab East.
George Ball, who served as under secretary of state under the Kennedy teaseraogis. recently spelled out how the SHTe9 BaLCoi and Israel should approach an international peace conference.
'Israel's security worries could be largely met by writing stringent, enforceable safeguards into a lornial Leaty,. new (Palestinian) state any armed force of its own and limiting the numbers and kinds of weapons available Palestinien week prominent Jews and tes which called for an to its police As a further safeguard, the settlement could require installation of surveillance posts larger, numerous and more effective than those now functioning in the Sinai under Israel's agreement Iul wy (w0s 28 Times, January Ball explains that the establishing • fcti he openly admits would be a Th Schoenman Palestinian state in the West Bank' is'a-matter of urgency, 'If the United States cocs. not seriously sogcther Bal the parties warns, the warfare in the Holyland will spread and intensify; sooner or later, the neighbouring Arab states even Egypt dragged into the maelstrom The "maelstrom' that this imperialist spokesperson so strongly fears is the emancipation of the Arab masses of the region from the Israeli colonial-settler state: from the feudal sheiks the Gulf and Arabian peninsula; and trom the Egyptian regime, which has rednced the WULACO peasants of Egypt to a level of poverty unknow even under King Farouk.
The appeal for mutual recognition and for a peace set up Palestinian 'rump state" will do no service to the Palestinian people.
Those who call for mutual recognition argue that there are two peoples and that each should be entitled to national nghts that is, a state The Palest nians, it is implied, shou) close the book on pre-1967 Israel statelet on the West Bank Others who hold this position have argued on the basis of 'realism' that only by accepting the fact of the israel state can the jews Df induced to support the idea of Palestinian statehood.
These views are based profound misunderstanding nature of the conflict and of the dangerous consequences of such advocacy Peace is inconceivable between racist Israeli enclave .WiRie even the Palestinians full membership in its kib the Arat peoples of the regin In could recoğnise Israel in good faith. Some 90 per cent of the land in Israel is administered by the National Fund under rules which require that those who ease or •settle land prove that they descend Jewish mother, grandmother, greatgrandmother.
If, in the United States, we had to prove the absence (ree euel UsIMaS I0 to enjoy elementary rights one would doubt the racist character of such a Slait Not one Zionist grouping supports even "separate but equal Palestinian state. Even the best of Inem insist llal istaci malu tain its full military might disarmed.
Labor Alignment and Likud reject even this.
To advance the view that a Palestinian state would be permitted by any Zionist government is to succumb to what C Wright Mills called 'crackpot realism' As to the illusion that the recognition of the state of Israel would remove a Wrdiul quite the opposite would occur. The ionist politi cians would then be able to say that even the 'terrorists' have been forced to accept Israel They would say that 40 years of firrational intran. Sutelcc were responsible for the conflict and that at last it is clear that the only Palestinians w nou Israel can deal are the ones who all along accepted the Israeli state.
Were South Africans to advocate an international conference predicated upon Sou reseran regime the the guarantee of its security, and the policing of a black entity by apartheid gime itself, go one would socia, and political en caning of such a BISi'sOl An international conference designed to legitimise the security interests of apartheid Israel in exchange for a Palestinian Bantustan' can never be viable except if a Palestinian leadership were to provide this plan with protective colouration.
Such án • outcome will merely hand to the PLO the unenviable task of policing the Palestinian people and converting self-determination into another sad replica of the country. selling regimes which plague the Arab masses from Jordan to Syria and from Egypt to the Gulf.
It was but a few years ago that no Palestinian nationalist would dare .
For herself asociae with so blatant an effort to betray struggle for Palestinian self- ole. yeals of determination and emancipation, let alone translate the Palestinian cause into a Dica lor a roie l preser vile the status quo in the region - with its grinding poverty and relentless exploitation and subordination to US imperialist control.
The rights of the Palestinian people Vall never be adyanced in this way.
The alternative is before us in the upsurge oi the Palestinian masses. The struggle awaits a political strategy which poses the dismantle the NCCt Zionist state of Israel and to establish a democratic and secuiar r'aicstmnc.
Such a programme was fict advanced by Aratat's Fatah organisation in 1968 - though it has since been shunted aside in favour of 'mini-state proposal, The democratic Palestine of Fatah's vision was one 'in which Jews ana raicsu. nians would live as equals without discriminatArafat described his proposal as follows:
We were saying "no" to the Zionist state, but we were saying "yes" to the Jewish people of Palestine.
them we wole saylll. "You are welcome to live in our land, but on one condition must be prepared to live among us equals, not as dominators.' We must not advocate a peace based .on acquiescence, a peace based on a 'Bantustan' policed by Israel andits agents We must link our demands for the release of all the political prisoners in the West Bank and Gaza and for an end to the deportations of Palestinian activists to demands which address the root of the conflict in the Middle East -that is, the very existence of the state of Israel.
Ralph Schoenman is the former general secretary of the Bertrand Russell Peace otrativi This article first appeared in the US paper Socialist Action in a longer version.
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l occupation of the West Bank and the In an interview with the Reuters press service on 18 Siniora called for 'an association among Israel, with a demilitarised West Bank as the