GREETINGS FOR
THE NEW YEAR !!
A ZIONIST APPRAISAL OF THE GENEVA ACCORD
Read it
before you criticize it
By Ron Pundak
"we, the heirs
to pragmatic Zionism, have something serious in our
hands."
"The Geneva Accord is regarded by its
framers as an initiative that would in effect fulfill the
true Zionist vision."
The Geneva Accord, as expected, was
met with harsh criticism at home. The unbridled attacks
and mendacious claims made by the Israeli right were to
be expected. The attacks from associates of former prime
minister Ehud Barak, or based on the blindness of his
distorted doctrine, were also not surprising. What was
most worrisome, however, was the criticism by those who
are meant to join the initiative, without any unnecessary
envy or sniffing, and to help explain the advantages the
initiative presents to the state of Israel and its
Zionist outlook.
Among the latter there are two types that can be
identified. One, which for the sake of its criticism,
twists the facts, and the other, which deals directly
with the accord but sees the shadows of mountains as the
mountains themselves. Prof. Shlomo Avineri, for example,
claimed in Yedioth Ahronoth that "the Jewish people
is not mentioned in the document" and raised the
possibility that "among the Palestinian signatories
are those who think there's no such thing as a Jewish
nation." Avineri, one of Israel's leading
academicians, is wrong and misleading,.
.
One of the first articles in the Geneva Accord
begins with the words "the state of Israel and the
PLO ... Affirming that this agreement marks the
recognition of the right of the Jewish people to
statehood and the recognition of the right of the
Palestinian people to statehood."
Moreover, the important article dealing with Jerusalem
begins with the words "The Parties recognize the
universal historic, religious, spiritual and cultural
significance of Jerusalem and its holiness enshrined in
Judaism, Christianity and Islam." The article also
says that "in view of the sanctity of the Compound,
and in light of the unique religious and cultural
significance of the site to the Jewish people, there
shall be no digging, excavation, or construction on the
Compound, unless approved by the two Parties." These
two articles are an enormous achievement for Israel
compared to the positions of the parties at the Camp
David negotiations, and are meant to respond to the
issues raised by Avineri.
Prof. Asher Susser, who published a piece in Haaretz on
November 21 critical of the article dealing with the
refugees, is a fair and most serious intellectual, and as
opposed to many of the other critics, he actually read
the accord. Nonetheless, after reading it seemingly
backward and forward, he is still its fighting its
smallest details.
Susser also is mistaken in his understanding of the
document, which is meant first of all to prove that it is
possible to reach a fair and executable agreement between
the sides over every issue of contention and as such is
an enormous accomplishment. The Geneva Accord is not
necessarily the actual agreement the parties will sign
and therefore it is good to examine the small articles,
and Susser's help on this matter is welcome. In places
where it is possible to tighten the language, it will be
necessary to do so during the negotiations.
However, to to turn the small question marks into the
entire object and through them to criticize the accord in
general, is a major mistake. The section on
refugees in the accord is unequivocal, and can serve as a
firm basis for any future agreement. Not for
nothing are those on the Palestinian side who
participated in the formulation of that section now
having their lives threatened. There, in the refugee
camps, they understand precisely the clear significance
and meaning of what the document says: there
won't be any right to return to Israel and Israel is
sovereign to decide how many refugees it will accept in
the context of a moral and humanitarian act.
Moreover, according to the Geneva Accord,
after fulfillment of that article, the Palestinians will
no longer be able to present any demands.
The key here is the finality of the conflict, a finality
of demands and closing the sorry case that was opened 55
years ago. UN Resolution 194 is a basis for a solution
only according to the implementation that appears in the
document itself and there, the implementation is
hermetic, and it is absolutely clear from it
that there is no right of return. Moreover,
the accord says that execution of the agreement will
represent settlement of the conflict in all its aspects.
One should be frank and say that even
afterward there will be refugees who will continue
demanding what they regard as a "right,"
but what is clear is that the agreement does
not allow that right to be realized.
The Geneva Accord is regarded by its framers
as an initiative that would in effect fulfill the true
Zionist vision.
This is not some fantastic dream, and it's not the
position of a marginal minority. The accord's authors and
its supporters from both sides represent a most
significant public. The sweeping encouragement from
countries that have traditionally supported Israel, like
Germany and Britain, as well as the support by leaders
from moderate Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan and
Morocco, and people like former U.S. presidents Bill
Clinton and Jimmy Carter, strengthen the feeling that we,
the heirs to pragmatic Zionism, have something serious in
our hands.
The writer is executive director of the Peres
Center for Peace and was one of the authors of the Geneva
Accord.
Copyright Haaretz. All rights reserved
From Adib S Kawar
The Real directions
in the "Geneva Accord"
The Geneva Accord was signed Monday, December 1, 2003,
amid great media and political fanfare. The 50-page
document lays out a plan for a presumed "peace
agreement" between Israel and the Palestinian
people. We, the undersigned, consider this initiative as
inconsistent with the prerequisites of a just and durable
peace for the following reasons:
1. It attempts to nullify the Palestinian right of
return, both as a collective national right and as an
individual right. By doing so, it strengthens existing
attempts to relocate and scatter Palestinian refugees
throughout the world and gives credence to plans to
abrogate international law pertaining to the inalienable
nature of the Right of Return. The net result would be to
extract the very anchor of the Palestinian struggle for
self-determination: the indivisible oneness of the
Palestinian people and their right to their homes,
properties and homeland.
2. It provides a Palestinian-Arab cover for the exclusive
nature of the Israeli polity as a "Jewish
State", thus abrogating the national character of
the Palestinian people within 1948 borders. It therefore
fails to recognize the right of the 1.2 million
Palestinian citizens of Israel to live in a democratic
state for all its citizens: Jews and Palestinians, and it
sets stage for mass transfer and ethnic cleansing in the
future to maintain demographic Jewish dominance.
3. It accepts the reconfiguration of Jerusalem based on
Israeli annexation plans, and grants Palestinian-Arab
legitimacy to the colonial process that altered the Arab
character of Jerusalem, making it impossible for the
Palestinians to exercise control over "East
Jerusalem," not to say anything about "West
Jerusalem," which was conquered and ethnically
cleansed in 1948.
4. It permanently accepts the presence of the vast
majority of Israeli settlement colonies, particularly
those that surround Jerusalem from the east, south, north
and northwest, where most post-1967 settlers live, and
alters the geography of Palestine to accommodate such
colonial seizures.
5. It codifies a process that would limit the upper
ceiling of a potential Palestinian polity to a truncated
and demilitarized entity void of sovereignty, and sets in
motion a process of expanding Israeli political oversight
and control over any potential Palestinian entity.
6. It paves for an economic/political relationship that
subordinates the Palestinian people to an exclusive and
dominant Israeli polity, thus strategically de-linking
the Palestinians from the Arab people and subjugating the
national interests of all Arabs to the singular power of
an Israeli-US alliance.
7. It allows for Israeli military and economic
penetration and permanent outposts into the presumed
Palestinian entity.
8. It leaves open all Israeli claims to the region's
water resources, natural wealth, and airspace. The text
makes several references to annexes, but these issues
have, in effect, been deferred, and may become the
"final status" issues of the Geneva
understanding.
9. It dilutes the international consensus on the conflict
and attempts to transform the basis of the Palestinian
struggle from one of national self-determination and
return to that of modified civil rights within a
prescribed political framework.
10. Most importantly, it weakens the national unity and
resolve of the Palestinian people leading to the
potential defeat of the current Intifada in the same
manner Madrid and Oslo destroyed the first a decade ago.
11. It diminishes European commitment to Palestinian
sovereignty, and most importantly, it expands the margin
of Palestinian concessions, which have been bottoming out
during the past two decades, making it very difficult for
future Palestinian negotiators to back away from these
concessions, including the renunciation of the Right of
Return.
12. It assumes the Palestinian victims of Israel are the
criminals, and the new judges allegedly more liberal than
previous ones in the sentencing.
The Geneva Accord is a natural extension and an
inevitable result of the "Road Map" and all
associated models. The outcome of all, if allowed to
succeed, would be to terminate the Palestinian march to
freedom, to nullify indefinitely and de-legitimize the
Palestinian right to return, and to subordinate the Arab
nation to a heavily militarized outpost with normalized
relationships with its
surrounding.
"baheth
center" <baheth@bahethcenter.org
Palestine
Belongs to the Palestinians : Re oppose the
"Geneva Accord" by Adib S. Kawar
Yes Palestinians are
Arabs, but they are not racists, Palestinian Arabs are
the descendents of all the peoples who inhabited or
passed through Palestine throughout history, whether they
are of Philistine, Jabusite/Canaanite Arab, Greek,
Persian, Roman or the descendents of the later wave
of Arabs... their descendents today consider them selves
as Semitic Palestinian Arabs. The present Arab states
where created by western imperialism to divide and rule.
Actually they are all one people. Yes the Arab land is vast and
covers tens of millions of square kilometers, but not one
tenth of a percent of it is for rent, sale or to be
occupied by a racist group gathered from the
four corners of the world, who belong to different
nationalities. Judaism is a religion and not a people or
a nationality; so they belong to where they came from.
Arabs are not to be confused
with a religion such as Islam or other wise. On the basis
of this we are not going to make claims on Palestine or
its capital Jerusalem on religious basis. Yes Palestinians are Arabs, and
there are Moslem Arabs, Christian Arabs (just like me)
and Jewish Arabs. Arab Jews, probably and some other
eastern Jews, are the only Semitic and original Jews. The
rest of the so-called Jews, the Khazari Jews, who form 80
to 90% of today's Jews, are converted Jews of Turkish
central Asian origin. They settled on the northern shores
of the Caspian sea, in Khazaria. Their king adopted
Judaism, and according to Jewish religious
law, which does not accept converts, they are not real
Jews. Thus let us say for arguments sake that Jews
have a historical right in Palestine,
those converted Jews, the Ashkenazim, has no
right in Palestine. Sephardim Jews were forced to adopt
Zionism after they were terrorized by
Ashkenazi Zionists. A good example are the Iraqi
Arab Jews who were terrorized by Zionists by throwing
bombs on their synagogues to frighten them and force them
to emigrate to occupied Palestine. Zionism was first created by
non-Jews, namely racist European imperialist powers who
wanted to be a pure race; so they started Zionism.
These powers wanted to get rid of Jews and establish an
outpost amid the Arab land, that is between Arab Asia and
Arab Africa to prevent an Arab unity, which
threatens the imperialist interests, the route to
India and later oil fields, they convinced
the Ashkenazim assimilated Jews in Europe of
national home for the Jews in Palestine or some other
part of the world, in Arab or foreign land claiming
that these parts of the world are each without
a people to give it to a people without a land. But we
should remember that Palestine was thousands of years
inhabited and developed before the Hebrew invasions, old
and new. They all wanted a "Jewish home land"
built on the skulls of the peoples of these parts of the
world, noting that Palestine was not a must even for
Herzl. JERUSALEM OLD AND NEW 1500 years before the first Hebrew
sat foot in the land of Canaan, Palestine, Jerusalem was
founded by the Yabusites, Arab Canaanites tribes,
who emigrated from the Arabian Peninsula in 4000 BC (six
millennia ago) and settled in it. The Yabusites (Jobsites) are one of
the seven Canaanite Arab tribes. They lived in the upper
land in the vicinity of Jerusalem who built it. They
called it Oro-Salem that is the city of Peace . Yabus is
one of the old names of Jerusalem. They controlled the
city for a long time even after Hebrew
tribes invaded it. The Hebrews arrived from
Canaan, and could only take control of Jerusalem in
the time of David (1004 - 965 BC). The Hebrew king,
David, occupied Jerusalem/Al-Kuds only for a short period
of time throughout history. Leaving ancient history behind us, and
coming to modern times, we see that for long decades, the
Arab population inside the walls burst out, and the Arabs
went out and started building new quarters in New
Jerusalem, which is a natural phenomena. The anti-Zionist Israel Shamir, who
calls for the reunification of Palestine as one
democratic state where every one of its inhabitants
has an equal vote like its other inhabitants, wrote
a masterpiece of an article entitled, "The Rape
of Dulcinea", defying the Zionist claim on the
"holy city" Jerusalem/Al-Kuds. Shamir compared the Zionist claim
on the city with the classical story of Don Quixote. He
referred to the article of the Israeli Professor Elie
Wiesel from which we quote the following excerpts:
The touching words of
Elie Wiesel (Jerusalem in my heart, NYT 1/25/2001 painted
a beautiful portrait of the Jewish people, yearning for
Jerusalem loving and praying for it over the centuries
and cherishing its name from generation to generation. (
) Wiesel s evocative article is so wonderfully
reminiscent of the immortal love of the night of Sad
Visage to his belle Dulcinea de Taboso. Don Quixote
traveled all over Spain proclaiming her name. He
performed formidable feats, defeated giants, who turned
out to be windmills, brought justice to the oppressed,
and so much more for the sake of his beloved. When he
decided that his achievements made him worthy, he sent
his arms bearer, Sancho Pansa, to his Dame with a message
of adoration. "Now
I find my self in somewhat embarrassing position of
Sancho Pansa and have to inform my master, Don Wiesel
Quixote that his Dulcinea is well, she is happily
married, has a bunch of kids, and she is quite busy with
laundry and other domestic chores. While he fought
brigands and restored governors, somebody else took care
of his beloved, fed her, provided her with food, made
love to her, made her a mother and grandmother. Do not
rush, dear knight, to Toboso, or it would break your
heart. Elie, the Jerusalem you write about so
movingly is not now and never has been desolate. She has
lived happily across the centuries in the embrace of
another people the Palestinians of Jerusalem, who had
taken good care of her. They made her the beautiful city
she is, adorned her with a magnificent piece of jewelry,
the Golden Dome of Haram al Sharif, built the houses with
painted arches and wide porches and planted cypresses and
palm trees. "A Don Quixote did not drive on his
jeep into Toboso to rape his old flame. OK, you loved
her, and thought of her but it does not give you the
right to kill her children, bulldoze her rose garden and
put your boots on her dining table. All your words just
prove that you confuse your desires with reality. If you
must continue to ask why the Palestinians want Jerusalem?
Because she belongs to them, because they live there and
it is their hometown. Granted, you dreamed about her in
your remote Polish hamlet. So did many people around the
world. She is so wonderful and certainly worth dreaming
about." Shamir then proceeds, addressing Wiesel,
relating how many peoples adored this city across the
ages, he named out of many, the Swedish, the Russians,
the British. "They just left bouquets of
architectural flowers as testament of their adoration,
but non of them thought to rape their Dulcinea.
"Those who
love Jerusalem are legion. It is disingenuous of Elie
Weisel to reduce the struggle for this city as a tug of
war between Muslims and Jews. (which is still the
case with other Zionists.) Shamir tells Weisel that confiscation of
property, and introducing changes on the ground does not
grant a deed of ownership to property. "These changes of the city
by the Israeli government amount to her rape.
"In order to
justify this rape, you invoke the name of King Solomon
and Jeremiah, quote the Koran and the Bible. ( )
"As every
archeologist will tell you, King Solomon and his temple
belong to the fantasy realm Moreover the name of
Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Jewish Holy
Book, the Torah. Elie,
you want to play some more games? I ll tell you more. The
Jews are not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible.
"Get that
thick book of your shelf and check it. None of the great
and legendary men you named, from King David to the
prophets, were called Jews . This ethnonym appears the
first and only time in the Bible in the Persian story of
the very late Book of Esther. The self identification of
Jews with the tribes of Israel and with the heroes of the
Bible is as valid as the story of Rome being founded by
the Trojan prince Aeneus. ( ) "Our ancestors, the humble
East European folk of Yids, whose language was Yiddish,
had a tradition of adoring themselves with the impressive
heraldic lions of Biblical heroes. Their claim of descent
from these legends was as valid as the claims of
Thomas Hardy s ambitious farmer girl Tess.
"Jerusalem is
not different from any place in the world she belongs to
her citizens. "Twenty more years of Zionist
control of this ancient city would ruin her into another
Milwaukee and forever ruin her charm. Jerusalem needs to
be restored to its inhabitants. The seized properties in
Talbieh and Latfieh, Katamon and Malcha should be
returned to their owners." As mentioned by Israel Shamir in
his above quoted article the Arab part of the new city
extension included many new and modern quarters among
which: Katmoun, Sheikh Jarrah, Bab Al Amoud, Talbieh, Bab
AL Zahrieh, Almisrarah, Al bakaa al Fouka etc. These new
extensions are not all in East Jerusalem occupied in
1967, but some of them are located in West Jerusalem
occupied in 1948. Jerusalem than, is an Arab city that
belonged to the Arabs thousands of years ago especially
that they laid its cornerstone, and modern Arabs
inherited it from them, and if any invaders, like the
Hebrew, were able to occupy it for a certain period of
time, they were at the end expelled and the city was
liberated and returned to its builders and rightful
owners the Arabs. Zionists keep speaking about the Nazi and
earlier genocide of Jews in Europe or by Europeans
outside this continent, so they want to occupy some other
people's land end empty it of its inhabitants by genocide
or forced transfer and terror. Palestinians are not
terrorists they were turned to a resistance force to
protect their land and people. Zionists wants to revenge
themselves from Palestinians by proxy, that is on behalf
or their European persecutors. Never a Jewish state lived in
Palestine more than 70 years a time, and like all other
invaders Jewish stated were expelled out of Palestine and
the rest of the Arab land. Also never a Jewish state
covered all of Palestine except in 1967 by non-Semitic
converted Jews. Zionists are never satisfied by
conquering only Palestine they wand to extend the borders
(which had never been specified) to God knows where, may
be except their own special g-d. Adib S. Kawar
----- Original Message
----- From: <Yardena3@aol.com> To: <h_kawar@terra.net.lb> Sent: Friday, December 12, 2003 11:09 AM
Subject: re Oppose the G .
"ACCORD"
Dear Mr Kawar,
I wish to respond to your statement:
No body is authorized by Palestinian Arabs to write off
their rights in
their Arab land Palestine. All Palestinians has all the
right to return to their land, be independent and have
full sovereignty over their land from end to end...
>> (your email enclosed)
THE TRUTH is that Arab Palestine is no more real than
Never-Never Land. The first time the name Palestine was
used was in 70 AD, when the Romans committed genocide
against the Jews, smashed their Temple, and declared the
land of Israel would be no more. From then on, the Romans
promised, it would be known as Palestine.
The name was derived from the name
"Philistines" - a people conquered by the >
Jews centuries earlier. It was a way for the Romans to
add insult to injury.
They also tried to change the name of Jerusalem to Aelia
Capitolina, but that had even less staying power.
Palestine has never existed - before or since - as an
autonomous entity. It was ruled alternately by Rome, by
Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire
and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The
British eventually agreed to restore at least part of the
land to the Jewish people as their homeland.
There is no language known as Palestinian. There is no
distinct Palestinian (Palestinians like other
all other Arabs speak Arabic, and its culture
is a part of the arab culture, there is nothing strange
in that.) culture.
There has never been a lan known as Palestine governed by
Palestinians. Palestinians are Arabs, indistinguishable
from Jordanians (another recent invention), Syrians,
Lebanese, Iraqis, etc.
Keep in mind that the Arabs control 99.9% of the Middle
East lands. Israel represents one-tenth of 1% of the
landmass.
But that's too much for the Arabs. They want it all. And
that is ultimately what the fighting in Israel is about
today. Greed. Pride. Envy. Covetousness. No matter how
many land concessions the Israelis make, it will never be
enough.
What about Islam's holy sites? There are none in
Jerusalem.
Shocked? You should be. I don't expect you will ever hear
this brutal truth from anyone else in the international
media. It's just not politically correct. I know what
you're going to say: "Farah, the Al-Aksa mosque and
the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem represent Islam's third
most holy sites."
Not true.
In fact, the Koran says nothing about Jerusalem. It
mentions Mecca hundreds of times. It mentions Medina
countless times. It never mentions Jerusalem. With good
reason. There is no historical evidence to suggest
Mohammed ever visited Jerusalem.
SO HOW did Jerusalem become the third-holiest site of
Islam? Moslems today cite a vague passage in the Koran,
the seventeenth Sura, entitled "The Night
Journey." It relates that in a dream or vision
Mohammed was carried by night "from the sacred
temple to the temple that is most remote, whose precinct
we have blessed, that we might show him our
signs..."
In the seventh century, some Moslems identified the two
temples mentioned in this verse as being in Mecca and
Jerusalem. And that's as close as Islam's > connection
with Jerusalem gets - myth, fantasy, wishful thinking.
Meanwhile, Jews can definitely trace their roots in
Jerusalem back to the days of Abraham.
Your Friend
Yardena
Subj: [AL-AWDA-News] Oppose the G .
"ACCORD"
Date: 12/11/03 1:09:14 PM Pacific Standard
Time
From: h_kawar@terra.net.lb (Adib S. Kawar)
To: gaoppose@yahoo.com
CC: Al-Awda-News@yahoogroups.com (Al-Awda News com)
From:
Adib S. Kawar
Palestinian writer
Beirut - Lebanon
|
