There is a painful and difficult Palestinian catharsis going on now, in this pre-and post-Annapolis atmosphere.
Electronic Intifada, for example, has posted just posted this signed (by Arjan El Fassed) editorial two days ago:
“If there is one thing that has been missing during the past decades of negotiations and ‘the peace process’ is the establishment of truth. Why is this crucial aspect of peacebuilding not included in any remark, speech or joint understanding? While the establishment of truth has been a significant part of the peace proces of virtually every international or communal conflict that has come to an end since the early 1990s, reckoning with the past so Israelis and Palestinians may look to a peaceful shared future has been completely absent. It was shocking to see Mahmoud Abbas, the designated head of the US-sponsored Palestinian Authority, warmly applaud the acknowledgement of Israel as a ‘Jewish state’ and ‘homeland for the Jewish people’ in Bush’s inaugural speech at Annapolis. [n.b. Abbas himself said no such thing...] With his clapping hands, Abbas supported the denial of his people’s history, in particular the 1948 mass expulsion that included the destruction of 531 villages and has been followed by the forced removal of Palestinians ever since. With his smile and embrace, Abbas implied just like his partners, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the US president, that the conflict started in 1967, instead of 1948 and even beforehand, and that the main problem is Palestinian terror rather than Israeli colonialization and oppression. With the US president and the Israeli prime minister demanding Palestinians to recognize Israel as ‘Jewish state’, Palestinians are expected to participate in the dismantling of their own history. While Western diplomats are obsessed with the recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, since the early days of this conflict, there has been a systematic attempt to deny the historic existence of the Palestinians. Whether they were forcefully expelled, live in ‘unrecognized villages’, are referred to as ‘refugees’, ‘Arabs’, ‘absentees’, ‘Bedouin’, people confined to their homes in times of curfews, under military rule, locked up in their towns and villages or in prisons and detention camps, and who have been finally put behind a concrete wall, Palestinians have been systematically wished away. The Israeli writer David Grossman once wrote about Palestinians in Israel as ‘those who are here but practically not here’ and by denying the collective past and present, it is not up to Palestinians to recognize the existence of the other, but the other way around“… Arjan is not alone in feeling this shock, anger, and grief he described here.
But it might be useful at this moment to take a deep breath — and recall some key excerpts from the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in November 1988: “Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty … Now by virtue of natural, historical and legal rights, and the sacrifices of successive generations who gave of themselves in defense of the freedom and independence of their homeland; In pursuance of Resolutions adopted by Arab Summit Conferences and relying on the authority bestowed by international legitimacy as embodied in the Resolutions of the United Nations Organization since 1947; And in exercise by the Palestinian Arab people of its rights to self-determination, political independence and sovereignty over its territory, the Palestine National Council, in the name of God, and in the name of the Palestinian Arab people, hereby proclaims the establishment of the State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem (Al-Quds Ash-Sharif). The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be….” One place where you can find the text of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence is here.
Tags: , Palestinian declaration of independence and of the stat