From the Rally for Palestinian Statehood, Nablus
As the socially engaged, intelligent, newsreading people I know you all are, I am sure you have noticed that there have been one or two little developments in the West Bank this week. And as your local correspondent in the aforementioned West Bank, it seemed tardy of me not to comment.
So everyone here has been talking about September for some time. "September", of course, is shorthand for the application of the PLO (Palestinian Authority) for Statehood. Students have been talking about it. People in Bars (Coffee, of course - Nablus is a dry city) have been talking about it. The Project Hope volunteers have talked about little else. But still i find my thoughts and emotions regarding it shifting from moment to moment.
I have just returned from joining the crowds as they stood together to watch and celebrate as Abbas submitted the application. The mood was ecstatic.
On the surface of it, it seems like a wonderful prospect. Finally, the Palestinian people have found a way to seek statehood, which doesn't rely on Israel offering them independence. They can finally call themselves a state before the United Nations and negotiate not as merely the Occupied Territories, but as an Occupied State. Symbolically, this means a huge amount. This is what the crowds were celebrating.
But if we examine the small print, we notice a couple of things. First of all, this bid for statehood says little to nothing about the refugees. These are the people who have proved a stumbling block in all the negotiations so thus far. People who were removed from their homes in the 1940s, and have been living in refugee camps ever since. Is was the refusal of Israel to accept the return of refugees that led the Palestinian Authority to reject offers of statehood twice in previous negotiations. UN statehood offers nothing to them
Statehood also wouldn't change anything with regards to the occupation. The Palestinians would still go on living under Israeli rule, with daily curtailments of their freedoms and human rights. The Israeli government would still go on building (illegal) settlements on Palestinian soil, and the settlers would go on attacking Palestinians and using much of the limited supplies of water.
Unsurprisingly, there is little support for the statehood bid amongst those living towards the borders, or near settlements. They know that that, for all the rhetoric, the impact of this on their lives would be minimal.
Of course, Abbas knows all this. He knows that this is a broadly symbolic move. He knows that there are still swathes of problematic negotiations and agreements to be made. He also knows that with the impending veto from the US, all this is academic. It is, in essence, a huge publicity stunt for the vision of a Palestinian state.
To what end? In part, I imagine, political support from his own people. Just as Obama has shuffled towards Israel in a fairly blatant attempt to garner votes from the pro-Israeli lobby in the states, so it seems that this gesture has sent Abbas' stock soaring in the West Bank. But it's more than that. This is a chance for Palestinians to get noticed. A chance to put pressure on the Israelis to return to the negotiation table. A chance to get at some of the UN bodies who might better defend the people of Palestine.
It's a huge risk. It's getting people's hopes up, and ultimately, they will be disappointed - either in the short term (when statehood is not achieved) or the long (when it is found to be indistiguishable from the cureent situation). In this sense, Obama is right - there is no way that peace can be established without agreement between the two states. With all that disappointment floating around, the possibility of violence is far higher (last night, a Palestinian was shot by an Israeli soldier in a village down the road from Nablus), and some people anticipate that this could be the catalyst for a third intifada.
But I'm more optimistic than that. Perhpas its the defiantly positive mood around the streets of Nablus, but it seems to me that America and Israel are increasingly isolated. International onlookers are starting to ask questions about the way the Palestinians are being treated, and even starting to wonder if this isn't a little, well, colonial. The UN, who have declared the settlements and the wall in the West Bank illegal, have been forced to sit up an notice. If negotiations resume, which I very much hope they will, they will be conducted with a sense of urgency, and perhaps with a significance, that they have not previously held.
I for one, and the vast majority of Palestinian people I have met, hope for a peaceful outcome.
