ILLUSIONS OF PEACE:

While Israel is going on with its Zionist program of stealing more lands and building more settlements, Mahmoud Abbas, the architect of Oslo, continues with his never ending ‘peace talks’ with the Zionists.

Had the Zionists really wanted peace, there could have been Peace long, long time ago.

On 11 December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted resolution # 194, which established a Palestine Conciliation Commission (PCC) to assume the functions given to the UN Mediator on Palestine, Count Folke Bernadotte, who was assassinated by the Zionists.

The PCC conference was opened in Lausanne, Switzerland on 26 April 1949. Under the threat that the United States would prevent Israel’s admission to the UN, Israel finally agreed to attend the conference.

On 12 May 1949, the Arab states and Israel signed a protocol stating that the UN Partition Resolution and the partition map included in it constituted the basis for negotiations. By signing this protocol, the Arabs had in fact accepted the legitimacy of the UN Partition Resolution, had abandoned the idea of Palestine as a unitary Arab state, accepted the reality of Israel, and agreed to solve the dispute by political means.

The efforts of the PCC were unsuccessful.

Failure of the PCC efforts to bring peace was repeated with all efforts for peace that were made ever since.

Following the 1967 war, Security Council resolution # 242 was adopted calling for a UN special representative to proceed to the Middle East to establish and maintain contacts with the States concerned to promote agreement and achieve a peaceful and accepted settlement. Gunnar Jarring was appointed as the UN special representative. His efforts led to nowhere because Israel wanted to keep all the conquered territories, as it did in 1948.

On 9 December 1969, U.S. Secretary of State, William Rogers, announced a peace plan based on the exchange of land for peace in accordance with UN resolution # 242. These efforts petered out because Israel simply rejected the plan.

On 22 October 1973, Security Council resolution # 338 was adopted and faced the same fate as Resolution # 242 of 1967.

Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, U.S. President Reagan made a peace initiative in the hope of reviving the peace process. Arab response to Reagan’s initiative was positive. The Israeli government rejected the proposals in a unanimous vote.

On 30 October 1991, the ‘Middle East Peace Conference’ convened in Madrid under the auspices of the U.S. and the USSR for talks to resolve the Israeli-Arab conflict. Israeli PM Shamir, later declared that he wanted the negotiations in Washington (following the Madrid conference) to continue for 10 years, if need be, so that he had enough time to keep on going with planned Israeli settlement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and leave nothing for the negotiations to talk about.

On 30 April 2003, a Road Map for peace was proposed by the U.S., European Union, Russia and the UN. The principles of the plan were first outlined by U.S. President George W. Bush in a speech on 24 June 2002 that called for an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel in peace.

On 27 November 2007, a U.S. sponsored a one-day peace conference in Annapolice and launching another tasteless and aimless peace process that is going to nowhere.

As long as Zionist racist and colonialist trends prevail, any talk about peace in Palestine is a mere illusion. Real peace is inconsistent with the racist and colonialist motives of the Zionist Establishment that is in control in occupied Palestine, all of Palestine.

State or no state, one-state or a two-state solution, is not the issue. The road for peace goes through serving justice and upholding human rights. Until that happens, resistance is the only way to return to the homes and lands that were stolen by the Zionists.

Nizar Sakhnini, 8 September 2008