In reality, Sharon is implementing the Road Map for Israel piecemeal, which throws the peace process to the four winds.
The government of Israel is in reality not seriously performing its role in executing the peace process. It is necessary therefore for the Palestinians to prepare so that they not be thrown to the four winds.
For this peace process it is necessary to carry through a strategy, armed with a program of political unity, with the participation of all Palestinian factions who will hold a dialogue to arrive at an agreed-upon "National Command," which will be the umbrella for all the Palestinian forces and will therefore be able to implement together the purposes of this stage of National Liberation.
The cease-fire agreed upon in this peace process (between 3 and 6 months in length), which the Palestinian side has taken responsibility to implement, is being thwarted by the Sharon administration's continuation of kidnapping, aggression, arrests and the further construction of settlements in the occupied territories.
The cease-fire must be the responsibility of both sides, but what is happening is that, while on the Palestinian side the agreement is being carried out, on the Israeli side the Sharon government is only implementing it piecemeal, which is throwing the peace process to the four winds.
Israel is also carrying out its military withdrawal piecemeal and is not completely withdrawing from the territory under the administration of the Palestinian Authority before the 2nd Intifada of 2000.
Israel has promised, in order to carry out the Road Map agreement, not to practice policies that contradict the agreement and cause it to fail.
Now the future inter-Palestinian dialogue must have sufficient time during the cease-fire to arrive at a detailed agreement that can arrive at a United Political Program whose pillars would be the international legal resolutions on the Question of Palestine, establishing at the same time a United National Command so that the future government of Palestine will not be under one single political color or dominating faction, which is the "Fatah Movement."
It seems to me that the role of the Bush administration in carrying out the Road Map is not that of a balanced intermediary. That administration has given Sharon and Israel the opportunity to drain the major part of the content of the Road Map through the cynicism and lack of concern of George W. Bush. He has openly aligned himself with Israel (this is no secret), he sides with the mythology of Sharon and the Israeli right wing, which seeks to trick the Palestinians with its magic. But the Palestinians believe that the magic is in the occupying military forces of Israel that must be dismantled and withdrawn from the territories occupied since 1967. It is clear that the problem is not that they recognize us as a people, but that Israel also recognize our national rights.
Sharon and his administration have departed from the logic of a concrete resolution, and it is necessary that this dialogue deal with the geopolitical realities of this time in order to arrive at a concrete peace.
In the June 4, 2003, summit in Aqaba, Jordan, President Bush said he was guaranteeing the Jewish state's existence, but he did not guarantee a Palestinian state, and he left the resolution of the peace process as the final step of the Road Map for the year 2005. Also, Washington closed the avenues to the Palestinian Right of Return, which is Resolution 194 of the United Nations. At the same time this declaration endangered the 1.5 million Palestinians who live in their native land and have their ancestral homes and property there in the historic land of Palestine (which after 1948 became part of Israel).
The Bush declaration of June 4 has put these native inhabitants under pressure of imminent expulsion politically and socially. Moreover, it has given the green light to Sharon and the Israeli right wing to at any time carry out a massacre or an expulsion of these Palestinians from their homes. (For more clarification, the state of Israel is not a purely Jewish state, as Sharon and Bush assert. It is a state in which there are both Jewish and Arab/Palestinian communities, there is a linkage between them, protesting the terror of the Israel right wing against the native Palestinians' rights as well as against the working class, the humanists and democratic forces that oppose the Apartheid right wing policies of Israel. One of the well-known organizations that oppose such injustice, war, the occupation and racism is the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, as well as other political parties that represent the exploited and working class. Unfortunately, pressure from the Israeli right wing does not let this reality be known, because Israel has always been protected and blessed by the government of the United States, which is responsible for all these crises, to tell the truth.)
Some of the Jewish communities identify with the Palestinians' rights in defense of equality and the historic reality. Even before the division, there were groups and parties that were anti-colonialist, anti-racist, and against the exploitation of others and in defense of justice and equality. But the ambition and purpose of the Sharon government and the right wing, with its hegemonic program protected by the colonialist West, which is his role model, was what caused this division. The League of Nations, which became the United Nations, accepted the partition into two states, which was imposed over the backs of the Palestinian people. The state of Israel already exists; the right to an independent, sovereign state of Palestine must be implemented, and the UN resolutions on the Question of Palestine must be implemented, to have Jerusalem as its capital, and especially Resolution 194, the Right of Return for the Palestine refugees to go back to their homes and properties in the historic land of Palestine.
After this obligation to implement these rights becomes reality, these two wings of the Phoenix will change the negative into positive and will bring about a future of cooperation between these two peoples on a concrete platform of equality, justice, and true peace in the historic land of Palestine.
"Great the mysticism for the All Powerful, and earthly for us, the humans." Period!
Thus the Palestinian community in its native lands was always politically for the defense of the Palestinian Arab community, for equality and its rights. But when President Bush guaranteed the security of Israel at the summit of June 4, 2003, this was exactly what Sharon's administration and the right wing sought, a pretext to endanger one third of the communities within Israel, that is, the native Palestinians of Israel (inside the 1948 territory) will be the victims.
Mr. Bush has put greater emphasis on security than on the geopolitical situation of the conflict. Even the General Assembly of the UN has demanded that this Road Map be implemented, on a road that is balanced so that a true peace can be achieved.
It is to be hoped that the contents of the Road Map are not emptied and converted into a mere piece of paper, as happened earlier with the resolution of George Mitchell and others.
It is also important to evaluate the role of the Arabs in the Palestinian cause. This has lost force and solidarity, especially since the occupation of Iraq, and this has increased the disequilibrium in the balance of force in the Middle East. We also need to have instruments to bring this resolution to the Arab summit and keep in mind this second Intifada (for this is a sad situation). It is also important for Palestinian unity that these pillars support the rights of the Palestinian people and carry on this cause of solidarity so that it has force in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Now the U.S. has put pressure on Syria to immobilize the movement of the Palestinian Organizations in Syria, which have the right to act and respond and to support their brothers, sisters and families in the occupied territories or in the other Palestinian refugee camps.
Because 2/3 of the Palestinian people live as refugees in the neighboring Arab countries, including Syria and these bridges connecting the Palestinian people, no one can prohibit this mobilization, either in Syria or in any other neighboring country or in any other part of the world. Period!
The Syrian Authority has directed itself towards some offices of the Palestinian Organizations, to inspect their activities; however, we hope that this problem will be resolved soon, since more than half a million Palestinian refugees live in Syria. They have fought all their lives for the Palestinian cause and no one can break up these communities living in refugee camps in Syria, or in other refugee communities or in the occupied territories (1967), or in the historic land of Palestine (1948), or in the exterior.
There is a possibility that Syria would be interested in participating in the Road Map to put forward its rights and its cause for the territory occupied by Israel in 1967, to enter the peace dialogue, as would equally be Lebanon, of which Israel still occupies a strip of land. But I think that the Sharon administration will cause trouble in some way so that this dialogue will not become a reality, because the warlike mentality and practice of the Israeli government does not correspond to a balance of peace in this region or in the world.
I think it is important to take into account a Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese dialogue which will give mutual strength to one another to bring about the immediate and total withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories and thus achieve a concrete peace.
If in reality the government of Israel commits itself to withdraw immediately from the territories occupied on June 4, 1967, as well as from the territories occupied in Syria and the strip occupied in Lebanon, the road will lead to a permanent peace in the region and the world.
Yes, it is possible.
