By asserting that Iran is a threat to Israel’s existence (a ludicrous assertion) and beating the drums for war with it, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has succeeded in getting Palestine off the political and mainstream media agenda and winning more time for Zionism to consolidate its occupation of the West Bank. (As Barak Ravid noted in an article for Ha’aretz, “The Presidential election season in the United States is obviously an especially good time to enlarge settlements in the West Bank and strike new roots in the Jewish neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem.”)
Question: What can be done to put Palestine back on the agenda?
Answer: Close down the Palestinian Authority and by so doing make Israel fully responsible for its occupation.
As my regular readers know, I advocated this course of action many months ago, but the case for actually doing it has now been well made by Yossi Beilin, the Israeli who has worked harder than any other for real peace with the Palestinians. (Beilin served as a minster in the cabinets of three Israel Prime Ministers – Rabin, Peres and Barak; was the architect on the Israeli side of the Oslo peace process; worked on the Beilin-Abu Mazen talks between 1993 and 1995; and launched the Geneva Accord with Yasser Abed Rabbo in 2003. Incidentally, I agree with Beilin. The Oslo process was not doomed to failure from its beginning. As Arafat once said to me, it could have worked if Rabin had not been assassinated by a Zionist zealot and if the U.S. and other major powers had insisted that Israel honoured the commitments it made).
Beilin delivered his call for action in an open letter to Palestinian “President” Abbas published by Foreign Policy. It was headlined Dear Abu Mazen, End This Farce.
