The Palestinian "Peace" Referendum
(Updated July 2006)
Mahmoud
Abbas called
for a July 26, 2006, referendum on a proposal
drafted by jailed terrorist leader Marwan
Barghouti and Hamas and Islamic
Jihad prisoners held by Israel.
The document, or “prisoners
peace plan,” has been portrayed
in the media as a historic
step in the peace
process because it reputedly recognizes Israel,
drops Palestinian territorial claims
beyond the 1967
borders and renounces violence
and terrorism against
Israeli citizens. A closer look at the actual
document indicates the proposal’s contents
are very different than the media descriptions.
The “prisoners
peace plan” is really not about
peace with Israel at all; it is aimed at
ending the civil war between Palestinian
factions. The plan actually represents
a giant step backward by the Palestinians
and reduces the prospects for peace because
it undercuts positions taken by Abbas and
his associates in the Fatah leadership
that suggested a willingness to accept
compromises — such as exchanges of
territory, adjustments to the border in Jerusalem, and concessions on the refugee issue.
Reading the text of this “peace
plan,” it is striking that the language
is confrontational rather than compromising.
The document calls on the people to “confront
the Israeli enterprise,” to form a “united
resistance,” and to “liberate” their
land and prisoners. Nowhere in the document
is there any mention of a Palestinian state
coexisting with a Jewish State or any explicit
recognition of Israel. The only reference
to peace in this “peace plan” is
in the context of protests against the policies
of the Palestinian Authority.
The referendum does not call for an end to
terror against Israelis, only
an end to violence among Palestinians. It
does, however, endorse continued
attacks on Israelis.
The first point of the plan
states, “The
Palestinian people... seek to establish their
independent state with al-Quds al-Shareef
(Jerusalem)
as its capital on all territories occupied
in 1967 and to secure the right
of return for the refugees and
to liberate all prisoners and detainees....” The
demand for all territories
Israel captured in 1967 directly contradicts
the agreed framework for negotiations, namely, UN
Resolution 242. That resolution calls
for Israel to withdraw
from territory (not all the territory),
but also requires the termination of
all claims and the right of all states
to live in peace within secure
and recognized boundaries free from threats
or acts of force
Nothing in this section
or the rest of the document indicates the
Palestinians will drop their claims to Israeli
territory should they establish a state in
the pre-1967 borders. The document, for example,
does not recognize any Israeli claim to Jerusalem.
The document also explicitly calls for continuing
acts of violence, noting in point three the “Palestinian
people’s
right to resistance...and continuing popular
resistance against the occupation in all
its forms, places and policies....”
By advocating
the “right of return” for Palestinian
refugees, but not specifying that they
should return to the future state of Palestine,
the signers of the document are inferring
that the refugees should return to Israel,
the equivalent of advocating a one-state
solution to the conflict.
The
current Israeli population is approximately
7 million, 5.3 million are Jews. If every
Palestinian was allowed to move to Israel,
the population would exceed 11 million
and the Jewish proportion would shrink from
76% to 48%. The Jews would be a minority
in their own country, the very situation
they fought to avoid in 1948, and which the
UN expressly ruled out in deciding on a partition of
Palestine. Furthermore,
most Palestinians now live in historic Palestine,
which is an area including the Palestinian Authority and Jordan. When
Palestinians speak of the right to return,
however, they don’t mean just to Palestine,
but to the exact houses they lived in prior
to 1948. These homes are either gone or inhabited
now.
Palestinian
intellectual Sari Nusseibeh has noted that
if the refugees are not resettled in a future
Palestinian state, “what does a two-state
solution mean?” This is exactly why Hamas views
this provision as crucial. Aziz Dweik, Hamas’ parliament
speaker, said that approval of the referendum
“would
kill all other past initiatives and understandings
excluding the right of return. It would push
others, not us, to the corner, since others,
not us, have shown a willingness to compromise
on the right of return.”
The
referendum also misrepresents UN
resolution 194, which was a nonbinding
resolution that all Arab
states voted against in 1948. That
resolution called upon the Arab states
and Israel to resolve all outstanding issues
through negotiations either directly, or
with the help of the Palestine Conciliation
Commission. It also recognized that Israel
could not be expected to repatriate a hostile
population that might endanger its security.
The solution to the problem, like all previous
refugee problems, would require at least
some Palestinians to be resettled in Arab
lands.
The Christian
Science Monitor (May 31, 2006) described
the prisoners who wrote and signed the
proposed plan as a “moderate
and influential force.” These prisoners,
however, are among the most dangerous terrorists
serving sentences in Israeli jails:
- Marwan
Barghouti is serving five life
sentences and 40 years for terrorist
attacks that killed five people;
- Sheikh Abdel Khaliq al-Natsche is senior Hamas leader who ran a network of charities
that directly funded the Izz al-Din
al-Qassam Brigades;
- Sheikh
Bassam al-Saadi led Palestinian
Islamic Jihad in
Jenin;
- Abdel Rahim Malouh was No. 2 in the PFLP and helped plan the murder of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi;
- Mustafa Badarne recruited DFLP members
to attack Israeli soldiers and civilians.
According to Palestinian
polls,
the
referendum has overwhelming support.
Even if the referendum were adopted,
however, it is unclear that it would
have any meaning given that the elected
representatives of the Palestinian
Authority from Hamas have
rejected the document and the idea of
a national referendum. In fact, Hamas and Islamic
Jihad prisoners who helped author the
document have withdrawn their names from
the plan and, on June 11, 2006, Hamas announced
its intent to block the referendum
and accused Abbas of trying to undermine
its authority with the referendum. Meanwhile,
as of the end of June 2006, Abbas had
not signed the document either.
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