Gideon Levy : Opinion Abbas Is Right. Why Does Israel Keep Saying He's Wrong?
From
Nadav Eyal ("a wacky, despicable speech") to Ben Dror Yemini
("delusional ideology"), they all competed for who will attack Abbas
more. Nobody faced up to what he said. After all, he swore at Donald
Trump, the champion of refined rhetoric, "may your house be demolished,"
and the Israelis with their sensitive ears were oh so appalled. And he
said colonialism, and the self-victimizing Israelis yelled:
"anti-Semitism." Nobody said what was incorrect in his speech and what
was anti-Semitic about it. Except perhaps for "the Dutch fleet that
brought Jews here," Abbas spoke the truth. It's hard to swallow. Israel
chose to shriek. It always does when it has no answers.
Abbas said the Oslo agreement
was over. Indeed, what is left of it, some 20 years after the
final-status agreement was due to be signed? Israel did everything it
could to sabotage it. Every soldier who invades A territories every
night and every prisoner left in prison from before the Oslo agreement
is a violation of it.
The
current government and its supporters objected to Oslo, so now they're
offended when Abbas says it's over? Abbas told the truth.
"We
will no longer accept American sponsorship," Abbas said. Does he have
any choice? What is he supposed to do, bow his head to resounding slaps?
Kneel before a president who ignores the occupation?
Wasn't he telling the truth when he
protested against Trump's deranged argument that the Palestinians
foiled the negotiations? A super power that punishes the occupied
instead of the occupier – that's an inexplicable matter. Instead of
stopping to finance and arm the occupier, the United States is stopping
the funds to the rescue organization assisting the occupied party's
refugees. It's insane. Abbas responded with restraint. American
ambassadors Nikki Haley and David Friedman are indeed friends of the
occupier and enemies of international law; how can those two oddballs be
described in any other way?
But the main shock happened when
Abbas touched the rawest Israeli nerves and classified Zionism as part
of the colonial project. What is incorrect here? When a sinking colonial
power promises a country it isn't ruling yet to a nation whose absolute
majority doesn't live in it, while ignoring the nation that does – what
is it if not colonialism? When more than half the country is promised
to less than a tenth of its residents, what is it if not a terrible
injustice?
It's
hard to hear, but its' the truth. The Balfour Declaration cannot be
read differently. And what is more proper than to ask the British to
apologize for it and now stand beside the Palestinians after all the
years of being evicted and dispossessed, beginning with Balfour and
continuing to this day?
Establishing Israel served the
imperialist West. Abbas is right. Israel is seen as the last Western
outpost against the Arab savages, as South Africa's apartheid regime was
seen by the same West as the last outpost against the communists and
the blacks.
Then
came the Holocaust and Israel became a rightful, just refuge, but this
too was at the Palestinians' expense. The world should have compensated
them by liberating them from the 1967 occupation and given them equal
rights or a state. That's what Abbas was talking about.
Abbas is far from being the perfect
statesman. He's not a democrat. He's unpopular, perhaps corrupt,
certainly pathetic in his insistence on the dead two-state solution. But
he's the most peace-seeking, non-violent Palestinian statesman
imaginable. This is why he is so dangerous to Israel. This is why
Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his speech, echoed by the national choir.
Israel wants everyone to be Yahya Sinwar. It would make the occupation
even more convenient.
Gideon Levy
Haaretz Correspondent
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