Husam Zomlot, a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, gave a lecture this week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
By MATT RANDHusam Zomlot 521(photo credit: Matt Rand)
The reconciliation train has left and there is no going back, due to the “impossibility of reaching a deal with Israel” and the “absence of the US so far in the Middle East. There is no track for going back to the train,” said Husam Zomlot, a senior adviser to Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, adding that he hoped after the Palestinians seek statehood at the UN next week that “...this train will proceed faster – much faster.”Hopefully, after September, Hamas will realize that it indeed wants to be part of the polity and the political system and will start to play by the political rules. The level of violence on the Gaza border has already dropped significantly as a result of the reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah.According to Zomlot, the Palestinians have no other option at the moment. In looking at all the possibilities and scenarios on the table, this is the least costly option and the most beneficial. There are endless possible scenarios, and negotiations are one possible option. The last 20 years of negotiations with Israel have led absolutely nowhere and have created a situation where “occupation, colonization is deepening by the day,” instead of the reverse. Supposedly, the peace process was to lead to the end of occupation and the dismantling of at least most of the settlements.“By challenging the status quo you need to disarm all the factors that lead to the sustainability [of the status quo].” This includes arming oneself with tools that would aid in the ability to continue to challenge the status quo (Israel) and would “help you in sustaining the new paradigm.”Pragmatically speaking, the Palestinians will really have to come around and forget about violence altogether.This is not a time for armed resistance or any kind of violent confrontation. This is a time for peaceful demonstrations involving all of civil society. Zomlot said that it has taken a long time for the Palestinians to come around this corner “but I think we are turning it,” he added, saying that Fatah was coming to terms with the fact that the type of fighting in the first intifada in 1987 (which Zomlot characterized as peaceful, bloodless resistance) may have been the best form “of really putting pressure on the status quo.” Such tactics align the Palestinians with the Arab Spring and its support by the US.Without mentioning Israel by name explicitly, Zomlot said the Palestinians needed international boycotts against all institutions implicated in the occupation. “We need something similar, in my opinion, to the South Africa experience,” he said.The Palestinians have the responsibility to create a political system that will represent all Palestinians both “inside and outside” and will channel all Palestinian voices. The fact that the Palestinians do not have such a system at present is a failure that must be corrected. There are no “justifications or pretexts or excuses” for not having an appropriate system. In this light, the Palestinian elections must be held on time, in May of next year, and should include all Palestinian political parties.According to to Zomlot, the “Fayad Plan” on the preparation of the Palestinian institutions for statehood, released in August 2008, had only one condition, stipulating that this preparation process had a time limit of two years, which would end now – September 2011.The part of the contract between the Palestinians and the international community, in which billions of dollars have been invested, and for which the Palestinians are responsible, has been delivered at a rate of 100 percent. Several international institutions, including the UN, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, could corroborate this.During negotiations with the Obama administration and Israelis in September 2010 (at which Zomlot was the spokesperson for the Palestinian delegation to Washington), President Obama and his administration established that this round of talks had a limit of one year, should end by September 2011 and must lead to a Palestinian state, fully engaged, fully accepted. We went to the negotiations knowing that in September [2011] again by hook or crook there will be a state.”All the Palestinians heard from the Israelis during the talks concerned matters of security and nothing else. Of the 19 hours of direct talks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he spoke of only two things: security, and Palestinian recognition of the Jewish state.Nothing else. The Palestinians had even prepared maps and proposals but Netanyahu refused to accept these under the justification that his government did not have a mandate from the Israeli people to consider any proposals.ZOMLOT SAID the Palestinians believe that they have the opportunity right now to turn all these timetables, promises and the political capital that they have worldwide into something concrete.While he did not think that this would immediately change the reality on the ground, it was a way of “cashing in our political capital in the most legal manner there is in the international community” – that is at the United Nations, which he described as “our atomic bomb.”Around 125 countries have said that they would recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinians hope that number will increase significantly before the General Assembly vote to around 140 to 150 countries.The Palestinians’ UN bid is not so much about recognition, which is a bilateral issue, but more about full membership in the UN. Full membership would require the approval of the Security Council, a request the US has said it would deny.However, Zomlot said that the GA has the legal ability to endorse a resolution that would give the Palestinians observer status as a state rather than as a political entity, a status the Palestine Liberation Organization obtained in 1974. The Palestinians will decide in the next couple of days whether or not to first go to the UN Security Council.The Palestinian leadership is least interested in confronting the US or creating serious polarization in the international community. At the same time, there are serious concerns about how much time they could wait for a deliberation that would deliver something complete. “We don’t want to go back to the days of just paperwork and accumulations of resolutions that will go nowhere,” Zomlot commented.The Palestinians will benefit from either a UN Security Council or GA resolution because it will consolidate international recognition of Palestine as a state and it will give the Palestinians an advantage over Israel in determining terms of reference such as what is considered disputed territory. A UN resolution would, at the very least, begin to put a stop to the “nonsense” that Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem are disputed rather than under occupation.
Under international law, an occupied state has its own set of laws and rules.Sovereignty is not with the occupier but with the people whose land is being occupied, and if that occupied state is recognized by the international system, anything that happens there becomes an international incident. An Israeli jeep would not be able to just wander around Ramallah freely. Having a state would give the Palestinians a sharper legal tool to go after those who infringe on their rights.“I’m sure Human Rights Watch would be pleased that we meet international standards,” quipped Zomlot. “We need at least the possibility of shouting, the possibility of complaining, the option of saying this is unlawful.”Obama is very serious about finding a solution. “He is the one who came up with [the proposition to] stop [building in] settlements [before talks could proceed].You don’t negotiate [for] the dismantling of settlements when you are building them.”
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