Haidar Eid
THE END OF THE ‘PEACE PROCESS’: OSLO AND AFTER by Edward Said (Pantheon)
The difficulty, albeit necessity, of addressing the current situation in Palestine emanates from the euphoria of the mainstream media accompanying the signing of the Oslo Accords in 199. The mainstream media avoided the agreement’s denial of Palestinian rights, endorsing the establishment of an apartheid state.
Edward Said, in The End of the “Peace Process”, maintains that any attempt to understand the Oslo accords, their consequences, and the power mechanisms that had led to them, needs a rereading of the close relationship between Zionism, American imperialism and Arab reaction.
Were the Oslo accords a radical change in Zionist ideology with regard to the Palestinians? Do the accords guarantee a long-lasting comprehensive peace? And does the current leadership of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) represent the political aspirations of the Palestinian people? These are the kinds of questions Said tries to answer. “No negotiations are better than endless concessions that simply prolong the Israeli occupation,” he writes. “Israel is certainly pleased that it can take the credit for having made peace, and at the same time continue the occupation with Palestinian consent.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak supports the establishment of a demilitarised Palestinian state in most of the Gaza strip and parts of the West Bank. Said holds that the programme of Barak’s government does not challenge the current status quo, nor does it allow the Palestinian people to exercise minimal national and political rights. Barak’s clear platform during the elections, which he confirmed in his first victory speech, offered no return to the borders of June 4 1967, no dismantling of Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip and the West Bank, no return of Palestinian refugees, no backing down on Jerusalem as “the undivided, eternal capital city of Israel”, and no sovereign Palestinian state with a military on the western bank of the Jordan.
The “safe passage” that was established last year between Gaza and the West Bank is not free of “interference from Israeli authorities”, as the Oslo accords require. Israel issues the new magnetic cards – akin to an old South African passbook – required by Palestinians. Israel reserves the right to arrest any Palestinian “suspect” on this route. The enforced divisions between the Gaza strip and the West Bank remain.
Said shows how the Barak government has accelerated Jewish settlement on the West Bank. Israel is putting the Palestinians into reservations. According to Said, this is accepted by the PLO leadership. It is clear now, six years after the famous White House ceremony, that no sovereign state will be established in the near future.
Said holds that a minimum fair solution at this stage needs to be based on resolutions of international legitimacy which accord the Palestinian people some of their rights – self-determination, establishment of an independent state, return of dispossessed refugees, Jerusalem, and the removal of the Jewish settlements. He supports the idea of one binational democratic state in which all its citizens are treated equally.
“[It] only takes a few bold spirits to speak out and start challenging a status quo that gets worse and more dissembling each day,” writes Said. This urgent and valuable book is a Gramscian manifestation of the pessimism of the intellect and the optimism of the will.
Dr Heidar Eid is a senior lecturer in the English department at Vista University’s Soweto campus and the author of the story collection All of You and I