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The
Geneva Accord was long ago scripted by Israeli Military
Intelligence, writes Salman Abu Sitta
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 1 -
7 January 2004 (Issue No. 671)
The orchestrated media blitz, replete with approving
noises made by those European and Arab politicians eager
to be rid of Palestinian refugees, conveniently ignored
the fact that the understanding reached between some
Palestinians and Israelis on the shores of the Dead Sea,
later dignified with the name Geneva Accord, is in
essence no more than the blueprint produced by the
Israeli intelligence service to "solve" the issue of
Palestinian refugees.
Following the first Palestinian Intifada of 1987 Yitzhak
Shamir, on a visit to the US, called for an
international conference to discuss ways to disperse
Palestinian refugees across the globe and make the
international community -- i.e. Europe and the rich
Arabs -- pay for the scheme. Later, during the Madrid
Conference of 1991, Shamir declared: "The land of Israel
[Palestine] is our true homeland... any other country is
still diaspora."
The Israeli official position underlying the Dead Sea
understanding was later formulated by the former chief
of Israeli Military Intelligence, and the first governor
of the Israeli- occupied West Bank and Gaza, General
Shlomo Gazit.
Gazit produced a report in 1994, shortly after the Oslo
Accords, for the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at
Tel Aviv University, entitled "The Palestinian Refugee
Problem". The report's solution to the refugee problem
included the following.
The option of return should, under no circumstances, be
provided to the Palestinians. Israel may allow a small
number of returnees, under the [existing but useless]
shaml programme, for humanitarian reasons but only if
this does not compromise security or national interests.
The return of refugees to their homes (in Israel), Gazit
states, "will threaten the Jewish character of the
state".
UNRWA, the UN relief organisation, should be disbanded
because it confirms the refugees' identity as
Palestinians by issuing identification cards. The legal
status of "refugee" must be eliminated.
The PLO must renounce the right of return on behalf of
the Palestinian people.
An international fund must be set up -- paid for by the
world and controlled by Israel -- offering paltry
compensation to the refugees to enable their dispersion
and permanent exile. Against this compensation, paid by
others, Israel will retain free and legal title to
Palestinian land and property in 530 towns and villages,
representing 93 per cent of Israel's area.
For the sake of PR Israel will apologise to the
Palestinians . The apology, though, will have no legal
implications as regards compensation or the prosecution
of those guilty crimes against the Palestinian
population.
To give a final veneer of legitimacy the UN, with Arab
and Israel agreement, should pass a resolution
cancelling all previous resolutions supporting
Palestinian rights, including resolution No.194. Any
refugee claiming a right of return thereafter would be
considered an enemy of peace.
Such is the stuff of which the Dead Sea understanding --
otherwise known as Geneva Accord -- is made. It has been
repackaged but it is nothing more than the Israeli
intelligence services plan.
Needless to say, the articles in the Dead Sea
understanding announced in Geneva regarding the refugees
fly in the face of international law.
To begin with, the right of return is entrenched in
international law and in universal and regional
covenants on human rights. Being an individual
inalienable right, it cannot be compromised by time,
sovereignty or political agreements. It can only be lost
by the voluntary surrender of the right individually.
Why then this fuss over Geneva? Because the media blitz
-- and it is nothing more than that -- targets two kinds
of audience. The first are the Palestinian refugees,
especially those who suffer under the brutal and bloody
Israeli occupation. Their lives are shattered, their
children killed, their homes bulldozed, their
livelihoods destroyed. The aim is to drive those
refugees to despair and accept any kind of life anywhere
as being better than the one they endure.
The second audience comprises Arab and European
politicians -- with the obvious exclusion of those in
the US and Israel who do not need to pretend -- who pay
lip service to international law but put pressure on the
Palestinians to abandon their rights. They want to wash
their hands of a problem that betrays their impotence
and political expediency.
Nothing in the last 55 years indicates that the ploy
will succeed. On the contrary, advocacy of the right of
return is stronger than ever. In October 2003, and
against considerable odds, 100 Palestinians from all
over the world, from refugee camps in Gaza and the West
Bank, from Israel (yes there are 250,000 refugees in
Israel), from Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, the
UAE, North Africa, Europe and America met in London and
formed an umbrella organisation, the Right of Return
Congress, with chapters in several countries.
The plane load of Palestinians who attended the Geneva
hoopla may choose to drop their right of return. There
is no problem with that. But they have no right to make
the same decision for more than five million refugees.
Nor have they any right to issue on behalf of the
Palestinian people any certificate exonerating Israelis
from crimes committed from 1948 to today.
The Israeli left may well benefit politically from the
fanfare. It remains, however, committed to racist
policies. Unlike the Geneva Palestinians, it does not
disavow the ethno-religious discriminatory institutions
so often censured by the UN Treaty-Based Human Rights
Committees. The concessions were decidedly one-sided,
and they were made by the wrong side.
If the right of refugees are ignored, as the Dead Sea
understanding attempts to ignore them, instability in
the area will increase. First, Israel will have the
cover necessary to expel or exterminate its 1.25 million
Palestinian citizens. Israel's racist policies will be
legitimised as Palestinians are restricted to virtual
concentration camps bounded by an apartheid wall
defining a Palestinian state with no credible
sovereignty.
If only one per cent of Palestinians -- in Jordan,
Lebanon and other places -- are driven to despair by the
elimination of their rights and decide to fight ever
more fiercely for them, 40,000 angry people could be
taking unpredictable actions.
Refugees settled outside the Arab world have an
increasing voice in the media, parliaments and NGOs.
Their efforts may still be modest but with 59 per cent
of Europeans seeing Israel as the largest threat to
world peace, international support for the basic rights
of Palestinians will grow.
Efforts to continue ethnic cleansing, and disperse
Palestinian refugees across the four corners of the
globe, are destined to fail, as they have failed for
more than half a century.
The only road to peace is the application of
international law and the final and complete abolition
of all vestiges of racism by Israel.
The writer is the general coordinator of the Right of
Return Congress.
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