At Tampa town hall, Obama confirms that “peace” precludes Palestinian rights
Responding to an unexpected question about US funding for Israeli human rights violations at a town hall in Tampa yesterday, President Obama made a remark reminiscent of the last eight years and its frequent Bushisms.
On top of his tortured remark however (“The Middle East is an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.”), President Obama reminded us that the so-called peace process has become incompatible with Palestinian human rights. According to Obama, Palestinians must renounce violence, but not Israel, even though Israel is the country with a navy, air force, army, nuclear weapons, and an active intelligence apparatus, and even though Palestinians are the ones with an internationally recognized right to use violence against their occupier.
Joseph Massad’s analysis of this trend back to the Oslo Agreements could not have come at a more opportune time, given the way that Obama did not address Palestinian rights but instead responded to an un-asked question about the fantasy peace process, vividly demonstrating the dichotomy that has come to represent a new form of racism against the Palestinians.
It is thanks to this logic that Israel can charge that the Goldstone report, extensively documenting human rights violations, will cause “harm” to the peace process. Under the same pretext, the British government tries to prevent arrest warrants against accused Israeli leaders, because “Israel’s leaders need to be able to come to the UK for talks.” As if a peace process actually exists!
We cannot accept the notion that addressing the injustices against the Palestinians is an obstacle to this “elusive” peace, because it is precisely those injustices that stand in the way. Increasingly, the two-state solution espoused in words only by Israel, the State Department, and PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas looks like nothing more than another phase in perpetuating those injustices against most Palestinians, even if it helps create an elite VIP political class that can travel freely and make money under occupation.
To that extent the idea that every discussion about Palestinians must be centered on the chimera of “peace” aka Israel’s conception of the two state solution actually stands in the way of restoring to Palestinians their rights.
That the President can respond so audaciously and dishonestly with a recycled script practically written by the Israel lobby should dispel all fantasies that change on this issue will come from the top, or that they should even be aimed at the top. The Israel lobby will exist as long as Israeli apartheid does, so we cannot act as if the two issues are separate. All these claims only emphasize the need for more agitation and substantive organization at the grassroots level.
There are those who will act as apologists for the President, pointing to the Israel lobby, or to the fact that Florida is a swing state and the President is simply being realistic. That might be palatable, detriments to an honest and transparent political discourse aside, if there was actually something positive happening for Palestinians behind the scenes — but there isn’t.
