tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/palestinian-liberation-organisation-plo-73848/articlesPalestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) – The Conversation2020-10-22T13:16:36Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1479752020-10-22T13:16:36Z2020-10-22T13:16:36ZRight-wing extremism: The new wave of global terrorism<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364095/original/file-20201018-21-1dfcfoo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C62%2C4605%2C2840&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this April 2020 photo, protesters carry rifles near the steps of the Michigan State Capitol building in Lansing, Mich. A plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor has put a focus on the security of governors in the United States.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In April 2020, the United Nation’s Secretary-General, António Guterres, addressed members of the <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/">Security Council</a> by warning them that the COVID-19 pandemic <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/04/1061502">could threaten global peace and security</a>. </p>
<p>If the health crisis was not managed effectively, he feared that its negative economic consequences, along with a mismanaged government response, would provide an opportunity for white supremacists, right-wing extremists and others to promote division, social unrest and even violence to achieve their objectives. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is seen speaking at a podium." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364399/original/file-20201020-21-1jw14bc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was the focus of kidnapping plot by right-wing extremists.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Michigan Office of the Governor via AP, Pool, File)</span></span>
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<p>In early October 2020, less than a month before the United States federal election, the FBI thwarted <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/michigan-whitmer-plot-1.5755273">an alleged terrorism plot</a> by right-wing extremists to kidnap the Michigan governor, storm the state capital building and commit acts of violence against law enforcement. </p>
<p>Their aim, according to court documents, was to start a “civil war leading to societal collapse.” To date, <a href="https://www.clickondetroit.com/news/local/2020/10/08/view-mugshots-for-13-people-charged-after-fbi-uncovers-plot-to-kidnap-michigan-gov-whitmer/">14 men have been arrested on charges of terrorism</a> and other related crimes. Several of them are <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/08/wolverine-watchmen-michigan-militia/">linked to the Wolverine Watchmen</a>, a militia-type group in Michigan that espouses anti-government and anti-law enforcement views.</p>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/worldwide-threats-to-the-homeland-092420">FBI recently briefed U.S. senators</a> on the evolving concern of domestic violent extremists, groups whose ideological goals to commit violence stem from domestic influences such as social movements like <a href="https://theconversation.com/when-is-metoo-coming-to-my-workplace-eight-things-you-can-do-now-99661">#MeToo</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-failure-of-multiculturalism-led-to-the-rise-of-black-lives-matter-144463">Black Lives Matter</a> and government policies. </p>
<p>The composition of many of these organizations are right-wing terror groups whose grievances are rooted in racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBTQ sentiments, Islamophobia and perceptions of government overreach. Given the wide range of grievances, these groups are defined as being complex, with overlapping viewpoints from similarly minded individuals advocating different but related ideologies. </p>
<h2>Toxic masculinity</h2>
<p>Feminist researchers believe the rise of disenfranchised middle-class white males is leading to increased <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1097184X17706401">toxic masculinity</a> within society, as evidenced by the increased popularity of the so-called <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/08/anti-feminism-gateway-far-right/595642/">manosphere</a> to share extremist ideas and vent their grievances. Law enforcement agencies are concerned that the manosphere and similar online communities are radicalizing young men to commit violence to achieve their goals.</p>
<p>This concern is valid, with plenty of evidence to support it.</p>
<p>According to the University of Maryland’s <a href="https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_GTD_GlobalTerrorismOverview2019_July2020.pdf">Global Terrorism Database</a>, there were 310 terrorist attacks resulting in 316 deaths (excluding perpetrators) in the United States alone from 2015 to 2019. </p>
<p>Most were right-wing extremists, including white nationalists and other alt-right movement members. This alt-right movement also contains the incel (involuntary celibate) members who are <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1751459">a growing threat</a> to women.</p>
<p>But the increase in right-wing terrorism is not just a U.S. problem. The UN Security Council’s Counterterrorism Committee says there’s been a <a href="https://www.un.org/sc/ctc/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/CTED_Trends_Alert_Extreme_Right-Wing_Terrorism.pdf">320 per cent increase in right-wing terrorism globally</a> in the five years prior to 2020. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A short-haired white man in a grey sweatshirt sits in a courtroom dock." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364392/original/file-20201020-17-2wft1j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, 29, sits in the dock in a New Zealand courtroom for sentencing after pleading guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of terrorism for an attack on a mosque in March 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(John Kirk-Anderson/Pool Photo via AP)</span></span>
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<p>Recent terrorist attacks in <a href="https://theconversation.com/christchurch-mosque-shootings-must-end-new-zealands-innocence-about-right-wing-terrorism-113655">New Zealand (2019)</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50003759">Germany (2019)</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/world/europe/norway-mosque-attacker-convicted.html">Norway (2019)</a> are indicators of this trend. The Centre for Research on Extremism at the University of Oslo <a href="https://www.sv.uio.no/c-rex/english/topics/online-resources/rtv-dataset/rtv_trend_report_2020.pdf">reports that both Spain and Greece</a> are growing hotbeds for right-wing terrorism and violence. </p>
<p>Canada isn’t immune to these violent extremist ideologies. Many sympathizers to these causes reside in Canada, and as such there is always a risk for attacks. But the Canadian government is taking notice and has listed <a href="https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/cntr-trrrsm/lstd-ntts/crrnt-lstd-ntts-en.aspx#60">Combat 18 </a> and <a href="https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/ntnl-scrt/cntr-trrrsm/lstd-ntts/crrnt-lstd-ntts-en.aspx#59">Blood & Honour</a> as right-wing terrorist organizations.</p>
<h2>A major global security threat</h2>
<p>Right-wing extremism is of such concern that when the top international security policy-makers met at the <a href="https://securityconference.org/assets/user_upload/MunichSecurityReport2020.pdf">2019 Munich Security Conference</a>, they ranked it among space security, climate security and emerging technologies as the top global security threats. </p>
<p>It would appear as though the world is at the dawn of a new age of terrorism that’s different from before. Famed terrorism researcher David C. Rapoport argued in his influential thesis “The Four Waves of Rebel Terror and September 11” that modern terrorism can be <a href="http://anthropoetics.ucla.edu/ap0801/terror/">categorized into four distinct waves</a>. </p>
<p>The first “Anarchist Wave” began in the 1880s in Russia with the <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-16941-2_5">Narodnaya Volya (“The People’s Will”)</a> conducting assassinations of political leaders. It continued until the 1920s, spreading across the Balkans and eventually into the West, influencing the creation of new terror groups within different countries. </p>
<p>The 1920s saw the beginning of the “Anti-Colonial Wave” coming out of the remnants of the First World War, when groups like the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/566849?seq=1">Irish Republican Army (IRA)</a> began using ambush tactics against police and military targets to force political change. </p>
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<img alt="Masked men in black walk along a street carrying unfurled flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364398/original/file-20201020-15-eua5c4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The IRA’s Derry Brigade in Derry, Ireland, year unknown.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Flickr)</span></span>
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<p>In the 1960s, the “New Left Wave” was created. This third wave emerged from the perceived oppression of Western countries within the developing world (like Vietnam and the Middle East). Its tactics included plane hijackings, embassy attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by groups like the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/25765949.2018.1534405">Palestine Liberation Organization </a>(PLO). </p>
<p>Finally, the 1990s witnessed the birth of the “Religious Wave” in which terror groups like <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2013.802973">al-Qaida</a> used religious ideology as a justification to overthrow secular governments with martyrdom tactics like suicide bombings. </p>
<p>What all these waves have in common is that they last for a few decades and become infectious over time, spreading across the globe as new groups learn and adopt the successful tactics of previous ones.</p>
<h2>The fifth wave?</h2>
<p>This brings us to today’s right-wing terrorism. </p>
<p>Already observers have signalled the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jihadist-plots-used-be-u-s-europe-s-biggest-terrorist-n1234840">decline of violent Islamic movements</a> and the rise of far-right extremist activities. Is right-wing violent extremism the new fifth wave of modern terrorism? </p>
<p>If so, there’s no doubt the negative societal impacts of COVID-19 will only help accelerate the radicalization of its adherents.</p>
<p>And if the duration of the previous four waves have taught us anything, it’s that this new one could be around for many more years to come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/147975/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sean Spence does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Is right-wing violent extremism the new fifth wave of modern terrorism? If so, there’s no doubt the impacts of COVID-19 will only help accelerate the radicalization of its adherents.Sean Spence, Doctorate Student - Security Risk Management, University of PortsmouthLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1306972020-01-30T00:28:32Z2020-01-30T00:28:32ZTrump’s Middle East ‘vision’ is a disaster that will only make things worse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312684/original/file-20200129-154320-jjs51s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">With such an unbalanced offer on foot, it's no wonder Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was happy with it. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/EPA/Michael Reynolds</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>US President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-vision-peace-prosperity-brighter-future-israel-palestinian-people/">“vision”</a> for Israelis and Palestinians is not a realistic peace plan to end a decades-old conflict. Rather, it’s more like a real estate deal in which one side is a recipient of a low-ball offer.</p>
<p>In the meantime, the other side is continuing to expand its hold on property to which it does not have the title deeds under international law. This is not the “deal of the century”, as Trump claims, but an invitation to Israel to assert its sovereignty over swathes of territory seized in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-39960461">the 1967 war</a>.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-on-from-the-six-day-war-the-prospects-for-middle-east-peace-remain-dim-78749">Fifty years on from the Six Day War, the prospects for Middle East peace remain dim</a>
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<p>In return, the Palestinians are being offered a “Swiss cheese” arrangement in which what is left of territory under their nominal control is pock-marked with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/29/world/middleeast/trump-peace-plan-explained.html">settlement enclaves</a> that will remain subject to Israeli military occupation.</p>
<p>This does not represent a two-state solution, or even a half-a-state solution. The Trump plan is a recipe for endless occupation of a stunted Palestinian entity with little or no prospect of achieving statehood, or even a basic autonomy free from military occupation.</p>
<p>The latest peace plan will likely join other failed initiatives, like rusting ordnance in the desert after Middle East conflicts.</p>
<p>It will do nothing for regional peace and stability. On the contrary, it will provide a rallying call for extremists across the Middle East who have no interest in reasonable compromise that would enable Israelis and Palestinians to co-exist in neighbouring entities.</p>
<p>The fact that Palestinian representatives were not involved in negotiations on a future outlined by the president of the United States and accepted with alacrity by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the most nationalistic and uncompromising leaders in Israel’s history, tells its own story.</p>
<p>The Palestinian leadership severed official contact with the Trump administration in 2017 when Washington <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-israel-capital.html">recognised Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem</a> and shifted its embassy there from Tel Aviv.</p>
<p>The Palestinians can reasonably be criticised for pulling back from direct dealings with the administration, but given Washington’s biases towards Israel, this boycott is hardly surprising.</p>
<p>The Trump plan amounts to not much more than a series of talking points, apart from the green light it gives to Israeli supporters of annexation. In addition, the Palestinian leadership is being asked to agree to terms that fall far short of what had been negotiated in previous peace efforts dating back to the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1993-2000/oslo">Oslo Accords of 1993</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/312697/original/file-20200129-154332-1ile9ux.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The famous handshake on the White House lawn to signify the accords in 1993 is a distant memory.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span>
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<p>Under Oslo, a “Palestinian Self-Governing Authority” would be established for a five-year transitional period, leading to a permanent two-state solution settlement based on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1979/08/18/archives/texts-of-resolutions-242-and-338-resolution-242-nov-22-1967.html">United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338</a>.</p>
<p>These called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from territories occupied in war.</p>
<p>Sadly, the Oslo process was stillborn due to toxic internal politics on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides. An opportunity was squandered. That was a quarter of a century ago.</p>
<p>Under the Trump plan, the so-called two-state solution is dead for the foreseeable future given that Israel is allowed to annex territory under its control, including the Jordan Valley.</p>
<p>Israel has said it will move ahead with annexation as soon as this coming Sunday.</p>
<p>At the same time, the Trump administration has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/middleeast/trump-israel-west-bank-settlements.html">validated Israel’s settlement-building on Palestinian land in the West Bank</a> by reversing longstanding US policy that regarded these settlements as a breach of international law.</p>
<p>The Trump “vision” should also be viewed in the context of the US administration’s unprecedented accommodation of an ultra-nationalist Israeli government’s priorities.</p>
<p>No Palestinian representatives attended the unveiling in Washington of the Trump plan celebrated by a US president under threat of impeachment and an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/01/28/world/middleeast/28reuters-israel-palestinians-plan-netanyahu.html">Israeli prime minister charged with corruption</a>.</p>
<p>Arab attendees came from those countries in the Gulf that could be regarded as American clients: Bahrain and United Arab Emirates. Representatives of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan were not present. Egypt and Jordan are the only two Arab countries to have peace treaties with Israel.</p>
<p>While Cairo’s response – like that of Riyadh – to the Trump plan has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/world/middleeast/arabs-reaction-trump-mideast-peace-plan.html">muted</a>, it is unlikely leaders of these two countries will risk demonstrations that would likely follow overt acceptance of arrangements inimical to Palestinian interests.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/us-can-no-longer-be-counted-on-to-end-israel-palestinian-conflict-96716">US can no longer be counted on to end Israel-Palestinian conflict</a>
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<p>In all of this, the year 1995 should be regarded as the reference point for any discussion of what lies ahead for the Palestinians and Israelis. That was the year a Jewish zealot <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/10/26/shot-in-the-heart">assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin</a>.</p>
<p>The so-called peace process effectively died that day.</p>
<p>Rabin’s death and Netanyahu’s subsequent election effectively stymied efforts to encourage a more constructive atmosphere in which compromise might be possible.</p>
<p>A combination of Netanyahu’s obduracy and a weak and divided Palestinian leadership has meant prospects for peace have gone backwards since Oslo in 1993. The <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/14/world/mideast-accord-overview-rabin-arafat-seal-their-accord-clinton-applauds-brave.html">handshake on the White House lawn</a> between Palestine Liberation Organisation leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is a distant memory. </p>
<p>The Trump plan is highly unlikely to reverse a continuing drift away from reasonable compromise. It risks making things worse, if that’s possible.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130697/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Trump’s “deal of the century” is not a realistic plan to resolve a decades-old conflict, but an invitation to Israel to expand its territory at Palestine’s expense.Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1231242019-09-18T15:07:45Z2019-09-18T15:07:45ZIsraeli election has no clear winner – what political deadlock means for the Middle East<p>With no clear winner in September’s Israeli elections, both the incumbent prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his only serious contender, Benny Gantz, will now set about trying to form a governing coalition. Both are tarnished by the result. </p>
<p>Contrary to <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Elections-set-for-Sept-17-after-coalition-talks-fail-591044">elections held in April</a> when Netanyahu’s right-wing party, Likud, and Gantz’s centrist alliance, Kahol Lavan or “Blue and White”, were tied, this time Gantz is one seat ahead of Netanyahu, according to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/with-90-of-vote-officially-counted-blue-and-white-edging-out-likud-32-31/">official results</a> released after 90% of the vote had been counted. </p>
<p>But Gantz’s 32 seats – three fewer than in April – plus those of his two centrist-left alliance partners (the Democratic Union and Labor-Gesher) add up to only 43. This is far from the 61 seats necessary to form a government backed by a majority of 120 deputies in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. </p>
<p>Yet, Netanyahu’s bloc that consists of the two ultra-orthodox parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism, and the parties of the far-right Yamina alliance, add up to only 55 seats. To further complicate matters, the two groups that aren’t fully affiliated with one of the blocs are not political allies: the Joint List of mostly Arab parties gained 13 seats, while the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu – the party headed by Netanyahu’s former ally Avigdor Lieberman – won nine seats. </p>
<p>As there is no Likud politician in sight who would be capable of subverting Netanyahu to form a national unity government, for the time being both Gantz and Netanyahu remain in the race for the premiership.</p>
<p>So what does this stalemate mean for the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and the Middle East region more widely? </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-4-big-questions-that-the-next-israeli-government-will-decide-123317">The 4 big questions that the next Israeli government will decide</a>
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<h2>The stakes for Palestinians</h2>
<p>Palestinians who have lived under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip since 1967 have the most at stake. Whatever government is formed, it will not only rule Israeli citizens who were eligible to vote but also those Palestinians living in the occupied territories who weren’t – something I’ve argued <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2019/08/25/israel-a-democratic-state/">implies that Israel is not a democracy</a>. </p>
<p>In another sense, the elections have little significance for the Palestinians living under occupation. The idea of withdrawing the Israeli army from Palestinian territories and accepting a sovereign and viable state of Palestine is as <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-gantz-only-with-new-leadership-on-both-sides-can-we-move-on-1.7084250">alien to Gantz as it is to Netanyahu</a>. </p>
<p>Whether Israeli governments in the late 20th century seriously considered the possibility of a two-state solution remains debatable. Yet, so far in the 21st century, the game played by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation has not been about negotiating “peace” in the form of untroubled relations between Israel and a Palestinian state. Rather, it’s been about pretend-negotiating peace – and avoiding blame for, predictably, <a href="https://books.google.com.lb/books?id=hCruCwAAQBAJ&pg=PR4&lpg=PR4&dq=martin+beck+peter+seeberg+the+levant+in+turmoil&source=bl&ots=bl_SDeWY2w&sig=ACfU3U1DENgX-WV4MTA7wkg6mTgzW6pYXg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjIwpmJzMjkAhVGCxoKHV4uA1cQ6AEwBnoECA8QAQ#v=onepage&q=martin%20beck%20peter%20seeberg%20the%20levant%20in%20turmoil&f=false">failed rounds of talks</a>. </p>
<p>Contrary to Gantz, Netanyahu announced he would annex major <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israeli-premier-netanyahu-vows-annex-west-bank-settlements-if-re-elected">parts of the West Bank including all Jewish settlements</a> and most of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/netanyahu-vows-annex-large-parts-occupied-west-bank-trump">Jordan Valley</a>. However, as the West Bank has been ruled and colonised by Israel for half a century, its annexation would be little more than a symbolic policy and wouldn’t fundamentally change the situation on the ground.</p>
<p>In August, Gantz vowed to “pound Gaza” in the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium-gantz-vows-to-send-ground-forces-pound-gaza-in-any-future-conflict-1.7646085">event of military confrontations</a>. Under his premiership, Israel’s rule over the coastal strip might be implemented in an even more oppressive way than it has been so far this decade.</p>
<h2>United against Iran</h2>
<p>With regards to wider regional policies, Gantz is in line with Netanyahu and they share a strong stand against Iran. In February, referring to Iran, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-security-iran-gantz/netanyahus-main-rival-in-israeli-election-voices-agreement-with-him-on-iran-idUSKCN1Q60C6">Gantz said</a>: “On my watch, there will be no appeasement.” </p>
<p>Gantz has also endorsed Israel’s policy of containing Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah inside Lebanon and in Syria. Since 2013, Israel has frequently <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/israel-launched-200-strikes-syria-2017-180905063755959.html">launched air strikes</a> against Iranian-backed militia posts in Syria, whose activities are crucial for the Bashar al-Assad regime’s relentless fight for survival. </p>
<p>Until recently, the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Syria had not spilled <a href="https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/eastern-mediterranean/syria/182-israel-hizbollah-and-iran-preventing-another-war-syria">beyond its borders</a>. But by launching an attack with two drones in Beirut on August 25, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/28/drone-attacks-in-middle-east-raise-fears-of-escalating-conflict">Israel violated this tacit agreement</a>. In the aftermath, despite some skirmishes and aggressive rhetoric, <a href="http://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/264379">both Lebanon and Israel showed restraint</a>. But similar incidents in future could lead to further escalation – something Netanyahu might welcome if he were hoping to make a mark early in another premiership.</p>
<p>Regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict, US president Donald Trump’s <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/middle-east-watch/israels-september-17-elections-will-have-regional-repercussions-78316">so-called “deal of the century”</a>, expected to be released shortly, probably won’t be more than the symbolic funeral of an idea – the two-state solution – that has been clinically dead for years. Much more intriguing is whether the plan might boost the ongoing normalisation of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-increasing-arab-israeli-closeness-matters-119691">Arab world’s relations with Israel</a> and foster the tacit anti-Iranian alliance between <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-43632905">Saudi Arabia and Israel in the making</a>.</p>
<p>There is a lot at stake for Netanyahu now. Probably only a law granting Israel’s prime minister full immunity from prosecution could <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-denies-intention-to-change-immunity-law-to-evade-prosecution/">save Netanyahu from being indicted for corruption</a>, and such a law will only pass if he manages to remain in power. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen in the coming days and weeks of coalition negotiations whether a tottering Netanyahu will win what is probably his last major political battle and stay in power against all the odds – and what role foreign policy towards the Middle East will play in his coalition-building strategy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123124/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Beck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Coalition negotiations begin in Israel after neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Benny Gantz secure a majority.Martin Beck, Professor, Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies, University of Southern DenmarkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1206142019-07-21T06:56:04Z2019-07-21T06:56:04ZAs the West toasted men on the moon, Algeria held a party to a post-imperial world<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/284768/original/file-20190718-116579-7k9zn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Senegal's singer Ismael Lo performs during the second Pan-African Cultural Festival (PANAF) in Algeria in 2009. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Mohamed Messara</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/30/performing-global-african-culture-and-citizenship">First Pan-African Cultural Festival</a>, known as PANAF, formally opened in Algiers on 21 July 1969. This was the day after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html">historic moon landing</a> 50 years ago. But most Pan-Africanist commentators didn’t see the coincidence as detracting attention from the festival. On the contrary, while the moon landing marked the white, Western world seeking out new frontiers in space, the festival denoted something just as significant: the emergence of a post-imperial world in which Algiers was positioned as the <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/30/performing-global-african-culture-and-citizenship">‘mecca of revolution’</a>.</p>
<p>Mandated by the Organisation of African Unity to organise the festival, the Algerian state sought to involve the entire black and African world. This included representatives from various liberation movements in Africa, as well as the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party">Black Panthers</a> from the US. Even the Palestinian Liberation Organisation was invited, explicitly linking Pan-African culture with an ongoing global process of political liberation from Western colonial rule. </p>
<p>The festival is held up by many critics and participants as the radical response to an <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-first-black-arts-festival-was-shaped-by-cold-war-politics-54926">earlier Pan-African event held in Dakar, Senegal</a>, in April 1966: the First World Festival of Negro Arts. Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor’s vision of Pan-African culture in 1966 had been racially defined and delimited, which meant that North African culture and participants were largely omitted. </p>
<p>Senghor also excluded representatives of the liberation movements that were at that time still fighting against racist colonial regimes in the settler colonies of Southern Africa, as well as in Lusophone Africa. Senghor’s critics perceived this as proof of his desire to keep culture and politics separate and to appease the former European colonial powers. The 1969 event explicitly set out to right these perceived wrongs.</p>
<p>Algeria’s successful struggle against the French in a bloody <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Algerian-War">war of independence</a> (1954-62) had inspired independence movements around the world. During the war, Algerian militants of the National Liberation Front (FLN) had received <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2003-03-01/diplomatic-revolution-algerias-fight-independence-and-origins-post">international support</a>. And the post-imperial FLN regime now wished to return the favour. </p>
<p>The American activist, Elaine Mokhtefi, was one of those drawn to the Algerian cause. She worked at its UN office in New York during the war and settled in the country after independence. In her remarkable memoir, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/aug/11/algiers-third-world-capital-elaine-mokhtefi-review">Algiers, Third World Capital</a> (2018), Mokhtefi wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Algeria opted for an open-door policy of aid to the oppressed, an invitation to liberation movements and personalities from around the world. </p>
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<p>As her book also demonstrates, however, Algerian support was generally conditional, uneven and prone to come to a rather abrupt end.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bouteflika-steps-aside-as-algerians-push-to-reclaim-and-own-their-history-114380">Bouteflika steps aside as Algerians push to reclaim and own their history</a>
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<h2>Black Power in Algiers</h2>
<p>The festival ran from 21 July to 1 August 1969. It began with a parade by members of the various national delegations through downtown Algiers that was attended by thousands of ordinary Algerians. </p>
<p>A central colloquium accompanied the festival. Through its deliberations it sought to express a shared vision of Pan-African culture. Popular music also featured centrally. There were nightly concerts by the likes of Miriam Makeba, Nina Simone and Archie Shepp. </p>
<p>In his <a href="https://letterboxd.com/film/festival-panafricain-dalger/">celebrated documentary film</a> on the festival, William Klein famously captured Shepp’s impromptu jazz improvisations with Touareg musicians, shouting that ‘Jazz is Black Power!’. The performance enjoyed great symbolism as an emblematic example of Pan-African artistic collaboration.</p>
<p>The organisation of the festival and the regime’s open doors policy towards anti-colonial liberation movements hinted at a new form of global, black revolutionary citizenship. One representation of this was the presence of the Black Panthers, several dozen of whom had gathered in Algiers by the late 1960s. </p>
<p>Shortly before the festival, the Panthers’ charismatic and volatile Information Minister <a href="https://reason.com/1986/02/01/an-interview-with-eldridge-cle/">Eldridge Cleaver</a> — who had served time in prison for violent sexual crimes — had arrived unannounced into Algerian exile. He became one of the festival’s star attractions. </p>
<p>The FLN welcomed the latest revolutionary arrival to their shores with Mokhtefi serving as the Panthers’ interpreter and general ‘fixer’. A new, two-story Afro-American Information Centre was opened in central Algiers, stocked with Black Panther pamphlets and posters. This was where the Panther delegation, Cleaver in particular, held court with the press as well as local and international visitors.</p>
<p>As the historian Andrew Apter has <a href="https://www.academia.edu/19538531/Beyond_N%C3%A9gritude_Black_Cultural_Citizenship_and_the_Arab_Question_in_FESTAC_77">argued</a>, Cleaver had fled his vulnerable citizenship as an African American and had embraced a new form of ‘cultural citizenship’ in Algeria. There was, however, significant doubt as to how long his political welcome would extend beyond the festival. </p>
<h2>The Limits of Pan-African citizenship</h2>
<p>Algeria may have been keen to proclaim itself Capital of the Third World. But it was also an authoritarian, one-party regime that tolerated little dissent. Cleaver had established a Black Panther Embassy in Algiers with FLN support. But he was not invited to engage with Algerian President Houari Boumedienne as an equal partner. </p>
<p>The FLN gradually grew impatient towards its radical guests. It’s not clear whether the Black Panthers were formally expelled, but by the early 1970s, all had drifted back to the US or into alternative sites of exile. For his part, Cleaver <a href="https://reason.com/1986/02/01/an-interview-with-eldridge-cle/">sought refuge</a> in France in 1973. </p>
<p>The form of Pan-African citizenship that the festival appeared to promise proved all too ephemeral. Mokhtefi herself was <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/elaine-mokhtefi-algiers-book-review/">expelled</a> from Algeria without explanation in 1974.</p>
<p>In 2009, Algeria hosted a major <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-algeria-africa-festival/after-years-of-violence-algerians-have-some-fun-idUKTRE56K04A20090721">40th anniversary celebration of PANAF</a>. The festival was, in part, a way of marking the country’s gradual emergence from its ‘black decade’ of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23061753">murderous civil war</a> between government forces and Islamist rebels in which tens of thousands died. </p>
<p>There are no such plans for a 50th anniversary event this year, as the country goes through its latest <a href="https://theconversation.com/bouteflika-steps-aside-as-algerians-push-to-reclaim-and-own-their-history-114380">period of political unrest </a>after almost 60 years of one-party rule by the FLN. As the major global powers gear up for new missions to the moon, Algerian protestors are also channelling some of the idealism of the late 1960s. They are seeking freedom and equality but without the controlling hand of the all-powerful one-party state.</p>
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<header>David Murphy is (with Charles Forsdick) the co-author of:</header>
<p><a href="https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/id/40441/">Postcolonial Thought in the French-Speaking World</a></p>
<footer>Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK</footer>
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</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/120614/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Murphy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pan-African festival marked the emergence of a post-imperial worldDavid Murphy, Professor of French and Postcolonial Studies, University of Strathclyde Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1160242019-05-06T10:37:11Z2019-05-06T10:37:11ZWhy the Trump administration’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan shouldn’t be released<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/272087/original/file-20190501-113835-12nshju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">On the same day, May 14, 2018, Palestinians protest near the border of Israel and the Gaza Strip (left) while dignitaries applaud the opening ceremony of the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem (right). </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Israel-Palestinians/c1d294196a1e4f9790b26b834db5a9d0/6/0">AP/ADEL HANA, LEFT, AND SEBASTIAN SCHEINER</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Dead on arrival. </p>
<p>That’s what almost every expert predicts will be the fate of the Trump administration’s long-awaited peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.</p>
<p>As the author of the new book, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-israeli-palestinian-conflict-9780190625337?cc=us&lang=en&">“The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know,”</a> I share this view.</p>
<h2>Low expectations</h2>
<p>Developed in secrecy for the past two years by Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, along with Trump’s longtime lawyers Jason Greenblatt and David Friedman (now U.S. ambassador to Israel), the <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/424071-us-envoy-uss-peace-plan-for-israel-and-palestinian-delayed-several">peace plan’s release has been repeatedly postponed</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/kushner-middle-east-peace-plan-to-be-unveiled-after-ramadan/2019/04/23/bc231efc-65e1-11e9-a698-2a8f808c9cfb_story.html?utm_term=.84d854421c7c">According to news reports</a>, it will finally be made public sometime next month. That’s after the new Israeli government is formed and the Muslim holy month of Ramadan ends. </p>
<p>You might think that a plan <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinian-trump/in-leaky-white-house-trump-team-keeps-middle-east-peace-plan-secret-idUSKCN1RM2GQ">cloaked in secrecy</a>, aimed at achieving what President Trump has called the “deal of the century” to end the long-running conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, would be eagerly anticipated and widely welcomed. </p>
<p>But it seems that no one is enthusiastically waiting for this plan or ready to embrace it, least of all <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/21/israeli-minister-dismisses-trump-peace-plan-as-waste-of-time">Israelis</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/42463144-5d14-11e9-939a-341f5ada9d40">Palestinians</a>. Even President Trump has kept his distance from the plan and, <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/it-might-be-the-trump-peace-plan-but-officials-say-he-hasnt-actually-seen-it/">reportedly, hasn’t read it in full</a>.</p>
<p>About the only thing the Trump administration’s peace plan has going for it is the fact that nobody expects it to succeed. With expectations so low, there’s less risk that the likely failure of the plan will trigger another round of Israeli-Palestinian violence. </p>
<p>That’s what happened previously when U.S.-led efforts to make peace failed. The Second Intifada, for example, <a href="https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/220/378#a105">erupted shortly after the failure of the peace talks at Camp David in July 2000</a>. </p>
<h2>Dim chance of success</h2>
<p>There are many reasons why Kushner’s peace plan seems doomed to fail. Some of these are the Trump administration’s own making. </p>
<p>President Trump <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/world/middleeast/trump-jerusalem-israel-capital.html">recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December 2017</a> – with no mention of Palestinian claims to East Jerusalem. Since then, relations between his administration and the Palestinian leadership based in the West Bank have gone from bad to worse. </p>
<p>The administration has taken a series of punitive actions against Palestinians. They include <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/us/politics/trump-unrwa-palestinians.html">ending U.S. funding for the U.N. agency responsible for Palestinian refugees</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-palestinians/trump-cuts-more-than-200-million-in-u-s-aid-to-palestinians-idUSKCN1L923C">slashing aid to the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/10/trump-plo-office-close-washington-813574">closing the PLO’s office in Washington, D.C.</a> and even <a href="https://forward.com/fast-forward/410345/us-eliminates-funding-for-israeli-palestinian-coexistence-programs/">eliminating funding for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence programs</a>.</p>
<p>But those actions have not forced the Palestinian leadership to be more compliant and compromising. </p>
<p>Instead, the measures <a href="https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5495813,00.html">stiffened their resistance to American pressure</a> while angering and alienating the Palestinian public, who have <a href="https://www.apnews.com/3fad5d9e1fb94159a95decb08623e7d2">suffered as a result of the cutbacks in U.S. aid</a>.</p>
<p>Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/rejecting-trump-abbas-at-un-says-us-too-biased-to-mediate-talks-with-israel/">railed against the Trump administration’s pro-Israel bias</a>, and the Palestinian Authority that Abbas heads has <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-aide-we-wont-meet-with-kushner-greenblatt-or-any-us-officials-on-peace/">refused to meet with or talk to Trump administration officials</a>.</p>
<h2>Political aspirations vs. money</h2>
<p>Even if President Abbas were not so hostile to the Trump administration and vice versa, he would never accept the terms of the peace plan that Kushner and company have devised. </p>
<p>Although its details remain secret, its broad outlines have gradually emerged. </p>
<p>In exchange for a massive infusion of aid and investment financed by wealthy Arab gulf states, the Palestinians would have to accept Israeli settlements deep inside the West Bank, Israel’s permanent control over the Jordan Valley and a long-term Israeli military presence in the West Bank, where <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/we.html">roughly 2.8 million Palestinians live</a>. </p>
<p>The Palestinians would also have to <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/jordan/.premium-why-jordan-is-worried-about-trump-s-peace-plan-1.6198909?=&ts=_1529868895903">abandon their demand for a capital in East Jerusalem</a> and <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/trump-s-peace-plan-will-not-include-sovereign-palestinian-state-report-says-1.7120374">maybe even give up their decades-long quest for sovereign statehood</a>. </p>
<p>No Palestinian leader would agree to these terms, <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/01/23/israeli-palestinian-conflict-is-not-bankruptcy-sale-pub-78208">which effectively amount to a surrender to long-time Israeli demands, not a peace agreement based on mutual compromise</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-un/un-bemoans-unsustainable-palestinian-economy-idUSKCN1LS2ON">Palestinians desperately need economic opportunities</a>. But I doubt they will pressure their leadership to capitulate – <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/jared-kushner-criticizes-abbas-in-rare-palestinian-newspaper-interview-1.6200287">as Kushner apparently hopes they will</a> – or forsake their long struggle for national self-determination. </p>
<p>And many younger Palestinians, who are less committed to the goal of Palestinian statehood, would <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/2018/07/20/palestinians-israel-abbas-gaza-west-bank-peace-pa-palestinian-authority-hamas-1016978.html">prefer to have Israeli citizenship</a> than live in a small, fragmented, autonomous Palestinian entity. </p>
<p>Nor will Arab states like <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/saudis-say-u-s-peace-plan-must-include-e-j-l-as-palestinian-capital-1.6319323">Saudi Arabia force the Palestinians to accept such a one-sided deal</a>. Kushner’s friend, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, might be <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Saudi-Arabia-offered-Abbas-10-billion-to-accept-Trumps-peace-plan-report-588294">willing to offer Abbas billions of dollars</a>, but that won’t entice Abbas to give up Palestinian political aspirations and territorial demands.</p>
<h2>Prelude to Israeli annexation</h2>
<p>While the Palestinians are bound to reject the Trump administration’s peace plan, the Israelis are unlikely to fully embrace it, despite its decidedly pro-Israel bent. </p>
<p>Prime Minister Netanyahu will certainly be careful not to antagonize President Trump, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/world/middleeast/netanyahu-trump-election-scandal.html">with whom he has forged a friendship and political alliance</a>. </p>
<p>But he will also be careful not to lose the support of his coalition partners on which the survival of his government depends. </p>
<p>It seems likely that Netanyahu’s government will include <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/far-right-slate-to-offer-pm-immunity-law-in-exchange-for-settlement-annexation/">far-right parties that want Israel to annex the West Bank</a>, in whole or in part. They will object to any plan that cedes West Bank territory to the Palestinians, since they regard it as sacred land that belongs to the Jewish people for eternity.</p>
<p>I believe there is a real risk that a new, right-wing Israeli government will seize upon Palestinian rejection of Kushner’s peace plan to justify annexing Israeli settlements in the West Bank. </p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-settlements/israels-netanyahu-says-plans-to-annex-settlements-in-west-bank-if-reelected-idUSKCN1RI0JY">television interview</a> shortly before the recent Israeli election, Netanyahu promised to extend Israeli sovereignty to its settlements in the West Bank. This was undoubtedly a last-minute bid by Netanyahu to convince right-wing Israelis, especially settlers, to vote for his Likud Party. </p>
<p>Yet Netanyahu may have no choice but to fulfill this promise if he forms a right-wing government with a slim parliamentary majority. The inevitable failure of Kushner’s peace plan might give him the perfect opportunity to do this – with American acquiescence, if not support.</p>
<p>To avoid this danger, and the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/22/opinion/trump-israel-golan-heights.html">potentially dire consequences that could follow from Israel’s annexation of its West Bank settlements</a>, I think it would be better if the Trump administration just kept its peace plan to itself.</p>
<p>Releasing the plan will probably do more harm than good. It almost certainly won’t bring peace, and it could ultimately lead to a severe deterioration in Israeli-Palestinian relations.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/116024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dov Waxman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>About the only thing the Trump administration’s peace plan has going for it is the fact that no one expects it to work. And the plan’s likely failure could trigger more Israeli-Palestinian violence.Dov Waxman, Professor of Political Science, International Affairs and Israel Studies, Northeastern UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1031472018-09-19T22:40:39Z2018-09-19T22:40:39ZTrump is just the latest U.S. president to push Palestine around<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237160/original/file-20180919-158234-ahn4wl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In this September 1993 photo, U.S. President Bill Clinton presides over White House ceremonies marking the signing of the peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, left, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, right, in Washington. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2005/3/31/john_bolton_in_his_own_words">is at it again</a>. He recently issued a blistering rebuke of the International Criminal Court (ICC): “<a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?451213-1/national-security-adviser-john-bolton-addresses-federalist-society">We will let the ICC die on its own. After all, for all intents and purposes, the ICC is already dead to us</a>.”</p>
<p>Is this another example of U.S. President Donald Trump withdrawing the United States from the international community? Is it yet another harbinger of the end of the post-1945 “rules-based international order?”</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/NWB6IUE0hJU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">John Bolton strongly criticizes the International Criminal Court in this clip on the Guardian website.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No. That’s because “rules-based international order” was never what it appeared to be anyway. Rather than a benign de facto agreement on problem-solving through discussion rather than armed conflict, it represents an exclusive club that ensures the perpetual dominance of some societies over others. </p>
<p>Just ask the Palestinians.</p>
<p>One of the reasons behind Bolton’s tirade is that the U.S. administration wants to prevent the ICC from following through on Palestinian requests to investigate the legality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Trump administration has proven over the last few months that it is more than willing to go out of its way to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestine-unrwa-israel-refugees-united-nations-trump-administration-a8518651.html">punish the Palestinians</a> for daring to challenge Israeli domination, even when that “challenge” has taken the meekest of forms.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gazas-fire-kites-and-balloon-bombs-ignite-tensions-99341">Gaza’s fire kites and balloon bombs ignite tensions</a>
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<p>According to David Rothkopf, a prominent commentator: “<a href="https://soundcloud.com/deepstateradio/is-that-thing-under-john-boltons-nose-a-bugbear">It’s as if the U.S. State Department has handed over its entire Middle East policy to the Prime Minister of Israel.</a>” </p>
<p>Bolton, as if to prove this point, said in his speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel. And today, reflecting congressional concerns with Palestinian attempts to prompt an ICC investigation of Israel, the State Department will announce the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization office here in Washington, D.C.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Not surprising</h2>
<p>At the risk of employing what has become a cliché during the Trump presidency: This is shocking, yes, but not really surprising. </p>
<p>Trump is apparently seeking to destroy the apparently civilized way in which international politics has been conducted since the end of the Second World War — the so-called rules-based international order.</p>
<p>As Kori Schake explained in the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/opinion/sunday/trump-china-america-first.html"><em>New York Times</em></a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Beginning in the wreckage of World War II, America established a set of global norms that solidified its position atop a rules-based international system … building institutions and patterns of behaviour that legitimize American power by giving less powerful countries a say.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trump, so this argument goes, either can’t accept or doesn’t understand this, and is gleefully engaged in the process of wrecking it from the inside. </p>
<p>“This aggressive disregard for the interests of like-minded countries, indifference to democracy and human rights and cultivation of dictators is the new world Mr. Trump is creating,” Schake explains. </p>
<p>However, the notion of a broad and benign American-led world order makes less sense from the standpoint of those excluded by the system.</p>
<p>Indeed, for Palestinians, the Trump administration’s bullying may be more humiliating than previous presidencies, but in terms of substance, the difference is marginal. </p>
<p>The U.S. has always protected Israel’s ability to lord over Palestinian lands and Palestinian lives with impunity; the U.S. has always been happy to use its heft to back its friend under presidents both Democratic and Republican.</p>
<h2>James Baker’s threat</h2>
<p>A useful example comes from celebrated U.S. Secretary of State James Baker, who in 1989 <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1989-05-02/news/mn-2572_1_plo-observer-organization-chairman-yasser-arafat-s-organization">threatened to defund the World Health Organization</a> if Palestine were to join:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The United States vigorously opposes the admission of the PLO to membership in the World Health Organization or any other UN agency … To emphasize the depth of our concern, I will recommend to the president that the United States make no further contributions, voluntary or assessed, to any international organization which makes any change in the PLO’s present status as an observer organization.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Like Bolton’s attack on the ICC, the effect would be to punish a valuable and obviously benevolent partner in the “rules-based international order” merely to ensure that Palestine would be kept out.</p>
<p>Under successive presidents since George H.W. Bush, the U.S. has promoted or enabled some form of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but they’ve always taken place outside the framework of international law. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237154/original/file-20180919-146148-1snm5ns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=531&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this September 1993 photo, Israel’s Foreign Minister Shimon Peres signs the Middle East peace agreement in Washington, D.C. as Bill Clinton and PLO Leader Yasser Arafat, among other officials, look on. The deal later fell apart.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Twenty-five years ago this month, PLO Leader Yasser Arafat <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/world/wp/2018/09/12/feature/a-middle-east-mirage/">shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn</a> and agreed on a phased plan to end the occupation by the turn of the century. There has been virtually no progress and no enforcement by the United States since.</p>
<p>The Americans show scant concern for human rights, the rights of refugees or for UN Security Council resolutions when it comes to Israel-Palestine. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=442&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237140/original/file-20180919-158213-cdgh2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=555&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, looks around Arafat at a news conference in October 1996 after Clinton said they’d failed in a two-day Washington summit to settle their explosive differences.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Doug Mills, File)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead, the U.S. has used its <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/42-times-us-has-used-its-veto-power-against-un-resolutions-israel-942194703">veto power some 43 times</a> to protect Israel from the overwhelming will of the international community, and it has withdrawn and defunded international agencies such as UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council in retribution for those entities recognizing Palestine.</p>
<p>Why? </p>
<p>It’s not as if the Palestinians have been unco-operative. Since the end of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/archive/2003/12/20084101554875168.html">the second intefadeh</a>, the Palestinian Authority — the non-sovereign entity that has governed parts of the West Bank — has indulged the will of the <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/01/18/building-a-police-state-in-palestine/">international community to a degree that is almost craven</a>. </p>
<p>It has curtailed violence against Israel and pursued U.S.-led security sector reform. At the same time, it’s taken steps through bilateral negotiations <a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=palestine+UN+membership&oq=palestine+UN+membership&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l2.6904j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">and through the UN to join the “rules-based order.”</a> All of which is in pursuit of the so-called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/middleeast/israel-palestinians-two-state-solution.html">two-state solution</a> — a partition plan wherein the Palestinians would, at the very least, accept the loss of <a href="https://ifamericaknew.org/history/maps.html">78 per cent of their historic territory</a>.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=915&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/237155/original/file-20180919-143281-bf31kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1150&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">U.S. President Barack Obama waves at the audience after delivering a speech in Cairo in June 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But none of this was good enough for President George W. Bush, who promoted a “<a href="https://www.google.ca/search?q=roadmap+to+peace&oq=roadmap+to+peace&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.4003j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Road Map</a>” that made Palestinian statehood contingent on a “performance analysis” that would be adjudicated exclusively by the occupier. Nor was it enough for President Barack Obama, who told an audience in Cairo in 2009 that “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/presidents-speech-cairo-a-new-beginning">the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable</a>,” but went on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/28/politics/ben-rhodes-veto-un-resolution-palestinian-state-obama/index.html">to oppose Palestinian statehood at every turn</a>.</p>
<p>When viewed in this context, we can see that while Trump’s White House may be more overtly aggressive in its language and willingness to be vindictive toward Palestine and the Palestinians, in substance it’s not significantly different from previous administrations.</p>
<p>Perniciously excluding Palestine from the “rules-based order” is a U.S. priority under any president, whether they’re blue, red … or orange.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trumps-orange-face-may-be-funny-but-this-tanning-historian-says-it-masks-something-deeper-100282">Donald Trump's orange face may be funny, but this tanning historian says it masks something deeper</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103147/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Leech-Ngo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Donald Trump’s strong defence of Israel might be more boisterous than his predecessors, but it’s consistent with the anti-Palestinian policies by previous U.S. administrations.Philip Leech-Ngo, Senior Research Fellow, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of OttawaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1032222018-09-17T04:36:53Z2018-09-17T04:36:53ZTwenty-five years after the Oslo Accords, the prospect of peace in the Middle East remains bleak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236567/original/file-20180917-96155-1jfhqz3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Bill Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat sign the historic Oslo accord at the White House in September 1993.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikicommons/Vince Musi</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Looking back on events 25 years ago, when the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/03/world/meast/oslo-accords-fast-facts/index.html">Oslo Accords</a> were struck on the White House lawn, it is hard to avoid a painful memory. </p>
<p>I was watching from a sickbed in Jerusalem when Bill Clinton stood between Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for that famous handshake on the White House lawn.</p>
<p>At that moment, I was recovering from plastic surgery carried out by a skilled Israeli surgeon and necessitated by a bullet wound inflicted by the Israeli Defence Forces. (I had been caught in crossfire while covering a demonstration in the West Bank by stone-throwing Palestinian youths.)</p>
<p>That scar – like a tattoo – is a reminder of a time when it seemed just possible Arabs and Jews, Israelis and Palestinians could bring themselves to reach an historic compromise.</p>
<p>All these years later, prospects of real progress towards peace, or as American president Donald Trump puts it, the <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/40d77344-b04a-11e8-8d14-6f049d06439c">“deal of the century”</a>, seems further away than ever.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-expands-in-the-middle-east-as-americas-honest-broker-role-fades-74695">Russia expands in the Middle East as America's 'honest broker' role fades</a>
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<p>As a correspondent in the Middle East for a decade (1984-1993) and as co-author of a <a href="http://www.danielpipes.org/938/arafat-in-the-eyes-of-the-beholder">biography of Arafat</a>, I had an understandable interest in the outcome of the Oslo process.</p>
<p>In hours of conversations with members of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s historical leadership, I had tracked the PLO’s faltering progression from outright rejection of Israel’s right to exist to acceptance implicit in the Oslo Accords.</p>
<p>Throughout that process of interviewing and cross-referencing with Israeli sources, I had hoped an honourable divorce could be achieved between decades-long adversaries. Like many, I was disappointed. </p>
<p>In 1993, the so-called Oslo Accords, negotiated in secret outside the Norwegian capital, resulted in mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO. This enabled the beginning of face-to-face peace negotiations.</p>
<h2>A devastating event</h2>
<p>Two years after the historic events at the White House, and by then correspondent in Beijing, I witnessed another episode of lasting and, as it turned out, tragic consequences for the Middle East.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1995/11/05/world/assassination-israel-overview-rabin-slain-after-peace-rally-tel-aviv-israeli.html">On November 4, 1995, Rabin was assassinated</a> while attending a political rally in Tel Aviv by a Jewish fanatic opposed to compromise with the Palestinians.</p>
<p>That devastating moment brought to power for the first time the current Israeli Prime Minister <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-18008697">Benjamin Netanyahu</a>. He has distinguished himself by his unwillingness to engage meaningfully with the Palestinians through four US administrations: those of Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama, and now Trump.</p>
<p>Some argue the Palestinians and their enfeebled leadership bear significant responsibility for peace process paralysis. That viewpoint is valid, up to a point. But it is also the case that Netanyahu’s replacement of Rabin stifled momentum.</p>
<p>Under Trump, Netanyahu finds himself under no pressure to concede ground in negotiations, or even negotiate at all. Indeed, the administration seems intent on further marginalising a Palestinian national movement, even as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/the-oslo-accords-were-doomed-by-their-ambiguity/570226/">settlement construction in the occupied areas continues apace</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/236583/original/file-20180917-177968-12fis3j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">US President Donald Trump, here with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has promised the ‘deal of the century’ in the Middle East, but the details have not yet been made clear.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/ Olivier Douliery/pool</span></span>
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<p>On the eve of the accords, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/the-oslo-accords-were-doomed-by-their-ambiguity/570226/">there were 110,000 Jewish settlers</a> in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That number has grown to 430,000 today. In 2017, those numbers grew by 20% more than the average for previous years.</p>
<p>The Trump administration’s decision to <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/05/282032.htm">move the American embassy to Jerusalem</a> without making a distinction between Jewish West or Arab East Jerusalem could hardly have been more antagonistic.</p>
<p>By taking this action, and not making it clear that East Jerusalem as a future capital of a putative Palestinian state would not be compromised, the administration has thumbed its nose at legitimate Palestinian aspirations.</p>
<p>The administration’s follow-up moves to <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/28/middle-east-palestinian-israel-pompeo-trump-kushner-u-s-to-end-all-funding-to-u-n-agency-that-aids-palestinian-refugees/">strip funding for the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA)</a> and assistance to Palestinian hospitals in East Jerusalem have further soured the atmosphere.</p>
<p>UNWRA is responsible for the livelihoods of thousands of Palestinian refugees in camps in the West Bank, Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. These are the ongoing casualties of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence against the Arabs.</p>
<p>In this context, it is interesting to note that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy, has <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/trump-palestinians-israel-refugees-unrwaand-allies-seek-end-to-refugee-status-for-millions-of-palestinians-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-unrwa-israel-palestine-peace-plan-jared-kushner-greenb/">urged that refugee status be denied Palestinians and their offspring displaced by the war of 1948</a>.</p>
<p>In that year, two-thirds, or about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jan/14/israel">750,000 residents of what had been Palestine</a> under a British mandate became refugees.</p>
<p>Against this background and years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, including two major wars – the Six-Day War of 1967 and Yom Kippur War of 1973 – the two sides had in 1993 reached what was then described as an historic compromise.</p>
<h2>Hopes dashed</h2>
<p>What needs to be understood about Oslo is that its two documents, signed by Rabin and Arafat, did not go further than mutual recognition of Israel and the PLO in the first, and, in the second, a declaration of principles laying down an agenda for the negotiation of Palestinian self-government in the occupied territories.</p>
<p>What Oslo did not do was provide a detailed road-map for final status negotiations, which were to be completed within five years. This would deal with the vexed issues of refugees, Jerusalem, demilitarisation of the Palestinian areas in the event of a two-state settlement, and anything but an implied acknowledgement of territorial compromise, including land swaps, that would be needed to bring about a lasting agreement.</p>
<p>Writing in the <a href="http://jps.ucpress.edu/content/23/3/24">Journal of Palestine Studies</a> in 1994, Oxford professor Avi Shlaim described the White House handshake as:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>one of the most momentous events in the 20th-century history of the Middle East. In one stunning move, the two leaders redrew the geopolitical map of the entire region.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now emeritus professor, Shlaim’s own hopes, along with those of many others, that genuine compromise was possible, have been dashed.</p>
<p>Referring to the recent passage through the Knesset of a “basic law” that declares Israel to be “the nation-state of the Jewish people”, Shlaim <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/13/palestinians-still-face-apartheid-israel-25-years-after-oslo-accord">recently observed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This law stands in complete contradiction to the 1948 declaration of independence, which recognizes the full equality of all the state’s citizens ‘without distinction of religion, race or sex’… Netanyahu has radically reconfigured Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, rather than a Jewish and a democratic state. As long as the government that introduced this law stays in power, any voluntary agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will remain largely a pipe dream.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Martin Indyk, now en route to the Council on Foreign Relations from the Brookings Institution, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2018/09/13/the-day-israeli-palestinian-peace-seemed-within-reach/">shared Shlaim’s hopes of an “historic turning point’’</a> in the annals of the Arab-Israeli conflict.</p>
<p>As Clinton’s National Security Council adviser on the Middle East, Indyk was responsible for the 1993 arrangements on the White House South Lawn. He writes: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The handshake was meant to signify the moment when Israeli and Palestinian leaders decided to begin the process of ending their bloody conflict and resolving their differences at the negotiating table.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Two decades later, in 2014, the funeral rites were pronounced on the Oslo Process after then Secretary of State John Kerry had done all he could to revive it against Netanyahu’s obduracy. Oslo had, in any case, been on life support since Rabin’s assassination.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fifty-years-on-from-the-six-day-war-the-prospects-for-middle-east-peace-remain-dim-78749">Fifty years on from the Six Day War, the prospects for Middle East peace remain dim</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>"Then,” in Indyk’s words, “along came Trump with "the Deal of the Century”. Indyk writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>His plan has yet to be revealed but its purpose appears clear – to legitimize the status quo and call it peace. Trump has already attempted to arbitrate every one of the final status issues in Israel’s favor: no capital in East Jerusalem for the Palestinians; no ‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees; no evacuation of outlying settlements; no ’67 lines; no end of occupation; and no Palestinian state…
Over 25 years, in shifting roles from witness to midwife, to arbiter, the United States has sadly failed to help Israelis and Palestinians make peace, leaving them for the time being in what has essentially been a frozen conflict.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>However, as history shows, “frozen conflicts” don’t remain frozen forever. They tend to erupt when least expected.</p>
<p>Twenty-five years ago, I shared a bloody hospital casualty station – not unlike a scene from M.A.S.H. – with more than a dozen wounded Palestinians. Some of them would not recover from terrible wounds inflicted by live ammunition.</p>
<p>I asked myself then, as I do now: what’s the point of it all?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/103222/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tony Walker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In 1993 the Oslo Accords were struck in optimism, but a quarter of a century later little has changed - and there’s no real prospect it ever will.Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/974872018-06-06T15:17:50Z2018-06-06T15:17:50ZPalestinians are not powerless – they can take the initiative<p>Donald Trump’s recent policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been unambiguous, to put it mildly. His administration is increasingly aligned with <a href="https://theconversation.com/profile-avigdor-lieberman-israels-hardline-defence-minister-96474">one of the most right-wing governments</a> in Israel’s history. Most radically of all, it reversed a longstanding US policy by <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-trumps-recognition-of-jerusalem-as-the-capital-of-israel-means-for-the-middle-east-88722">recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel</a>, and relocating the US embassy there from Tel Aviv. But, while the US policy has been the subject of furious debate, there’s been relatively little discussion about how the Palestinian leaders can respond.</p>
<p>It’s very important not to see the Palestinians and their leaders as passive actors or helpless victims. This is an evolving situation, and the Palestinian people are far from powerless. In fact, the current US-Israeli alliance presents Palestinian leaders with new opportunities to formulate counter-policies and preserve the Palestinian issue’s status as a just cause.</p>
<p>There’s plenty to do on the home front, and high up the list is achieving national unity among the different Palestinian political factions – Fatah and Hamas – and also the wider Palestinian communities in the homeland and the Shatat (diaspora). </p>
<p>Shatat communities have been marginalised in Palestinian political life ever since the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7385301.stm">Oslo Accords</a> were signed in the early 1990s. While the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) returned to the occupied territories, the vast majority of the Palestinian refugee and displaced communities in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan were left waiting for an end to the displacement that began in 1948. They are still waiting today.</p>
<p>The PLO’s existing institutions need to be reformed and reinvigorated, and Palestinian communities within the homeland and the Shatat given a true voice in them. More than that, if Palestinian leaders want to put Israel under pressure, they need to think seriously about engaging in national campaigns of nonviolent popular resistance and civil disobedience.</p>
<h2>Changing course</h2>
<p>One of the Israeli military and political leadership’s biggest fears is the emergence of an unarmed and nonviolent movement in the occupied Palestinian territories, one that could attract international support and the attention of the world’s media. The possibility of Palestinian refugees marching towards their confiscated land and demanding their national rights has <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/gaza-s-refugees-have-always-haunted-israel-now-they-re-on-the-march-1.5958265">haunted Israel for 70 years</a>, and the last thing the Netanyahu government wants to see is an organised peaceful mass resistance movement that the wider world might feel comfortable supporting.</p>
<p>Along these lines, there’s another radical option the Palestinian leaders should consider: to shift its focus from the failing two-state solution to the pursuit of full and equal rights for all its citizens.</p>
<p>Palestinians in Israel face severe everyday discrimination, and Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem are living under oppressive military occupation. Both are subject to complex and unjust legal structures that accord full rights to Israelis and settlers while denying protection and national rights to indigenous Palestinian communities.</p>
<p>Seeking equal rights and justice in all of Palestine is not only a democratic question, but a challenge to exclusive ideologies that have maintained separation and conflict. Among Palestinian intellectual and political representatives, the discourse of citizenship and equality is <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/04/israel-palestinians-mahmoud-abbas-demography-two-state.html">regaining currency</a> as a primary means of conflict transformation – largely because of the failure of the two-state solution.</p>
<h2>The high ground</h2>
<p>Another option is to keep pursuing international recognition of Palestinian statehood. This may not make much impact on Palestinians’ everyday lives, but it will certainly help enhance Palestine’s international status and foreground the Palestinian issue in international law. And that in turn will put Israel under increasing pressure to accept Palestinian national independence.</p>
<p>The most recent breakthroughs on this front came at the UN, which in 2012 effectively <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-statehood/palestinians-win-de-facto-u-n-recognition-of-sovereign-state-idUSBRE8AR0EG20121201">recognised Palestine’s statehood</a> and granted it membership as a “non-member observer state”. That move has granted the Palestinians access to international justice mechanisms; today, the <a href="https://www.icc-cpi.int/palestine">International Criminal Court</a> is investigating potential war crimes committed by Israel since June 2014 in Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza.</p>
<p>The Palestinian political leadership can also do more to leverage the PLO’s recognition of Israel. Whereas the PLO has recognised Israel’s right to live in peace and security since the 1993 Oslo Accords, Israel has never reciprocated and recognised Palestinian statehood. Instead, in the words of <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt18dzscm">Sara Roy</a>, the Oslo process saw the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories became “formalised” and “institutionalised”. Yet despite <a href="https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/173784-180502-palestinian-leader-to-i24news-oslo-agreement-to-be-voted-obsolete">repeated statements</a> bemoaning the Oslo framework’s failure, the Palestinian Authority has yet to capitalise on this obvious political inequality. Instead, it is still firmly committed thanks to the political, economic and security interests of its ruling elites.</p>
<p>To change the calculus, the Palestinian Authority leadership needs to put the issue of equal state recognition back on the agenda and consider the merit of its dogged commitment to the Oslo Accords. Options like this might not reverse the damage created by Trump’s alignment with the right-wing Israeli leadership, but they will prove that the Palestinians are serious and capable of developing policies that can lead to genuine change and win over international public opinion.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>More articles about <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/palestine-1178?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Palestine</a>, written by experts:</em></p>
<ul>
<li><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-palestinians-to-be-resilient-the-rest-of-the-world-has-failed-them-96587?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Stop telling Palestinians to be ‘resilient’ – the rest of the world has failed them</a></em></li>
<li><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/five-myths-about-palestines-youth-activists-debunked-96736?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Five myths about Palestine’s youth activists – debunked</a></em></li>
<li><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-now-has-a-toxic-biosphere-of-war-that-no-one-can-escape-95397?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement">Gaza now has a toxic ‘biosphere of war’ that no one can escape</a></em></li>
</ul><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97487/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yaser Alashqar does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Palestinian nonviolent protests and mass movement of resistance is one of Israel’s biggest fears.Yaser Alashqar, Adjunct Assistant Professor and Lecturer in conflict studies and Middle East politics, Trinity College DublinLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/976572018-06-06T14:03:44Z2018-06-06T14:03:44ZPlans to ban photos of Israeli soldiers will stain the country’s reputation even further<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221990/original/file-20180606-137301-1km18gq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=205%2C397%2C3812%2C2439&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/idfonline/5201914594/sizes/o/">IDF/Flickr.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>That evening, the sun sank swiftly. The tank which blocked our way was briefly silhouetted by the last sharp rays, before it disappeared into the gloom. It was still there, but the detail of track and gun turret could no longer be seen. Eventually, whoever was giving the orders decided we could go. The material we had filmed would not make it onto that night’s news. </p>
<p>It was October 2003. I was working as a BBC correspondent in the Gaza Strip. I was trying to return from Rafah, at the territory’s southern edge, to my office in Gaza City. A major Israeli military operation, code named “Root Canal”, was underway. The army strictly controlled access to the area. My colleagues and I had got into Rafah without too much trouble, but had waited several hours to get out. By the time we did, our material was late. </p>
<p>That hardly bothered the soldiers who held us up. They weren’t wondering which bulletins we were missing. They probably weren’t too bothered that they were stopping us getting our report out, either. Israeli army operations in Gaza often involve civilian deaths. In such a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/03/v3_israel_palestinians/maps/html/population_settlements.stm">densely populated strip of land</a>, where the people are not permitted to leave, it can hardly be otherwise. </p>
<p>Operation Root Canal was targeting tunnels running under Gaza’s border with Egypt. That day, we had heard the stories of Rafah residents whose houses had been destroyed because they were suspected of concealing tunnel entrances, or of being used as firing positions – or just because they were unlucky enough to be too close to Israeli army posts, at a time when the Israeli army were going on the offensive against armed Palestinian groups. </p>
<p>Whatever the reasons given for the operation, the consequences for local residents would not exactly look good on the international news. No army wants that kind of coverage.</p>
<h2>Bad press</h2>
<p>Now, apparently troubled by recent incidents of soldiers caught on camera breaking the law – Israeli soldier Elor Azaria’s shooting to death a wounded, prone, Palestinian attacker being perhaps <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL-h4s0H4Fw">the highest profile example</a> – one Israeli politician wants to place strict legal limits on the filming and photographing of soldiers. </p>
<p>Robert Ilatov is a member of parliament for the right-wing nationalist party Yisrael Beitenu (which translates as “Israel, our home”). His plan has already been criticised by journalists’ organisations: “It constitutes a serious breach of the freedom of the press, as it precisely criminalises the work of journalists”, in the view of the <a href="http://www.ifj.org/nc/en/news-single-view/category/reports/article/israel-ifj-condemns-bill-to-ban-filming-soldiers-on-duty/">International Federation of Journalists</a>. </p>
<p>The Israeli–Palestinian conflict has been the focus of extensive international reporting since the middle of the last century. “Every single word is scrutinised”, said Crispian Balmer, then Jerusalem bureau chief for Reuters, of the challenges of covering the conflict, in an interview for my book <a href="https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137395122">Headlines from the Holy Land</a>. </p>
<p>The bloodshed in Syria may have drawn media and diplomatic resources away from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank in recent years. But the Israeli army’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-palestinians-to-be-resilient-the-rest-of-the-world-has-failed-them-96587">killing of Palestinian protesters</a> at the Gaza border fence last month shows that the conflict can still grab the world’s attention. Even in our image-saturated world, pictures seem to retain a particular power – easily shared as they are on social media. This power is presumably what concerns Ilatov.</p>
<h2>Bad reputation</h2>
<p>The opposition to his plans is not confined to international organisations. Israel’s leading liberal newspaper, Ha'aretz, <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/the-bill-to-protect-elor-azaria-1.6117404">has condemned the bill</a> as “dangerous”, noting that “anyone who breaks the law is subject to five years in prison”. Yet censorship on reporting the activities of armies is nothing new. Its rules are often characterised by vagueness. </p>
<p>British correspondents during World War I were forbidden to publish any, “false statements or utterances ‘likely to cause disaffection to His Majesty’,” as Susan Carruthers put it in her book <a href="https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/?sf1=barcode&st1=9780230345355">The Media at War</a>. The bill before the Israeli parliament echoes that lack of clarity, warning civillians and journalists alike against “undermining the morale of Israel’s soldiers and residents”.</p>
<p>Although they are rarely required to conform to it, any international journalist granted an Israeli Government Press Card has to agree to “<a href="https://forms.gov.il/globaldata/getsequence/getHtmlForm.aspx?formType=gpocardeng@pmo.gov.il#">accept the censorship declaration</a>”. This new legislation would be more extensive, covering not just the foreign media, but anyone at all. </p>
<p>“Being a spectator of calamities taking place in another country is a quintessential modern experience”, wrote Susan Sontag in <a href="https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/54582/regarding-the-pain-of-others/">Regarding the Pain of Others</a>. Social media have given us the chance to see ever more of our world. As with all new media, governments and armies seek to influence the messages they bring.</p>
<p>Today, leaders of the world’s most powerful countries <a href="https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/04/25/press-freedom-index-trump-attacks/549000002/">feel at liberty to sneer</a> at any journalists who question them. Adding extra layers of censorship to that scorn will hardly help audiences to understand this complex and unstable age. Besides, legislation has limited power to stop what technology has started. While military victories may enhance a country’s reputation, the manner in which they are achieved may also tarnish it. Criminalising journalism definitely does.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97657/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Rodgers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new bill proposes to ban reporters and civilians alike from photographing or videoing Israeli troops.James Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/968642018-05-18T13:00:10Z2018-05-18T13:00:10ZPalestinian women: a history of female resistance in Gaza and the West Bank<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219576/original/file-20180518-42233-v7vdix.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C68%2C3431%2C2258&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Woman on the march. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/bilin-palestine-december-31-2010-palestinian-1062820916?src=0u4wKyY_kqLINqEMheKEOw-1-38">Dominika Zarzycka/Shutterstock.</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Outside observers tend to imagine the face of Gaza as resolutely male: the bearded Hamas “militant”, or the young man hurling stones across the border fence. But Palestinian women, both in Gaza and the West Bank, have a significant presence as activists, protesting against an unjust occupation, but also as the backbone of a fragmented and demoralised society.</p>
<p>Women have been active in the Palestinian struggle since its early days. In the 1920s, they protested side by side with men against British control of their country. They formed charitable organisations and <a href="http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=83084">expressed themselves politically</a>.</p>
<p>After the state of Israel was created in 1948, the majority of Palestinians were forced to flee into exile, and here too women played a key role as protectors of their families, and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2538283">repositories of the “national story”</a>. It was vital that Palestinians, wherever they were in the world, did not forget what had happened and continued to insist on their right of return to their homeland. Women passed their memories of Palestine down to subsequent generations. </p>
<h2>Participating in politics</h2>
<p>In the 1960s, with the emergence of a Palestinian liberation movement, dedicated to regaining the lost homeland, some women turned to more militant activities. Leila Khalid, for example, hijacked several airliners on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and became <a href="https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745329512/leila-khaled/">a familiar face</a> in the Western media. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=294&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/219578/original/file-20180518-42238-hi5652.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=369&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mural of Leila Khaled on a wall in Bethlehem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leila_Khaled_-_Icon_of_the_Palestinian_Revolution.jpg">Rehgina/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Gradually, women also started to engage in formal politics, through membership of the main Palestinian political factions. Although Palestinians tend to be socially conservative and are anxious to shield women and girls from what might be considered “dishonourable” or nontraditional behaviour, many younger women found a new kind of freedom through education and political mobilisation.</p>
<p>A largely non-violent intifada (or “uprising”) began in 1987. Women, men and children combined efforts to resist the 20-year occupation of their land. They did so <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/030639689303400303">in innovative ways</a>, for example by establishing alternative educational facilities for children after all the schools were closed, creating an alternative economy based on home produce, as well as <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Intifada.html?id=KYPVNdzXUJkC&redir_esc=y">engaging in large-scale protests</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-gazas-peaceful-protesters-power-is-all-about-perception-96679">For Gaza's peaceful protesters, power is all about perception</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There were also attempts at dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli women. For example, in July 2006, members of the International Women’s Commission for a Just and Sustainable Palestinian-Israeli Peace (IWC) convened an emergency meeting in Athens. They urged the international community to intervene. In <a href="https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/554262E9B99D8D80852572EB0048CF2F">their words</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Civilians, mainly women and children, are paying the price daily for this vicious cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation. This is a time of great danger … If no action is taken today, tomorrow will be too late. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although no resolution came out of this or similar calls, initiatives involving women from the two sides were judged to have been among the most promising.</p>
<h2>Telling the world</h2>
<p>Such activities ended in 2000, with the start of the second intifada. The resistance was no longer a shared endeavour involving all sectors of society – it was an armed confrontation. Women <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1395628?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">suffered greatly</a> from rising levels of violence and decreasing security for civilians. </p>
<p>No one felt safe. Girls travelling from their homes to university were likely to experience harassment at Israeli army checkpoints and, as a result, many parents started to keep their daughters at home, and even to marry them off at the earliest possible opportunity; the age of marriage began to fall. </p>
<p>As the economic situation deteriorated, women had fewer opportunities for employment. Incidences of mental illness rose and women exhibited deep anxiety about the safety of their children.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stop-telling-palestinians-to-be-resilient-the-rest-of-the-world-has-failed-them-96587">Stop telling Palestinians to be 'resilient' – the rest of the world has failed them</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Many Palestinians feel that they have no control over their own lives. Under a harsh Israeli regime, it has been very difficult to exercise agency and Palestinian political parties have seemed weak and ineffectual. The Islamist party Hamas seemed to offer a more assertive form of opposition, and many women were attracted by its grassroots organising and evident ability to confront the Israeli occupation. Some <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14690764.2010.546115">became militants</a>.</p>
<p>While it may be tempting to argue that the participation of women in violence is a sign of a society that has lost its way, the reality is more complex. Many Palestinian women point out that their community is powerless; it has neither the political leadership nor the weapons to fight a conventional war. Instead, it relies on all its members to participate and “tell the world” what is happening to them. </p>
<p>By protesting at the Gaza-Israel border to mark the anniversary of al-nakbah (“the catastrophe”), Palestinians are reminding the world that they were dispossessed 70 years ago and this injustice has still not been remedied. Palestinian women, as much as men, have a vital stake in finding a solution to the conflict, that will provide safety and certainty for the next generation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maria Holt receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council and the United States Institute of Peace. </span></em></p>Palestinian women are the backbone of a fragmented and demoralised society.Maria Holt, Reader in Politics, University of WestminsterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/902822018-01-23T14:52:02Z2018-01-23T14:52:02ZTrump cuts aid to Palestinian refugees – and throws their future into doubt<p>The Trump administration has announced that it will <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/cuts-unrwa-funding-180116193513823.html">drastically cut its donations</a> to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (<a href="https://www.unrwa.org">UNRWA</a>). Instead of the US$125m expected, UNRWA will now receive only US$60m from the US to fund its services for Palestinian refugees in the West Bank, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.</p>
<p>The move is the latest stage in the ongoing fallout from the US’ December 2017 decision to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-42246564">recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital</a>, to which the Palestinian Authority responded by saying that it would <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/erekat-no-peace-talks-until-us-revokes-jerusalem-recognition/">no longer participate</a> in US-led peace talks. President Trump then <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/948322496591384576">tweeted</a> that he would cut US payments to “the Palestinians” due to their lack of respect. </p>
<p>The significance of this funding cut cannot be overstated. UNRWA currently provides not only emergency relief but also education and healthcare to more than 5m Palestinian refugees. As UNRWA Commissioner-General, Pierre Krähenbühl, <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-unrwa-commissioner-general-pierre-kr%C3%A4henb%C3%BChl-1">stated</a>, their living conditions are now severely threatened. The impact is likely to be particularly serious in Gaza, where <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/where-we-work/gaza-strip">more than 70%</a> of the population receive services from UNRWA. </p>
<p>The cut’s repercussions will be political as well as humanitarian. UNRWA provides aid to <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/palestine-refugees">exiled communities of stateless Palestinians</a> who originally lost their homes in the 1948 war (known in Arabic as the <a href="https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/PalestineRemix/al-nakba.html#/17">Nakba</a> or catastrophe). In other words, it serves some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the Middle East – people whose <a href="http://prrn.mcgill.ca/research/papers/brynen_980403.htm">position</a> remains one of the most intractable <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11104284">issues</a> in the struggle with Israel.</p>
<p>Standing at the intersection of aid and politics, UNRWA is seen as a key force for maintaining stability in the region. Indeed, UNRWA spokesperson Chris Gunness has said that the cut <a href="https://www.albawaba.com/news/original-unrwa-trump-cuts-funding-refugees-1075840">threatens the stability</a> of the entire Middle East.</p>
<p>In particular, UNRWA currently provides <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/what-we-do/education">schooling</a> to half a million Palestinian children. They are now at risk of becoming acutely vulnerable at a time when numerous extremists are seeking recruits in the region. This will be to the benefit of the US’s enemies, and particular, it will create a vacuum for more hostile regional actors to provide refugees with services – most notably <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/12/donald-trump-cut-funding-palestinian-refugees-middle-east-security">Hamas in Gaza</a>. </p>
<p>Since UNRWA works across the Middle East, the impact will not be limited to the Palestinian territories. The agency’s services are vital in Jordan, Lebanon, and most of all Syria, which is now in its seventh year of civil war. Since 2011, UNRWA has provided essential aid to Palestinians fleeing Syria as <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/03/palestinian-syrians-refugees-160321055107834.html">two-time refugees</a>. It has also helped relieve the burden on the Jordanian and Lebanese governments, which host the <a href="http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/culture/the-palestinian-precedent-and-the-syrian-refugee-crisis_44193">largest populations of Syrian refugees</a> in addition to long-term Palestinian refugee populations.</p>
<h2>Tearing it up</h2>
<p>Unsurprisingly, Palestinian leaders have been swift to condemn the move. The Palestine Liberation Organisation described it as a <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Trump-cuts-UNRWA-funding-amid-Abbas-assault-536917">political decision</a> designed to <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/plo-cut-to-unrwa-proves-u-s-complicit-in-israeli-occupation-1.5742399">undermine Palestinian rights</a>. The Trump administration’s <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/abbas-palestinians-are-canaanites-were-in-jerusalem-before-jews-1.5743576">already shaky relationship</a> with the Palestinian Authority seems doomed to decline further.</p>
<p>To make matters worse, the US’s announcement comes at a critical time in Palestinian politics. After over a decade of bitter division, rival factions Fatah and Hamas signed a <a href="https://theconversation.com/palestinian-leaders-must-make-their-unity-deal-work-for-their-own-sake-and-their-peoples-85033">reconciliation deal</a> in October 2017, which set out proposals to establish a united Palestinian government in the West Bank and Gaza. But recent <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-fatah-hamas-are-at-an-impasse-1.5630299">reports</a> suggest that the deal may be <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171222-hamas-reconciliation-agreement-with-fatah-collapsing/">stalling</a> – and further instability will not help.</p>
<p>The cut to UNRWA’s funding also signifies serious fissures in US foreign policy. While some right-wing politicians in the US have long criticised UNRWA for allegedly being pro-Palestinian, successive administrations have continued to fund it. Krähenbühl noted this in his recent <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-unrwa-commissioner-general-pierre-kr%C3%A4henb%C3%BChl-1">statement</a>, pointing out that the US <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestory/2018/01/withholding-aid-palestinian-refugees-180119175843394.html?ref=hvper.com">donated US$350m</a> last year. In reversing this decades-long position, the Trump administration has signalled it is willing to disregard some of the central pillars of US foreign policy.</p>
<h2>The view from abroad</h2>
<p>International reactions to the move have largely been unfavourable. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern and pointed out in a statement that <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2018/sgsm18856.doc.htm">UNRWA is a UN organisation</a>, not a Palestinian institution as Trump implied. <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/arab-league-us-cutting-unrwa-funds-to-erase-palestinian-refugees/">The Arab League</a> and <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/global-ngos-criticise-drastic-cuts-unrwa-funding-180117061559788.html">numerous NGOs</a> have also been critical. Following the US decision, the Belgian government has pledged <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/belgium-pledges-23m-unrwa-aid-cut-180118081044623.html">an emergency donation of US$23m</a> and the Norwegian government has <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/norway-provides-nok-125-million-un-agency-palestine-refugees">announced</a> one of 125 million krone – but these will not fill the gap completely.</p>
<p>Only the Israeli government has <a href="http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/israel/2018/january/as-us-slashes-65m-to-anti-israel-unrwa-netanyahu-says-us-to-move-embassy-to-jerusalem-much-sooner">welcomed</a> the news, following on from <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/11/israeli-pm-calls-un-dismantle-palestinian-aid-agency/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_fb">Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s call last year</a> to abolish UNRWA completely. Yet with the Trump administration vocal in its disregard for world opinion, its isolation on this issue may prove immaterial. </p>
<p>Before the US announced the funding cut, UNRWA was already suffering from a <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/statement-unrwa-commissioner-general-pierre-kr%C3%A4henb%C3%BChl-0">prolonged budget deficit</a>. Now it faces another crisis, UNRWA has responded with an <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/donate">emergency appeal</a>, and is considering alternative sources of funding. But it doesn’t have much time – and the window for mitigating the cut’s potentially disastrous impact is worryingly tight.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This article has been updated to include the Norwegian government’s announcement.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Irfan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With a single cut in donations to a UN agency, Donald Trump has abandoned another norm of US foreign policy. The consequences could be disastrous.Anne Irfan, Teaching Fellow in Middle Eastern History, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/497592015-10-27T05:47:03Z2015-10-27T05:47:03ZNetanyahu’s narrative: how the Israeli PM is rewriting history to suit himself<p>What more can be said about Netanyahu’s flagrant Holocaust revisionism? Rainer Schultze <a href="https://theconversation.com/netanyahu-the-grand-mufti-and-the-holocaust-why-it-is-important-to-get-the-historical-facts-right-49617">summarised</a> the incident nicely. By claiming the Palestinian mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini, inspired Hitler to plan the Holocaust, Netanyahu was engaging in blatant historical revisionism for the sake of contemporary politics. It certainly is worth repeating Netanyahu’s claim:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here.’ ‘So what should I do with them?’ he asked. He said: ‘Burn them.’</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Recently there has been renewed activity in the project of accrediting this alternative historical narrative. Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.682144">dug out</a> a reference-laden article by <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/palestinians-arabs-and-the-holocaust/">Joseph Spoerl</a> on the website of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs which attempts to link Husseini with Nazi ideology. Similar accounts have been published in Hebrew by right-leaning Israeli think tanks <a href="http://mida.org.il/category/%D7%9E%D7%A0%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%AA%D7%99/english-archive/">Mida</a>, which defines itself as “conservative-liberal” and the <a href="http://www.forumkedem.org.il/english/about-us/">Kedem Forum</a>, an organisation specialising in public diplomacy.</p>
<p>Michael Sells has traced the narrative of the mufti as the progenitor of the idea of the Holocaust in an excellent <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jore.12119/full">academic article</a> and demonstrated that the claim is baseless. Nevertheless, as commentators have pointed out, the script that assigns Palestinian blame for the Holocaust serves a political purpose. It re-narrates the history of the Holocaust as a product of a single Palestinian historical figure. In doing so, it feeds into older and more established myths.</p>
<h2>Amalek the supervillain</h2>
<p>In Jewish tradition, “Amalek” is an abstraction that refers to eternal enemies of the Jews. It comes from <a href="http://biblehub.com/niv/exodus/17.htm">Exodus 17</a>: “The Lord will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation.” As Jeffrey Goldberg demonstrated, the myth of <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2009/05/the-abuse-of-amalek/18084/">Amalek</a> is often mobilised to string the Palestinian into a history of judeophobic persecution “from generation to generation”. The evil mufti narrative makes the historical figure of the mufti an almost ahistorical and mythical personification of Amalek and the very spirit of Israeli historiography.</p>
<p>The mufti, Netanyahu explained in his speech, was around to instigate attacks in 1920, 1921 and 1929 – and, while Netanyahu did not mention the full charge sheet against the mufti, the mufti is usually also blamed for the flight of Jews from Arab countries following the establishment of the state of Israel, as Spoerl <a href="http://jcpa.org/article/palestinians-arabs-and-the-holocaust/">explained</a>: “The mufti’s call for murder and ethnic cleansing would not fall on deaf ears. After 1948, 850,000 Jews were violently driven from Arab lands, stripped of their property and passports”.</p>
<p>While the meaning of the evil mufti narrative and its relation with existing myths and attitudes in Israeli and Jewish life is worthy of a discussion, what is also interesting is the interpretation some Netanyahu supporters have given to it after the fact, arguing that Netanyahu deliberately lied in order to bring the world’s attention to the little-known history of Palestinian complicity with the Nazis. </p>
<p>Elli Fischer <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-brilliance-of-bibis-big-lie-a-dramatization/">wrote in the Times of Israel</a> about: “The brilliance of Bibi’s big lie”, while Carolyne Glick <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Crazy-like-a-fox-429841">wrote in her article in the Jerusalem Post</a> that: “For most Westerners, this is the first they’ve heard of the fact that the Palestinians’ George Washington was a Nazi war criminal.” </p>
<p>Of course, casting Husseini as the “Palestinian George Washington” is almost as much a fabrication as the “big lie” itself. But the idea that Netanyahu made these false assertions in order to introduce audiences to their context, which is implicit in Jeffrey Herf’s account as well, who <a href="http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-husseini-and-the-historians/">wrote</a> that: “Netanayhu’s comments about Husseini’s lasting impact on Palestinian political culture are very much on the mark” (Netanyahu made no such comments, his accusation was direct: “he said 'burn them’”), is as revealing as the content of his claims.</p>
<p>There is a philosophical construct known as “Wittgenstein’s ladder”, which was popularised by the late Terry Pratchett as “lie-to-children”. It means that in order to get across a complicated idea, sometimes you need to use an explanation that is actually wrong but which helps a child – or anyone learning about anything complex – build an understanding of that issue. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=454&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/99669/original/image-20151026-18424-14qvhga.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jerusalem’s grand mufti, Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, with Adolf Hitler in 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1987-004-09A / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is the approach Netanyahu’s supporters have taken. Netanyahu has deliberately taken a public blow, knowingly telling a lie, in order to focus his audience in what he considers to be the larger truth of historical Palestinian complicity in the persecution of Jews. While this argument is advanced as a desperate defence over a pretty clear statement, it actually neatly frames Netanyahu’s recent approach to politics. </p>
<h2>Lying to children</h2>
<p>When asked by the BBC’s Lyse Doucet last week about the chances of renewing negotiations, Netanyahu <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p035cj4w">responded</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Are we living in the same planet Lyse? … Right now, as we speak, we can meet I have no problem with that … I’m willing to meet him he’s not willing to meet me – and you ask me about the resumptions of negotiations. Come on, get with the programme. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The condescending attitude and the crystal clear platitude clash with his statements from the previous day, when he compared the pronouncements of Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, to those of <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.681499">Islamic State</a>. Having asserted his willingness to engage in negotiations Netanyahu tells Doucet: “These people don’t want negotiations and they’re inciting for violence, direct your questions to them.” </p>
<p>But how convincing is Netanyahu’s willingness to negotiate with Abbas? Especially given that the education minister, Naftali Bennett of the Jewish Home party, <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/bennett-government-doesnt-back-pm-on-palestinian-state/">said</a> that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>When we talk about two states – it gives them hope. The government isn’t talking about a Palestinian state and therefore what the prime minister says is his own opinion and is not the position of the government of Israel.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The tensions within the Israeli government, which is reliant on a parliamentary majority of one, are simply too great to allow for any real change of policy towards the Palestinians. This policy was reiterated by Netanyahu recently when he <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.682374">announced</a> that: “We need to control all of the territory for the foreseeable future.” </p>
<p>What was that about wanting to talk? Just like Netanyahu’s latest announcement – a counter-terror <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israel-developing-app-to-call-for-help-in-a-terror-attack-430086">app</a> – it’s a trick.</p>
<p>As for the Holocaust revisionism itself, sadly, it is not. The incoming Israeli ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/22/world/middleeast/netanyahu-saying-palestinian-mufti-inspired-holocaust-draws-broad-criticism.html?_r=0">referred reporters inquiring about Netanyahu’s pronouncements concerning the mufti</a> to a 1993 book that details the mufti’s relations with the Third Reich. Its author is Benjamin Netanyahu.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/49759/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yoav Galai does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Israeli PM’s ‘big lie’ about Hitler and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem was of a piece with Netanyahu’s history of making false and misleading claims.Yoav Galai, PhD candidate in the School of International Relations, University of St AndrewsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/466762015-08-27T00:42:50Z2015-08-27T00:42:50ZIs peace between Hamas and Israel possible? Tony Blair seems to think so<p>Given his central role in instigating the present <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/08/14/abadis-reforms-and-the-death-of-us-imposed-democracy-in-iraq">pandemonium in Iraq</a>, former UK prime minister Tony Blair was always a curious choice as the UN envoy for peace in the Middle East. Palestinians in particular thought Blair was biased towards Israel in his official <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-28/british-ex-pm-tony-blair-quits-as-middle-east-envoy/6502688">former role</a> as UN peacemaker. </p>
<p>On the first anniversary of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-gaza-bloodshed-demands-a-proper-process-of-accountability-31458">ceasefire</a> that halted the most recent <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza%E2%80%93Israel_conflict">Israel-Gaza conflict</a>, it is thus interesting to read that Blair has only now <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/tony-blair-and-hamas-militant-palestinian-group-confirms-meetings-with-former-pm--and-says-ceasefire-deal-with-israel-is-possible-10466277.html">met the upper echelons of Hamas</a> – one of the principal movers and shakers in the Palestine-Israel conflict.</p>
<p>To be fair to Blair, boycotting Hamas was the official policy of the international <a href="http://www.quartetrep.org/quartet/">Quartet</a> on the Middle East – the UN, the US, the EU and Russia. The Quartet’s conditions of lifting the boycott required the movement to: </p>
<p>a) renounce violence; </p>
<p>b) recognise Israel; and </p>
<p>c) promise to adhere to previous agreements between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation/Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel.</p>
<p>Under discussion is the prospect of a long-term ceasefire between Hamas – the de facto rulers of the Gaza Strip – and Israel. Specifically, the ceasefire would be predicated on Israel ending its crippling blockade of the coastal enclave. This would fulfil Hamas’ desire to restore a sense of normalcy to everyday life in the Gaza Strip, rebuild the damage from the 2014 war and alleviate poverty through increased trade via a sea corridor. </p>
<h2>A peace deal with pros and cons</h2>
<p>These developments are both promising and concerning. On the one hand, a separate peace deal with Hamas would reinforce Palestinian divisions in accordance with Israel’s divide-and-rule policy. </p>
<p>Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have been politically divided since Hamas seized power in Gaza in a <a href="http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804">pre-emptive counter-coup</a> in 2007. Geographically speaking, however, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank have been separated since the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Intifada">First Intifada</a> in the early 1990s. As a result, divergent cultural norms have arisen in the two territories.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the isolation and poverty of the Gaza Strip mean it’s a tinderbox that’s perennially waiting to explode – or, as the Israeli euphemism might have it, a <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/KNOW-COMMENT-Mowing-the-grass-in-Gaza-and-beyond-363290">lawn in need of mowing</a>. </p>
<p>Also, nobody with a shred of conscience wants to see a repeat of last year’s war. The conflict killed some 2200 Palestinians – nearly seven in ten of whom the UN says were <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-un-says-7-in-10-palestinians-killed-in-gaza-were-civilians-israel-disagrees/2014/08/29/44edc598-2faa-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html">civilians</a> (Israel says one in two) – and 70 Israelis, the vast majority of whom were serving in the armed forces.</p>
<p>While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated that no negotiations are taking place, he has indicated he’s willing to listen to what Blair puts on the table. </p>
<h2>What’s in it for Israel and Hamas?</h2>
<p>Negotiating separately with Hamas is appealing to Israel on several levels.</p>
<p>First, a long-term ceasefire will restore some normalcy to the Israeli south.</p>
<p>Second, unlike negotiating with the PA in the West Bank, peace with Hamas does not require any territorial concessions. Israel unilaterally evacuated its Gaza settlements a decade ago. </p>
<p>However, many analysts saw the August 2005 <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/10/us-israel-gaza-disengagement-insight-idUSKCN0QF1QQ20150810">disengagement</a> from Gaza as merely an Israeli feint to distract the international community from its consolidation of settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Dov Weiglass, a former aide to then-prime minister Ariel Sharon, publicly described the disengagement as <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/top-pm-aide-gaza-plan-aims-to-freeze-the-peace-process-1.136686">“formaldehyde”</a> intended to freeze the peace process. </p>
<p>It is thus interesting that Hamas has not demanded a halt to settlement construction in the West Bank as a precondition to negotiate a long-term ceasefire. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/22/map-the-spread-of-israeli-settlements-in-the-west-bank/">ongoing expansion</a> of Israeli settlements has long been one of the major sticking points in Israeli-PA negotiations. </p>
<p>The PA is bitterly opposed to any such deal between Hamas and Israel because it does not require a halt to settlement building in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Any such deal would also be a further sign of PA irrelevance and weaken its bargaining position.</p>
<p>Third, opening up Gaza to the outside world will foster a sense of normalcy among the Gazan population and undercut radicalism. Undercutting radicalism is especially important given the rise of Islamic State (IS) and its affiliates. A December 2014 <a href="http://www.pcpsr.org/en/node/600">poll</a> by the Palestinian Centre for Survey and Policy Research found that a concerning 12% of Palestinians believed IS represents “true Islam”.</p>
<p>Supposed IS affiliates in the Gaza Strip have already claimed responsibility for several <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/ISIS-linked-group-claims-responsibility-for-mortar-attack-on-Hamas-base-in-Gaza-402504">attacks against Hamas</a> and for <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/gazas-hamas-rulers-have-a-new-problem-isis-sympathic-jihadists-2015-6?IR=T">firing rockets at Israel</a>. </p>
<p>Although Hamas also wants a return to normalcy in the Gaza Strip, it is potentially a double-edged sword for the movement. This is because much of its support base is derived from <a href="http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138937291/"><em>muqawama</em></a> (resistance in all of its forms) and <em>summud</em> (steadfastness). Contact with the outside world will broaden the horizons of many Gazans, which in turn could undercut Hamas’ appeal among the territory’s population.</p>
<p>For Hamas, a deal with Israel and the opening of borders would bolster its international legitimacy as ruler of the quasi-statelette in the Gaza Strip. The opening of Gaza’s borders would enhance Hamas’ domestic legitimacy as well. Hamas would be able to claim that it is the one Palestinian political organisation that stands up to Israel and gets things done. </p>
<p>This is in marked contrast to the endless PA-Israeli negotiations over the past 25 years. These have merely served to entrench Israel’s hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem.</p>
<p>As Efraim Halevy, the former head of Mossad, recently <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/its-time-for-israel-to-talk-to-hamas-says-former-mossad-head-10311651.html">opined</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Hamas wants to achieve a sizeable benefit in terms of the quality of life in Gaza, and wants a degree of acceptance … It would obviously be a two-way street. Hamas would have to tread a different route than it does now, but we have not given them any options but confrontation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A long-term ceasefire could potentially – finally – put to rest the tired debate around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-hamas-charter-isnt-a-key-obstacle-to-peace-with-israel-31571">essentially defunct Hamas charter</a>.</p>
<p>The concerns that a separate long-term ceasefire between Hamas and Israel would irrevocably sever the ties between th West Bank and the Gaza Strip are very real and should not be dismissed lightly. However, the images emanating from the conflict in Gaza a year ago broke the hearts of millions of people around the world. That tragedy must not be repeated when there are other options on the table that might give peace a chance.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46676/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Tristan Dunning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although Hamas also wants a return to normalcy in the Gaza Strip, it is potentially a double-edged sword for the movement.Tristan Dunning, Adjunct Research Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/343952014-11-18T18:42:41Z2014-11-18T18:42:41ZJerusalem attacks are no isolated incident: the third intifada is here<p>The attack on a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-30092720">Jerusalem synagogue</a> in which four Jewish worshippers were killed and eight were injured has sparked new fears that fighting between Israel and Palestinian could flare up once more.</p>
<p>The attack, by two Palestinians carrying meat cleavers and a gun, has the potential to kick off fresh religious confrontation and a <a href="https://theconversation.com/jerusalem-israeli-settlements-and-why-a-third-intifada-could-be-about-to-kick-off-33646">third intifada</a>.</p>
<p>The immediate trigger for the attack was the death of a Palestinian bus driver in Jerusalem. The Israeli authorities who carried out the autopsy on the body concluded that the driver hanged himself but a Palestinian pathologist who participated in the autopsy argued that the bus driver was <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/.premium-1.626996">probably murdered</a>. Hours earlier a Palestinian had stabbed an Israeli with a screwdriver near the Damascus Gate.</p>
<p>In a conflict littered with seemingly isolated incidents, attacks and counter-attacks, it is sometimes difficult to see the wood for the trees. But taking a long-range view of the conflict since the failure of US secretary of state John Kerry’s mission to the region that ended in <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/28/israel-apartheid-state-peace-talks-john-kerry">April 2014</a>, the inescapable conclusion is that the third intifada is already here.</p>
<p>The city of Jerusalem, and the dispute over Temple Mount/Harem al-Sharif in particular, is at the heart of this conflict. This is the holiest site in Judaism. It is where God is believed to have created Adam, where Abraham offered his son Isaac as a sacrifice to God, and where the two Holy Temples once stood. For Muslims, it is from this spot that the Prophet Muhammad visited Heaven during his nocturnal journey. It is home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam, after Mecca and Medina.</p>
<p>Israel annexed East Jerusalem following the June 1967 war and continues to manage security and access to the holy sites of the old city, but the mount is managed by Muslims.</p>
<h2>Rising tensions</h2>
<p>On October 29, a Palestinian from East Jerusalem <a href="http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Unknown-assailant-shots-seriously-wounds-known-right-wing-activist-in-Jerusalem-380210">attempted to assassinate</a> a prominent rabbi who advocated free Jewish access to Temple Mount. In response, Israeli authorities temporarily closed off the site to both Jews and Muslims. Israel has since allowed access once more but the violence has not abated. Jerusalem is still very much in the eye of the storm.</p>
<p>The attempt on the rabbi’s life was the culmination of months of tension in East Jerusalem. The city is home to around 250,000 Palestinians who hold Israeli ID cards and pay taxes to Israel, but there have been repeated efforts by certain Jewish religious groups to <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/30/uk-palestinians-israel-silwan-idUKKCN0HP1GO20140930">buy Palestinian property</a> in order to create a Jewish majority in the city.</p>
<p>The synagogue attack is therefore neither isolated nor random. The murder of Jews in their place of worship by Palestinians is hugely symbolic though. This was not merely an attack on the Jewish state, but an attack on Judaism itself. </p>
<p>In the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7381369.stm">first intifada</a> of 1987, the Palestinians rose up against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza for the first time. The <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3677206.stm">2000 intifada</a> followed a failed peace process. But this intifada is not being fought over territory or negotiating positions. It is a religious conflict that is bubbling up as a result of contrasting claims to sovereignty over the Holy City of Jerusalem.</p>
<p>The language used by both sides to describe the current tensions points to these religious undertones. The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) has asked the international media to refrain from using the Jewish name of Temple Mount when reporting the story. It says the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is not a disputed territory and so any other name for it is null and void. The Israeli government, on the other hand, has characterised the synagogue murders as the latest in a series of acts of Palestinian terrorism designed to damage Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem and to kill Jews just because of their religion. </p>
<p>The Israeli government has responded to the attack by ordering the immediate <a href="http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/187605">demolition of the perpetrators’ houses</a> and the bolstering of security in the city. This decision was as swift as it was predictable, and is unlikely to calm the situation.</p>
<p>But Israel’s options are limited – the Palestinians of East Jerusalem are not subjected to the same restrictions of movement and employment as the people living in the West Bank and there seems to be no central authority behind these spontaneous attacks. Israel has accused the Palestinian Authority of inciting this wave of religious violence against Jews in Jerusalem but the organisation does not have the civil authority in the city to bring the situation under its control.</p>
<p>Tensions will without doubt escalate in the coming days and weeks. It is clearer than ever that Israelis and Palestinians will not resume the stalled peace process for the foreseeable future. To think so would be naïve at best. </p>
<p>This intractable conflict has long been defined by issues such as the future of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the fate of Palestinian refugees. Now the added burden of more religious tensions is certain to condemn the people of the Holy Land to many more years of bloodshed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34395/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Asaf Siniver does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in which four Jewish worshippers were killed and eight were injured has sparked new fears that fighting between Israel and Palestinian could flare up once more. The…Asaf Siniver, Associate Professor (Reader) in International Security, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84652012-07-30T04:15:52Z2012-07-30T04:15:52ZA one-state solution is the only way forward for Israel and Palestine<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/13588/original/92m3cqdg-1343610207.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mitt Romney's comments about Israel parroted the US Zionist lobby.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Abir Sultan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How should the world react when a supposedly democratic state can’t acknowledge a 40-year-old occupation?</p>
<p>When US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-30/romney-says-jerusalem-is-israel-capital/4162692">declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel</a> during a visit this weekend, he was playing into this mass delusion, and mouthing the official position of the American Zionist lobby. </p>
<p>It is a fallacy that runs right through Israel, self-described as the Middle East’s only democracy, where a recent government-backed report by retired Supreme Court judge Edmond Levy found that its decades-long occupation of Palestinian land <a href="http://www.alternativenews.org/english/index.php/news/opinion/4858-so-what-if-judge-levy-says-there-is-no-occupation-.html">wasn’t an occupation at all</a>. The report granted quasi-legal justification for illegally moving Jews into the West Bank. There are now at least 600,000 Jewish colonists squatting on Palestinian land in direct contravention of international law.</p>
<p>But for the Zionist state, the occupation is merely a God-given right to populate land. The lie was proved when Israeli officials, leaders and dutiful Zionist lobbyists in the West spent decades claiming the occupation was temporary and arguing that Palestinian land and natural resources for Israeli use were solely <a href="http://972mag.com/israeli-human-rights-lawyer-occupation-is-not-temporary/51594/">motivated by security concerns</a>.</p>
<p>The occupation can apparently be ignored forever. Soon enough, a person like Levy will be found to create a legal fiction and legitimise what the whole world knows to be illegal. The US issues muted criticism, while Australia doesn’t have an independent foreign policy when it comes to Israel, meekly following American and Israeli dictates, and colonisation continues apace.</p>
<p>What remains fascinating about the Levy findings – American Zionist organisations <a href="http://forward.com/articles/159537/levy-report-tests-american-consensus/">still can’t bring themselves</a> to speak clearly and honestly about Jewish housing in the West Bank - is what it implies for Palestinian rights under occupation. If there is no occupation, then there should be no problem granting full voting and civil rights to all citizens of the West Bank and Gaza. If that happened today, Jews would soon find themselves a minority. It’s called democracy and it’s something Zionist leadership fears.</p>
<p>Mitt Romney compounded these lies with his comments about Jerusalem. But peace isn’t served when politicians don’t have their own views on the Middle East issue. </p>
<p>What all this means for the much discussed two-state solution is a death knell. It’s beyond time to declare partition of the land both unworkable and unethical. Despite 20 years of this fiction, two decades of dreamers, cynics, Israel lobbyists, politicians, journalists, officials, liberal Zionists and pundits pronouncing the two-state solution the <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/07/16/five_reasons_why_the_two_state_solution_won_t_die?page=full">only game in town</a>, it’s over. Finished. Israel killed it by pursuing its natural Zionist, expansionist tendencies.</p>
<p>The result is that Israel has succeeded in conquering the West Bank but ended its chances of remaining a Jewish state. This is something we should celebrate if we believe in the concept of democracy and a rejection of Jewish privilege in a modern age.</p>
<p>The only viable alternative, and one gaining increasing traction, is the <a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/audio-ali-abunimah-and-ilan-pappe-keynote-speeches-harvard-one-state-conference">one-state solution</a>. Sometimes support appears from the most unlikely of places. British conservative MP, Bob Stewart, who spent 28 years in the UK military, visited the West Bank recently and said he was “deeply upset by what I saw.” [His response](http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-going-mainstream-british-politics/11503](http://electronicintifada.net/content/palestine-going-mainstream-british-politics/11503)? “Unless the settlements stop, there can be no chance whatever of a two-state solution, and the only alternative … is a one-state solution. One state where Jews and Palestinians recognise one another as equals. Surely that is not totally utopian”.</p>
<p>In a new book I’ve edited with Ahmed Moor, <a href="http://www.saqibooks.com/book/after-zionism/"><em>After Zionism</em></a>, we explain both the justice and sense of imagining a one-state future. One chapter, by Nazareth-based journalist <a href="http://www.jkcook.net/">Jonathan Cook</a>, highlights the case of Ahmed and Fatina Zbeidat, a <a href="http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=43961">Palestinian couple</a> who face systematic discrimination simply because they’re not Jews. It is one story but the message is universal.</p>
<p>Another chapter, by long-time one-state proponent, Palestinian Ghada Karmi, outlines the challenges of achieving true equality in Israel and Palestine, not least the determination of Israel and its supporters to talk peace but entrench Jewish exclusivity over land and rights and the Palestinian Authority who have become financially enriched by being Israel’s occupation manager. Such obstacles once faced the two-state solution until it became corporatised and a convenient ruse to mask colonisation.</p>
<p>The exact outline of a one-state solution is not set. Israelis, Palestinians and interested parties, must decide it. <em>After Zionism</em> features Palestinians, academics, journalists, Orthodox Jews, Arabs and intellectuals, many of whom live, work and breathe with Israelis and Palestinians, and know that Israel must be <a href="http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2010/1023/op5.htm">de-Zionised</a> before it can begin to right historical wrongs of continued ethnic cleansing.</p>
<p>A one-state equation isn’t about dismissing or ignoring Jewish history, but recognising the land is shared between two peoples and a soon-to-be minority Jewish population has no legal or ethical right to control a majority Arab people.</p>
<p>On its current path, despite some mainstream Israeli politicians advocating the illegal annexation of the West Bank to create an <a href="http://www.timesofisrael.com/at-hebron-conference-proponents-of-the-one-state-solution-show-their-growing-confidence/">indefinite apartheid state</a>, Israel will become increasingly ghettoised and militarised, convincing once-proud diaspora supporters to decide between their morality and Zionist loyalties.</p>
<p>The time for a one-state solution has surely come.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/8465/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Antony Loewenstein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How should the world react when a supposedly democratic state can’t acknowledge a 40-year-old occupation? When US Presidential candidate Mitt Romney declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel during a visit…Antony Loewenstein, Research Associate, Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.