Sunday, March 24, 2013

Obama's Israel visit is an insult to the Palestinians


Obama's visit to Israel endorsed their narrative and was a slap in the face to Palestinians.

".......But no amount of rhetoric can disguise the fact that the visit was an insult to the Palestinian people on every count. He laid a wreath at Theodor Herzl's grave, (needless to say, he did not do the same for Yasser Arafat). He viewed an exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Israel Museum, and had no new plan for resolving the Palestinian plight. 

Herzl was a Jewish Hungarian journalist living in Vienna at the end of the 19th century, with no conceivable connection to Palestine. Nevertheless, it was his vision of an exclusive state for foreign Jews like himself to be built in my homeland that eventually led to the creation of modern Israel in place of Palestine. President Obama's visit coincided with a time of sad anniversaries for us, Herzl's victims........

Palestinians, already disillusioned about the chances of a separate state arising, should take heed of these realities. Obama's visit has shown that no help for their plight will be forthcoming from the US, (or anyone else). They have one last card and they must play it now: to abandon their leaderships both in the West Bank and Gaza and throw their efforts behind a demand for equal rights, including citizenship, under Israeli rule.

This move, dreaded by Israel's previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and its past defence minister, Ehud Barak as the preamble to a bi-national state, will put Israel in an impossible position. But it would be the logical result of its policy of land grabs and citizen disenfranchisement. If President Obama's visit goes some way to stimulating this resolve amongst Palestinians, then it would have had a historic, albeit unintended, purpose, and establish his currently vacuous trip to one that is truly momentous. "

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