by Arieh Cohen

Attention is persistently focused on the PNA and the Road Map but it is only the PLO that could take part in an international conference to pave the way for “two States”. What’s more, the organization has not been tainted by Islamist organizations so far.

Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) – Following intense regional and international activity around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – meetings of the “Quartet”, ministerial visits, meetings with government leaders, statements, press conferences – the ill-omened ambivalence at the root and at the heart of so many activities becomes increasingly clear. This lies in the supposition that any possible future peace negotiations, if they ever materialize, must take place between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PNA). This is why there is so much interest in the programs, principles, politics, ideologies, even the theology of the PNA. This is the reason behind many imperious demands aimed at this tottering structure. These demands, marked by inflexible imperiousness together with increasing distance separating them from the ever sadder reality “on the ground”, practically ensure non-implementation in the current state of affairs.

One consequence is that for some time, there has been no talk about peace or even about concretely agreed peace negotiations. Instead there is plenty of talk about just one of the many possible mechanisms to get there, the famous “Road Map”, almost as if it has been divinely ordained that there should never be another. As if this particular mechanism (which aimed for peace by 2005) has not already failed, opening the field up to other ideas and initiatives – like the one announced by France-Spain-Italy last November, which was effectively shelved shortly afterwards (it is not known why).

But the “partner” of Israel (and the rest of the world) for the ends of a peace agreement is certainly not the PNA. This is nothing but a strictly temporary provisional structure set up by the “Oslo process” of the nineties, to administer semi-autonomously part of Palestinian territory, specifically in anticipation of the conclusion of a peace agreement by organs that are competent to do so, to put an end to the conflict, to liberate the Palestinians and to safeguard the security of both nations.

It is the PLO which signed the Oslo Accords recognizing Israel and which was recognized by this as the only competent interlocutor with the scope of negotiating and signing peace. It is the PLO which was recognized by the Arab world and the whole international community as the only representative of the Palestinian people at international level. It is in fact the PLO which already back in 15 November 1988 publicly accepted the “two State” principle in ex-Palestine which was then a British mandate, in conformity with UN Resolution of 29 November 1947, and which coherently proceeded to sign the Declaration of Principles with Israel on 13 September 1993.

What’s more, the accords of the nineties, which provided for the Palestinian Authority, explicitly establish that it has no capacity of representation on international level, a function reserved for the PLO, and this, among other reasons, due to the insistence of Israel.

If things are not going well in territories semi-controlled by the Palestinian Authority, if attacks against Israel stem from there, if they are a battleground of frequent domestic fratricidal clashes between Palestinians, these facts do not serve other than to highlight the urgent need to replace this structure, which was conceived in circumstances very different to those of today, of a real Palestinian state based on a definitive peace treaty with Israel. This is a peace which it is up to the PLO alone to negotiate and sign.

It is the PLO, represented by its main component, al-Fatah, which lost last year’s elections to the institutions of the Palestinian Authority because it showed, in the eyes of the electorate, that it was incapable of fulfilling the promise of freedom made in the preceding decade. And it is the PLO that now risks being profoundly changed by the threatened intake of Hamas-style Islamist organizations if that promise remains unfulfilled.

So far, the speculated entry of Islamists in the PLO has not materialized yet. And it can still be avoided if the PLO is put in the condition to “take home” a reasonably fair peace treaty which – and this is almost certain – will be positively welcomed by the vast majority of Palestinians in the Territories.

In such a scenario, the dangers currently represented by Islamist forces, especially those avowed to violence, would be overcome and the “two States” desired by the UN already back in 1947 will be able to coexist peacefully. But the time to do it is now. And it is hard to understand why “responsible adults” do not make the required use of ever diminishing time to call Israel and the PLO to real peace talks (possibly in a more complete regional framework) instead of concentrating attention on failed ideas and a failing structure which is anyhow destined to be dissolved, and which is intrinsically incapable of being a state which is not there, which is in fact destined to decline because of a persistent lack of peace, security and freedom for the people.

• ISRAEL
• PALESTINE
• war