Put this creature out of our misery says PA co-creator

Dear Abu Mazen: End This Farce

An open letter to the Palestinian leader.

By Yossi Beilin
04.04.12

To:
Mahmoud Abbas
President, Palestinian Authority
Muqata, Ramallah

I admit that I never believed the moment would come when I would have to write these words. I am doing so because U.S. President Barack Obama has convinced you not to announce, at this point in time, the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority’s institutions and the “return of the keys” of authority for the Palestinian territories to Israel. Because there have never been serious negotiations with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the last three years, and because you did not want to perpetuate the myth that a meaningful dialogue existed, you have been sorely tempted to declare the death of the “peace process” — but the American president urged you to maintain the status quo. It is a mistake to agree to Obama’s request, and you can rectify this.

The Oslo Accords were a tremendous victory for the peace camps on both sides. And this agreement did not fail. It was thwarted. The assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestinian terrorism, and the political victories of the opponents of the agreement — both on the Palestinian side and on the Israeli side — have turned the agreement into a device that has allowed the parties to block a two-state solution.

Oslo’s opponents, on both sides, were initially startled by a process that promised to lead to a partition of the land in a few years. They later turned Oslo into a tool to prevent partition by prolonging the interim agreement, claiming that, as long as it is not replaced by a permanent agreement, it must continue and be binding to both sides. Oslo’s adversaries have turned the interim agreement, which was supposed to last not more than six years and serve only as a pathway to a final solution, into an arena where they can continue to build settlements or spin their dreams of an Islamic empire, without the world putting serious pressure on them to put an end to the conflict.

The extremists’ gutting of the Oslo agreement has been complete. They have uprooted the permanent-status negotiations — where the two sides pledged to tackle core issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees, and the future of Israeli settlements — from the peace process. They have succeeded in preventing the creation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with land swaps, the establishment of two capitals in the current area of Jerusalem, the formulation of appropriate security arrangements, and a fitting symbolic and economic resolution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees — as was proposed in the Geneva Accord, in which you were involved in all of the details. Their aim is to perpetuate the interim process indefinitely, and every single day that passes plays into their hands.

One simply cannot continue with an interim arrangement for almost 20 years. This was not the intention when we spearheaded the Oslo process in late 1992 — you from Tunis and I from Jerusalem — or when we assiduously worked on what subsequently became known as the “Beilin-Abu Mazen Agreement” between 1993 and 1995.

You and I both understand that the current situation is a ticking time bomb. From my point of view, what is at stake is the loss of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. From yours, it is the loss of the chance for an independent Palestinian state. And from both of our points of view, the failure of the two-state solution risks a renewal of terrible violence.

Anyone who believes these things must take action. You can do it, and for this step you do not need a partner. A declaration of the end of the Oslo process — justified by the fact that the path to a permanent-status agreement is blocked — is the most reasonable, nonviolent option for putting the subject back on the world’s agenda, with the aim of renewing genuine efforts to reach a conclusive solution.

Dissolving the Palestinian Authority and returning daily control to Israel would be an action nobody could ignore. It is not at all similar to a demonstration in front of the Municipality of Ramallah, nor is it similar to appealing to the United Nations for member-state status. This is a step that only you can take, and a step that will demand a response.

I know how difficult it is. I know how many tens of thousands of people depend on the Palestinian Authority for their livelihoods. I am able to appreciate all that you and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have accomplished — establishing Palestinian institutions, growing an economy in impossible conditions, and fostering security in the West Bank.

After all these endeavors, however, you still need to beg the government of Israel to release your money from customs, you still need to beg the Republicans in the U.S. Congress to transfer funds to the Palestinian Authority, and you still need to stand, day after day, before your Palestinian critics and explain why your political efforts are failing. Please don’t let this be the way you end your political mission — a mission that seeks to achieve Palestinian independence without the use of violence.

Do not hesitate for a moment! Do not accept the request of President Obama, who merely wants to be left undisturbed before election day. Do not let Prime Minister Netanyahu hide behind the fig leaf of the Palestinian Authority — impose upon him, once again, the responsibility for the fate of 4 million Palestinians. Remain as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which will give you the authority to lead the political negotiations if and when they resume.

But for the sake of your own people, and for the sake of peace, you cannot let this farce continue.

It is possible, of course, that Oslo’s demise will not be followed by the birth of more substantive peace talks. But if that occurs, then at least it will not be you — the man who stood beside the cradle of the Oslo process — who is responsible for failing to prevent the complete and utter distortion of that process by its Palestinian and Israeli opponents.

Yossi Beilin served as a minister in the cabinets of Israeli Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, and Ehud Barak. He initiated the Oslo peace process in 1992, worked on the Beilin-Abu Mazen talks between 1993 and 1995, and launched the Geneva Accord with Yasser Abed Rabbo in 2003.

The man who invented the PA calls for it to be dismantled

Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, calls on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to put an end to the ‘fig leaf’ that is the Palestinian Authority.

Noam Sheizaf, +972
04.02.12

This is as big as an op-ed gets: Yossi Beilin, the Israeli architect of the Oslo process, has published a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urging him to shut down the Palestinian Authority and let Prime Minister Netanyahu bear direct responsibility for the fate of the Palestinians under Israeli control.

*Do not hesitate for a moment! Do not accept the request of President Obama, who merely wants to be left undisturbed before election day. Do not let Prime Minister Netanyahu hide behind the fig leaf of the Palestinian Authority — impose upon him, once again, the responsibility for the fate of 4 million Palestinians. Remain as the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which will give you the authority to lead the political negotiations if and when they resume.

But for the sake of your own people, and for the sake of peace, you cannot let this farce continue.*

For years, Beilin was known as a relentless advocate of the peace process, even as more and more people came to realize that the endless process was keeping the occupation alive. Beilin still believes in the two-state solution – but even he knows that the Palestinian Authority won’t get us there, so he begs the Palestinian president to “end this farce.”

The date for a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which was set in Oslo, passed 13 years ago. The Palestinian Authority was never meant to live that long. But even at the peak of military escalation, Israeli leaders kept the PA alive, because of the vital role it played in normalizing Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza.

Today, Israel enjoys the best of all worlds: it controls all entries and exits to and from the West Bank, it builds settlements and moves Jews to live in them, it uses the natural resources in the West Bank, and it even controls the airspace and electromagnetic frequencies. Yet Israel doesn’t need to bother itself with running the lives of millions of Palestinians, who are deprived of basic civil rights: the Palestinian Authority deals with them, and even does the necessary police work for Israel, while the European Union, the Arab League and the American taxpayer pay the bills. It’s occupation by proxy – the most comfortable arrangement Israel achieved since it took control over the territories in 1967.

Everybody knows that. This is the reason that whenever Israel’s overzealous “friends” in Congress stop funding the Palestinian Authority – reading the condemnations it received from Jerusalem at face value, and totally missing Israel’s double-game – it is Prime Minister Netanyahu himself who urges them to release the money. After all, Israel enjoys those funds much more than the Palestinians, who have began to see the Authority as a second authoritarian regime imposed on them.

After Israel managed to stop the last Palestinian effort to transform the Authority into a full state – at least in name – through the unilateral move at the UN, President Abbas decided to threaten Israel with shutting down the PA. The idea was to be made known in a special letter Prime Minister Fayyad was to pass to Netanyahu after Passover (Haaretz’s Barak Ravid obtained a copy of this letter). But Washington was so alarmed by this option that the White House applied enormous pressure on Abbas, finally convincing him only to appeal to Netanyahu with four demands, the most important being the recognition of the 1967 borders as the starting point for negotiations.

Netanyahu is expected to answer Abbas with a demand that the Palestinians enter negotiations “without preconditions.”

This is the context of Beilin’s public letter, which ends with a plea to the Palestinians not to give in to Washington’s threats. What Beilin doesn’t write – but clearly understands – is that by now, the United States has become the greatest enabler of the occupation. Will American officials be able to continue talking about the need for both sides to re-enter the peace process, now that the man most closely identified with it has abandoned any such hope?