In 1993, the PLO recognised Israel’s “right to exist in peace and security” as part of the Oslo Accords that established the Palestinian Authority (PA) and that were supposed to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Now Israel is demanding that Palestinians additionally recognise Israel as the “nation state of the Jewish people” as a condition for extending a largely fictitious moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West Bank for a mere 60 days.

De facto PA leader Mahmoud Abbas has lately been responding to questions regarding the issue, saying that it is Israel’s business alone to choose the name it desires for itself. He further said that Israel could go to the United Nations and ask formally for a name change.

Last week, one of his chief advisors, Yasser Abed Rabbo, told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the PA would consider accepting Israel’s conditionif Israel accepted the pre-1967 armistice line as the final borders for the envisaged Palestinian state. Both hints were seen as introductory moves towards a new PA concession recognising Israel as the state for the Jewish people, in the hope that the 60-day freeze extension would restart the stalled direct negotiations, desperately needed by Abbas and his Rama?lah authority./p
p dir=ltrAny such recognition by the PA would be catastrophic to Palestinian rights. Since it was created, Israel has been referred to as a “Jewish state”, in the mere sense that that it has a manufactured Jewish majority within the pre-1967 borders as a result of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948. It is also “Jewish” in the sense that it discriminates in favour of Jews in the economic, social and political life, has an army that is in effect a Jewish army, and allows Jews from anywhere in the world to s?ttle on the land of expelled Palestinians, while denying the true owners of that land the right to return home./p
p dir=ltrThese very discriminatory policies and practices lie at the heart of the conflict created by the Zionist project. To ask the Palestinians to recognise and accept them is to ask them to accept defeat and adopt Zionism./p
p dir=ltrIsrael - and its supporters, including the US administration - offer a very twisted logic to justify its demand. It claims that it will be the state of the Jewish people and the Palestinian state will be the state for the Palestinians./p
p dir=ltrBut if Palestinians recognise an Israeli “right” to oppress and discriminate against them, the next logical step will be for Israel to “enforce” its “right” to be a “Jewish state” by getting rid of Palestinians from within its borders, which is in fact precisely what Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman proposed in his recent “population exchange” speech at the United Nations./p
p dir=ltrHe was referring to the 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who make up 20 per cent of the population within the pre-1967 borders. These Palestinians, who have steadfastly remained on their land, face increasing campaigns of incitement and persecution by Israel, which views them as a hostile alien presence, spoiling its dream of Jewish purity./p
p dir=ltrAccepting the Israeli demand would open the door for another wave of ethnic cleansing by Israel, but this time with Palestinian consent. This can never be allowed to happen./p
p dir=ltrThe loud wave of Palestinian protests in response to Abed Rabbo’s steep descent into new humiliating political lows has forced the PA to deny his statement. But no denial was ever made of Abbas’ statements to Jewish organisations in the United States or in his recent press statement with the president of Finland, affirming that Israel can define itself any way it wants./p
p dir=ltrIsrael, of course, wants to secure Palestinians’ acquiescence to its usurpation of their land and rights, and hopes to squeeze this endorsement from weak Palestinian leaders such as Abbas. But even if Abbas resists, Israel still hopes to gain. By pressing this demand now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to embarrass the PA into either submitting to a new humiliating condition, or - if the PA refuses - shouldering the responsibility of yet one more collapse of the continuously collapsing pea?e talks./p
p dir=ltrApparently Abbas has for a while been seriously contemplating acceptance. He did offer very serious concessions before and probably one more for him is not going to make a big difference. Neither would anyone exclude the possibility of Abbas’ full knowledge of the consequences. In addition to placing Palestinian citizens of Israel in immediate danger of ethnic cleansing, any acceptance of the Israeli demand would also annul the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to the homes and lands from which Isra?l now excludes them under the racist pretext that they are not Jews./p
p dir=ltrNeither Abbas nor any of his advisors have the right to concede Palestinian rights this way. Abbas has no legitimacy, not only because his legal term as PA president expired long ago, but also because he has decisively broken with the Palestinian national consensus. His constituency today is not the Palestinian people, but the self-appointed peace process industry operators including the Quartet (the UN, the US, Russia and the EU), the Arab League and to a certain extent the Israelis./p
p dir=ltrPalestinian support for Abbas has been steadily dwindling, narrowing the circle around him to a bunch of beneficiaries and political parasites who greedily feed on foreign money, offered generously as the price for submission./p
p dir=ltrYet even if Abbas were, despite all this, to surrender to the Israeli demand, no one should be under the illusion that Israel would be satisfied or that this would be the key to Israel fulfilling its obligations./p
p dir=ltrWe can already anticipate the next Israeli demand: now that the Palestinians have recognised Israel as the state of the Jewish people, they must recognise that the land itself belongs only to the Jewish people./p
p dir=ltrIn that case, Israel would be doing the Palestinians a favour to tolerate their continued presence on any part of Palestine, even in the so-called Palestinian state if it is ever established./p
p dir=ltrAbbas’ constant bets on the Israelis and Americans have failed a thousand times. He cannot keep rushing from one failure to another. He should live up to his repeated threats to step down. He should apologise to the Palestinian people for the time, the rights, the sacrifices and opportunities he has squandered over the years of his miserable and disastrous leadership. This would be the greatest service he could now do for his people./p