As Long As ‘Peace’ Means We Can Keep Fighting, We’re In

by Jibril Rajoub, Fatah

Credit: dlisbona via Wikimedia Commons

Ramallah, February 6 – Our people’s objections to President Trump’s “Peace Through Prosperity” plan span many different issues, but I wish to make clear that all of those problems have solutions available if we receive assurances that making peace with Israel will nevertheless allow Palestinians to keep waging war against Israel.

Our core objection to the plan goes as follows: accepting the conditions that the proposal lays out for Palestinian statehood means forswearing violence against Israel, and Israeli Jews in particular, and taking measures to eliminate the rampant antisemitism in our media, schools, and politics. Such provisions strike at the very essence of Palestinian identity, i.e. rejection of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. Little else binds us together as a people; deprived of that unifying element, Palestinians will fall back on their disparate loyalties to clan and caste, with nothing around which to build a coherent state or society. Adding to the proposal a section that permits the holy “Resistance by any means” to occupation to continue will address this shortcoming, thereby removing the chief obstacle to the plan’s adoption.

Once cleared to continue our violent activities against the accursed Zionist usurper rapist of the land, Palestinians could, with reaffirmed dignity, engage in the hard, but peaceful, work of state-building. Our institutions have languished under occupation; we have not held parliamentary elections in fourteen years, presidential elections in fifteen. Our parliament has not convened in recent memory. Local and national government occurs by fiat. International organizations perform many functions that in a healthy, sovereign state, fall to the government. Our leadership has remained unable to fulfill its role in the state-building capacity that the Oslo Accords enabled, because we have subordinated all organs of our nascent state to fighting Israel rhetorically, politically, diplomatically, economically, and sometimes militarily when we need a release valve to relieve the pressure on our population so they don’t blame us at the top. How can we be expected to function as a state unless we can continue those policies?

We therefore say to Mr. Trump, thank you but no thank you. You may get back to us with a revised plan that does not insult Palestinian dignity by removing from our arsenal the one pursuit that allows us to feel we have a purpose in existing. Let us kill the Jews in peace and then we can look forward to having peace.

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