119 Days to Go
What PA President Abbas Should Have Written

By Sherwin Pomerantz

With 119 days to September 14th and the opening of the fall 2011 session of the United Nations General Assembly, PA President Abbas wrote a New York Times op-ed that can only be described as a gross distortion of the truth. Following is what he should have written.

=============================================================================

Sixty three years ago, a 13-year-old Palestinian boy was taken by his family from his home in the Galilean city of Safed to live in Syria because there was a fear that with the outbreak of war in 1948 things would be safer there. He took up shelter in a canvas tent provided to all the arriving refugees. That child’s story, like that of so many other Palestinians, is mine and, in retrospect, it was a mistake to leave. Rather, we should have remained and worked with the Israelis to build our mutual economies.
.
This month, as we commemorate another year of what we have termed our expulsion — in Arabic nakba, or catastrophe — I think it is time to level with my people, the Palestinian people, and admit that we should have accepted partition in 1947 and built a successful community here similar to what the Israelis have done these past 63 years.

Not having done that we still have cause for hope: this September, at the United Nations General Assembly, we will request international recognition of the State of Palestine on our side of the 1967 armistice line which, while never a border in the formal sense of the word, has been the point of reference for all negotiations since Oslo.

Many are questioning what value there is to such recognition while the Israeli occupation continues. Others have accused us of imperiling the peace process. We believe, however, that there is tremendous value for all Palestinians — those living in the homeland, in self-imposed exile or under occupation to take this step and move the dormant peace process forward.

It is important to note that the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states. In November 1947, the General Assembly made its recommendation and answered in the affirmative. The Jewish Agency, acting on behalf of the Jewish people, accepted the vote of the U.N. and declared Israel’s independence. We should have done the same.

Instead, our people, along with the armies of five other Arab countries and with the support of two others waged a war with the nascent state of Israel…and lost. While we have told the story for many years of our expulsion from this land after the war, the fact is that our own leadership during the war drove through the streets of Jerusalem in neighborhoods like Talbieh and told the Arabs living there to leave for a few days until we won the war and they would return. Today, 63 years later, the descendants of those who left remain strangers in other lands. To a great extent that is our own fault.

The people who were shot and wounded in the north by Israeli forces on Sunday may have thought that they were symbolically exercising their right to return to their families’ homes. But, in fact, they were really demonstrating their anger at us, the Palestinian Arab leadership who, by our desire to occupy ourselves only with destroying Israel, have denied professional development and economic growth to generations of young people in our communities. And for that mistake I apologize on behalf of all of us who wasted so many of our youth in this non-productive effort.

Thankfully today, we have people like Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and visionary businessman Bashir Masri, who are able to see a future that is not solely fixated on destroying Israel, the only example of dynamic economic growth in this region. Salam Fayyad’s development of the structures needed for state building along with Bashir Masri’s vision in conceiving of a new Palestinian city (Ruwabi) north of Ramallah herald a new vision for our people of which all of us should be proud.

I understand Israel’s concern over our push to have Palestine admitted to the United Nations. But, to us, this is an important symbolic step and one that we would hope would be supported by Israel as well. To generate that support I am prepared to come to Jerusalem immediately, as Anwar Sadat did some years ago, and say to the members of the Knesset, that we (i.e. all of us, Fatah and Hamas as well) are prepared to end the conflict, to stop terrorism, to develop diplomatic relations with Israel and to make the needed compromises that will make this a reality.

Prime Minister Netanyahu, in his address to the Knesset on Monday, laid out the basic parameters of what Israel could accept. We know that some of the points he raised were painful for him and not popular with his coalition. To be sure we have the same problems on our side. Within that framework we are convinced that over the next 120 days before the opening of the General Assembly our two peoples, without the interference of outside parties, can hammer out the details of an agreement that will permit both of us to go to that meeting with a plan for a new era of reconciliation in this troubled part of the world.

Our quest for recognition as a state should not be seen as a stunt; too many of our men and women have been lost for us to engage in such political theater. We go to the United Nations now to secure the right to live free in our historic homeland and we invite the Government of Israel to partner with us in this quest.

The State of Palestine intends to be a peace-loving nation, committed to human rights, democracy, and the rule of law and the principles of the United Nations Charter. We hope that Israel, after all these years of mutual distrust, will join with us in that quest.

=================================================================================
Some will read this and say “what a dreamer I am.” But futures are built on dreams and the absence of dreams perforce dictates depression. 5-star General and former US President Dwight Eisenhower once said “Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.” When you pull people along you invite them on a journey and the opportunity to dream along with you. It is where we humans differ from the rest of the animal kingdom and what the Creator expects from us as well.