N° 24 of Dialogue has been published (September 2009)
Introduction
click to download the pdf
This latest issue of Dialogue comes out a few days before the opening of the annual session of the UN and just after the publishing of the Goldstone Report on the extortion committed by the Israeli army during last winter‘s "Operation Cast Lead". Isn‘t there a connection between these two events? The US president Barack Obama is to deliver a speech and offer new proposals in order to re-launch the sacrosanct "peace process". The US, which is out of its depth in Iraq, losing ground in Afghanistan and becoming hated by an increasing majority of the Pakistani people, considers that a settling of what it has been agreed to call the Palestinian question is urgent.
But what can be expected of this new peace plan? Can peace be spoken of without the recognition of the equal rights of all the populations who live between the Mediterranean and Jordan? Is peace, as has been queried in several contributions to this revue, compatible with predatory Zionism? Can we speak of peace without the implementing of the Right of Return for all refugees, no matter where they come from, and the reconstruction of the villages destroyed in 1948?
For 20 years, from new peace plan to new peace plan, the « process » has never come to anything but a worsening of the situation. Worsening of the situation of the populations, acceleration of the stealing of land, of massacres, of the suffering of the Palestinian people and worsening in the degradation of the institutions of the Palestinian Authority, as of the state of Israel, deep in corruption, in rising militarism, pushing a majority of the Jewish populations — especially the eastern ones — to poverty.
After recognizing the Israelis as "neighbours", the Palestinian Authority is accelerating the transformation of the territories that it is in charge of into "special economic zones", deregulated and controlled by an internal army of prison guards and flouting the Right of Return. This is what the future of the claimed "Palestinian State" looks like.
Can there be no other perspective for the Palestinian people ? After 60 years of refusing a division, expressed by the inalienable claim to a Right of Return, will it have to be accepted?
Can there be no democratic perspective ? Amongst the Zionist leaders and their allies, there are many who consider that the creating of two states has become urgent in order to save the essential of what exists. In a recent interview, Shimon Peres expressed his alarm over the fact that if the state of Israel "doesn‘t advance quickly in this direction, a time will come where the perspective of a two-state solution will topple into a single state for Israelis and Palestinians in which Jews will no longer dominate, (a perspective) which will effectively mean the end of the state of Israel" (AP, September 4). In an article published by the Washington Post , Jimmy Carter has stated as worrisome the fact that "many Palestinian leaders are seriously considering accepting the solution of a single-state between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea".
But isn‘t there another perspective, a democratic one? Don‘t the articles that are published here, meant by their writers as a contribution to the discussion, indicate that the debate needs to be pursued?
The Editors
Content :
- p.2
- Introduction
- p.3
-
An interview with Sabah Abu Hudeid, head of Baqa‘a Women‘s Cooperative
in the Palestinian Refugee Camp of al-Baqa‘a, near Amman, Jordan - p.6
-
Security - "The War is With the Arabs"
By Hannah Mermelstein - p.8
-
Dividing War Spoils: Israel's Robbery of Palestinian Property.
By Dr. Salman Abu Sitta - p.12
-
The end of Israel?
By Hannah Mermelstein - p.15
-
The Real Roots of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict
By Julian Kunnie - p.19
-
Arno J. Mayer, Plowshares into Swords
By Sam Ayache
