Palestine Think Tank

By Tommaso Di Francesco, translated by Diego Traversa

The diverging international reactions to former American President Jimmy Carter's initiative in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the attention it is receiving from the Arab and Muslim world underscores a fact that has been ignored in Italy and Europe.

Indeed, what we're facing is the arrival at an original and unique diplomatic crossroad, the only one that can by now let in some light in the dark Middle East night.

Jimmy Carter, who was awarded with the Nobel Prize for his commitment in the Egyptian-Israeli peace process with the historical Camp David Accords in 1978, has wilfully decided to start working on a peace negotiation again through direct talks with Hamas, the Palestinian religious extremist and national movement which is opposed to any compromise with occupying Israel.

It is an initiative that comes in the wake of the publication in 2006 of one of his books which not only blames Israel for not wanting peace but also, as the alternative, for preferring to implement a massive apartheid regime against the Palestinian population. Basically, Carter has put into practice what everyone - Massimo D'Alema (Italy's former Foreign Affairs Minister) included – used to say but never carried out. And, above all, he has performed a daring act of diplomacy which was called for even by most of the Israelis themselves, fed up with having to undergo an endless war that is instrumental to leaders who are unable to open a season of peace.

Obviously, he didn't have to gain 'Israel's recognition' as those who speak of his alleged 'failure' seem to be throwing in Carter's face. For example, Bernard-Henry Levy was shocked by "the useless and spectacular hug of the Hamas-member Nasser Shaez in Ramallah" and by the wreath the former US President "devotedly laid down on Arafat's grave."

Actually, he only aimed to grant legitimization to the movement that is mistakenly seen as the prime enemy but that, in January 2006, simply won at the Palestinian elections and defeated Al Fatah which was regarded as being both corrupted and unsuccessful as regards the  negotiations with Israel.

Since then, Hamas, instead of being supported in handling the Palestinian crisis, has been boycotted, even through international sanctions. Then someone has the impudence to call it democracy…

We must admit that Carter succeeded. At least judging by the fulminating words the Israeli government has delivered in these days through its UN Ambassador who defined him as a 'fanatic'; or judging by the explicit criticism of his mission that came from the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has reminded how "he didn't come as a US representative"; and also judging by the accusations from what we are used to calling Al Qaeda which has railed against Hamas's willingness to have talks with him.

Let alone that the spectre of Hamas is even starting to pervade the US Presidential campaign, with the Republican John McCain throwing accusations against Obama of "being Hamas's favourite candidate."

If one takes a careful look, the utmost end of his mission was that of breaking the Palestinian question's isolation, by now reduced to daily reports of deaths, and not only that of helping Hamas out. As a matter of fact, while Bush says he's persuaded that a chance for the Palestinian state still exists, Carter has reminded everyone that the promises of Annapolis already failed. Hence the crucial point, in a Middle-East lacking peace it does not depend on Hamas at all, but on Israel and its wilful choice of the apartheid system.

"The problem isn't Hamas but the fact that, while on one hand the PNA talks with the Israeli government, on the other hand Israel expands the settlements": these are the sad words by Salam Fayyad, the PNA Prime Minister appointed by Mahmud Abbas in place of Ismail Haniyeh after Hamas's putsch in the Gaza Strip.  Which, as all the international investigations and US intelligence itself tells us, did nothing but forestall by hours a very same putsch in the Strip by Al Fatah. That the Palestinian problem has ended up in the hands of US intelligence isn't conspiracy-theorizing, but part of the hailed and unsuccessful dictates of the Road Map.

Carter's mission reminds us all what is the factual situation on the ground: the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza only, carried out in spite of the Palestinian popular will, has increasingly put that territory in the hands of the Israeli army who controls and bombs it at its own pleasure so much so that, undergoing the Israeli tanks' siege and lacking any contact with outside world, it risks an extreme polarization and the humanitarian disaster since the UN can no longer supply food aid to a people of peasants forced to starvation on their own land, where cultivations are repeatedly devastated by the occupying forces.

While the military occupation is ongoing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Wall begun under Sharon's government is growing and the settlements are expanding so much that those who would like to honestly see what's left of Palestine would be able to see only many fragmented lots of land lacking the necessary territorial continuity in which to set a state.

Meanwhile, prisons and concentration camps are still filled with ten thousand Palestinian political detainees, the number of refugee camps is increasing and the 3.5 million Palestinians around the world are nobody's sons.

We are more frequently told about the Iranian nukes and now there's much fuss about the alleged Syrian one while everyone keeps silent over the real Israeli atomic bombs.

It's not true that Jimmy Carter's mission has brought no outcome or that he has been proved wrong by Hamas itself. Through him, who arrived in Damascus to meet with Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal, the world has discovered a new willingness to achieve the truce – willingness which, unfortunately, has been bombed by the Israeli army in the last hours. A truce that once again calls on the compliance with UN Resolutions which have been unheeded for 40 years and which demand Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem so far as the 1967 borders: an implicit willingness 'to recognize' Israel and to give up on 'historical Palestine as cornerstones of Hamas which Israel itself helped settle to baffle the peace accords by which Arafat took control over the 22% of that still occupied territory to build the Palestinian state.

Hence a new lesson of courage comes from Carter. And a message for us Italians, a few hours after the appointment of Franco Frattini as Minister of Foreign Affairs of the most right wing government that has been elected since the end of the war, the worst one that has ever come into power here.