A breakthrough happened earlier this week, when Dov Weisglass, the Israeli PM’s advisor, said that the disengagement plan in Gaza was a ruse to stop negotiations with the Palestinians. What Palestinians have known all along has miraculously come out. The true face of Israeli government policy has been exposed. The Palestinians must now take the opportunity to sing the same mantra that Israelis have done for so long.
The Israeli propaganda machine has perfected the art of public speaking. Listen to any comment by an Israeli official and your ears will soon be adjusted to the mantra they constantly quote, “there is no partner for negotiations”. Israeli officials do not waiver from what they have to say, they are constantly drumming into the audiences how much they have reached out to the Palestinians, who have rejected their “generous offers”, another mantra that the Israelis cannot seem to shake off. If something is said often enough, people will inevitably start to believe it.
There has been little doubt that the Gaza Disengagement plan is anything but a ploy to divert attention from any political process, while laying all the responsibility on the Palestinians’ doorstep. Weisglass describes it best by saying, “The disengagement plan makes it possible for Israel to park conveniently in an interim situation that distances us as far as possible from political pressure. It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians…. It compels the world to deal with our idea, with the scenario we wrote. It places the Palestinians under tremendous pressure.”
The outcry that followed this interview was surprisingly very little, or perhaps unsurprisingly so. The fact that US Secretary of State Colin Powell accepted Ariel Sharon’s explanation “in the absence of a Palestinian partner, the government initiated the disengagement plan to bolster Israel’s diplomatic standing, improve its ability to defend its citizens, and ease the suffering of the civilian population,” shows that it is the Palestinians who have no negotiating partner with this current government in place, especially with the US Administration completely backing any Israeli decision, no questions asked.
Again, the Israeli Prime Minister continued that the Palestinians are employing “terror” and until they stop, then there will be no meetings on the diplomatic front. This has been another constant mantra in Israeli speech. There rarely is any relenting in what they have to say; Israelis say things over and over again, until whatever it is they are saying becomes etched in stone.
Subsequent Israeli governments have been successful in convincing the world, to varying degrees, that it is the Palestinians who are at fault in the current quagmire. Weisglass said in his interview that the Americans represented by John Wolf, the Assistant Secretary of State, last year “saw for themselves what the Palestinians’ most solemn promises really meant… They did not need us to understand what it’s all about. So, when we came to them and told them that there is no one to talk to, we didn’t have any problems. They already knew that as of now, there is no one to talk to.” This explains plainly why the US Administration does not want to engage with the Palestinians at this point in time. There is a meeting of minds between the Americans and the Israelis, so much so, that it seems they are one and the same. In another sense, it illustrates how the Palestinians have little hope in convincing the Americans that they are indeed willing to carry on with negotiations and finding an acceptable political settlement and therefore garner their support.
Weisglass, as a senior advisor, could not have spoken without the blessings of the prime minister, and for the first time, someone close to the government has spoken straightforwardly with regards to their stand against the Palestinians. “The significance of [the disengagement plan] is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refuges, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress… With the proper management we succeeded in removing the issue of the political process from the agenda. And we educated the world to understand that here is no one to talk to and we received a no-one-to-talk-to certificate.”
The Palestinian street has had no doubt in their mind that the disengagement plan is merely a delaying tactic on the part of the Israeli government. There is a deep sense of loss of trust with the Israeli government and the US Administration. Therefore, it is perhaps up to the Palestinians to start employing the tactics of the Israeli officials and constantly sing their own mantras, “There is no negotiating partner with Israel”, “there is no negotiating under fire” and “occupation is terrorism”, maybe if people hear it often enough they will realize that it is the truth, but so far, Palestinian officials have lacked the flair with which to relay the message clearly and in a reasonable enough tone to have the tables turned in their favor.
