Statement by MECA on the Peace Process

Dear friends,

The Obama administration started another round of peace talks between the Israeli Occupation officials and the Palestinian Authority last Thursday. The whole world watched while the word “peace” was thrown around by each speaker during the opening ceremony, attempting to show the world with every utterance of the word, that it is soon to arrive to the Middle East. When in fact, simply stating the word peace cannot create the environment of peace that is much needed for the Palestinian people.

Dear friends,

Life for most Palestinian people during these last 20 years has not reflected the glossy “peace-process” we see on television. In the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinians watch as construction of illegal Israeli settlements continues on their land. According to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, there are 232 illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (We do not distinguish between settlements and outposts here because they are just two names for the same thing: illegal colonies on Palestinian land). The settler population has reached over 500,000. The illegal settlements and the Jewish only by-pass roads connecting these settlements to each other have divided the West Bank into Bantustan- like areas similar to those under the Apartheid system in South Africa. In addition to this continued confiscation of land, the IOF continues to build an Apartheid wall annexing another 12% of the West Bank and further separating Palestinians from one another and their villages. And then there is the unremitting violence of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza which includes but is not limited to thousands of arrests, hundreds of children murdered, and daily harassment at Israeli military checkpoints on every main road in the West Bank. Throughout the diaspora, Palestinians experience the pain of forced removal from our villages and homes.

The US-led peace process also seeks to divide the Palestinian people. Those that are silent about US support for Israel's occupation are labeled good and invited to the table. But the rest of us that are skeptical or opposed to this one-sided process are vilified. The current Palestinian Authority is complicit in these policies, dividing their own people to protect personal privilege and interests in the region.

Since the advent of Oslo, two classes have emerged. One a privileged class, that makes up the current Palestinian Authority and continues to benefit from the current Israeli occupation and the “peace-process”. This privileged class of ministers and leaders has high salaries, profiting business, and well-protected families surrounded by security forces funded and trained by the US and other Arab regimes. The other class makes up the majority of the Palestinian community, for whom nothing in their daily life has changed.

Rather, it has deteriorated along with their struggle for political rights. Oslo has not only worked to divide the Palestinian people into these two classes, but along with the IOF has divided them geographically, economically and politically.

While the people in Gaza strip continue to suffer the bloody and merciless siege by the IOF since 2006 as punishment for freely and fairly electing Hamas, the people of the West Bank suffer home demolitions, checkpoints, arrests and the effects of the construction of the Apartheid wall. The privileged class from Oslo is rewarded financially and politically by the US and the international community.

All the while the divisions between the Palestinian people grow deeper and deeper, effectively weakening any attempt at a sustained resistance to the occupation and their suffering.

We at (MECA) see that these peace talks will not have any real effect on the ground unless there exists a Palestinian leadership grounded in the true conditions of their people and promote without conditionality the fundamental rights of Palestinians as clearly defined under international law, the international declaration of human rights, and subsequent UN resolutions on Palestine. Effective peace talks must accept the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and an end to the Israeli occupation.

Any talks that do not include these two fundamental points as a starting place will not actually be talks preparing for peace, but in fact will be more talks that maintain the status quo.