The Qatari involvement was blessed and hailed by the 8+1 camp and beforehand perceived as an additional pressure on Hamas irrespective of Qatar's well-intentioned motives. Any simple logical analysis would easily conclude that Doha's mediation has weighed in on Hamas. The Qatari proposals boil down to being a US version of the API that was adapted to sell the Israeli dictates to Hamas in Arab packing.
Any Arab involvement to resolve the Palestinian crisis is doomed if based on an agenda adverse to Syria and Iran, particularly if this involvement is suspiciously backed by the US strategic ally of Israel.
The Americans, the Arab moderates, the Qataris and the "moderate" Palestinian camp knew this beforehand and were very well aware that Hamas won't be forthcoming and won't buy the Israeli conditions camouflaged in Arab mediation.
The initiative does not address: (1) the nature of the envisioned Palestinian state or the level of its militarization, (2) the use of water resources, (3) access to Jerusalem and its holy sites as well as access to other holy sites within the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine or access between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, (4) the fate of more than 160 Israeli colonies home to more than 450.000 illegal Jewish settlers in the envisioned Palestinian state, (5) the borders and the border controls between Israel and the Palestinian state, and (6) the fate of Palestinian prisoners.
More importantly the API doesn't address the nature of the "just solution" to the refugee problem, the hard core of the Palestine Question, although it refers to the UN General Assembly non-binding resolution 194 -- rejected by Israel and ignored by the U.S. for 59 years -- and makes this solution subject to negotiations, thus compromising the "Right of Return" for more than half the Palestinian people.
The "moderate" side in the Palestinian divide complicates the controversy further by President Mahmoud Abbas' repeated statements on reaching "a just and agreed upon solution for the problem." The "agreed upon" formula reveals willingness to compromise, which is worrying to refugees.
If the Palestinian ï ¿ ½ Israeli unofficial Geneva Accord or Initiative is the indicator then the "agreed upon solution" as an approach would compromise not only the Palestinian Right of Return but also the status of Jerusalem.
The accord gives the refugees six options of which only one grants them the choice to allow a marginal number a symbolic return to Israel, thus converging with the comatose former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's vision of turning the West Bank into world's largest refugee camp, which is to be called a Palestinian state. The accord also cedes to Israel 85 percent of eastern Jerusalem, which the Jewish state occupied in 1967.
Fortunately Israel rejected the initiative, but unfortunately the PLO never officially rejected the accord which was co-authored by none other than a member of its executive committee.
How could anyone blame Hamas for insisting on alternative terms of reference other than the terms which the PLO was coerced to accept when an Israeli academic and author, like Tanya Reinhart, decides to quit as emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and "return" to Australia in protest against Israel's handling of the Palestinian issue after condemning its government for lying to the world by using arguments about Israel's right to exist as a cover for grabbing land and resources from the Palestinian people.
"Palestinians should not have to pay the price of the Holocaust," she said, adding that Israel is imprisoning "a whole nation." (2)
If Israeli immigrants into Palestine have the luxury of opting to leave Israel and return home when things turn unbearable for them to stay, the Palestinian people have no other choice but to stay.
How could anyone blame Hamas for insisting on alternative terms of reference other than the terms which the PLO was coerced into accepting!
Notes
(1) Frida Ghitis, http://worldpoliticswatch.com, Oct 10, 2006.
(2) The Age Online, Oct. 10, 2006.
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