This U.S. passive indifference to Palestinian woes has no other explanation than Washington has already written off the PLO, or at least has decided to do off with it unless the PLO subscribes to coordinating with Israel's unilateralism, which would in fact be its political death certificate.
For too long now the Palestinian leadership has held its decision-making hostage to the "good offices" and "good will" of the U.S., with tragic consequences for the Palestinian people and catastrophic results on the ground.
Symbolic of this hostage-connection is the status of the PLO's office in the U.S., which is renewed by a presidential order on a semi-annual basis and which Bush has recently temporarily downgraded, then reinstated.
In a recent memorandum for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush said he was imposing a "downgrade in status of the PLO Office in the United States (for) non-compliance by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority with certain commitments."
What are those "certain commitments"? They are very well known to the Palestinian public for they have been in place for too long as preconditions dictated to the Palestinian leadership, any leadership.
When this leadership rejected them it was denied any US-connection and recognition and the occupied Palestinian territories were held hostage to the Israeli occupation.
When it complied its decision-making was held hostage to U.S. un-kept promises.
The US still hasn't delivered. It could, but it won't.
Moreover it is using involvement or disengagement to protect the Palestinian people from the Israeli atrocities and the ongoing policy of creating more facts on the Palestinian ground as a tool to squeeze the PLO into accepting more Israeli-made but US offered "concessions."
To build a democratic Palestinian regime under the Israeli occupation as a guarantee for Israel's security was the latest-invented Israeli-US precondition.
The PLO complied. And the Palestinian people are now being collectively punished for their compliance and denied recognition and connection until the newly-elected leadership in its turn complies.
A full-page advertisement in The New York Times, placed by the Council for the National Interest on July 2, called for a "realignment" of the U.S.-Israel relationship and urged the Bush administration to encourage Israel to return to its pre-1967 boundaries and reconsider U.S. assistance to Israel.
Just on time, not for the administration to be forthcoming because President Bush on April 14, 2004 had opted to move exactly in the opposite direction, but for the PLO to reconsider its leadership's 20-year old overt connection with the U.S.
The U.S. policy is once more plunging the region into a mess of bloody violence and insecurity and turning it into an incubator-environment for both Israeli state terrorism and a counter individual terror, while in this process cornering the PLO into seeing its leading role eroded by the day, to the joy of the Israeli propagandists who have been promoting the lie that no Palestinian partner exists.
It's high time for both sides to make or break.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank. He is the editor of the English Web site of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).
For too long now the Palestinian leadership has held its decision-making hostage to the "good offices" and "good will" of the U.S., with tragic consequences for the Palestinian people and catastrophic results on the ground.
Symbolic of this hostage-connection is the status of the PLO's office in the U.S., which is renewed by a presidential order on a semi-annual basis and which Bush has recently temporarily downgraded, then reinstated.
In a recent memorandum for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush said he was imposing a "downgrade in status of the PLO Office in the United States (for) non-compliance by the PLO and the Palestinian Authority with certain commitments."
When this leadership rejected them it was denied any US-connection and recognition and the occupied Palestinian territories were held hostage to the Israeli occupation.
When it complied its decision-making was held hostage to U.S. un-kept promises.
The US still hasn't delivered. It could, but it won't.
Moreover it is using involvement or disengagement to protect the Palestinian people from the Israeli atrocities and the ongoing policy of creating more facts on the Palestinian ground as a tool to squeeze the PLO into accepting more Israeli-made but US offered "concessions."
To build a democratic Palestinian regime under the Israeli occupation as a guarantee for Israel's security was the latest-invented Israeli-US precondition.
The PLO complied. And the Palestinian people are now being collectively punished for their compliance and denied recognition and connection until the newly-elected leadership in its turn complies.
A full-page advertisement in The New York Times, placed by the Council for the National Interest on July 2, called for a "realignment" of the U.S.-Israel relationship and urged the Bush administration to encourage Israel to return to its pre-1967 boundaries and reconsider U.S. assistance to Israel.
Just on time, not for the administration to be forthcoming because President Bush on April 14, 2004 had opted to move exactly in the opposite direction, but for the PLO to reconsider its leadership's 20-year old overt connection with the U.S.
The U.S. policy is once more plunging the region into a mess of bloody violence and insecurity and turning it into an incubator-environment for both Israeli state terrorism and a counter individual terror, while in this process cornering the PLO into seeing its leading role eroded by the day, to the joy of the Israeli propagandists who have been promoting the lie that no Palestinian partner exists.
It's high time for both sides to make or break.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Ramallah, West Bank. He is the editor of the English Web site of the Palestine Media Centre (PMC).
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