Further proof of the Palestinian Authority’s rejection of Palestinian land, history and memory was articulated recently by Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, who basically discounted Zionist colonisation and the Nakba by referring to a lacerated map as “the only recognised map of the State of Palestine”. As expected, the 1967 “borders” — Israel has never actually declared where its borders lie — continue to play a major role in the PA’s engagement with the international community and the occupation state.
“The map of the State of Palestine is the map recognised by the world in accordance with the United Nations resolutions, and it is the only one that can achieve security, peace and stability in the region and the world,” Abu Rudeineh declared in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts to claim Israeli sovereignty over the occupied West Bank. “Any other maps mean the continuation of the [Israeli] occupation and cannot be accepted.”
The 1967 borders are convenient for the PA, the UN and Israel. In particular, the PA has given the UN and Israel reassurance that it will never challenge the original crime of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Abu Rudeineh needs only to glance at the maps depicting Palestine’s disappearance to realise the discrepancy of his words and his betrayal of the Palestinian cause, all for the sake of keeping within the boundaries of UN resolutions.
Let’s be absolutely clear: UN resolutions work for Israel, not the Palestinians. By prioritising UN politics over Palestinian demands, the PA is affirming its acceptance of all Zionist colonisation, ethnic cleansing and dispossession of the Palestinian people from their land. The UN Partition Plan of November 1947 set the pace for Zionists’ colonisation of Palestine, and they departed from international consensus and violated the terms thereafter.
The PA, in accordance with the UN’s perpetually belated resolutions, separates the aftermath from its roots, thus preventing any possibility of addressing Israel’s accountability. In 1977, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 32/40 B calling for 29 November to be marked as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Commemorating this travesty of justice as ordained by the UN should be repudiated and replaced by demanding the UN to acknowledge its role in facilitating the forced displacement of Palestinians and ongoing territorial loss, by its own Resolution 181.
Yet the PA wilfully ignores the process which has now led to a US-Israeli partnership that faces no challenge from the international community. As a result, it encourages the UN in maintaining the role of issuing resolutions that justify Palestine’s fragmentation. What does Abu Rudeineh have to say to the Palestinian refugees who were deprived of their land as a result of what the 1947 Partition Plan decided for Palestine and its people?
The UN’s fixation upon the 1967 borders, as well as the PA’s acquiescence to this parameter, have obliterated the centrality of Palestinian refugees to the anti-colonial struggle. With reference to Trump’s so-called deal of the century, Netanyahu stated, “Israel is receiving real things, and the Palestinians are required to fulfil a list of demands.” Even when faced with this stark reality, all the PA can do is crawl back to the UN resolutions that enabled the Palestinians’ downfall in the first place.
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