One of the issues raised in my most recent diary was some unwise words uttered by PM Netanyahu to the effect that if the PLO took in Hamas, there would be no peace negotiations with them, and I said then that it was not his to determine who would represent the other side in the well known IP struggle. Oslo also says that PLO is the only and exclusive representative of the Palestinian people.
But there are some interesting developments going on now on the Palestinian side which deserve some mention and thought here, about a different way in which the exclusive right of PLO to speak may be at issue.
This article, ignore the title, appeared in Ma'an this week. The part that interested me was the discussion of the group whose meetings had been cancelled
For more than two years, Israeli and Palestinian peace activists have been working on an interesting concept: a Palestinian-Israeli confederation.
The idea was translated into a draft constitution and elections were to be held for parliament and co-presidents earlier this month.
Candidates and other speakers were scheduled to meet the public in three events, in Jerusalem’s Ambassador Hotel, at Talitha Kumi School in Beit Jala (the only location legally accessible to West Bank Palestinians and Israelis) and in Haifa. Sari Nusseibeh and Yael Dayyan were among the speakers. The first two events never happened as a result of consistent and angry protest by Palestinians.
Another similar events was canceled this week. The Palestinian Israeli Journal had scheduled a conference at the Galaxy Hotel, in East Jerusalem, to launch its latest issue, titled “The impact of the Arab Spring on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
In responding to inquiries, the founders of the organization noted the tremendous amount of pressure by Palestinian groups opposed to “normalization” on the hotel owners after a Facebook group called for its boycott.
The generic Palestinians and groups mentioned in the article were not identified.
There was also another article I did not successfully capture, about a program which apparently took place without police or other like fireworks at an educational institution in the settlement of Ariel, (YES, I mean THAT Ariel) in which a number of indisputably right wing nationalist extremist Israeli Jews, from settlements in part, discussed with what was at least described as a not insubstantial number of Arab students possible plans for land division and peace terms, not in the particular adversarial method that one might have predicted. A number of such plans from both sides were discussed. There was a photo of some of the participants.
Hmmm.
(The squiggle should be here)
This article from JPost contains a survey which suggests that there exists a substantial amount of support, majority on both sides, for a two state plan based on a series of terms referred to in the article. On the one hand, the discussions mentioned above do seem to suggest that there is a good deal of interest and some civilian action in coming up with 'a' peace plan, whether a confederation or some two state plan such as the one used for the survey, interestingly called the Clinton parameters, notwithstanding Clinton's disastrous conference on the subject from which such parameters allegedly emerged. On the other, I note the 'objections' from unidentified Palestinians or Palestinian groups, which do not state either the objection or the people involved.
Anyone who has any better or more details on any of these events or similar ones in the last three years is invited to post them.
Assuming something not in evidence at least in these articles, what I am pondering is whether the objections noted in the Ma'an article, ostensibly on the subject of the building wrath of totally disenfranchised Jerusalem Arabs, are concerned with the problem of whether one or more of the unofficial negotiating groups may be working at taking control of or obtaining a position of influence over its end of the negotiating table or providing an alternative to the PLO and its control over the issue and as to Ariel, the Israeli government as well.
Equally phraseable as exercising rights to state opinions on the subject in a public manner for the consideration of others, in a way not theretofore available. Not as much as Occupy, but putting new and additional voices in interested ears. It is at least in my opinion some sign that the people working on these alternatives and publicizing them, and talking to whichever side is the 'other side' as part of doing so, is some evidence that there are folk working to be visible with the idea that the official parties to the still not yet seen table are simply not doing a good, or a good enough, job of getting there and getting the work done.
I know this is a bit on the thin thin side, but one does not often see "Palestinians' reported as shutting down meetings on the terms of peace deals. Not by Ma'an. Forget Bibi and his. There may be no realistic prospect that Bibi and his will be relieved of their formal position as Israeli negotiators, or as the only proposers of plans for the Israeli side. But I am wondering if what this is is perhaps a bit of evidence of an attempted preventive shutdown on the Palestinian side so as to control what the Palestinian side says and who gets to decide that. I can, for example, imagine Bibi trying to trade on or mess with such publicized alternatives or implied dissent from the PA/PLO position, since he says that even with Mr. Abbas he has no partner for peace, nobody who can sit at the other end of the table, but there are these folk over there....
As we sit, the election commission among Palestinian groups will be going forward on January 15, aiming for a May election, assuming that the problem of Bibi messing in it by prohibiting Palestinians in East Jerusalem from participating, notwithstanding their status as mere 'residents' and their inability to vote in Israel because not citizens, which also prevents their voting anywhere else, as reported yesterday in NYT, is solved. There have been indications that an election in which less than all Palestinians would be able to vote is one on which there may be sufficient concern that it might hinder the vote which is planned and that the disenfranchisement of Jerusalem Arabs on Israeli orders is intended to do precisely that. Whether that bar will hold remains to be seen.
I mention that because one of the things that happens in elections is usually that people with decisively different positions state those positions so that voters can choose between them and put one of them in office, and it is unlikely that all of the candidates in any such election would only be from specified parties with platforms we have heard of before. Palestine does have underlying political structures, such as mayors of towns, and heads of family and tribal groups, and religious groups of several kinds, which have their own constituencies and their own views, not necessarily thusfar consulted in the Big National Deal but which might well figure in these sorts of elections, once we find out what sort they will be, by district or party list or whatever, and who will and will not get to vote in them. Did someone say 'refugees"? Once elections are formally called, all sorts of voices will be heard, and the monopolies of the organized official voices on both sides controlling the dialog will be toast.
It will also be remembered that even with Israel, the first applications for UN membership were not accepted until after they got their first election done or at least well underway. Yes, there was one for Palestinians or some of them in 2006 but fresh new elections definitely would not hurt the P side. So elections are not a neutral matter in more ways than one.
Comments invited under my usual rules, including no OT, no meta or minimeta on the house rules here stated, no violations of DKos IP Godwin, no personal attacks or charges of bad faith or one sidedness (or whatever else a mind bent on not discussing the subject of the diary may come up with), on any participant in the conversation, no accusations of bigotry simply to stop conversation because x is an anti-whatever (if you think you have them, you know where to find management) or other thread jacking, no dickish conduct of any kind, no obscenity or profanity, and yes, I will be inflexible in enforcement as another I poster has promised as well to be in his version of his rules. One commenter in one of my diaries put these rules as keeping the static from interfering with the signal. Don't be the static.