MPPM denounces the “hoax of the century” that the US wants to impose on the Palestinians

The Movement for the Rights of the Palestinian People and for Peace in the Middle East (MPPM) firmly condemns the content of the so-called “deal of the century” for the resolution of the Palestinian question, presented on 28 January by US President Donald Trump, supported by the still Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Presented with imperial arrogance, the so-called “Peace for Prosperity” plan tears up all the resolutions passed over decades by the UN on the Palestinian issue, and even tears up the agreements, such as Oslo, promoted under the aegis of the United States of America since the 1990s. The “Plan” is fully in line with the positions of the Israeli extreme right and takes the form of a diktat that seeks to impose on the Palestinian people, whose representatives were not even considered worthy of consultation, the total renunciation of their national rights, recognized and enshrined in international law.

Legitimising annexation and continuing the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians

The “deal of the century” proclaims (again) undivided Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel; promotes the annexation by Israel of all Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank; recognizes the annexation of the Jordan Valley by Israel; denies the Palestinian refugees, expelled in successive campaigns of ethnic cleansing by Zionist forces and later by Israel, the right to return. The map accompanying the “Plan” traces a border that annexes the Syrian Golan Heights to Israel, contrary to all international legitimacy.

Defendant for corruption Netanyahu wastes no time: blessed by Trump, he wants the Israeli government to discuss the first phase of the annexation next Sunday.

In contrast, the Palestinians would have to accept a farcical “state”, yet again consigned to the Greek Calends: a shapeless entity, fragmented into discontinuous ghettos reminiscent of Apartheid South Africa's Bantustan plans, with no control of the borders, with no control of airspace and territorial waters, with its capital in an outskirt of East Jerusalem, with no right to have its own military forces but subject to the eternal military presence of Israel.

Furthermore, the Palestinians would have to renounce financial subsidies to the families of prisoners and the deadly victims of Israeli repression; to recognise Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people”, i.e., discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel; and to accept the disarmament of Palestinian resistance movements.

A part of the Palestinian citizens of Israel would be destined to be forcibly annexed to the Palestinian pseudo-state. Under cover of the fallacious argument of a nation-state for the Jews and a nation-state for the Palestinians, under the pretext of “territorial compensation” for the settlements established in the heart of the West Bank, it is in reality yet another measure of ethnic cleansing, aimed at what Zionism failed to achieve in 1948: an “ethnically pure” Jewish state, unencumbered by its Palestinian inhabitants, Muslims and Christians.

In direct line with previous measures of the Trump administration — recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and transfer of the US embassy there; cutting funding to UNRWA, the UN agency for assistance to Palestinian refugees; annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights occupied in 1967; denying the illegal character of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories — the US plan seems to have come out of the pen of the most radical Zionists, the most extreme settlers. And not by chance: it is significant that Trump and Netanyahu both hailed the role played in this process by David Friedman, US ambassador to Israel, Jason Greenblatt, special envoy to the Middle East, and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and main author of the plan, all avowed Zionists with close ties to the settlers' movement.

A new international order in the Middle East with Iran in the crosshairs

The relevance of what is at stake transcends the strict framework of the Palestinian issue. It is a brutal violation of international legality, moreover, presented expressly as part of a plan of aggression against Iran. Trump said, and Netanyahu reiterated and applauded, that the plan follows the unilateral breach by the USA of the nuclear limitation agreement signed with Iran by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, and boasted of the assassination in Baghdad, in blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty, of the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, a leading figure in the fight against Daesh and other terrorists who are attacking Syria's integrity and sovereignty.

Trump silences the state terrorism and ethnic cleansing practised by Israel for decades against the Palestinian people and other peoples in the region, and wants to deprive the Palestinian question of the centrality it has in establishing a climate of peace in the Middle East.

The aim is an entire political and geostrategic reorganisation of the region under the imperial aegis. By presenting Iran as the main source of terrorism, the aim is to create an alignment of certain Arab countries around the Israel-Saudi Arabia axis against the countries and forces in the Middle East which oppose US domination and side with the Palestinian people. The document makes this explicit by recommending the creation of a “Regional Security Council” composed of the USA, Israel, the “State of Palestine”, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The international community must assume its responsibilities

In fact, the presence at the presentation session of the “deal of the century” of the ambassadors in Washington of Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates is a symptom of the advanced stage of the implementation of this plan — and of the increasingly shameless and ignoble betrayal of reactionary and dictatorial Arab regimes to the Palestinian cause.

The unprecedented gravity of the document and the real dangers it poses to the peoples of the Middle East, and above all on the long-suffering Palestinian people, demand that the operation now under way be halted.

For this it is necessary that countries and organisations defending a world governed by international law and not by the law of the strongest act forcefully and without delay, categorically rejecting the plan presented unilaterally by the USA and reaffirming that the solution to the Palestinian drama cannot be reconciled with the continuation, in whatever form, of the Zionist control and colonisation of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. The UN, whose legitimacy is directly challenged by this plan, as well as the European Union, which have already reaffirmed their continued commitment to the two-state solution, including a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, must, moreover, move from fine declarations of principle to deeds.

MPPM considers it intolerable that the European Union maintains an Association Agreement with Israel, even though the very preamble to the Agreement mentions respect for human rights and democracy as a condition. Rather, the situation calls for sanctions against Israel, a persistent and unrepentant violator of international law and the human rights of Palestinians.

Portugal cannot continue to be complacent with Israel

MPPM considers it unacceptable that the Portuguese government continues to maintain an attitude of shocking complacency towards Israel's crimes and violations of international law. It is unacceptable that the Portuguese government maintains a longstanding cooperation with Israel in the military and security fields, recently evidenced by the purchase of Israeli electronic warfare equipment for the KC-390 planes destined for the Portuguese Air Force. It is unacceptable that the Portuguese government should align itself with those who wish to curtail the just criticism of Zionism and Israel's crimes by equating it with anti-Semitism, as intended by the specious definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance to which the government has subscribed.

In compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, MPPM considers that the Portuguese government should instead take an active position in denouncing Israeli crimes and violations of law. The Portuguese government must comply with the recommendation of the Assembly of the Republic [Parliament] and sovereignly recognise the State of Palestine within the 1967 borders, as well as act in this sense within the institutions of the European Union, adhering to the Luxembourg proposal.

Solidarity with the Palestinian cause

The intentions of the USA and the Zionist State to eliminate once and for all the Palestinian people's aspirations for freedom, justice for refugees, a sovereign and independent State, are met with firm and increasingly united opposition from the Palestinian people itself.

At this time of extreme difficulty for the Palestinian people, and in a struggle that is also for peace and justice throughout the Middle East and the world, MPPM reiterates its everlasting solidarity with the cause of the Palestinian people and calls for the active solidarity of all Portuguese citizens and organisations with the Palestinian people in their yearning for the realization of their legitimate and imprescriptible national rights.

30 January 2020

The MPPM National Directorate