<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[Occupied Palestine | فلسطين]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[occupiedpalestine]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/author/hajarhajar/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Declaring Palestine: Revisiting Hope and Failure | Dissident&nbsp;Voice]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<h1 class="title">&nbsp;</p>
<p><a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/declaring-palestine-revisiting-hope-and-failure/"><img src="https://occupiedpalestine.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/header.jpg?w=456&#038;h=120" alt="" width="456" height="120" /></a></p>
<p>&nbsp;</h1>
<p class="byline">by Ramzy Baroud / January 7th, 2011</p>
<p>When late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat read the   Declaration of the Palestinian Independence just over 22 years ago,  Palestinians  everywhere were enthralled. They held on to his every word  during the Palestinian  National Council (PNC) session in Algeria on  November 15, 1988. The council  members incessantly applauded and  chanted in the name of Palestine, freedom, the  people and much more.</p>
<p>Back in Nuseirat, a refugee camp in Gaza, a large crowd  of neighbors  and friends watched the event on a small black and white  television.</p>
<p>The Declaration of Independence read, in part: “On this  day unlike  all others…as we stand at the threshold of a new dawn, in all honor  and  modesty we humbly bow to the sacred spirits of our fallen ones,  Palestinian  and Arab, by the purity of whose sacrifice for the homeland  our sky has been  illuminated and our Land given life.”</p>
<p>Many tears were shed, as those watching the historic  event recalled  the innumerable “spirits of the fallen ones”. The Nuseirat  refugee camp  alone had buried scores of its finest men, women and children the   previous year.</p>
<p>By then, the first Palestinian Uprising (December 1987)  had swiftly  changed a political equation that relegated both the Palestinian  cause  and Palestine Liberation Origination (PLO). Arab leaders had met in  Amman  in November 1987, where their discussions were focused almost  exclusively on the  Iran-Iraq war. The “central issue” of the Arabs  didn’t even receive the usual  lip service. The PLO leadership, exiled  in Tunisia since the Israeli war on  Lebanon in 1982, was being  disowned, sidelined, and worse, discredited.</p>
<p>The Palestinian people watched in dismay – but not for  long. Merely  days after the disastrous Arab Summit, Palestinian streets erupted  in  fury. Tens of thousands took to the streets of the Gaza Strip, the West  Bank,  and even Arab towns throughout Israel, making their frustrations  clear to  everyone who contributed to their protracted misery and  oppression.</p>
<p>While celebrating the people’s uprising, Yasser Arafat  and the PLO  leadership didn’t seem to have a concrete plan. They did, however,   labor to seize the moment. PLO representatives were first consulted  regionally  and internationally, and then US and other Western powers  attempted to court the  PLO and to exact ‘compromises’. This  ‘engagement’ was conditional, of course, as  it continues to be till  date.</p>
<p>The Palestinian Declaration of Independence was, then, a   capitalization on all of this. Although it rekindled the ‘power of the  people’  as a very relevant political factor in the Middle East  equation, it also ushered  the triumphant return of the PLO and Arafat.</p>
<p>“We call upon our great people to rally to the banner of  Palestine,  to cherish and defend it, so that it may forever be the symbol of our   freedom and dignity in that homeland, which is a homeland for the free,  now and  always,” the declaration stated.</p>
<p>Abu Ashraf, of the Nuseirat refugee camp, was a poor man  with six  children. His barely treated diabetes had taken a toll on his body.   Once a boxer who had competed at a ‘regional level’ (i.e. in other  refugee camps  in Gaza), his body was now contorted and withering. But  when Arafat declared  that the state of Palestine now existed – even if  only on paper and largely  symbolically – Abu Ashraf got up and danced.  He waved his cane above his head  and swayed around the room amidst the  laughter of his children.</p>
<p>Around 100 countries now recognized “Palestine”.  Ambassadors were  deployed to new posts in many countries, excluding the US and  European  states. But this also seemed to matter little. Palestine had never   sought legitimization from the very powers that had helped establish,  sustain  and defend Israel’s illegal occupation and violence.</p>
<p>The problem was that Arafat, his political party, Fatah  and PLO  leadership could only go so far. There was a subtle understanding among   the ‘pragmatics’ in Fatah that without Western, and specifically  American  validation, a real, tangible Palestine could never follow the  symbolic one.  However, the US, the ultimate defender of Israel, had  raised conditions, which  the PLO readily accepted. The more conditions  Arafat met, the more he was  expected to meet. Among these were:  acknowledging UN resolution 242, renouncing  armed struggle, excluding  PLO factions that the US considered too radical, and  many more.</p>
<p>At first Arafat seemed to have a strategy: get some and  demand more.  But the concessions never stopped, and Arafat was constantly  paraded  following US demands. In return, he received very little, aside from,  six  years later, a Palestinian Authority that was merely responsible  for managing  small, disconnected, ‘autonomous’ areas in the West Bank  and Gaza. The once  glorious moment of independence was left at only  that – a fleeting moment. Its  political potential was prematurely and  cleverly co-opted by US ‘engagement’,  which yielded the Oslo agreement.  Oslo, in turn, led to many disasters, which we  are still witnessing  today.</p>
<p>In late 2010 the fervor of recognitions returned,  championed by  Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. This time around,  however,  there is little fanfare and no genuine hope for meaningful political   initiatives. Abu Ashraf died in his mid-40’s, broken and penniless. His  children  and grandchildren still live in the same house, in the same  refugee camp. A  minor difference in their life is that the Israeli  military occupation of past  has been rebranded and replaced by a very  tight siege. The soldiers are still  nearby, just a few miles away in  any possible direction. And these days there  seem to be few reasons to  dance.</p>
<p>What Palestinians do have today is a much gratitude to  the Latin  American countries that have recently joined the host of nations that   recognize independent Palestine. Uruguay has promised to recognize  Palestine in  January 2011. Many Palestinians now understand that to  capitalize on the growing  international solidarity, the Palestinian  leadership needs to free itself from  the iron grip and political  monopoly of the United States and embrace its  partners of old, from the  time before Oslo, the “peace process”, the Roadmap and  all the other  broken promises.</p>
<p class="author">Ramzy Baroud is an author and a journalist. His latest volume is <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0745325475/dissivoice-20">The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle</a></em> (Pluto Press, London). He can be reached at <a href="mailto:ramzybaroud@hotmail.com">ramzybaroud@hotmail.com</a>. <a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/author/RamzyBaroud/">Read other articles by Ramzy</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/declaring-palestine-revisiting-hope-and-failure/">Declaring Palestine: Revisiting Hope and Failure | Dissident Voice</a>.</p>
]]></html><thumbnail_url><![CDATA[https://occupiedpalestine.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/header.jpg?fit=440%2C330]]></thumbnail_url><thumbnail_width><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_width><thumbnail_height><![CDATA[]]></thumbnail_height></oembed>