Just Arab wishful thinking? The prospect of a Palestinian state

Ma'an - Ghada Karmi- President Mahmoud Abbas lays the first stone of new Palestinian embassy in Brazil on December 31, 2010. Brazil angered Israel and the United States earlier this month when it declared it was recognizing a sovereign Palestinian state within the borders before the 1967 Six Day War.

It is difficult to think of a term so frequently cited by political circles and with so little basis in reality as "the Palestinian state". Even more illusory is the description of this non-existent state as "sovereign" and "independent". These terms appear in Article 2 (III) of the Saudi-inspired Arab Peace Initiative adopted by the Arab summit of 2002. The text speaks of, "The establishment of a sovereign independent Palestinian state on the Palestinian territories occupied since June 4, 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital"--surely a statement about the triumph of hope over experience?

There is nothing new in the idea of a Palestinian state as such. It been been taking shape over many decades, a remarkable phenomenon of something avidly pursued without actually happening, despite years of "peacemaking". Partition of the land of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states was ushered in by the British mandatory government in the 1937 Peel Commission report as a solution to the conflict between Jews and Arabs at the time. It acquired more status with UN General Assembly partition resolution 181, passed in 1947. By 1977, Palestinians (who had always rejected the idea of partition) began their gradual descent toward its acceptance when the Palestine National Council approved the establishment of an "independent national state" on any liberated Palestinian land. Not long after, the 1982 Saudi-sponsored Fez peace plan proposed the creation of an independent Palestinian state, following on from a similar Russian proposal in 1981.
Read more