Abbas was liberal with the misconceptions in his speech to the French senate

While Israel has blatantly violated international law by legalising settlements on privately-owned Palestinian territory, President Mahmoud Abbas is hindering, rather than facilitating, any reversal of such action. The simple fact is that the Palestinian Authority leader is continuing to speak from a compromised position which places Palestinians on the periphery.

Last Tuesday, Abbas’s speech to the French senate in Paris included an insistence that in order to preserve the (surely long dead) two-state paradigm, there should be “recognition of a Palestinian state akin to the recognition of Israel.” His speech was sprinkled liberally with such misconceptions.

Now that Abbas has a new UN Security Council Resolution to use as reference, the link between the Zionists’ initial colonial plans and the current settlement expansion will become even weaker. The PA’s penchant for dissociation can be perceived easily in the way that each recent sliver of symbolic condemnation or criticism is magnified until even the slightest relevance to the political aspirations of Palestinians is eliminated in favour of mere rhetoric, for the convenience of the speech-writers and international approval.

Adherence to the two-state imposition has already proved to be dangerous for Palestinians. It has differentiated between those in the occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and Diaspora; minimised the importance of the Palestinian right of return; and contributed towards their oblivion with regard to what constitutes Palestine, just to avoid any dissonance within the international community of how the topic should be discussed. The excessive repetition of phrases containing only a slight variation in dissemination is keeping Palestine in the news. Beneath that veneer, though, there is a culture of resistance and anti-colonial struggle that risks annihilation; this will undoubtedly be achieved by the kind of measured utterances favoured by Abbas.

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Forget the conjectures offered by the two-state scenario as imparted by the PA and the international community. Contrary to Abbas’s statement, the imposition does not require any purported equality of recognition. All it needs is a compliant political actor willing to subjugate an entire population to colonial demands and international frameworks. Given that the PA has consistently substituted Palestinian memory in favour of the colonial fabrication, it is evident that this farcical leadership functions from a position of inferiority, which it has embraced wholeheartedly. This is also reflected in international perception of what shapes Palestine today. There is no vision of historic Palestine and no remembrance of villages, towns and cities colonised since the 1948 Nakba; indeed, wiped off the map altogether. This is what the two-state compromise has achieved; it is Palestine, and not Israel, which faces an existential crisis.

Recognition of Palestine should not be on a par with that bequeathed to Israel. Such reasoning absolves Israeli colonialism even as it steals yet more Palestinian territory. If Palestinian aspirations are to be achieved, the accepted narrative insists that they must not depart from Mahmoud Abbas’s appeasement. Dissociation has contributed to the prevailing reference to “an independent, viable Palestinian state” with no proper plan of how this can be implemented. Yet “living side by side in peace and security” with Israel is a prerequisite that the PA has absorbed as its own mantra. How difficult is it to remember the inequality between the coloniser and the colonised?

The two-state imposition reinforces an unchallenged, widespread illusion while encouraging Israel to colonise and Palestinians to accept the crumbs left over. Not all is lost, but the reticence of Palestinian movements to unify and uphold their initial aims of liberation, combined with the PA’s calculated blunders, may well contribute towards an irredeemable scenario.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.