COVER PROFILE
PLO Chief Representative Maen Rashid Areikat
After Gaza, What’s Next For the Palestinians? by Larry Luxner
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s the Washington representative of a stateless people for the last five years, Maen Rashid Areikat seems a lot more optimistic than he should be.
Since mid-2009, Areikat — a 54-year-old career diplomat who enjoys fine Cuban cigars and lively political debates — has headed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mission to the United States. During that time, the influence of his moderate Fatah faction has declined, while Fatah’s far more militant rival Hamas has grown dramatically in popularity, both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to build Jewish settlements in occupied territory, over the protests of Netanyahu’s counterpart in Ramallah, President Mahmoud Abbas, who looks increasingly impotent in the face of failed peace talks. The Israelis themselves — having shifted to the right in recent years — appear less willing than ever to trust the Palestinians in resuming talks that would return Israel to its 1967 borders as part of an elusive two-state solution (see related story, page 12). Gaza is still smoldering from this summer’s Israeli air and ground invasion, which began after three Jewish yeshiva students were kidnapped and murdered. Hundreds of Palestinians were rounded up in the ensuing Israeli dragnet, one Palestinian boy was burned to death, Hamas began lobbing relentless rocket fire toward Israel and the PLO government in the West Bank was relegated to the sidelines as Hamas and Israel traded blows.The 50-day conflict, known in Israel as Operation Protective Edge, killed 67 Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel, and more than 2,100 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, including 500 children, according to the United Nations. Since then, the Israel-Palestine struggle itself has been overshadowed by the Islamic State, a Sunni fundamentalist group now terrorizing millions of people throughout Iraq and Syria — and giving Muslims everywhere a bad name. Netanyahu recently equated the Islamic State with Hamas as “branches of the same tree,” a public relations tactic that puts Palestinians on the defensive at a time when PLO leaders would much rather be discussing things like statehood, legitimacy and international recognition. Despite the bleak state of affairs, Areikat hasn’t given up on his dream of an independent Palestine, a dream that has fascinated and frustrated the global consciousness for more than 66 years. “I’ve been here for five years, and professionally, I can’t say I’m more optimistic or hopeful than when I came. But I see changes happening, even here in the U.S.,” he told The Washington Diplomat during a two-hour interview at the PLO’s gleaming new mission fronting Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. “The government and the American people are somehow getting tired of this continuing conflict. One would have expected they’d abandon the idea, but I think there’s a serious, genuine desire to end it.” Areikat spoke to us on Oct. 8, the day before representatives of Fatah and Hamas met in Gaza City — in the first national consensus meeting since the Hamas takeover of the tiny coastal enclave in 2007. Several days later, at an international donor conference in Cairo, foreign countries led by Qatar pledged $5.4 billion to help rebuild Gaza, where the recent war left some 100,000 Gazans homeless November 2014
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Photo: Lawrence Ruggeri of ruggeriphoto.com
The Netanyahu government’s aim is to prolong the status quo. They think this can go on for another 50 years, with Gaza separated and the West Bank under their control…. They don’t pay the price of this occupation.
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— Maen Rashid Areikat
chief representative of the PLO Delegation to the United States
and much of the crowded strip’s infrastructure in shambles. And in another hopeful sign, Sweden in early October said it would recognize Palestine — thereby becoming the first European Union member state to do so, although it did not indicate a timeframe for recognition. (In a largely symbolic vote, the British Parliament also passed a nonbinding resolution to recognize a Palestinian state.) Predictably, Sweden’s announcement angered both the United States and Israel, with Netanyahu warning it would harm the peace process and the State Department saying it was “premature.” All told, 134 countries now recognize Palestine. Yet in the long run, the only country that really controls
Palestine’s destiny is the state of Israel — and on that front, things don’t look too promising at the moment. “The Netanyahu government’s aim is to prolong the status quo.They think this can go on for another 50 years, with Gaza separated and the West Bank under their control,” Areikat complained.“They don’t pay the price of this occupation. Israel today is in a very comfortable situation. Security-wise, they are not confronting any security threats in the West Bank. The fact they have not been genuinely engaged in peace talks has contributed to Palestinian despair and hopelessness.” To make matters worse, Israel’s campaign in Gaza was a failure, accomplishing only one thing, at least according to Areikat: increased hatred by Palestinians of their Jewish neighbors.“Both peoples went to the extreme,” he lamented.“It didn’t serve anyone’s interest but the extremists.” Areikat dismissed the notion that ceaseless rocket attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians justified the powerful assault on Gaza. He says the real reason for Operation Protective Edge “was to undermine the national consensus” that had emerged between Fatah and Hamas under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority. After the U.S.-led peace talks collapsed earlier this year, Abbas announced that he would form a technocratic unity government with Hamas, a move that was promptly denounced by Israel and the United States. Some speculate that the crackdown in the West Bank following the murder of three Jewish teens in June was really a pretext to sabotage the reconciliation— and re-arrest some of the Palestinian prisoners that had been released as part of peace negotiations.
Continued on next page The Washington Diplomat Page 15