Barghouthi: “Israel Used Peace Talks To Implement Apartheid”
by Saed Bannoura
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi
(IMEMC) ,- Palestinian Legislator, Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, stated that the Oslo peace agreement is a big failure, and that Israel is the only party the benefits of this treaty.
Marking the twentieth anniversary of signing the first Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Dr. Barghouthi said that agreement was transitional and partial, and did not carry any characteristics of the main goal of peace talks.
“This allowed Israel to implement a system of apartheid, by significantly escalating its settlement activities, and the theft of Palestinian lands, Israel is using the peace deal as a cover-up for its violations”, the Palestinian official added.
He also said that one aspect of the failure of this agreement is, that it failed to include the release of all Palestinians held by Israel, and the issue that all detainees, who were held before Oslo, were kept behind bars for additional twenty years.
“The agreement was signed without any commitments from Israel to stop its settlement activities”, Dr. Barghouthi stated, “This is why former chief negotiator, Dr. Haider Abdul-Shafi, and many others, quit the talks; the number of Israeli settlers increased from 160.000 by the time Oslo was signed, to 650.000”.
Dr. Barghouthi said that the Oslo Agreement was not signed between two equal partners, forcing the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) to recognize Israel as a state, while Tel Aviv only recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian People without recognizing the Palestinian right to a state within the 1967 borders.
“Those serious mistakes led to disastrous consequences, allowing Israel to divide the occupied territories into areas A, B and C, giving it the chance to build and expand settlements, and the Apartheid Wall”, he said, “The wall was build 25 Kilometers deep into the West Bank, isolating and confiscating large areas of lands and orchards, and isolated Jerusalem from its surrounding Arab areas”.
Furthermore, the official said that Oslo divided the Palestinian people, and their national movements, in addition to causing division with the refugees in exile, and weakening the role of the PLO by transforming it into a government instead of a liberation movement.
He also accused Israel of only implementing what is good for the state, and of obliging the Palestinians to remain committed to the agreements and all following agreements, including the Paris Protocols.
“All issues of this conflict were supposed to be resolved by 1999 through a final status agreement”, Dr. Barghouthi said, “But what happened is that Israel transformed the temporary agreement into a permanent one and enforced its social, political and economic apartheid policies on the Palestinians.
He said that the Palestinian leadership should adopt a new policy by increasing national resistance activities, by boycotting Israel, by working on the international level to boycott all Israeli products, and different institutions.
“The Palestinians must end all internal divisions, form a unified leadership that can place economic strategies that support the people and counter increasing living costs”, the official said, “we need a compressive unity between all Palestinians in Palestine and in exile”.
This article was originally published at Middle East Media Center
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Saed Bannoura, born 1973 in Palestine, is a prolific Palestinian journalist, who is working for the International Middle East Media Center IMEMC. After having been shot multiple times by an Israeli death squad, Saed Bannoura is confined to using a wheelchair. Saed Bannoura is a tireless activist for Palestinians rights. His work and the work of his colleagues at the independent Palestinian news agency IMEMC are setting today´s standards in independent reporting and media ethics, to a degree that most major “purportedly independent” news agencies have problems following the standards set by IMEMC. Saed Bannoura´s articles are published in media worldwide, including on nsnbc ìnternational. IMEMC´s website is located at www.imemc.org
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