In Solidarity 3/191 Sean Matgamna argued that the Guardian’s recent condemnation of the Palestinian Authority was demagogic (pretended “shock” at the “leak” of negotiating positions which were already well-known) and a backhanded way of supporting those who uphold the “right of return”, i.e. collective Arab repossession of Israeli territory rather than “two states”.
Broadly Ira Berkovic (in a letter Solidarity 3/192) agrees, I think.
Ira agrees that it is wrong to propose the “right of return”. But he charges Sean with being imprisoned by “the admittedly very unpleasant realities of bourgeois diplomacy”.
Sean’s article condemns, not approves, the Israeli negotiating stance: “Israel refuses to make a peace which the Arab states and the Palestinians offer it”. Is Ira’s complaint that Sean does not expand on this condemnation of Israeli governments?
The article is not about Israeli negotiating stances. It is about Palestinian negotiating stances and the Guardian’s condemnation of them (“Palestinian leaders gave up on refugees”).
At Taba in 2001, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators agreed to talk about a limit to the number of “returners”. The Israeli side suggested 25,000 over three years, or 40,000 over five, with “return” to be resolved over a fifteen year period.
The Palestinian side said nothing more precise than “six figures” over an indefinite period.
The Geneva accord formulated in 2003 between unofficial negotiators, endorsed by Yasser Arafat, and welcomed by AWL at the time, set no minimum figure at all: Israel would admit “returners” at its “sovereign discretion”.
Something more generous than 10,000 would be good? Sure. But it’s a matter of adjustments, not of valid principle or abandonment of principle. If Palestinian negotiators could deliver an “ultimatum” for a real independent state, that would be good. An “ultimatum” for the “right of return” would be destructive in principle, not just unwise negotiating tactics.
Ira seems to want to “escape” rhetorically into “another way” between an “ultimatum” for the “right of return” and getting the best “return”-or-compensation deal possible in real life now. “Any democratic two-states settlement would involve open negotiations on these questions [presumably, the returner-number question] and others that go far beyond the boundaries of bourgeois diplomacy”.
Doubtless negotiations between an Israeli workers’ government and a sovereign Palestinian workers’ government could produce something much better than any bourgeois diplomacy can produce. But what has that got to do with the issues as regards the Guardian? And what sense would it make to condemn the bourgeois Palestinian negotiators for negotiating within bourgeois bounds, i.e. not setting a socialist revolution in the whole region as a precondition for any movement?
