Hussein Ibish: Freedom and equality are at the core of the Palestinians’ struggle

Former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was solicited to contribute to the New York Times "Turning Points/The Big Debate" edition on the question, "Who are the moral leaders for these times?" Dr. Fayyad contributed this commentary on the power of justice, peace, Palestinian rights and the inspiration of Nelson Mandela.

http://www.americantaskforce.org/former_pm_fayyad_and_aftp_senior_fellow_ibish_moral_need_palestinian_state

Freedom and equality are at the core of the Palestinians’ struggle

Writing recently in the New York Times, former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad cited Nelson Mandela as his personal inspiration and the embodiment of the essential attributes of the Palestinian cause. It was a perfect choice.

Mr Mandela, he wrote, has become a “universal symbol of the struggle for self-determination and human equality”. The essence of the Palestinian struggle is exactly that: a quest for establishing that Palestinians are equal human beings to all others. They are no better and no worse, but equal.

The only viable means for Palestinians to attain and assert this equality is through the establishment of a fully sovereign, independent Palestinian state. Through this state, Palestinians will be first-class citizens in a country of their own for the first time in their modern history. For the first time, they will be able to exercise self-determination. And, for the first time, they will be equal to Jewish Israelis, and all of their Arab neighbours, as citizens of equally sovereign, independent states that will have to coexist in peace and security.

Equality of the kind envisaged by Mr Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, Mohandas K Gandhi, and invoked by Mr Fayyad, doesn’t involve a highly regimented, nihilistic vision of non-differentiation, such has been advocated by some radical Maoist and other extreme utopian groups. It understands that each individual is different, and that there will be many differences between societies as well. It doesn’t seek to smash everyone into a tiny cubbyhole of conformity and standardisation.

Instead, it seeks to free the creative and self-empowering energies of every individual and society. For a national collectivity like the Palestinians, this means freedom from occupation and for the equal right – along with all other peoples – to establish their own state and pursue their independence as they see fit.

It does not and it cannot in the real world mean perfect justice, which is, by definition, unattainable. But it does mean relieving an extreme form of injustice: the occupation that leaves over four million Palestinians stateless in their own land.

Mr Fayyad and other serious Palestinians understand that this means compromises with Israel. Israel, too, must rein in the overweening ambitions of its settler and annexationist movements and make serious compromises on politically difficult issues such as Jerusalem, which will have to be a shared city if the conflict is to end.

Mr Fayyad is absolutely right when he points to “the fundamental asymmetry in the balance of power between occupier and occupied” as the primary obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. It is simply too easy for the Israeli public to ignore the problem of the occupation and pretend, in effect, as it did in its last election, that it simply doesn’t exist.

But the world has a stake in resolving the conflict by ending the occupation, and the two-state solution is the stated policy of virtually every government in the world, the preference of the majority of Israelis and Palestinians in every survey and the only outcome explicitly endorsed by international law. The global consensus is practically unanimous: Palestinians deserve a state alongside Israel, which is already a United Nations member state....