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Palestine Istanbul conference

Mar 07,2017 - Last updated at Mar 07,2017

Earlier this week, I listened to two leading figures who had just returned from Istanbul where they participated in a conference on Palestine, held at the end of February.

I knew about the meeting from the little the media had already published, but I learned much more, indeed much more important information, from the two participants who were quite thorough in sharing their observations at a small social gathering.

Here are some main points.

Why Istanbul?

Because the place is accessible and the visa issue was a concern with respect to other contemplated locations.

Beirut will, however, be the next venue, and probably the chosen location for future follow up meetings.

The conference, we learned, is not going to be a one-time event. Rather, it is meant to be a process to bring together the Palestinians living outside Palestine, from wherever they exist, to discuss their case and to redefine their national objectives following, from the viewpoint of the initiators, the failure of the current Palestinian leadership and, most importantly, the entire PLO strategy, including the Oslo Accords.

The purely voluntary turn out was stunning.

While an optimistic estimate expected a couple of thousand conference participants at best, more than 6,000 showed up. 

The mostly young people who were born and are well settled in their locations, occupying high professional positions, all registered on line, and paid for their accommodation and transportation.

They came to Istanbul from all over the world: Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Scandinavian countries, Europe, the US, Canada, Arab countries, the West Bank, Gaza and many more.

Known, politically active, groups and organisations that did not want their participation to be visible, dispatched attendants too.

The Turkish government did not host the conference, nor did it take part in the proceedings. But the Istanbul municipality offered its meeting hall, transportation and arranged special accommodation and transportation fees for all attendees at a number of hotels and with Turkish Airlines.

On substance there was agreement that the Palestinian rights have been steadily and inadvertently squandered over the years, while the Palestinian leadership has lost direction, running after the mirage of an empty peace process and an endless negotiation strategy that has only been accumulating losses and failures.

No one wanted to abolish the PLO, or to give the impression that the new initiative is separatist. 

The quest is to reform the old organisation, shake up its archaic structure and call for new leadership elections within all its outdated institutions.

The Istanbul meeting did agree on organisational matters, as well as a plan.

The participants envisage the formation of local chapters of the “People’s Front for the Palestinians in Exile” (my translation) to lead a mobilisation process to engage as many Palestinians as possible and to rally support for the redefined Palestinian strategy.

They also aim at holding elections wherever possible to renew their depleted political institutions.

The published final conference communiqué reflects much of what has just been said.

It condemns the Oslo process, in fact the entire peace process strategy, including successive Arab and Palestinian concessions made to the Zionist occupiers, calling instead for reaffirming the basic, original Palestinian, Arab, Islamic rights on all Palestine from the “Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River”.

The tone of the meeting is clearly radical, in the sense that it adopts a new approach, rather than rehash worn-out peace process terminology to ensure acceptability within the licensed political activity arena.

The conference language left no space for continuing with the Oslo process and its disastrous aftermath that lead to the highly controversial security cooperation and the massive attrition of Palestinian rights, including the construction of dozens of Jewish settlements with around 700,000 settlers living now in occupied Jerusalem and on the little land left for the Palestinians.

Moreover, Israeli actions on the ground left no room for the two-state solution, a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines, or the territorial swap that is meant to allow Israel to annex the settlements it illegally built on occupied Palestinian lands.

Most notably, the conference insists on the full exercise of the right of return for all Palestinians to all Palestine.

That means, we were told, that Palestinians will insist on their right to recover their properties anywhere in Palestine and not just in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, within the so-called 1967 borders.

The ultimate goal is eventually one state: all the land for all the people within a democratic state where all citizens enjoy equal rights.

The PLO did speak, in its early times, of a secular democracy in Palestine for both Arabs — Muslims and Christians — and Jews. That was thought to be extreme, thus fiercely opposed.

Later on, the PLO agreed to settle for a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

That was a major Palestinian concession done under international pressure to demonstrate moderation and to move closer to the Israeli position.

But like many other compromises, the Israelis rejected that, too.

Why should the Palestinians, therefore, insist on it and not demand their full rights?

That is what we were told.

One other important point was made clear by one of the two key Palestinian figures who briefed us on the meeting.

He affirmed that the fulfilment of the Palestinian rights does not threaten the Jewish presence in Palestine. It does, however, threaten the apartheid regime that is being gradually established there. 

 

That seemed to be the mood of the Palestine Istanbul conference.

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