On Vichy Palestine

Much celebration has been accorded to the news of some recent recognitions of the "State of Palestine", such as by Spain and Ireland. It would, therefore, surprise many in the Palestine Movement to know that many Palestinians such as myself have dismissed these developments with nothing more than a grimace and a snarl.

What entity is being recognized here? It is the "Palestinian Authority (PA)", which arose as a result of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Now, Oslo was a singular disaster in Palestinian history, and, much to the misfortune of the Norwegians, the word "Oslo" itself has acquired the feel of an expletive, to be ejected from one's vocal cords with the requisite amount of spittle. "Oslovite dogs", "Oslo's orphans", "The Oslo Treason", "The Oslo Authority"... All phrases you would hear from frustrated Palestinians.¹

Palestinian diplomat and writer Rashid Khalidi, in his excellent book The Hundred Years' War on Palestine, tells of his time negotiating in Madrid and being blindsided by the secret Oslo negotiations (emphasis mine):

The problem with the agreement was that the devil is in the details, and the personnel the PLO sent to Oslo were not strong on details. Indeed, they did not have the linguistic or legal or other expertise necessary to comprehend exactly what the Israelis were doing ... When we first saw the text of what had been agreed in Oslo, those of us with twenty-one months of experience in Madrid and Washington grasped immediately that the Palestinian negotiators had failed to understand what Israel meant by autonomy. What they had signed on to was a highly restricted form of self-rule in a fragment of the Occupied Territories, and without control of land, water, borders, or much else. In these and subsequent accords based on them, in force until the present day with minor modifications, Israel retained all such prerogatives, indeed amounting to virtually complete control over land and people, together with most of the attributes of sovereignty ... On balance, a failure to reach a deal would have been better than the deal that emerged from Oslo.

It must come as no surprise to you, dear reader, that the papers and records of the Oslo process have been "lost" and are unavailable to researchers. In fact, according to Norwegian researcher Hilde Henriksen Waage,

But when I set to work at the archives, to my surprise, I found not a single scrap of paper for the entire period from January to September 1993—precisely the period of the backchannel talks. I alerted the head of the MFA archive, who was astonished and more than a little puzzled. Surely they had been misplaced, perhaps stored in improperly marked boxes. After an exhaustive search by the archive’s staff, who combed through indexes, storage rooms, and shelves looking for misfiled documents, all doubt was removed: There were no files.²

Quite naturally, this created a Palestinian entity that was dependent for its very existence on its collaboration with the Israeli occupier, a Vichy Palestine. The Oslo Authority (Sulṭit Ōslō سلطة أوسلو in Palestinian vernacular) has made this very clear through its actions and its words, and perhaps there is no better example of the latter than Mahmoud Abbas himself claiming that "security coordination is sacred". "Security coordination (al-tansīq al-amni التنسيق الأمني)" is the polite euphemism for providing intelligence to the IDF and the Shabak. The Oslo Authority has consistently suppressed all armed resistance against Israeli occupation. Those who find themselves in Oslo's prisons are often tortured and released, only to be arrested immediately by the IDF, sometimes literally at the gates of the prison, handover-style.

It would take me hours³ to list all the incidents of collaboration⁴, but suffice it to say that, by latest count, the Oslo Authority has killed 13 Palestinians in the West Bank since October 7th, 2023, several of them Resistance fighters, but also several civilians including a 9-year-old girl who they shot on October 17th during a pro-Gaza demonstration.

On July 13, Munir Jaghoub, an Oslo official, appeared on a Saudi TV channel and repeated the IDF's narrative about the Mawasi massacre verbatim. This was only the latest in the Oslovite information war against the Palestinian Resistance. Jaghoub faced significant backlash from Palestinians for his disgusting remarks, and this was not helped when the IDF's Arabic-language spokesman and high-output cringe factory Avichay Aderee came to Jaghoub's defense.

It must be stressed again that the "State of Palestine" is not a sovereign state and was never meant to be one. Some Palestine supporters, especially those new to the cause, have stood mouths agape, denouncing the "surprising" heartlessness of the United States as it vetoed the accession of the "State of Palestine" to the UN. In reality, this is more of a routine procedure than an earth-shattering surprise, as Oslo itself was an implicit concession by the Palestinian negotiators that the "State of Palestine" will never be a sovereign state, but merely an extension of the Israeli government—a Ministry of Palestinian Affairs, if you will. If the US delegate had failed to press the veto button (perhaps because he had a coughing fit, slipped on a banana peel, had a prophetic vision, secretly joined Hamas, etc.), Israel would simply respond by fully annexing the West Bank and abolishing the "State of Palestine". This is fully within their power to do, a fact which only serves to throw a stark light onto the true nature of the "State of Palestine".

Nothing can change the fundamental basis of the "State of Palestine": a collection of bantustan islands, separated by colonial settlements and military checkpoints. This is neither desirable nor sustainable, and I personally disclaim any loyalty to such a concept.

True independence for Palestine will never come through begging or as a consolation gift for our tears, and as the Comrade Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa said (speech with English subtitles):

Those who think they are going to get Jerusalem as a gift from Ehud Barak, or that Barak would one day dismantle the settlements himself, or that Barak would volunteer to give us sovereignty ... anyone who thinks like this is delusional.

So, no, and please convey my regrets to Micheál Martin personally, and tell him that, however much he needs the political clout, recognizing the Palestinian equivalent of the Irish Free State—however much this impulse would fit his political leanings—is not something that will do him much credit in the long run, and is not something that gives me much hope or despair either way. It is as empty a gesture as it can be: you cannot spite Hitler by recognizing Pétain∎