The New York Times · 16 May 2001

CP-2001-047

Land and the Intifada

By Yasir Abed Rabbo

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Transcribed from the clipping

RAMALLAH, West Bank — With great precision, an international fact finding committee has identified the principal hindrance to calming the crisis and resuming the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

In its report, completed at the end of April, the committee, headed by former United States Senator George Mitchell, declared: “A cessation of Palestinian-Israeli violence will be particularly hard to sustain unless the government of Israel freezes all settlement construction activity.” The implications of this statement are clear.

The intifada, if it is to end, must first be seen for what it is: Palestinian resistance to Israeli military occupation, exemplified by Israel’s continuing confiscation of Palestinian territory and destruction of Palestinian property in order to build and expand illegal settlements.

For Palestinians, the primary goal is the return of our land and the establishment of a viable, contiguous state on a portion of historic Palestine. Continuing Israeli settlement not only makes this goal impossible to attain, it also has caused us to doubt whether the Israeli government really wants peace.

Israel is continuing to colonize the territory from which it is ostensibly negotiating a withdrawal — since the Oslo accords were signed in 1994, the number of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land has increased by nearly 70 percent. As a result, every new brick laid in Israeli settlements is transformed into a stone of Palestinian defiance.

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