Editing Palestine (section)

=====Oslo Accords (1993 - 1995)=====
Yasser Arafat signed a partial peace agreement with fifth Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993. Arafat was being groomed to take over a group of Bantustan-ized Palestinian territories, and was offered leadership in return for a cessation of resistance. In the Oslo Accords, he and the PLO recognized Israeli sovereignty while maintaining a call for Arab statehood/recognized sovereignty only in the continuously occupied West Bank and Gazan territories-- a key reason as to why Hamas and other Palestinian groups rejected the deal.

The Carter Center observed Gazan and West Bank elections thrice, beginning in 1996, with the election of Arafat and 132 members of parliament.

From 1993 to 2000, the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories nearly doubled from 200,000 to 400,000. The settlements encompassed 50% of the West Bank. This settlement was far more rapid under Labor than Likud, under PMs Rabin and Barak than others. In B'Tselem's 2002 report on the West Bank, a 200-page report, the investigators conclude: "Israel has created in the occupied territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two different systems of law in the same area, and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes of the past, such as the Apartheid regime in South Africa."

It was during the negotiations in 1994 that the Palestinian Authority was established. The PA held elections separate from the PLO and rejected the PLO's rule unless it or its factions participated in the PA's elections and parliament. The PA has been led by Fatah and Arafat since the 2007 Palestinian civil war. Also in 1994 Israel signed a treaty with Jordan, after decades of cooperation.

In the 1990s, Sheik Yassin of Hamas gave an interview in which he explained his views regarding Jews. He said "We don't hate Jews and fight Jews because they are Jewish. They are a people of faith and we are a people of faith, and we love all people of faith. If my brother, from my own mother and father and my own faith takes my homes and expels me from it, I will fight him. I will fight my cousin if he takes my home and expels me from it. So when a Jew takes my home and expels me from it, I will fight him. I don't fight other countries because I want to be at peace with them, I love all people and wish peace for them, even the Jews. The Jews lived with us all of our lives and we never assaulted them, and they held high positions in government and ministries. But if they take my home and make me a refugee like 4 million Palestinians in exile? Who has more right to this land? The Russian immigrant who left this land 2000 years ago or the one who left 40 years ago? We don't hate the Jews, we only ask for them to give us our rights."

In a speech in 1997, he elaborated the same point: "I want to proclaim loudly to the world that we are not fighting Jews because they are Jews! We are fighting them because they assaulted us, they killed us, they took our land, our homes, our children, our women, they scattered us, we became scattered everywhere, a people without a homeland. We want our rights. We don't want more. We love peace, but they hate the peace, because people who take away the rights of others don't believe in peace. Why should we not fight? We have our right to defend ourselves."

The various factions of Palestinian resistance have differences-- secular vs. Islamic, nationalist vs. internationalist, recognition of the State of Israel vs. not, and so on-- however, they are bound together by a single thread: the fight for self-determination for the Palestinian people. They are also bound as a whole to the people, the land, and the rest of world history in various ways.

A product of Zionism, the state of Israel, and American foreign policy, the network of American Jewish organizations formed throughout the mid-20th century, gained extreme and swift prominence in America following the 1967 war, and served as advocates of Zionism and the state of Israel ever since. This NGO complex was dubbed "The Holocaust Industry" by liberal professor and author Norman Finkelstein, in the book of the same name. In said book, Finkelstein documents the NGO complex ("organized American Jewry") and the prominent public figures ("Jewish elites") in it, such as Chaim Weizmann, Elie Weisel, and Jocko Wilkomirski, among many others. He seeks to expose the Zionist-NGO complex's exploitation of the memory of "The Holocaust": a dramatized and dogmatic version of the Nazi holocaust which, to the Zionists, represents the culmination of an eternal Gentile hatred of Jews as well as the worst, most incomparable event in human history. These organizations, even including those which were state-sponsored such as the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., have "shaken down" various nations for millions by stealing reparations from Holocaust survivors and claiming both the survivors' possessions as well as assets held by state and private banks since the second World War. Of course, the American Jewish network is only a small subsect of the vast network of charities, universities, NGOs, PACs, and other institutions which serve as devices for funneling money from monopolists under the guise of philanthropy. As Marx wrote, this type of bourgeois socialism was worked into a full system by the mid-19th century, and later became consolidated and socialized by the ruling class well into the 21st century.