Below is a list of resources on the Geneva Accord, including the official text, a synopsis of problems with the Accord, and critical analyses. Click to view:
The OFFICIAL TEXT can be read here.
SYNOPSIS OF PROBLEMS
1. It attempts to nullify the Palestinian right of return, both as a collective national right and as an individual right. By doing so, it strengthens existing attempts to relocate and scatter Palestinian refugees throughout the world and gives credence to plans to abrogate international law pertaining to the inalienable nature of the Right of Return. The net result would be to extract the very anchor of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination: the indivisible oneness of the Palestinian people and their right to their homes, properties and homeland.
2. It provides a Palestinian-Arab cover for the exclusive nature of the Israeli polity as a "Jewish State", thus abrogating the national character of the Palestinian people within 1948 borders. It therefore fails to recognize the right of the 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to live in a democratic state for all its citizens: Jews and Palestinians, and it sets stage for mass transfer and ethnic cleansing in the future to maintain demographic Jewish dominance.
3. It accepts the reconfiguration of Jerusalem based on Israeli annexation plans, and grants Palestinian-Arab legitimacy to the colonial process that altered the Arab character of Jerusalem, making it impossible for the Palestinians to exercise control over "East Jerusalem," not to say anything about "West Jerusalem," which was conquered and ethnically cleansed in 1948.
4. It permanently accepts the presence of the vast majority of Israeli settlement colonies, particularly those that surround Jerusalem from the east, south, north and northwest, where most post-1967 settlers live, and alters the geography of Palestine to accommodate such colonial seizures.
5. It codifies a process that would limit the upper ceiling of a potential Palestinian polity to a truncated and demilitarized entity void of sovereignty, and sets in motion a process of expanding Israeli political oversight and control over any potential Palestinian entity.
6. It paves for an economic/political relationship that subordinates the Palestinian people to an exclusive and dominant Israeli polity, thus strategically de-linking the Palestinians from the Arab people and subjugating the national interests of all Arabs to the singular power of an Israeli-US alliance.
7. It allows for Israeli military and economic penetration and permanent outposts into the presumed Palestinian entity.
8. It leaves open all Israeli claims to the region's water resources, natural wealth, and airspace. The text makes several references to annexes, but these issues have, in effect, been deferred, and may become the "final status" issues of the Geneva understanding.
9. It dilutes the international consensus on the conflict and attempts to transform the basis of the Palestinian struggle from one of national self-determination and return to that of modified civil rights within a prescribed political framework.
10. Most importantly, it weakens the national unity and resolve of the Palestinian people leading to the potential defeat of the current Intifada in the same manner Madrid and Oslo destroyed the first a decade ago.
11. It diminishes European commitment to Palestinian sovereignty, and most importantly, it expands the margin of Palestinian concessions, which have been bottoming out during the past two decades, making it very difficult for future Palestinian negotiators to back away from these concessions, including the renunciation of the Right of Return.
12. It assumes the Palestinian victims of Israel are the criminals, and the new judges allegedly more liberal than previous ones in the sentencing.
The Geneva Accord is a natural extension and an inevitable result of the "Road Map" and all associated models. The outcome of all, if allowed to succeed, would be to terminate the Palestinian march to freedom, to nullify indefinitely and de-legitimize the Palestinian right to return, and to subordinate the Arab nation to a heavily militarized outpost with normalized relationships with its surrounding.
ANALYSES:
January 2004
Racism Repackaged - By Salman Abu Sitta, Al Ahram, January 1-7. Abu Sitta is general coordinator of the Right of Return Congress.
Geneva Accord: Analysis of the Bankruptcy - By Paul Burrows, January 3. Burrows is a member of the Canada Palestine Support Network and the International Solidarity Movement-Canada.
December 2003
Talking out of both sides of their mouths - By Sherri Muzher, Media Monitors Network, December 8.
The false hope of the Geneva Accord - By Ali Abunimah, December 3. Abunimah is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
Geneva understandings promote a failed apartheid solution - By Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, December 2. Qumsiyeh is a member of Arab Media Watch and chair of the media committee of The Palestine Right to Return Coalition.
The Geneva Accord: A critical assessment - By Marwan Bishara, Daily Star, December 1. Bishara is professor of international relations at the American University of Paris.
Apartheid Israel: A critical reading of the draft permanent agreement known as the Geneva Accords - By Uri Davis, honourary research fellow at the University of Durham's Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and at the University of Exeter's Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies; founder member of the Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine and the Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel; observer-member of the Palestine National Council.
November 2003
The Israeli text and context of the Geneva Accord - By Shiko Behar and Michael Warschawski, November 24. Behar is director of the Alternative Information Center, a joint Palestinian-Israeli organisation based in Jerusalem and Beit Sahour. Warschawski is co-chairman of the board of the AIC.
Recycled delusions in Geneva - By Arab Media Watch member and journalist Rime Allaf, November 14.
October 2003
The 1.5 state solution - By Gabriel Ash, Yellow Times, October 31.
Geneva Accord: Why can't the PA learn from its mistakes? - By Hasan Abu Nimah, October 30. Abu Nimah is former ambassador and permanent representative of Jordan at the UN.
A disastrous dead end: The Geneva Accord - By Ali Abunimah, October 28. Abunimah is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
Geneva Accord: PA selling out Palestinian rights? - By Haitham El-Zabri, October 22. El-Zabri is editor and webmaster of AlAqsaIntifada.org.