The Geneva accord was signed Monday 1 December 2003 amid great media and political fanfare. The 50-page document lays out a plan for a presumed "peace agreement" between Israel and the Palestinian people. We, the undersigned, consider this initiative as inconsistent with the prerequisites of a just and durable peace for the following reasons:
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 the 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 that Madrid and Oslo [accords] 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 delegitimize the Palestinian right to return, and to subordinate the Arab nation to a heavily militarized outpost with normalized relationships with its surrounding.
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Signed by (in alphabetical order):
Yousef Abudayyeh
San Diego, California, USA
As'ad AbuKhalil, PhD
Stanislaus, California, USA
Nader Abuljebein
Writer
Palestine Right of Return Congress
Free Palestine Alliance, USA
Janet Abu-Lughod, PhD
Professor Emerita of Sociology
East Quogue, New York, USA
Ali Abunimah
Writer/journalist
Chicago, USA
Ambassador Hasan Abunimah
New York, USA
Husam Abusneineh
California, USA
Hussein Agrama
Washington DC, USA
Munir Akash
Editor/publisher
Massachusetts, USA
Musa Al-Hindi
Palestine Right of Return Congress
Al-Awda Coalition
Nebraska, USA
Fadhil Al-Kazily, PhD
Part-time Professor, Civil Engineering
California, USA
Abbas Ali, PhD
Indiana, USA
Abbas Alnasrawi, PhD
Shelburne, VT, USA
Mohammed Al-Sheikh
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Kamal Khalaf Altawil, M.D.
Past president of the Arab American University Graduates (AAUG)
Past president of the National Arab American Medical Association
(NAAMA)
Pennsylvania, USA
Ban Al-Wardi
Los Angeles, USA
Lamis Andoni
Journalist/writer
California, USA
Said Arikat
Journalist/writer
Washington, DC, USA
Naseer H. Aruri, PhD
Massachusetts, USA
Fawzi Asmar, PhD
Writer/journalist
Washington, DC, USA
Omar Barghouti
Philosophy PhD Student
Activist & Dance choreographer
USA
Kenneth R. Barney
Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Hanna Batarseh
Free Palestine Alliance
California, USA
Brian Becker
International A.N.S.W.E.R. Steering Committee
New York, USA
Richard Becker
Western Region Coordinator
International Action Center
San Francisco, California, USA
George Bisharat, PhD
San Francisco, California, USA
Mary J. Bisharat, MSW
California, USA
Mona Coobti, Esq.
International Action Center
Free Palestine Alliance
California, USA
Jamil Dakwar, Attorney
Adalah
Zahi Damuni, PhD
Palestine Right of Return Congress
Co-Founder, Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
San Diego, California, USA
Ziad Deeb, M.D.
Washington, DC, USA
Peter Dodd, PhD
Victoria, BC, Canada
Erica Dodd, PhD
Victoria, BC, Canada
Nada Elia, PhD
Redmond, Washington, USA
Samih Farsoun, PhD
Professor of Sociology
Washington, DC, USA
Jamil Fayez, M.D.
Washington, DC, USA
Elizabeth Fenton
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Jess Ghannam, PhD
Right of Return Congress
Al-Awda Coalition
Ziad Hafez, PhD
Economist
Washington, DC, USA
Elaine Hagopian, PhD
Organizer of the April 2000 Right of Return Conference
Shouki Kassis, PhD
Pennsylvania, USA
Isma'il Kamal
Washington, DC, USA
Lara Kiswani
Students for Justice in Palestine
Third World Forum
University of California, Davis, USA
Jennifer Loewenstein, PhD
Madison, Wisconsin, USA
Riyad Mansour, PhD
Orlando, Florida, USA
Joseph Massad, PhD
New York, USA
Nur Masalha, PhD
London, United Kingdom
Rania Masri, PhD
Raleigh, North Carolina, USA,
Ed Mast
Palestine Solidarity Committee
Seattle, Washington USA
Carl Messineo, Esq.
Washington, DC, USA
Nabil Migalli
New Hampshire, USA
Eid B. Mustafa, M.D., F.A.C.S.
Texas, USA
Karma Nabulsi, PhD
Oxford, United Kingdom
Hasan & Shereen Newash
Grosse Pointe, Michigan, USA
Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
Connecticut, USA
Nasser Rabbat. PhD
MIT
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Fadia Rafeedie, Esq.
Los Angeles, California,USA
Elias Rashmawi
Free Palestine Alliance
National Steering Committee of International A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition,
USA
Gary Rothberger
Cambridge, MA, USA
Cheryl A. Rubenberg, PhD
North Miami, Florida, USA
Nizar Sakhnini
Canada
Michel Shehadeh
Free Palestine Alliance
Committee for Justice
California, USA
Sylvia Shihadeh
Austin, Texas, USA
Muhammad A. Shuraydi, PhD
Ontario, Canada
Abdelhameed Siyam
New York, USA
Mounzer Sleiman, PhD
Journalist/Writer
Washington, DC, USA
Samy Sharaf
Cairo, Egypt
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Esq.
Washington, DC, USA
Arthur H. Whitman
Auburn, Maine, USA
Anthony Zahlan, PhD
Scientist/Author
United Kingdom
Zeina Zaatari, PhD
California, USA