Category Archives: Palestine

Palestinians give ‘two weeks’ for UNSC action

Al Jazeera reports:

The Palestinians want the United Nations Security Council to decide on their bid for full membership of the world body within a fortnight, a leading Fatah official has said as difficult questions about the move’s consequences and the future of their statehood remained.

“Palestinians will wait two weeks for Security Council to consider application for membership,” Azzam al-Ahmad, was quoted telling the Maan news agency on Saturday.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also said on Saturday he expected the council to finish debating within weeks, not months.

Lebanon’s UN ambassador said the Security Council would convene on Monday to discuss the application after Abbas presented it to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday.

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The lies Netanyahu told at the UN

The Institute for Middle East Understanding fact-checked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN General Assembly on Friday.

NETANYAHU: “Ladies and gentlemen, Israel has extended its hand in peace from the moment it was established 63 years ago.”

REALITY: The establishment of Israel in 1948 was accompanied by the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from their homes – over two-thirds of the population. It is estimated that more than 50 percent fled under direct military assault. Others fled in panic as news of massacres of hundreds of civilians in the villages of Deir Yassin and Tantura spread. Their exodus, or Nakba, was already nearly half-complete by May 1948, when Israel declared its independence and the Arab states entered the fray. Zionist forces depopulated more than 450 Palestinian towns and villages, most of which were demolished to prevent the return of the refugees. Although Jews owned only about seven percent of the land in Palestine in 1947 and constituted about 33 percent of the population, Israel was established the next year on 78 percent of Palestine.


In 1967, Israel launched a surprise attack on Egypt, leading to the 1967 war, where it militarily occupied the remaining 22 percent of historic Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza Strip) as well as the Syrian Golan Heights and the Egyptian Sinai. Of all this territory, Israel has to this day returned only the Sinai.

NETANYAHU: “And it’s here [at the United Nations], year after year that Israel is unjustly singled out for condemnation. It’s singled out for condemnation more often than all the nations of the world combined.”

REALITY: Israel is not above the law. International law is based on the notion that all human beings are worthy of the same rights and of being treated equally. These laws apply equally to all nations. The UN was instrumental in the creation of Israel through UN General Assembly resolution 181. Because of this, the UN, and the international community in general, bears a responsibility to help resolve the situation, guided by the standards of international law.

NETANYAHU: “Twenty-one out of the 27 General Assembly resolutions condemn Israel – the one true democracy in the Middle East.”

REALITY: For more than 43 years, Israel has militarily occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, a population now numbering 4.36 million people. Except for a few thousand Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, this population has no voice in Israeli national policy despite being subjected to long-term Israeli occupation. Additionally, 1.2 million Palestinians are citizens of Israel and subject to more than 30 laws which discriminate against them solely based on their ethnicity, rendering them second or third-class citizens in their own homeland. From 1948 to 1966, those Palestinians who remained in what became Israel after the ethnic cleansing of the vast majority of the Palestinians from their homeland were governed by Israeli military rule (not unlike what exists in the Occupied Territories today). Thus for the entirety of its 63-year existence, there has been a period of only about one year, between the lifting of martial law in 1966 and the occupation which began in 1967, that Israel did not rule over large numbers of Palestinians to whom it granted no political or human rights. [Continue reading…]

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September 23, 2011: A historic day for Israel-Palestine?

Daniel Levy writes:

Cynicism and skepticism always have their place, but today might just go down as an historic day on the Israeli-Palestinian front. No, there is no direct or quick fix move from the Palestinian application for U.N. membership to the actual realization of a Palestinian state (and certainly not when one factors in the Israeli response) but the Palestinian U.N. move does represent the most definitive break yet with the failed and structurally flawed strategies for advancing peace of many a year. Many Palestinians and others are now suggesting that the PLO leadership progress from the symbolism of September 23rd to a concerted struggle for their freedom centered on nonviolent resistance, diplomacy, and international legality, believing that this would finally deliver a breakthrough.

In its theatrics, today was rather predictable — other than the Quartet statement of the afternoon, on which more in a moment. The speeches of Abbas and Netanyahu held few, if any, surprises. Abbas played to the Palestinian community at home and around the world, and to the rest of the international community.

Abbas spoke to the refugee experience, including his own, while leaving wiggle room for a future solution and embracing the Arab Peace Initiative on this score. He clarified that the PLO would continue to represent all Palestinians until all issues are definitively resolved, urged that this not become a religious struggle (pushing back on Netanyahu’s attempt to make this about a Jewish state), and linked the Palestinian struggle for rights to the so-called Arab Spring, albeit something that will have to be born out in reality beyond the made-for-TV pictures from Ramallah’s town square.

Abbas could also not have been more explicit on this being a Palestine alongside Israel, on the 67 lines, on only 22% of Mandatory Palestine — and thus calling the lie on Netanyahu’s claim that Abbas wants to have a state that would come at Israel’s expense, replacing Israel.

Netanyahu was playing to the Israeli public and to the American and Jewish right. His speech represented a doubling down of the porcupine strategy that guides his government’s policy. He told the world body that its Security Council was being presided over by terrorists and posed as the champion of the “Clash of Civilizations” narrative. In reminding his audience of the sacrifices entailed by Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza six years ago, he somehow overlooked the fact that this was a withdrawal that he himself vociferously opposed. In referring several times to Israel’s peace with Egypt, Netanyahu may have left some reminiscing that in that agreement Israel withdrew to the last centimeter of the 67 lines, removed every settler and IDF position, and entrusted security to an international force — the MFO.

In response to their respective speeches, Abbas received overwhelming applause from the delegates in the GA hall while Netanyahu’s support came only from his own delegation and from the peanut gallery — perhaps that was filled with a U.S. congressional delegation on a daytrip to the U.N.!

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As Netanyahu blasts the U.N. General Assembly the U.S. bullies members of the Security Council

Comparing Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the UN today with Nikita Khrushchev’s boorish conduct in 1960, The Guardian‘s Julian Borger tweeted: “He didn’t take his shoe off and thump the lectern but Bibi just delivered one of the more combative speeches in UN history.”

Netanyahu proceeded to insult the UN which he called “the theater of the absurd”, while he compared the Palestinians to the Nazis.

Here in the UN automatic majorities can decide anything. They can decide that the sun sets in the West — or rises in the West. I think the first has already been preordained. They can also decide — they have decided — that the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place, is occupied Palestinian territory.

And yet, even here, in the General Assembly, the truth can sometimes break through.

In 1984, when I was appointed as Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, I visited the great rabbi of Lubavitch. He said to me — and ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want any of you to be offended because from personal experience of serving here, I know there are many honorable men and women, capable and decent people serving their nations here — but here’s what the rabbi said to me. He said to me: “You’ll be serving in a house of many lies.” And then he said: “Remember, that even in the darkest place, the light of a single candle can be seen far and wide.”

Today I hope that the light of truth will shine, if only for a few minutes, in a hall that for too long has been a place of darkness for my country. So as Israel’s prime minister, I didn’t come here to win applause. I came here to speak the truth.

Maybe Netanyahu’s truth-telling will have helped tip some undecided votes in the Security Council in Palestine’s favor but the odds don’t look good.

The Guardian reports:

[Palestinian president Abbas] privately retreated from his pledge to seek an immediate security council vote in part because he is no longer sure of winning the necessary majority, which would have given the Palestinians a moral victory even if the US used its veto. Palestinian sources say they believe Washington has bullied several security council members into withdrawing their support for the Palestinian move, including Portugal, by threatening to withhold support for its stricken economy, and Bosnia, over its opposition to Kosovo being admitted to the UN. Palestinian officials also believe Nigeria is no longer certain to vote in their favour. There are also questions about the position of Gabon and Colombia.

One senior Palestinian official described the Americans as “playing a really nasty game”.

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The world — except for Israel and the US — welcomes the rebirth of Palestine

“Palestine is being reborn. This is my message. May all the people of the world stand with the people of Palestine as it marches steadfastly to its appointment with history toward its freedom and independence.” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressing the UN General Assembly today. (Full text of speech – PDF)

“susan rice, israeli delegation sit stone silent as the Gen Assembly offer rousing applause for Abbas” — Colum Lynch

The Palestinian bid for UN membership will be “quickly” handled and sent to the UN Security Council, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

Speaking after Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas met UN leader Ban Ki-moon, Nesirky said: “The appropriate procedural reviews will be quickly undertaken in the secretariat and afterwards will be transmitted to the president of the Security Council and the president of the General Assembly”. (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera reports:

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has handed over a historic request to UN chief Ban Ki-moon asking the United Nations to admit the state of Palestine as a full member.

The Palestinian leader won huge applause and a standing ovation on Friday from some of the assembly as he entered the hall before beginning his speech.

Abbas said he was ready to return to the negotiations, saying he did not want to isolate or delegitimize Israel.

“Here I declare that the Palestine Liberation Organization is ready to return immediately to the negotiating table on the basis of the adopted terms of reference … and a complete cessation of settlement activities,” he told the UN General Assembly.

But he maintained previous peace talks were “smashed against the rocks of the positions of the Israeli government, which quickly dashed the hopes raised by the launch of negotiations last September”.

Palestinians across the West Bank celebrated the formal submission of their bid to become a United Nations member state, despite opposition from the United States and Israel.

In city centres, giant television screens were set up so residents could watch Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, deliver a historic address to the 193 member states of the UN General Assembly.

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Palestine doesn’t need Israel’s permission to exist

James Verini writes:

In 1988, Abba Eban, perhaps the finest diplomat and one of the sharpest minds Israel has ever produced, got up before a distinguished crowd in London to give an address with the predictable and yet absurd title, “Prospects for Peace in the Middle East.” Predictable not just in itself, but because Eban and other Israeli leaders had delivered countless such addresses in the 40 unpeaceful years since the country’s creation; absurd because his remarks, which concerned Palestine, came a year into the First Intifada.

But Eban, who served as Israel’s deputy prime minister, its foreign minister, and its ambassador to the United States, laid the case bare for his surprised listeners. He lamented “the paradox of the West Bank and Gaza as an area in which a man’s rights are defined not by how he behaves, but who he is.” He said of the Israeli occupation, “The need to rule one-and-a-half million people of specific and recognized national particularity against their will weakens our economy, distorts our image, complicates our regional and international relations,” and “prevents any prospect of peace.” Weighing the Palestinian stone-throwers in the streets against Israel’s indisputable — no, laughable — military supremacy over its neighbors, he concluded, “We come up against the immense gap between the reality of our power and the psychology of our vulnerability.”

“The immense gap between the reality of our power and the psychology of our vulnerability” — nicely put, and Israel’s existential dilemma crystallized. It’s a phrase worth bearing in mind this week as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama, and even certain European leaders try to persuade Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to not seek full statehood at the United Nations.

But there’s another phrase in Eban’s remarks that demands as much attention. Note that he referred to Palestinians as a “people of specific and recognized national particularity” — as a nation, in other words, or at least a population deserving one. Eban, who died in 2002, saw his fears borne out. He outlived the First Intifada only to catch the start of the second one, by which time the Palestinians were well-armed enough to inflict real damage, and to watch the eclipse in Gaza of Yasir Arafat’s Fatah party by the more militant Islamist party Hamas. Still, his epigones in Israel and the United States refute him as a matter of course. Get into a discussion with even a well-informed Israeli or defender of Israeli policy on the prospect of Palestinian nationhood, and the outdated and circular line of argument that Palestinians never comprised a state, and thus do not require one now, presents itself inside of a minute. If that doesn’t work, they’ll tell you that, anyway, Hamas has made a Palestinian state untenable.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, for instance, justified his criticisms of what he says are Obama’s too weak efforts by saying, “America should not be ambivalent between the terrorist tactics of Hamas and the security tactics of the legitimate and free state of Israel.” Whether Perry knows that Abbas has risked life and limb defying Hamas he didn’t mention.

The first argument, too, still finds voice in the government offices of West Jerusalem, but it’s not the one Netanyahu and his colleagues, including the prime minister’s critics, are marshaling now. No, they say that recognition of a Palestinian state would subvert the principle of direct negotiation that has been the ideal since the Oslo process; that it would indeed embolden Hamas or inspire Palestine to rash actions such as seeking redress in international courts; or that it would — the psychology of vulnerability again, enhanced by the Arab Spring and the new anti-Israel flare-ups in Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey — compromise Israeli security. Obama, who has spent months trying to head off the vote, purports to agree at least with the first point and has promised to veto any resolution that makes it to the Security Council. But his U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, was saying more than she knew when she asked, rhetorically, “What will change in the re­al world for the Pales­tini­an people?”

What neither government mentions — but what Eban, who also served as head of the Israeli mission to the United Nations, knew — is that Palestine already is essentially a nation in the eyes of the international body. As set forth in a decades-long procession of decisions in not just the Palestine-obsessed General Assembly, but also the U.S.-dominated Security Council, the West Bank and Gaza possess the same rights of self-determination as any nation. Palestine — and it is known officially as “Palestine” at the U.N. — participates in General Assembly and Security Council debates and enjoys a permanent mission. Merely making this formal, as Abbas wants, would change little at Turtle Bay — and, if history is any indication, less on the ground. [Continue reading…]

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PLO official: Rick Perry is a ‘racist’

Foreign Policy reports:

A top Palestine Liberation Organization official responded to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s scathing criticisms of the PLO on Tuesday by telling The Cable that Perry’s comments were “discriminatory and racist.”

Perry hosted a pro-Israel rally in New York on Tuesday morning, during which he repeatedly accused President Barack Obama of “appeasement” of the Palestinians and of bungling three years of Middle East diplomacy. He also called for the closing of the PLO mission in Washington, and the cutting off of U.S. aid to the Palestinian leadership as punishment for their drive to seek member-state status at the United Nations.

But the part of Perry’s remarks that really angered the PLO’s Washington representative, Maen Rashid Areikat, was when Perry said, “The Obama policy of moral equivalency, which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians, including the orchestrators of terrorism, is a very dangerous insult.”

“I was appalled by what he said about ‘moral equivalence,’ that there shouldn’t be moral equivalence between Israelis and Palestinians. This amounts to taking a discriminatory and racist position,” Areikat said in a Tuesday interview with The Cable.

“I thought the fundamental principles of the United States were to support people who are seeking freedom and liberty and justice and the Palestinian people are doing exactly that,” Areikat continued.

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Palestinians declare independence from the U.S.

“Israel and the US are one and the same: the US is Israel, and Israel is the US. Israel doesn’t want to give the Palestinians anything and Obama can’t do anything without Israel because Congress is pro-Israel.”

That’s how Marwan Jubeh, a shop owner in Ramallah, neatly sums up the situation.

If there was an honest element in President Obama’s speech at the UN General Assembly yesterday, it was implicit rather than directly spelled out: it was in effect a declaration of impotence.

And as Obama shifts into gear in his campaign for re-election, he will be grateful for the kosher seal of approval he just got from Israel’s political leaders which he can deploy as often as necessary over the next twelve months to signal that for both Democrats and Republicans, Israel and the US are one and indivisible — even when the president’s middle name is Hussein.

“I think it’s in our national interest, and Israel’s national interest, that we have a strong partnership and that the president is perceived as a friend and ally of Israel. While he does that, everybody should be happy.” So says Bob Turner who — even though he just rode to victory in New York’s 9th Congressional district through a campaign that presented Obama as no friend of Israel — now says that he does not see Israel as a wedge issue.

So now that Obama has once again burnished his credentials as a stalwart friend of Israel, he will be only too happy to set aside any expectation that the US, under his leadership, has a constructive role to play in ending the conflict.

Meanwhile, as Obama insists that the current Palestinian bid for statehood will make no difference, as Henry Siegman argues, it may actually completely change the power dynamics as the Palestinians begin to assert their right of self-determination.

The outpouring of commentary on the request that Palestinians intend to submit to the United Nations to affirm their right to statehood within the pre-1967 borders has fallen into two categories. The first supports the Israeli and American view that sees the Palestinian initiative as endangering the Oslo Accords and prospects for a two-state solution. As described by President Obama, it is a “distraction” from the serious business at hand. The second view supports the Palestinian right to apply for UN membership, or for non-member-state observer status, and rejects the notion that this would set back the peace process.

However, both approaches believe that UN action will not result in any practical changes on the ground and that Palestinians will have to return to the U.S.-orchestrated “peace process” to achieve a two-state solution. And both have in common a profound misreading of the significance of the Palestinian initiative, which is likely to be transformative, changing the rules of the game for Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.

According to the prevailing rules, every aspect of the Palestinians’ existence depends on Israel. Whether Palestinians can travel from town to town within the areas to which they are restricted, open a new business venture, see their homes demolished by an Israeli bulldozer—indeed whether they will live or die—are Israeli decisions, often made by armed Israeli eighteen-year-olds just out of high school.

The Oslo Accords, requiring as they do that Israel withdraw its occupation in stages from the West Bank, were intended to change that reality. But Oslo was quickly undermined by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who declared—“unilaterally”—that the dates established in the accords for the withdrawals are not “holy” and can be ignored by Israel. Furthermore, as noted by Uri Savir, who headed Israel’s Foreign Ministry at the time, Rabin had no intention of returning the Jordan Valley or of sharing Jerusalem. (He might well have changed his views on these issues, as he did on some others, had he not been assassinated by a settler.)

Although the Oslo Accords did not mention a Palestinian state, statehood was the goal implicit in the agreement’s terms and the permanent-status issues slated for negotiations between the parties. But the peace process overseen by the United States was based on an unstated principle that fatally undermined the achievement of a Palestinian state: that any change in the Palestinians’ status as a people under Israel’s occupation depended entirely on Israel’s consent. This effectively excluded everyone other than the occupiers from a role in deciding the Palestinians’ fate. The UN, which was established to assure compliance with international law and to facilitate the self-determination of peoples living under colonial domination, was shunted aside. Above all, this principle excluded the Palestinian people themselves.

To be sure, President Obama recently proposed that negotiations begin at the 1967 lines, with territorial swaps. What he failed to say is that if the parties cannot reach agreement on the swaps, the lines will be drawn by the Security Council. Indeed, he said the opposite—that peace terms cannot be imposed on Israel. His proposal therefore changed nothing. Netanyahu can continue to make demands he knows no Palestinian leader can accept, and the occupation persists.

The real meaning of the Palestinians’ decision to defy the United States is that they will no longer accept their occupier’s role in their quest for statehood. They demand national self-determination as a right—indeed, as a “peremptory norm” that in international law takes precedence over all other considerations—and not as an act of charity by their occupiers.

The American insistence on aborting the Palestinians’ initiative and returning them to a peace process in which their fate remains dependent on Israel is shameful. It stains America’s honor. It will not succeed, for the Palestinian decision to defy the American demand is itself a declaration of independence; that genie cannot be returned to the bottle.

On the ground, little will be changed by a UN affirmation of Palestinian statehood. But nothing will be the same again in the Palestinians’ dealings with Israel and the United States. The notion that Israel will decide where negotiations begin and what parts of Palestine it will keep is history. It is sad that America, of all nations, has failed to understand this simple truth, even in the wake of the Arab Spring. Sadder still is Israel’s continuing blindness not only to the injustice but also to the impossibility of its colonial dream. That dream may now turn into a nightmare as the international community increasingly sees Israel as a rogue state and treats it accordingly.

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Most Israelis willing to accept UN recognition of Palestinian state

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Israel should accept the decision if the UN recognizes a Palestinian state, about 70 percent of Israelis answered in a recent Hebrew University poll.

The poll, which was conducted jointly by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, also found that over 80% of the Palestinians support turning to the UN to obtain recognition of a Palestinian state. The survey was supported by the Ford Foundation Cairo office and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Ramallah and Jerusalem.

As well as exploring Israeli and Palestinian attitudes to the Palestinian bid to the UN to obtain recognition as an independent state, the poll looked at other topical domestic issues within each population.

In response to questions about the Palestinian appeal at the UN, 83% of the Palestinians surveyed supported the move to obtain recognition for their state. Majorities on both sides, 77% of the Palestinians and 79% of the Israelis, believed that the US would use its veto power in the UN Security Council to prevent the UN from admitting the state of “Palestine” as a UN member.

In the face of UN recognition of a Palestinian state, 69% of Israelis thought that Israel should accept the decision and either start negotiations with the Palestinians about its implementation (34%) or not allow any change on the ground by the Palestinians (35%); 16% said Israel should oppose the decision and intensify the construction in the settlements; 7% think that Israel should annex the PA territory to Israel; and 4% think Israel should invade the PA territories and use force to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

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Obama’s passivity could pave the way to a civil uprising against Israel

Akiva Eldar writes:

To realize the extent to which the lame-duck candidate has regressed from the positions of the new and promising President Obama, the speech to the United Nations in September 2011 should be compared to one he gave in Cairo in 2009. At that time he pledged to “personally pursue this outcome with all the patience that the task requires,” and said “… it is time for all of us to live up to our responsibilities.” Yesterday he sent the occupied and the occupier, the strong and the weak, to solve the core issues on their own.

In Cairo he recalled, along with Jewish suffering in the Holocaust, the “daily humiliations … that come with the occupation.” And he added: “Let there be no doubt: The situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.” He even compared the struggle of the Palestinians for freedom to the struggle of black people in the United States for equal rights. On Wednesday, Obama paid pursed lip service to the legitimate aspirations and forgot to mention the occupation.

In June 2009, Obama spoke of “the obligations that the parties have agreed to under the road map.” He meant, among other things, and perhaps mainly, Israel’s obligation to completely stop construction in the settlements and dismantle the outposts built after March 2001. To remove all doubt, he stated resolutely: “It is time for these settlements to stop.”

On Wednesday, not one word of criticism was heard about Israel creating unilateral physical facts on the ground. To the 2011-model Obama, only the Palestinians’ approach to the United Nations is unilateral, objectionable and meriting the death penalty.

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Obama to UN: yada yada yada — Israelis applaud

In case anyone is in any doubt that President Obama’s comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, delivered to the UN General Assembly this morning, were nothing more than a string of worthless peace-process platitudes, then listen to the rave review he got from Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman: “I congratulate President Obama, and I am ready to sign on this speech with both hands.” Prime Minister Netanyahu and opposition leader Tzipi Livni were similarly pleased.

As usual Israel and the United States are speaking with one voice: Israel’s.

One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then – and I believe now – that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that genuine peace can only be realized between Israelis and Palestinians themselves. One year later, despite extensive efforts by America and others, the parties have not bridged their differences. Faced with this stalemate, I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May. That basis is clear, and well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.

I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. So am I. But the question isn’t the goal we seek – the question is how to reach it. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN – if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem.

Peace depends upon compromise among peoples who must live together long after our speeches are over, and our votes have been counted. That is the lesson of Northern Ireland, where ancient antagonists bridged their differences. That is the lesson of Sudan, where a negotiated settlement led to an independent state. And that is the path to a Palestinian state.

We seek a future where Palestinians live in a sovereign state of their own, with no limit to what they can achieve. There is no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. And it is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and effort in the building of a Palestinian state, and the negotiations that can achieve one.

America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable, and our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day. Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they were.

These facts cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.

That truth – that each side has legitimate aspirations – is what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes. That’s what we should be encouraging. This body – founded, as it was, out of the ashes of war and genocide; dedicated, as it is, to the dignity of every person – must recognize the reality that is lived by both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The measure of our actions must always be whether they advance the right of Israeli and Palestinian children to live in peace and security, with dignity and opportunity. We will only succeed in that effort if we can encourage the parties to sit down together, to listen to each other, and to understand each other’s hopes and fears. That is the project to which America is committed. And that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come.

The New York Times reports:

Less than an hour after Mr. Obama spoke, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France stood at the same podium in a sharp repudiation, calling for a General Assembly resolution that would upgrade the Palestinians to “observer status,” as a bridge towards statehood. “Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters,” Mr. Sarkozy said. “Let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise timetable.”

For Mr. Obama, the challenge in crafting the much-anticipated General Assembly address on Wednesday was how to address the incongruities of the administration’s position: the president who committed himself to making peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians a priority from Day One, who still has not been able to even get peace negotiations going after two and a half years; the president who opened the door to Palestinian state membership at the United Nations last year ending up threatening to veto that very membership; the president who was determined to get on the right side of Arab history ending up, in the views of many on the Arab street, on the wrong side of it on the Palestinian issue.

The US-Israeli message to Palestinians remains now what it has long been: the Palestinians deserve a state, but not just yet.

So if you’re looking for Palestine, all you need to do is find your way to the end of the peace process rainbow — it’s right there, alongside a pot of gold.

But if the White House is still willing to collude with its Israeli partners in refusing to set a deadline for the creation of a Palestinian state, France’s president issued Obama a stern warning:

“Each of us knows that Palestine cannot immediately obtain full and complete recognition of the status of United Nations member state,” he said. “But who could doubt that a veto at the Security Council risks engendering a cycle of violence in the Middle East?”

Those who still declare their belief that a two-state solution is the only viable solution to the conflict must move beyond their endless repetition of the parameters of such a solution and declare without equivocation when a Palestinian state must be created.

Without a date there will be no state.

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U.S. should recognize Palestinian state

Zvi Bar’el writes:

Memory is short and forgetfulness is often deliberate, but 23 years ago the UN General Assembly decided to move its session from New York to Switzerland so that Palestine Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat could deliver a speech. The reason: U.S. Secretary of State George Schultz refused to issue Yasser Arafat an entry visa to the United States.

Today too, with the opening of the session of the General Assembly, Washington is standing like a fortified wall blocking the entry of Palestine to the UN building. Although Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has no problem getting a visa, when he comes to ask for a state for the Palestinians he is put on a roller coaster. The list of threats and future punishments to be imposed on him and his country, if it is established, guarantees that this will be a state that is battered from birth.

Here is colonialism in all its glory. After all, the United States agrees that there should be a Palestinian state, it even twisted the arm of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a little bit, cautiously so it wouldn’t hurt, so that he would blurt out the necessary formula “two states for two peoples.” U.S. President Barack Obama even spoke about the optimal borders of the Palestinian state and Abbas was not yet required to recognize Israel.

After all, Arafat already recognized it. Palestine fulfilled all the threshold conditions. And still, this state has only one chance of being born the American way. Through negotiations that will lead to a consensual agreement and a handshake. And if Israel’s hand is missing, never mind, the Palestinians will wait until it grows.

But Abbas has learned a thing or two from Israel. The main lesson he has learned is that his real negotiations are not with Israel but with Washington. The second lesson: The negotiations must not take place on a playing field that is convenient for Obama, but rather at the United Nations. There Obama is not facing a beggarly Palestinian Authority that can be frightened with a shout, but 193 countries, each of which must be negotiated with.

New York is not Ramallah. Abbas saw how Israel chose its own playing field in the U.S. Congress, and carefully responded in kind. Instead of going out on a limb, he planted the tree by himself, nurtured it, diligently recruited most of the countries in the world, was helped substantially by Israel’s mistakes, took good advantage of Jerusalem’s isolation, examined the pros and cons and decided that even in loss there would be great gain.

If the United States casts a veto in the UN Security Council, it will cause more damage to Washington than to Abbas; if he makes do with recognition in the General Assembly, it will be in exchange for an American commitment to support a Palestinian state if negotiations fail, as they will.

Abbas caused Washington to be embroiled in a dispute with its European colleagues, and presented Israel as a cripple. He is forcing the United Nations to do what it usually fails to do: to find a peaceful solution to conflicts. As a bonus he caused Netanyahu to say that he is going to deliver a “speech of truth” at the United Nations, thereby admitting in effect that until now he has been lying.

The panic in Washington is genuine. It was evident when David Hale, Obama’s special envoy, was unable to control his temper and simply shouted at Abbas when he understood that he had no intention of retreating from his initiative.

Anger and helplessness could also be detected in the voice of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, when she announced that the United States would cast a veto in the Security Council. Suddenly she realized that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not only “the business of the parties involved” but threatens Washington’s regional and international status.

If the United States fails to recognize the Palestinian state, it will have difficulty sidelining its rivals in the new Middle East, where the public has more power than the rulers; if it recognizes the Palestinian state, it will have to ensure its sustainability, in other words, to direct the sanctions against Israel. Truly a bad situation for a great power that aspires to draw the map of the new Middle East.

Had it only made an effort to achieve genuine negotiations when that was still possible, had it invested its efforts into reaching an agreement that it is now investing in preventing the declaration of independence, had it shared the threats equally between the PA and Israel, it may not have found itself in this difficult situation.

It should at least recognize the state now. It should recall what has happened since it refused to grant Arafat his visa.

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Where the 13 United Nations Security Council members stand on the upcoming Palestine vote

On Friday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas laid out his plans to seek full membership at the United Nations Security Council this week. In order for the vote to succeed, it needs nine votes and no veto, and then approval by a two-thirds majority of members of the General Assembly. Alternatively, the Palestinians can seek to win only limited membership as a non-voting member in the General Assembly as a fallback option.

ThinkProgress has reviewed the positions of the 13 Security Council members. Five members are firm supporters of the Palestinian bid, while two, like the United States are opposed. The largest group of countries is the undecided: [Continue reading…]

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The mainstreaming of Walt and Mearsheimer

Glenn Greenwald writes:

There were numerous reasons that Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer were accused in prominent venues of all sorts of crimes — including anti-Semitism — when they published The Israel Lobby, but the most common cause was the book’s central theme: that there is a very powerful lobby in the U.S. which is principally devoted to Israel and causes U.S. political leaders to act to advance the interests of this foreign nation over their own.  In The New York Times today, Tom Friedman — long one of Israel’s most stalwart American supporters — wrote the following as the second paragraph of his column, warning that the U.S. was about to incur massive damage in order to block Palestinian statehood:

This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N., even when it knows Israel is pursuing policies not in its own interest or America’s.

Isn’t that exactly Walt and Mearseimer’s main theme, what caused them to be tarred and feathered with the most noxious accusations possible?  Indeed it is; here’s how the academic duo, in The Israel Lobby, described the crux of their argument as first set forth in an article on which the book was based:

After describing the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel, we argued that his support could not be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds  Instead, it was due largely to the political power of the Israel lobby, a loose coalition of individuals and groups that seeks to influence American foreign policy in ways that will benefit Israel . . . We suggested that these policies were not in the U.S. national interest and were in fact harmful to Israel’s long-term interests as well.

Is that not exactly the point which The New York Times‘ most “pro-Israel” columnist himself just voiced today?

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