EDITOR: The preparations for Palestine Global week are spreading
It is quite clear that Palestine was never in the news like it is now, not because of a massacre or bombing, but for the simple reason of its future being discussed in a policy connection, through the UN vote preparations. That in itself is already a major acheivment, though the vote may not deliver much change, of course. Major analysis feels the papers, radio and TV channels, and this can only be for the better. Israel’s message of hate and denial was never so exposed as it now is!
Jack Straw urges MPs to back Palestinian statehood bid: Guardian
Former foreign secretary calls on colleagues to lobby William Hague in support of move at UN general assembly
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
Jack Straw says recognition of the Palestinians at the UN is the best way to get peace talks started again. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters
The former foreign secretary Jack Straw has thrown his weight behind efforts to persuade the British government to support the Palestinian bid to be admitted to the United Nations as a member state.
Straw, who was foreign secretary from 2001 to 2006 in Tony Blair’s government, has written to all 650 members of parliament arguing the case for Palestinian statehood and urging colleagues to stand up and be counted.
The Palestinians are expected to formally submit an application for full membership of the UN – in effect recognition of an independent state – when the world body meets in New York next week. The US has confirmed that it would veto such a bid at the security council.
The UK government is taking a wait and see approach to the question; whether or not the UK backs the Palestinian plan of action will depend on the specific wording of any resolution they put forward.
London recognises that the Palestinian Authority has made significant strides in recent years in reforming itself and reducing corruption. And it acknowledges that a Palestinian state should exist alongside an Israeli state. But Britain believes a meaningful Palestinian state can be the outcome only of a negotiated agreement with Israel. That position sets the UK apart from the nine European states which have already officially recognised the state of Palestine.
Straw’s letter tells MPs: “it is vital … that the UK and other European countries have the courage to point the way forward. I believe the way forward is for the international community to recognise a Palestinian state alongside Israel and admit it to the UN.”
He urges colleagues to sign an early day motion backing the Palestinian bid and to lobby foreign secretary William Hague on the issue. He says it is a matter of “urgency” to make it clear to the government “how important it is that we, as a country, make the right decision on this”.
He reminds MPs that Barack Obama, in his speech to the UN a year ago, looked forward to welcoming “an independent sovereign state of Palestine” as a new member of the world body by September 2011.
He says: “I’m as firm as anyone about Israel’s right to security, as a sovereign state. We all understand the fears that Israelis have for their security, but it will not enhance their security to deny the right of self-determination permanently to the Palestinians. The World Bank, the UN, the EU and the IMF have all assessed the progress of the Palestinian Authority and judged it to be ready for statehood.”
Recognition at the UN, he says, “is the best way to get peace talks started again”.
Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, and Blair, the Middle East Quartet envoy, are visiting Jerusalem and Ramallah this week, along with the US envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross, in an attempt to avoid damaging splits at the UN general assembly, which opens next week.
The EU’s bloc is divided over the Palestinian bid, and Ashton is anxious for a deal that could unite the 27 nations. Of the so-called big three, Britain and France have not explicitly declared their intentions, and Germany is opposed to full membership. France is inclined to back the Palestinians but is trying to come up with a compromise acceptable to Germany in the interests of EU unity.
A poll released this week showed a majority of respondents in the three countries favoured their governments backing the Palestinian approach to the UN.
A former Foreign Office official said Straw as foreign secretary had taken “a very balanced view” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “But he was never in any doubt that there needed to be a Palestinian state, and at times he was very frustrated by some Israeli actions.”
The early day motion, sponsored by Ann Clwyd, calls for recognition of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and its admission to the UN. Among its backers are the former Conservative defence minister Nicholas Soames.
Palestinians: We will seek full UN membership on September 23: Haaretz
Envoy to UN Riyad al-Malki says Palestinians will submit request to Security Council next Friday, ending speculation over whether they would risk U.S. veto.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said the Palestinians will submit a bid for full membership at the UN Security Council on September 23.
The remarks by al-Malki put an end to speculation that the Palestinians might avoid a showdown with the United States by sidestepping the Security Council and going directly to the UN General Assembly to seek a lesser status of a non-member observer.
The U.S. does not wield veto power in the General Assembly, and a Palestinian bid there would be expected to win majority approval.
The Palestinians will likely still end up at the General Assembly with scaled-back ambitions, however, if the U.S.¬ exercises its veto power in the Security Council as expected.
The U.S. has been on a furious diplomatic offensive to try to keep the Palestinians from going to the UN in their statehood quest, saying negotiations are the only way to produce a Palestinian state.
Israel also opposes the UN move, which the Palestinians launched after concluding that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations … stalled for nearly three years … were not going to produce any breakthroughs at this time.
Malki said Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would present the statehood bid to UN chief Ban Ki-moon after delivering his speech before the General Assembly on Sept. 23.
Malki spoke to foreign journalists in Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority.
His comments came as U.S. and other international envoys were shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah in an effort to avert a diplomatic crisis over the Palestinians’ UN bid.
Palestinian statehood: can the UN vote be more than just symbolic recognition?: Guardian
Israeli’s refusal to accept a Palestine within 1967 borders and Hamas’s opposition make a solution unlikely but not hopeless
Ian Black, Middle East editor
A Palestinian worker at a printers in the West Bank inspects a banner supporting the upcoming bid for statehood at the UN. Photograph: Issam Rimawi/Zuma Press/Corbis
The United Nations has staked out landmark positions many times on the question of Palestine, but the current attempt to secure recognition for Palestinian statehood has powerful echoes of one its most significant past decisions – the partition of the country into separate Jewish and Arab states in November 1947.
That vote by the UN general assembly was necessitated by Britain’s desire to shed responsibility for the then mandated territory. Hailed by the Jews but fatefully rejected by the Arabs, the move signalled the start of fighting before the establishment of Israel and the flight of the Palestinian refugees – the “Nakba” – the following year.
Both sides are thus sharply aware of the historical resonance of next week’s UN bid. Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister, has warned of a “diplomatic tsunami”. But others predict a damp squib. In this view, the manoeuvring seems unlikely to deliver more than symbolic recognition of an already widely recognised right. But that may be underestimating the impact. And surprises cannot be ruled out.
In a new report, the International Crisis Group describes the path to the UN as “a tale of collective mismanagement”. It blames Palestinian leaders “plagued by ignorance, internal divisions and brinkmanship for overselling what they could achieve and scrambling to avoid further loss of domestic credibility”.
Israel, it warns, is over-dramatising the impact of UN recognition and has threatened to retaliate against the Palestinians. “The US administration, unable to steer events, fed up with both sides, and facing a Congress that will inflict a price for any Palestinian move at the UN, just wants the whole thing to go away. It is pressing instead for a resumption of negotiations which, in the current context, are likely to collapse – making it a cure more hazardous than the ailment.”
On the Palestinian side, the drive for recognition flows from a sense that the moribund “peace process” – never more deserving of those quotation marks than now – helps maintain a status quo that allows the relentless expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Earlier this year the “Palestine papers” published by the Guardian exposed the yawning gap between the two sides.
Supporters of Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, argue that even if a threatened US veto means that the effort will produce nothing more than observer status at the UN – akin to that of the Vatican – Palestinians will still gain access to organisations such as the international criminal court at The Hague and be able to use them to fight the occupation and its abuses – “lawfare” rather than warfare.
But a powerful counter-argument on the Palestinian side, where there is growing disillusionment with the two-state solution, is that this is a distraction from the real business of resisting Israel. That strategy envisages a struggle for civil rights on both sides of the old 1967 border with the distant goal of somehow achieving one single democratic state for Arabs and Jews.
The truth is that no solution at all is likely as long as Israel’s Likud-led government refuses to accept the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. And Abbas still faces opposition from Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza and opposes both negotiations with Israel and the struggle for UN recognition because it believes “that rights are grabbed and not begged for”.
Israeli “doves” see one big positive. “Abbas is effectively agreeing to a partial settlement of his final status claims that could be highly advantageous for the cause of a stable two-state solution,” wrote analyst Yossi Alpher at Bitterlemons.org.
“Abbas is asking the UN for a territorial solution: a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with its capital in Jerusalem. He is not asking the UN to rule on the right of return or the ‘ownership’ of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem – the real ‘dealbreakers’ when the two parties sit down to direct negotiations.” Those advantages are seen as disadvantages by many Palestinians.
With the seismic changes of the Arab spring and Israel’s spats with Egypt and Turkey in the background, this is a potentially significant moment. The two big questions are whether international recognition of a Palestinian state will make substantive and successful negotiations any more likely; and whether a UN decision – like that one back in 1947 and so many others since – will be rendered irrelevant by events and facts on the ground.
Netanyahu to address UN on day Palestinians submit statehood bid: Haaretz
PM tells reporters in Jerusalem that Israel does not receive ‘fair hearing’ at UN, but he has ‘decided to tell the truth.’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he will address the United Nations General Assembly on Friday, September 23, the day on which the Palestinians say they will submit their bid for full UN membership.
Netanyahu is due to leave for New York next Wednesday, and will attend the annual General Assembly session. Israel had originally intended to dispatch President Shimon Peres to New York for the General Assembly, but was warned by diplomats that this would only give more weight to the Palestinian move.
Should Netanyahu address the UN General Assembly on September 23? Visit Haaretz.com on Facebook and answer our poll.
“The General Assembly is not a place where Israel usually receives a fair hearing,” Netanyahu told a press conference with the Czech Prime Minister Petr Necas in Jerusalem on Thursday. “But I still decided to tell the truth before anyone who would like to hear it.”
“I have decided to convey the twin messages of direct negotiations for peace and the quest for peace,” Netanyahu told reporters.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said earlier Thursday that the Palestinians will definitely go ahead with their bid for full membership at the UN Security Council on September 23.
The west will not prevent a Palestinian state’s eventual birth: Guardian
The birth of Israel had an anti-imperialist pedigree. And Palestine is the unfinished business of that process of self-determination
Pankaj Mishra
Next week the Palestinian Authority, stepping away from years of a fruitless “peace process” with Israel, will ask the UN to recognise Palestine as an independent state. It is very likely to be obstructed in the security council by the US, Israel’s long-suffering but faithful friend. There is no question, however, that an overwhelming majority in the general assembly will back the Palestinians.
Israel has never looked more isolated as its embassy in Egypt is attacked, and Turkey, another close ally in the region until recently, leads a resurgent pan-Arab anti-Zionism. Its western supporters, too, have been dwindling fast. Besieged at home by furious masses demanding social justice after years of private wealth creation, Israeli leaders find their most devoted friends abroad among centre-right or extreme rightwing politicians in Canada, Italy, Holland and the Czech Republic, all of which are expected to stifle the Palestinian state at birth.
It was not at all like this in the lead-up to Israel’s creation. In 1945 George Orwell told his American readers that “the left, generally, is very strongly committed to support of the Jews against the Arabs”. The latter had no influential allies when, in November 1947, European and white commonwealth countries helped the UN plan for the partition of Palestine – fiercely resisted by Arabs – pass with a two-thirds majority. During the UN debate Zionists packed the galleries, applauding pro-Israel speakers and hissing at Arab ones. “They created,” a British official wrote, “the atmosphere of a football match, with the Arabs as the away team.”
Like many American gentiles of his generation, President Truman was prone to racist generalisations about the “Jews”: “I fear very much,” he wrote in his diary, “that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath.” Still, the US arm-twisted two former dependencies, the Philippines and Liberia, into supporting the creation of the Jewish state, and managed to get China and Ethiopia to abstain.
The infant nation states of India and Pakistan voted against partition, as did Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey. On the face of it, this seems unconscionable. In 1947, just two years after the full scale of the crimes against European Jews had been exposed, the moral case for the creation of a Jewish state was incontestable. And valiant Zionists outmanoeuvring the exhausted British masters of Palestine had provoked much admiration across Europe and America.
But, as Orwell warned, “few English people realize that the Palestine issue is partly a colour issue and that an Indian nationalist, for instance, would probably side with the Arabs”. The Jewish claim on Palestine may have existed for more than two millennia; but in the eyes of Asian leaders and intellectuals embattled against Western imperialists, it began with the Balfour Declaration, which threatened to implant yet another European people on Asian soil.
As Jawaharlal Nehru acidly remarked about the British promise of a Jewish homeland: “One not unimportant fact seems to have been overlooked. Palestine was not a wilderness, or an empty, uninhabited place. It was already somebody else’s home.” The lack of antisemitic traditions in Asia meant that many Asian leaders could not recognise the need for a separate Jewish state. Cosmopolitan networks of solidarity across Asia ensured that Indian nationalists would take the Arab side, and see Zionism as a form of western imperialism – a perception not challenged by Zionist leaders, who, busy courting European and American politicians, kept a careful distance from anti-colonial nationalist movements in the 1920s and 1930s.
As Jewish immigration to Palestine picked up during the British Mandate, Mahatma Gandhi resisted all entreaties to lend his moral prestige to the Zionist cause. Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle in London in 1931, he said: “I can understand the longing of a Jew to return to Palestine, and he can do so if he can without the help of bayonets, whether his own or those of Britain.” In 1938, during the brutal British suppression of the Arab revolt in Palestine, he reiterated that it was “wrong” of Jews to enter Palestine “under the shadow of the British gun”.
Eventually the Zionists in Palestine turned against their British enablers; and Israel, born during the high noon of decolonisation, could plausibly claim an anti-imperialist pedigree. But its collusion with Britain and France against Egypt in 1956 – a year after the conference of new postcolonial nations in Bandung – did not endear it to Asian and African leaders reflexively hostile to such imperialist skullduggery as the Suez expedition. Nor was the “colour issue” allowed to fade by Israel’s support of France against Algerian anti-colonialists, its occupation of the West Bank in 1967, and its close relations with the apartheid regime in South Africa.
There were many rightwing admirers of Israeli resourcefulness and bravery in India – growing up in a Hindu nationalist family, I came to revere the Israeli general Moshe Dayan – but almost all postcolonial nation states shunned Israel. The latter’s frequent attempts to reach out to Asian countries were met with rebuffs. A placatory cable from Israel’s foreign minister Abba Eban to the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was sent back with a note: “Undelivered because of non-existent relations”.
Israel’s diplomatic ties with India were established only in 1993, and then deepened by military and political links between Hindu nationalists and radical Zionists. In the 1990s Israel rapidly expanded its diplomatic presence in Asia beyond Burma, the only Asian country where it had an embassy in the 1950s. The end of the cold war, and Israel’s decision to open negotiations with the PLO after the first intifada, brought the country out of its long international isolation.
The peace process had many critics, who saw it as a ploy to buy time for Israeli settlements. With Israel’s security and expansion guaranteed by the US, it held back from the necessary and inevitable reckoning with its Palestinian subjects and Arab neighbours. But now the collapse of staunchly pro-American Arab regimes – amounting to a second round of decolonisation – and the related decline of American authority in the Middle East find Israel exposed to the chill winds of history.
The feelings and desires of Arabs entering mass politics can no longer be ignored; and this democratic opinion turns out to be not much less opposed to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza than were the Arab dictators who made radical anti-Zionism a pillar of their despotism.
In Cairo this week Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, proclaimed that “the world is changing to a system where the will of the people will rule”. This is self-serving rhetoric from a politician with clear authoritarian tendencies. Nevertheless, Erdogan’s assertion that “Israel is the west’s spoiled child” is unlikely to be challenged in the Arab world or, for that matter, a swath of Asian countries, where Palestinians are seen as victims of a western-style and western-aided expansionism.
Palestinian politicians remain hopelessly divided. And an independent Palestine might prove tragically unviable, quickly stumbling into the crowded ranks of “failed” or “failing” nation states. Yet Palestine has long been the unfinished business of decolonisation and national self-determination: the central events of the 20th century. And opposition from a weakened west next week will not prevent the eventual birth of a Palestinian state – just as objections from the fledgling and powerless nations of the east in 1947 did not thwart the creation of a Jewish state.
Britain changes law that enabled war crime charges against Israelis: Haaretz
Reform began after arrest warrant issued in 2009 against opposition leader Tzipi Livni; British Ambassador says change in law means it ‘can no longer be abused for political reasons.’
Britain has amended a law that allowed for issuing arrest warrants against Israeli politicians who visit the country, British Ambassador Matthew Gould announced Thursday. Gould called opposition leader Tzipi Livni, against whom an arrest warrant was issued in 2009, and told her the Queen has signed the amendment “to ensure that the UK’s justice system can no longer be abused for political reasons.”
Lawyers working with Palestinian activists in recent years have sought the arrest of senior Israeli civilian and military figures under terms of universal jurisdiction. This legal concept empowered judges to issue arrest warrants for visiting officials accused of war crimes in a foreign conflict, under the principle of universal jurisdiction which holds that some alleged crimes are so grave that they can be tried anywhere, regardless of where the offences were committed.
After the warrant was issued against Livni in 2009, Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced that Britain would no longer tolerate legal harassment of Israeli officials in that fashion.
Ambassador Gould added Thursday that the change in the law will ensure that people cannot be detained when there is no realistic chance of prosecution, while ensuring that we continue to honour our international obligations.
Livni welcomed the amendment, and told Gould that she is “pleased that the warrant issued against me opened Britain’s eyes and will put a stop to the cynical use of British legislation against IDF commanders and soldiers.”
Livni added that “real justice has been done, and it will distinguish between leaders and commanders who defend their country against terrorism, and real war criminals.”
Israel does not want a Palestinian state. Period.: Haaretz
By Gideon Levy
On Wednesday, a coalition of Israeli peace organizations published a list of 50 reasons for Israel to support a Palestinian state. Assuming that you only accept five of them, isn’t that enough? What exactly is the alternative, now that the heavens are closing in around us?
What will we tell the world next week, at the UN? What could we say? Whether in the General Assembly or the Security Council, we will be exposed in all our nakedness: Israel does not want a Palestinian state. Period. And it doesn’t have a single persuasive argument against the establishment and the international recognition of such a state.
So what will we say, that we’re opposed? Four prime ministers, Benjamin Netanyahu among them, have said that they’re in favor, that it must be accomplished through negotiations, so why haven’t we done it yet? Is our argument that we object to it’s being a unilateral measure? What’s more unilateral than the settlements that we insist on continuing to build? Or perhaps we will say that the route to a Palestinian state runs through Ramallah and Jerusalem, not New York, a la the U.S. secretary of state. The State of Israel itself was created, in part, in the United Nations.
Next week will be Israel’s moment of truth, or more precisely the moment in which its deception will be revealed. Be it the president, the prime minister or the ambassador to the UN, even the greatest of public speakers will be incapable of standing before the representatives of the nations of the world and explaining Israeli logic; none of the three will be able to convince them that there is any merit to Israel’s position.
Thirty-two years ago, Israel signed a peace agreement with Egypt in which it undertook “to recognize the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people” and to establish an autonomous authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip within five years. Nothing happened.
Eighteen years ago the prime minister of Israel signed the Oslo Accords, in which Israel undertook to conduct talks in order to achieve a final-status agreement with the Palestinians, including the core issues, within five years. That, too, did not occur. Most of the provisions of the agreement have foundered since then – in the majority of cases because of Israel. What will Israel’s advocate at the UN say about this?
For years, Israel claimed that Yasser Arafat was the sole obstacle to peace with the Palestinians. Arafat died – and once again nothing happened. Israel claimed that if only the terror were to stop, a solution would appear. The terror stopped – and nothing. Israel’s excuses became increasingly empty and the naked truth was increasingly exposed. Israel does not want to reach a peace arrangement that would involve the establishment of a Palestinian state. This can no longer be covered up in the UN. And what did Netanyahu’s Israel expect the Palestinians to do in this case – another round of photo ops, like the ones with Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni that led nowhere?
The truth is that the Palestinians have just three options, not four: to surrender unconditionally and go on living under Israeli occupation for another 42 years at least; to launch a third intifada; or to mobilize the world on their behalf. They picked the third option, the lesser of all evils even from Israel’s perspective. What could Israel say about this – that it’s a unilateral step, as it and the United States have said? But it didn’t agree to stop construction in the settlements, the mother of all unilateral steps. What did the Palestinians have left? The international arena. And if that won’t save them, then another popular uprising in the territories.
The Palestinians in the West Bank, 3.5 million today, will not live without civil rights for another 42 years. We might as well get used to the fact that the world won’t stand for it. Can Netanyahu or Shimon Peres explain why the Palestinians do not deserve their own state? Do they have even the slightest of arguments? Nothing. And why not now? We have already seen, especially of late, that time only reduces the possible alternatives in the region. So even that weak excuse is dead.
Yesterday, a coalition of Israeli peace organizations published a list of 50 reasons for Israel to support a Palestinian state. Assuming that you only accept five of them, isn’t that enough? What exactly is the alternative, now that the heavens are closing in around us? Can anyone, can Peres or Netanyahu, seriously contend that the regional hostility toward us would not have lessened had the occupation already ended and a Palestinian state been established?
The truths are so basic, so banal, that it hurts even to repeat them. But, unfortunately, they’re the only ones we have. And so, a simple question to whoever will be representing us at the UN next week: Why not, for heaven’s sake? Why “no” once again? And to what will we say “yes”?
United States in last-ditch effort to set up Israeli-Palestinian peace talks: Guardian
US fears major diplomatic embarrassment if Israelis and Palestinians collide in New York over looming request at UN for recognition of Palestinian statehood
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem and Chris McGreal in Washington
United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton is leading the talks to avert a clash betwen Israel and the Palestinians at the United Nations. Photograph: Marty Melville/Getty
The United States, Europe and the Middle East quartet are engaged in a last-ditch effort to set up a fresh round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in an attempt to head off a major diplomatic embarrassment over the looming Palestinian request for recognition of statehood at the UN.
The US is leading diplomatic pressure on Israeli and Palestinian leaders in a bid to persuade the parties back to negotiations rather than risk a damaging collision in New York next week. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton is in telephone contact with the three delegations in the region, who are co-ordinating their efforts.
Washington is keen to avoid carrying out a threat to veto a Palestinian request for full membership of the UN, a move likely to further damage America’s already battered reputation in the Middle East, particularly following its strong backing for moves towards self-determination in the region this year.
But some at the heart of the diplomatic manoeuvres believe that it is now too late to stop the Palestinians taking their case to the UN and are concentrating on damage limitation by seeking a clear position for a return to the negotiation table after the world body meets.
The Palestinians insist that they will not be diverted from making a formal request at the security council for full member status, and that diplomatic interventions have come too late. They claim to be resisting pressure, which included President Obama this week describing their move as “counterproductive”.
Washington, fearing isolation in wielding its veto, is seeking support from Britain in particular in its stand against the Palestinian resolution if it comes to a vote. Two other security council members, Russia and China, have openly backed the Palestinian move. France is sympathetic to the Palestinian demand but is seeking a compromise resolution that could be supported by Germany, which is opposed to UN recognition of a Palestinian state, in the hope of forging a common EU position.
Britain has so far not declared how it would vote but diplomatic sources say that it is torn between American pressure to support the US position in the security council and concerns about what such a move would do to the UK’s standing in a changing Middle East, particularly while it is still heavily involved in Libya.
The former British prime minister, Tony Blair, now special envoy of the Middle East quartet, was Wednesday working on a text to put to Israeli and Palestinian leaders outlining a basis on which talks might resume.
He was liaising with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and US special envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross in the region, and by telephone with Clinton. The former British prime minister expects to remain in the Middle East until flying to New York at the weekend.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, has said he will take the request for full recognition as a state to the UN security council next week. But some Arab and European nations are pressuring him to downgrade the request to the general assembly, which can only offer observer status to the Palestinians, to save Washington the embarrassment of having to wield its veto.
The Palestinians insist their approach to the UN does not preclude a return to negotiations later. “We see no contradictions between doing both,” said Dr Mohammad Shtayyeh, a senior member of the team heading to New York. The UN bid was “the beginning of the game, not the end. It is a process”.
But diplomatic efforts to secure a breakthrough on a return to talks are constrained by Palestinian demands of guarantees that any future negotiations would be based on the pre-1967 borders plus a total settlement freeze. Israel is unlikely to sign up to that.
The International Crisis Group warned this week that any climbdown by the Palestinians now “could decisively discredit [Mahmoud Abbas’s] leadership, embolden his foes and trigger unrest among his people”. It went on: “Most Palestinians do not strongly support the UN bid; but they would strongly oppose a decision to retract it without suitable compensation.”
Israel was also making last-minute efforts to persuade undeclared countries not to vote for a Palestinian resolution, although it has acknowledged it will lose a vote at the general assembly. The Palestinians claim to have the support of around 130 countries so far, just beyond the two-thirds majority needed for a resolution to succeed.
Israeli ministers have threatened retaliatory measures should the Palestinian bid succeed. They include tearing up the Oslo accords, under which the Palestinian Authority was given control of parts of the West Bank and Gaza, annexing the West Bank settlements and withholding tax revenues that Israel collects on behalf of the PA. The US Congress is also threatening to cut off financial aid to the Palestinians.
Erdogan warns Israel: Turkey can send warships to east Mediterranean at any time: Haaretz
Turkish PM says Israel could not do whatever it wants in the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday Israel could not do whatever it wanted in the eastern Mediterranean and that Turkish warships could be there at any moment.
Erdogan’s comments, made during a visit to Tunisia as part of a tour of Arab countries, were the latest in a war of words between the two regional powers, whose relations have deteriorated since Israel killed nine Turks aboard an aid ship headed for Gaza last year.
“Israel cannot do whatever it wants in the eastern Mediterranean. They will see what our decisions will be on this subject. Our navy attack ships can be there at any moment,” Erdogan told a news conference shortly after arriving in Tunis.
Turkey downgraded diplomatic ties with Israel and halted defense-related trade after the Jewish state confirmed last week it would not apologise for the raid on the Mavi Marmara ship which had attempted to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza.
Turkey and Israel had tried to mend fences before the publication two weeks ago of a UN report that deemed the blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip a legal means to stem the flow of arms to Palestinians but also said Israel had used unreasonable force.
Ankara said it was prepared to escort any future Gaza-bound ship with naval ships.
Israel has said it will maintain the blockade and that it wants to ease tensions with its former ally.
But in an interview last week with Al Jazeera television, excerpts of which were released by Turkish state media, Erdogan said he saw the Israeli storming of the ship in May, 2010 as “grounds for war” but that Turkey had acted “with patience”.
The prospect of a showdown at sea with Turkey, a NATO power and, like Israel, an ally of the United States, rattled Israelis already on edge over political upheaval in the Arab world and Iran’s nuclear program. Washington has appealed for restraint.
Erdogan, seeking to expand Turkey’s regional influence, is on a tour of Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, where he has so far received an enthusiastic welcome. His criticism of Israeli has helped win him great popularity in Arab countries.
Putting away the partitionist’s knife: Palestine and approaches to “ethnic conflict”: The Electronic Intifada
Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Thu, 09/15/2011 – 14:05
Just in time for the big debate on Palestinian “statehood,” an article I wrote challenging prevailing scholarly views on the inevitability of partition in Palestine has been published today by the leading journal Ethnopolitics.
In fact, I have two articles in the issue. First is my original thesis which takes on some the the main figures in the field. This is followed by three responses to my article from academics Sumantra Bose, Heribert Adam, and Anthony Oberschall.
Finally, I close with another article taking on those responses. It all makes for a good rollicking read.
Unfortunately, as is the case with most academic journals, the ability to read the full articles is restricted to those with electronic journal access. Most university students and faculty will have such access through their university libraries, and some public libraries also provide it. Otherwise you can purchase an copy of the articles from the publisher. I am sorry that I am not able to provide copies.
But here’s a brief excerpt from my opening article, “A Curious case of exceptionalism: Non-partitionist approaches to Ethnic Conflict Regulation and the Question of Palestine,” in Ethnopolitics, Vol. 10, Nos. 3-4, September-November 2011:
For decades, but particularly since the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, a consensus encompassing national leaders, international officials, academics, advocates, media and non-governmental organizations has asserted that the partition of historic Palestine into Israeli Jewish and Palestinian states is the only possible solution to an otherwise intractable conflict. Paradoxically, as this assertion has been made with ever greater fervor, there has been growing recognition that the possibility of such an outcome — a two-state solution — seems to be receding as Israeli colonization eats deeply into land expected to form the core of the Palestinian state.
When it comes to other territories, the most widely advocated approaches for the democratic regulation of ethnic conflict are non-partitionist models in all their varieties — ‘integrationist’ or ‘consociational’, federal, binational, unitary or other constitutional forms that accommodate two or more antagonistic groups within a single polity. Consociationalism and integrationism, in particular, ‘have become the focal point of both empirical and theoretical debate’ in this field (Caspersen, 2004, p. 570).
In this literature, Palestine/Israel is recognized as an ‘ethnic conflict’ comparable to others, so one would expect to find significant attention given to whether there are alternatives to the two-state solution in that case, or at least theoretical justifications for the nearly exclusive focus on partition. What emerges, however, is that Palestine/Israel is largely ignored. When it is included in analyses, it is treated as an exception, and scholars allow the sort of partitionist arguments to stand that they effectively refute in other cases.
This article takes the work of Donald L. Horowitz, John McGarry, Brendan O’Leary and Sumantra Bose as representative of this genre. Application of these scholars’ own analytic frames to Palestine/Israel results in the conclusion that Palestine/Israel is not an appropriate case for partition, a finding often contrary to their own assertions.
Which, if any, of the non-partitionist approaches they advocate elsewhere could work in Palestine/Israel is an open question that is beyond the scope of this analysis. This article should be read, above all, as a call for scholars to begin seriously to consider Palestine as a site for non-partitionist approaches, at a moment when it has become patently obvious to all but the most dogmatic that efforts to achieve a ‘two-state solution’ have utterly failed.
And here is one of my key conclusions:
An attempt to bring about a two-state solution along the pre-1967 ‘Green Line’ boundary would not—as many assume—be little more than a formal ratification of an already existing and agreed upon division. There is every likelihood that it would be a repartition as costly, violent and unpredictable as the one that occurred in 1948, and no more likely to ‘resolve’ the conflict. It may be time to recognize that historic Palestine today resembles one giant Northern Ireland, but with a lot more firepower, including, on the Israeli side, nuclear weapons.
Thousands protest against ‘murderous’ Israel in Turkey and Jordan: Haaretz
In Istanbul, thousands gather outside a soccer stadium where Maccabi Tel Aviv is playing; dozens demonstrate in front of Israeli embassy in Amman.
Thousands of Turkish protesters gathered outside the soccer stadium in Istanbul where Maccabi Tel Aviv was playing against Turkish team Beşiktaş, waving Hezbollah flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans. The protesters yelled “no passage for Zionists” and “Israel is a murderer, get out of Palestine.”
Local police were deployed in large numbers around the area, and prevented protesters from reaching dozens of Israeli soccer fans who were seated in an isolated area. There were no violent incidents inside the stadium.
On Wednesday, Turkish police instructed the team to stay within hotel grounds and to leave only on guarded trips to practice and the game itself. Team spokesman Ofer Ronen told the local media “we trust the Turkish police to do their work faithfully.”
Sports and Culture Minister Limor Livnat said she had talked with the authorities to beef up the team’s security and would be continuously in touch with the private security company guarding the team.
Meanwhile, dozens of Muslim Brotherhood activists held a demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy in Amman, Jordan, demanding the cancellation of peace accords between the two countries and calling for the deportation of the Israeli ambassador.
Jordanian police deployed armored vehicles in the area, fearing a takeover attempt like the one at the Cairo, Egypt, embassy earlier this week.
On Wednesday, the Amman embassy was closed in the evening hours and diplomats were sent home, fearing violent clashes. “Jordan is not Egypt and the king and security forces are determined to keep the peace,” said a source in the foreign ministry, “but it was decided not to take a chance.”
Time for people power to open Rafah crossing: The Electronic Intifada
Haidar Eid, 15 September 2011
The wolf is more merciful than my brothers – Mahmoud Darwish
Writing about the Rafah crossing, after the spectacular success of the Egyptian revolution in ousting Hosni Mubarak, brings back the horrific memory of the deposed dictator’s regime. There were high expectations amongst the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza earlier this year after former Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil el-Arabi described the Mubarak government’s complicity with Israel in besieging Gaza as “disgraceful.”
This was followed on 29 May by an official announcement by the Egyptian government that the Rafah crossing would be permanently opened. Palestinians with passports would be allowed to cross into Egypt every day from 9am to 5pm, except for Fridays and holidays. Palestinian women and children would be able to leave Gaza without restrictions, while men between the ages of 18 and 40 would have to obtain visas to enter Egypt. Despite these conditions, and even though the free flow of goods and materials would not be allowed, Palestinians in Gaza welcomed this move.
This decision, however, was implemented for only two days. It was retracted without any formal announcement and the number now allowed to leave Gaza each day has been reduced to 300. No reason has been given for this change.
Ordinary people in Gaza remain the victims of this political about-turn with their right to freedom of movement curtailed yet again, with no indication of when they can expect to travel freely.
No justification for closure
International law is sometimes cited selectively, even by some Palestine solidarity activists, to justify the closure of the Rafah crossing. They argue that Gaza is not an independent state and that since the internationally recognized, Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority signed the 2005 Rafah Agreement on Movement and Access, only that entity has the right to oversee movement through the crossing on the Palestinian side.
Even Israel’s mainstream liberal media is lecturing the Palestinians of Gaza on what is best for them. The Israeli journalist Amira Hass is another critic of calls to open the Rafah crossing, locating herself in opposition to prominent international signatories to the International Campaign to Open the Rafah Crossing, such as South Africans Desmond Tutu and Ronnie Kasrils as well as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Territories, Richard Falk. World-renowned writers Alaa Al Aswani, Ahdaf Soueif, Tariq Ali, Radwa Ashour, Mike Marqusee and Benjamin Zephania – to mention but a few – and major international solidarity groups and trade unions have also backed the call to open Rafah.
Hass’s argument is that the call to open the crossing permanently and unconditionally is “another self-described militant initiative that is a double-edged sword” because it is not combined with the demand for freedom of movement between Gaza and the West Bank — as if the opening of the crossing necessitates the closure of all other crossings between Gaza and Israel.
Confusing tactic with strategy allows Hass to ignore the simple fact that these six crossings are totally controlled by trigger-happy Israeli soldiers. For her, “the apparently progressive and militant initiative” to open the Rafah crossing turns the cutoff of Gaza from the West Bank into an “unchallenged reality.”
To a supporter of the two-state solution, this conclusion is of course valid. To not be able to see the immense amount of suffering caused by the closure of the crossing, and ignoring that Palestinians in Gaza currently have no other exit, boggles the mind.
Most importantly, Hass seems to even ignore the fact that the call to open the crossing permanently and unconditionally was issued by Gaza-based civil society and grassroots organizations. Meanwhile, Egyptian revolutionaries and grassroots organizations supported the call as soon as it was issued.
Rereading international law
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that:
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own,
and to return to his country.
International law is not against the opening of the Rafah crossing, and even if it was, it would be up to us, ordinary people, civil society and grassroots organizations, to create a new reality on the ground.
But international law is very clear that in cases of emergency, such as during the siege and massacres in Gaza, neighboring countries, such as Egypt, should open their borders. Bosnia is a good recent example where neighboring European countries heeded calls to open their borders for Bosnians in accordance with international law. One can go further and say that any government official imposing, or helping, in the imposition of this deadly siege on Gaza should be tried for war crimes. This question should be addressed to the present Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil el-Arabi, as an expert on international law, and because his statements on Egypt’s relations with Israel gave unfulfilled hope to the besieged Palestinians in Gaza.
The reality is that Israel, both before and after 2005, is the only power that decides when to open the crossing and how to interpret international law, making sure that its own interests and that of the US and the West in general are secured.
International law and agreements can be used, and defended, as a framework for struggle where Palestinian rights are guaranteed and protected (such as UN Resolution 194, which calls for the Palestinian refugees’ right of return) and if such use supports resistance and national liberation. My understanding is that international law should serve freedom, equality and human rights.
The restriction of Palestinian movement at the Rafah crossing is, however, a political decision since the Palestinian national unity government, which survived for a short period of time in 2007, representing almost all Palestinian political organizations, indicated to both Egypt and the Quartet (the US, European Union, Russia and the UN) that it accepts the 2005 Rafah crossing principles. This Palestinian endorsement of the principles was never accepted by the Egyptian regime or the Quartet, resulting in the current stalemate that has led directly to the deaths of more than 650 Palestinians in Gaza who were unable to access needed medical treatment.
It is worth nothing that prior to 1967, under an Egyptian administration, the Gaza Strip had no controlled borders with Egypt, and Gazans were able to drive through the Sinai up to the Suez Canal without being stopped at all. That freedom of movement was never used as a pretext to deprive Palestinians in Gaza of the right to struggle to return to the villages and towns from which they had been ethnically cleansed. Gaza was still considered part of historic Palestine. The same principle applies today regarding calls to open Rafah; to open Rafah doesn’t mean the acceptance of the rest of Israel’s closure regime.
Ignoring colonization
The problem with the mainstream (mis)interpretation of international law is that it transforms the whole Palestine question into a decontextualized, postmodern language game. The international law referred to is viewed as ahistorical and takes into consideration the interpretation of the powerful party, Israel. This discourse ignores that Israel has colonized not only the land, but also history and the discourse that represents it. As historian Ilan Pappe says in a different context, Israel has employed its powerful apparatus to propagate its official narrative.
We Palestinians are engaged in a national liberation struggle and the context in Gaza, especially during and after the massacre, requires a complete paradigm shift in our understanding of the tools of struggle and the political program that is to be used. It is the time of people power as evidenced on the streets of Cairo, Damascus, Sana’a, Manama and Tunis. The people of Egypt with the Palestinians of Gaza can open the crossing permanently and unconditionally, regardless of what Israel and its backers in the White House and 10 Downing Street think. Their man in Sharm El-Sheikh is behind bars, thanks to the sacrifices and courage of ordinary people like Khaled Said and Ahmed al-Shahat and the men, women and children of Gaza who managed to tear down the cement walls on the Palestinian-Egyptian borders twice.
There are lessons to learn from Gaza 2009. We have lost faith in the so-called international community that claims to uphold international law, as their representatives such as the UN, EU and the Arab League by and large have remained silent in the face of atrocities committed by apartheid Israel. They are therefore on the side of Israel.
So what if Israel declares Gaza a “hostile entity?” The message from officials citing international law to justify the closure of the crossing, and some misinformed activists and journalists, is a mechanical interpretation of the law that does not take human lives into account.
The closing of the Palestinians of Gaza’s only exit to the outside world amounts to a crime against humanity, given the Israeli siege and ongoing bombardment of Gaza. Egypt has a moral and political obligation to open the Rafah crossing permanently and around the clock. Egypt cannot continue to support opportunistic interpretations of international law that justify the ongoing deprivation of medicine, milk, food and other essentials to the population of Gaza.
The sanctity of human lives should take precedence over borders and treaties and solidarity activists need to take the lead in making this point to the Egyptian and other governments.
Under the Geneva Conventions, Palestinians, like all other people, are entitled to freedom of movement and protection from collective punishment such as the arbitrary closure of the crossing.
No misinterpretation of international law can override Palestinians’ right to free movement in and out of Egypt just because they are also at the same time engaged in a struggle against Israeli occupation, colonization and apartheid.
Haidar Eid is an independent political commentator from the Gaza Strip, Palestine.
UN Chief: End to Israeli-Palestinian conflict ‘long overdue’: Haaretz
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says he’s sympathetic to the frustrations of the Palestinian people who have failed to achieve an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told a news conference Thursday that an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “is long overdue” and it’s vital that long-stalled negotiations resume.
He said he’s sympathetic to the frustrations of the Palestinian people who have failed to achieve an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. “I am profoundly troubled by the lack of progress in the peace negotiations,” he said. “Time is not our friend.”
Ban said Israel has a duty to create conditions favorable to resuming negotiations and noted that new settlement activity “has not been helpful.” He said the Palestinians should try to sit down for talks with the Israelis.
On Thursday, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said that the Palestinians will submit a bid for full membership at the United Nations Security Council on September 23, but said that they would be open to other suggestions.
The remarks by Malki put an end to speculation that the Palestinians might avoid a showdown with the United States by sidestepping the Security Council and going directly to the UN General Assembly to seek a lesser status of a non-member observer.