EDITOR: New Chair of AIPAC speaks at the UN!
So the the AIPAC new chair, and ex-president of the US, a certain Barrack, Hussein Obama, has said what’s on his mind. Or, put differently, the second shot in the game of “fuck the Palestinians” has been now played. Wait for the next moves by the Republicans…
Palestinians blast Obama’s UN speech at West Bank rally
Protesters amass near Abbas’ Ramallah office, accuse U.S. President of siding ‘with killers against victims’; activists call for protests in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.
By The Associated Press, DPA and Haaretz
Tags: Middle East peace Palestinian state Barack Obama UN Mahmoud Abbas
Dozens of Palestinians gathered outside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ office in Ramallah on Thursday, protesting U.S. President Barack Obama’s opposition to their bid to gain recognition of a Palestinian state in the United Nations.
The protesters held up anti-Obama signs, including one reading “Obama the hypocrite” and another claiming the American president is siding “with killers against victims.”
Also Thursday, the Egypt’s semi-official Al Ahram newspaper reported online that activists in several Arab countries have called mass demonstrations in support of the Palestinian bid for statehood.
The demonstrations are being organized for Friday in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, countries where uprisings have this year led to the toppling of long-standing rulers.
The activists planned to protest Obama’s address on Wednesday at UN General Assembly, which they termed disappointing and biased, Al Ahram said.
Obama reiterated his objection of what he considered to be a unilateral Palestinain move for UN recognition in a speech given in front of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, saying that the only path for peace was bilateral negotiations.
In a meeting with Abbas following his UN address on Wednesday, Obama told the Palestinian president that UN action would not achieve a Palestinian state and the United States would veto any Security Council move to recognize Palestinian statehood.
“We would have to oppose any action at the UN Security Council including, if necessary, vetoing,” Ben Rhodes, the White House national security council spokesman, told reporters after Obama met Abbas in New York.
PLO diplomatic envoy to the U.S. Maen Rashid Erekat told Haaretz that the U.S. President “reiterated the commitment of the U.S. to the establishment of the Palestinian state, as part of the two-state solution, and stressed the position of the US that the UN is not the right venue to reach this goal.”
“President Abbas explained the Palestinian position – basically it’s what we’ve done in the past few months, each side explained his position,” he added.
Obama plays it (electorally) safe on Israel-Palestine: Guardian
The US president’s speech to the United Nations offers little hope to the Palestinians
Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, was in New York during Barack Obama’s speech, but did not actually turn up at the General Assembly to hear it. Given that the Israel-Palestine conflict was at the heart of the presidential address, that is a fairly extraordinary snub. If Obama had said anything that was difficult for Israel to stomach, the absence might have been rude but understandable. But the speech contained not an ounce of pressure on the Israelis. Netanyahu’s no-show simply reflected the current power relationship between the two men – the Israeli leader takes Obama for granted.
The reasons are political. Fourteen months from the elections, the US president is already fighting for his political life, and cannot afford (he clearly feels) to be outflanked by his future Republican opponent on the defence of Israel. That explains why the passage on how “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable” carried far more conviction that the bromides about the peace process.
A good measure of the emotional slant of any speech on the Israel-Palestine question is the relative weight given to Jewish and Arab suffering. By that measure, the needle on Obama’s speech was far over to one side. The president went into detail on the impact of suicide bombs and rockets, anti-Semitism in Arab schoolbooks and centuries of persecution on Jews. There was nothing on the pain of Palestinians under occupation, no mention of settlements, other than an acknowledgement of Arab frustration.
No wonder Mahmoud Abbas had his head in his hands and his fellow delegates were shaking their heads. The message that only Israelis and Palestinians can only sort this problem themselves, “when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes”, was the Bush administration approach. Obama is offering revived talks but apparently without US pressure for them to bring results.
New talks is what is being offered to Abbas to accept a deal by which the Palestinian application for statehood is kicked into the long grass this week, in the form of indefinite study by Security Council committee. For him to accept, the private assurances that the negotiations will not be time-wasting while new settlements are build on the West Bank will really have to be cast iron, because the public signals in Obama’s speech were pointing in the other direction.
U.S. Jews give Obama mixed reviews for ‘pro-Israel’ UN speech: Haaretz
AIPAC lauds U.S. President for seeing Israelis deserve ‘normal relations with their neighbors’; Americans for Peace Now: U.S. position as defender of rights cannot stand as Israeli-Palestinians conflict ‘left to fester’.
It was quite clear that U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech, which Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said he “would sign with both hands,” would draw mixed reactions. Its failure to go into details about the Israeli-Palestinian issue was assumed to be due to a combination of re-election concerns and those of slipping Jewish support.
But the U.S. Jewish organizations provided varying – in some cases even polar – responses to the speech.
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), which recently launched a new website explaining Obama’s support for Israel, took the speech as an opportunity to claim that all the “political chatter” doubting the president’s support for Israel should be “put to bed once and for all.”
“As he has proven throughout his presidency, President Obama supports Israel and its people instinctively. Israel truly has no better friend in the world today,” NJDC leaders Marc Stanley and David Harris said in a joint statement Wednesday.
“On behalf of the National Jewish Democratic Council’s Board of Directors and leadership, we wish to express our thanks to President Barack Obama for passionately and eloquently standing up for Israel and the Jewish State’s security needs at the United Nations today,” they said.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) welcomed the speech. “AIPAC appreciates the President’s “unshakeable” commitment to Israel’s security and his clear statements outlining the daily dangers and strategic threats facing Israel. President Obama demonstrated his understanding of Israel’s legitimate requirements when he stated that the Jewish people – in their historic homeland – deserve recognition and normal relations with their neighbors,” the Jewish lobby said.
American Jewish Committee (AJC) Executive Director David Harris said “President Obama’s message was crystal clear that the only path to sustainable peace is direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, not what goes on in the corridors of the UN.”
The Conference of Presidents Chairman Richard Stone and Executive Vice Chairman Malcolm Hoenlein welcomed Obama’s comments at the opening session of the UN General Assembly in support of direct negotiations, and his rejection of solutions imposed by outside parties, unilateral moves, or one sided declarations at the United Nations.
“The President correctly and clearly identified Israel’s security needs and challenges,” said the Conference of Presidents heads.
“The President said that “the Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland” and that “Israel deserves recognition.” We specially note this formulation not only because it reaffirmed a historic truth but also because many in the hall he was addressing have sought to deny Israel’s ancient and constant connection to the land and others have refuse to recognize it as the Jewish State,” their statement continued.
“We hope that other leaders will listen to President Obama’s words and heed his warnings,” they said, adding, “Most of all, we hope that the automatic majority against Israel at the UN will come to consider the danger to that institution and to the cause of peace that results from a blanket acceptance of anti-Israel measures no matter how unjustified they may be.”
Jewish Council for Public Affairs President Rabbi Steve Gutow praised Obama for saying the United States is dedicated to achieving peace through bilateral negotiations.
“He (Obama) understands that peace is a cooperative venture. It needs leaders, partners, supporters, witnesses, and principled advocates. No sustainable peace can be achieved alone,” said the Rabbi. “The path to peace is paved with compromise and cooperation, not unilateralism.”
But on the left side of the map, the disappointment was palpable.
Americans for Peace Now President and CEO Debra DeLee said Obama’s speech, while saying the Americans support peace, offered little hope to Israelis and Palestinians.
“Israelis want and deserve peace and security as much as anyone in the region. Palestinians want and deserve freedom and self-determination as much as Egyptians, Tunisians, or Libyans. The United States cannot maintain credibility as the standard-bearer of rights and freedoms while the Israeli-Palestinians conflict is left to fester,” said DeLee.
DeLee called upon the U.S. President to use his time at the United Nations this week as an opportunity to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to negotiations. “Only this can re-establish and re-assert U.S. credibility and re-inject hope for an end to this conflict,” she said.
J Street rejected the Palestinian UN bid, but its President Jeremy Ben-Ami said in a statement that Obama was right to say there is “no shortcut” to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that Obama must turn this “crisis” into “an opportunity to jumpstart meaningful diplomacy that yields results.”
Humanitarian aid for Palestinians should be unnecessary: Guardian
The huge amount of money spent on aid wouldn’t be needed if the international community pressed Israel to lift the blockade and respect international law, and pushed for a political solution
A Palestinian boy stands beside bags of food aid at a UN distribution centre in the Gaza Strip. Photograph: Ali Ali/EPA
As Friday’s expected Palestinian bid for UN membership draws closer, an overlooked issue is the untenable situation of the Palestinian population, who are subjected to collective poverty, misery and desperation, and the role that international humanitarian assistance plays in this.
Several years of experience in the Middle East and of closely following the humanitarian crisis in Palestine have convinced me that humanitarian aid would be unnecessary if a political solution were put in place, and it may even be perpetuating this manufactured crisis.
Many humanitarian workers we have interviewed in the context of the Humanitarian Response Index in recent years have voiced concerns that international humanitarian assistance is simply serving as a sticking plaster to avert the absolute collapse of living conditions in Palestine as the political crisis deepens. The more than $7.2bn (Global Humanitarian Assistance Report 2011) injected between 2000 and 2009 seems to have provided an excuse for the international community to avoid fully committing to establishing a just political resolution.
A political resolution is the only option that can solve this artificial crisis of protection, human rights and human dignity violations. But year after year we have seen how political decisions, or the lack thereof, undo humanitarian efforts. It is tragic that the main players, which include the Quartet (the UN, the US, the EU and Russia), are the most generous humanitarian donors while at the same time failing to achieve the political progress that would make their generosity needless.
Meanwhile, things are made worse by restrictions applied by Israel, both for Palestinians and the humanitarian agencies operating there.
Palestine is one of the most complex aid environments for humanitarian agencies, which need to overcome the obstacles and limitations imposed by the Israeli authorities. These include the restrictions on the movement of goods and people between zones and the bureaucratic procedures they entail, as well as the no-contact policy with Hamas stipulated by key donors. As a result, Palestine is a challenging and expensive environment to operate in. As one interviewee said, the no-contact policy “undermines the whole humanitarian response: creating parallel networks, wasting money, in addition to not using available services and resources”.
Another example of the multiple restrictions are the procedures demanded by the Israelis for the delivery of food supplies to Gaza, which cost the World Food Programme and the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) $4m per year.
In this context, humanitarian actors say donors are simply not doing enough. Many of the humanitarian organisations we met complained of donor passiveness in advocating for access and of their acceptance of additional operational costs – when at the same time they agreed that the Israeli blockade and occupation were the main obstacles to restoring a minimal level of livelihood and human dignity to the Palestinians.
If the situation seems bad for aid agencies, consider the plight of the Palestinians, who have to endure the Israeli barrier and numerous closures; the arbitrary opening and closing of checkpoints, as well as the random acceptance of the differentiated passes and permits; settlement expansion; forced evictions; and demolitions across the occupied territories. The humanitarian crisis this causes, along with the constant fear of violence, has led to failing hopes and desperation.
At a time when many donor governments are looking to maximise the results and value of their funding, the situation in Palestine shows just how far the response is from achieving efficiency, much less impact. The commitment of one donor to keep constructing what the Israeli authorities keep demolishing on account of a lack of valid building permits illustrates this game of doing, undoing and redoing.
The huge amount of money spent on humanitarian assistance would be unnecessary if the international community pressured Israeli authorities to lift the blockade, respect international humanitarian law, and allow full access to humanitarian aid and recovery.
As the political manoeuvring proceeds, there are ways to ameliorate the suffering of Palestinians. Donors can start by not placing political conditions on their assistance and challenging every party, both Israeli and Palestinian, that delays, controls or misuses aid. They should also avoid short-term funding cycles and grant humanitarian organisations the flexibility they need to implement long-term programmes to meet long-standing needs.
But even if NGOs, the UN and donor agencies provided an exemplary response – and they should deploy all efforts to this end – the solution to the humanitarian crisis in the occupied territories remains political. The most efficient humanitarian response will always fall short if it continues to depend on the interests of Israel and the convenience of donor capitals.
The international community, particularly the main humanitarian donor governments, must understand that their approach of providing large sums of money without calling for the end of the blockade and occupation is not the best way to help the Palestinians – in reality, it allows the protraction of the humanitarian crisis.
The current period is critical. Donors need to back the agencies they fund with a real commitment to building a Palestinian state, something they all agree to. The absence of a solution will lead to more violence, a deeper humanitarian crisis and further instability, none of which will benefit the Palestinians or the Israelis.
• Ross Mountain is director general of Dara
Noam Chayut: Israeli occupation is neither moral nor legitimate: Independent
Thursday, 22 September 2011
In 1979, the year I was born, the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was 12 years old. I was 10 during the first Palestinian uprising, when my father and his comrades in a reserve unit forced innocent Palestinians out of their homes and shops and, as a form of collective punishment, sent them to clean the streets of graffiti opposing Israeli occupation.
When I joined the army, the 30th anniversary of occupation was being “celebrated”, and three years later, as a young officer, I was sent with my soldiers to confront the second intifada. In one month of riots we killed a hundred Palestinians and many more were wounded by live ammunition.
We were told that our goal was “to sear into the consciousness of Palestinian civil society that terrorism doesn’t pay.” To achieve this, we were to “demonstrate our presence”. This meant entering Palestinian residential areas at any time, day or night, throwing stun grenades, shooting in the air or at water tanks, throwing tear gas grenades, creating noise and fear. For the very same reason, we committed revenge attacks such as demolishing the homes of terrorists’ families, or killing random Palestinian policemen (armed or unarmed): an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If militants attacked a road, we would close it to Palestinian traffic; if stones were thrown at cars on a road, we would place an indefinite curfew on the closest village.
The Israeli military regime over the Palestinian population is now in its 45th year, and while Palestinian violence has dramatically declined, Israeli soldiers still testify about being assigned to “disrupt the day-to-day routine” in Palestinian areas to create in the local community the feeling of “being constantly pursued”.
It is still unclear what the Palestinian leadership will propose to the UN tomorrow, beyond recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. We don’t know if, or how, the outcome of any vote will be felt on the ground. However, testimonies from more than 750 former Israeli soldiers and officers who have served in the Occupied Territories over the past decade, make one thing clear: from the point of view of the Israeli army, the occupation is not a temporary means of controlling the population. There is no end to it in sight.
Those who oppose the recognition of a Palestinian state cling to a false belief that Israel’s occupation is temporary, its aim to create political space for democratic rule in a future Palestine. This belief is what makes the occupation morally tolerable. Because if an occupation is a permanent one, it can only be illegitimate, not just because the ruler is foreign, but because controlling people via coercion and military orders is immoral.
Even if we accept that a 44-year-long occupation is still temporary in a 63-year-old state; if we ignore the reality of hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews settled in Palestinian territories, or the existence of two separate and unequal legal regimes imposed on the two ethnic groups in the same small piece of land, it is hard to remain optimistic about Israel’s intentions to evacuate, when we hear its soldiers’ reports to Breaking The Silence, an NGO which collects their testimonies.
We should accept the fact that the army does not intend to withdraw from the Occupied Territories, and that the status quo is the Israeli government’s plan for the future. We should take the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs – who lives in a settlement on Palestinian land – at face value when he declares there won’t be peace even in 50 years.
When security and prosperity continue to flourish for “us”, while liberty and freedom are continually withheld from “them”, it is difficult to think of any other non-violent action the Palestinian leadership can take besides seeking international support for ending the Israeli occupation.
The writer is a former Israeli army officer and member of ‘Breaking The Silence’, an NGO which gathers and publishes testimony from soldiers and works in partnership with Christian Aid to expose the realities of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories
The Palestinians are the new Jews: Haaretz
The Palestinians are the new Jews and their leaders are amazingly similar to the former Zionist leaders.
By Gideon Levy
Look at the Palestinians and look at us. Look at their leaders and recall ours. Not, of course, those we have today, but those we once had, the ones who established the state for us. The Palestinians are the new Jews and their leaders are amazingly similar to the former Zionist leaders.
Their David Ben-Gurion is no longer with them – Yasser Arafat died under mysterious circumstances – but look at Mahmoud Abbas: Isn’t he Levi Eshkol? Saeb Erekat – isn’t he Abba Eban? Salam Fayyad – isn’t he Pinhas Sapir or Eliezer Kaplan? The same moderation, the same nondescript personality, the same pragmatism, the same political wisdom and even, to some degree, the same sense of humor. To take what is attainable, to give up the big dreams – in the partition plan as in the two-state solution.
Then it was the pragmatic Zionist leaders who conceded and compromised, now it is the pragmatic leaders of the Palestinian Authority. At the time they insisted on getting it all, now it’s our turn. Both were ambushed by an internal opposition that was extremist, ultranationalist and uncompromising.
The Palestinian group that is now going to the United Nations should remind Israelis of the Zionist group that turned to the same organization 64 years earlier. Yes, there are differences. And yet the similarity is captivating: Now they are the weak versus the strong, David versus Goliath, their Qassam can’t help but remind us of our Davidka.
They are now the ones whose cause is just in the eyes of the world. The same world that understood in November 1947 that the Jews (and the Palestinians ) deserve a state, understands in September 2011 that the Palestinians finally deserve a state. Then it was after the trauma of the Holocaust, now it is after the trauma of the occupation, without making comparisons.
In the coming days people will once against be glued to their radios counting votes: Russia – yes; the United States – no; Argentina – abstains. Doesn’t it remind us of forgotten times? The United Nations has grown since then, but the proportion will be similar: an absolute majority in favor. The difference: The great powers supported partition at the time, the great power is now opposed to a state. But the moral validity remains the same, there is no longer anyone in the world who can seriously claim that they don’t deserve what we deserved, without being a racist, a chauvinist or a cynical opportunist.
It is amazing how Israelis are unwilling to see the similarities, it is amazing how they are falling plundered and blind in the face of the brainwashing campaign and the scare tactics through which recognition of Palestinian rights is being presented as a threat and an existential danger, and nothing more.
Why is it that there aren’t enough Israelis who see the opportunity and hope for Israel represented by this diplomatic step? Yes, for Israel too. And why is it that there aren’t enough Israelis who properly see the clear fact that the heart of almost the entire world is with the Palestinians, and that it isn’t ringing a belated and deafening wake-up call for them?
Israel at its birth was considered a model society, far more than Palestine at its birth. It bequeathed the world socialist and feminist values, the kibbutz and the moshav, absorption of immigrants and equality of women – a lighthouse of equality and social justice. The Palestinians are now in an inferior position: Their society is more corrupt and less egalitarian than ours, nor did they establish a state-in-the-making for themselves, with impressive institutions such as the ones we had.
But here the situation has become reversed beyond recognition. Israel of 2011 is no longer considered a model society in any area. With quite a number of corrupt Israeli politicians in prison or on the way there, with capitalism that is quite swinish and an occupation that is quite brutal, the story of the great national and social success of the 20th century is now considered a story of missed opportunity of the 21st century. The path to repairing this fateful missed opportunity must now be by way of a new partition plan.
The Palestinians bled for 63 years and paid the price for the fateful mistake of their leaders’ opposition to the 1947 partition plan; the Israelis must not now have regrets for another 63 years and pay a high price for their stubborn and surprising opposition to the 2011 partition plan. Look at them and look at us. They are what we once were.