Haneen Zoabi: “Just as Israelis are beginning to seriously consider a new social order, they must also consider a new diplomatic order in which Israel will pay a heavy price for its policy of oppression, occupation, and belligerence.”
UN
The Palestinians are walking into a trap of their own making. With the so-called “peace process” going nowhere, and with the number of Israeli settlements on the rise, the UN vote is an act of desperation, not strength, on the part of the Palestinian leadership.
“Under normal trade and transit conditions … Israel would no longer enjoy overwhelming dominance as the leading OPT trading partner,” the UNCTAD report says.
The one government determines the separate and unequal course of development of each people. An upper-country people and a lower-country people. Those on the first course have the right to live in the country because their forefather immigrated 3,000 years ago. Those on the second course do not have the right to live in their home, because their refugee fathers were born there 80 years ago.
This time, too, Israel will accuse the Arabs of unilateral steps, ignore the United Nations, expand settlements in the West Bank, and build more neighborhoods for Jews in East Jerusalem.
UN coordinator for the ME peace process: “If confirmed, this provocative action undermines ongoing efforts by the international community to bring the parties back to negotiations.”
What will the Palestinians do at the UN in September? The question appears to haunt Washington and Tel Aviv as they prepare to block Palestinian attempts to obtain UN recognition, as though the very idea of such action represents a form of political impudence that merits the harshest international rejection. Sober accounts by Palestinians of what they may expect from a trip to the UN have done little to allay the dark cloud of suspicion that is fostered in mainstream accounts.
In the case of Israel- the line between the government and the Jewish people as a whole is deliberately obscured and groups like the ADL never hesitate to use this confusion to their advantage, making virtually all criticism of Israel subject to potential condemnation as a a form of anti-Jewish hatred. This is the essence of Israeli exceptionalism which leads to the situation we have now- a country that claims all of the benefits of being a western style democracy with little of the accountability.
In May, in a closed meeting of many of Israel’s business leaders, Idan Ofer, a holding-company magnate, warned, “We are quickly turning into South Africa. The economic blow of sanctions will be felt by every family in Israel.”
A new report of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is highly critical of Israel for its handling of incidents on the border with Lebanon on May 15 – Nakba Day. It concludes that the Israeli soldiers used disproportionate force against Lebanese demonstrators, which resulted in seven deaths.
The United States is sure to bring all its considerable influence to bear to avoid such resolutions being brought before the Council… But the fact that such a course would clarify the situation, and finally extract a small price for the United States’ shameless pandering to Israel, is precisely the reason why this is a course to be seriously considered.
US Senate Resolution 185: “Palestinian efforts to gain recognition of a state outside direct negotiations demonstrates absence of a good faith commitment to peace negotiations, and will have implications for continued United States aid.”
Israeli Foreign Ministry Director General: “The goal we have set is to have the maximum number of countries oppose the process of having the UN recognize a Palestinian state… The Palestinian effort must be referred to as a process that erodes the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”
IOA Editor: Sixty three years after the Nakba, and 44 years since the 1967 occupation, Israeli propaganda remains the same, as does the reality of occupation and ethnic cleansing.
The votes are there already in the U.N. General Assembly to admit Palestine pursuant to the terms of its Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950). It is the U.N. General Assembly that admits a Member State, not the Security Council. Obama’s veto at the Security Council can be circumvented by the General Assembly acting under the Uniting for Peace Resolution to admit Palestine as a U.N Member State in September.
Goldstone’s timing may have been significant. He offered his reassessment a few days after the UN Human Rights Council, which appointed his fact-finding mission, recommended that the General Assembly refer the Goldstone Report to the Security Council. In doing so, the council initiated a mechanism designed to move the report to the ICC as a prelude to a possible war crimes tribunal.
The significance of a Palestinian state joining the UN is that, for the first time, it will be the Palestinians who will decide what the international legal framework is that is binding in their territory.
Goldstone miscalculated; he has given the report a second life. It may still languish in the UN system, thanks to the geopolitical leverage being exerted by the United States to ensure that Israeli impunity is safeguarded once more. But this new controversy surrounding the report has provided civil society with renewed energy to push harder on the legitimacy agenda which is animating the growing Palestinian solidarity movement.
Many of those calling for the nullification of our report imply that the final report by the follow-up committee … somehow contradicts the fact-finding mission’s report or invalidates it. In the light of the observations of this committee such claims are completely misplaced, and a clear distortion of their findings.
UN recognition of a Palestinian make-believe state would be no more meaningful than this fantasy “institution-building”, and could push Palestinians even further away from real liberation and self-determination.
I asked Goldstone to help point out even a single word in the two reports that could justify his vague statement about the non-existence of the policy on harming civilians – while both reports repeatedly criticize Israel for not having investigated this issue at all. Apologizing politely, the South African freedom fighter said he had imposed media silence on himself. A pity…
