First, the PLO accepted the Israeli demand to recognise the State of Israel decades ago and Israel never reciprocated with recognition of the State of Palestine or its right to exist. Now, while still denying self-determination to Palestinians, Israel demands recognition "as a Jewish state" not from the world but from Palestinians alone. Israel does not want to formally change its name to "the Jewish State of Israel"
The ostensibly pragmatic land-for-peace approach is one that says the parties will never agree on a historical narrative and must look to the future instead. But the Jewish state demand undercuts this and demands Palestinians accept the Israeli narrative that securing Jewish majoritarianism in Palestine was morally justified even if it necessitated destroying Palestinian society and created masses of Palestinian refugees. Asking Palestinians to make a deal that focuses on the future is one thing, but asking them to accept the crimes committed against them is another altogether. It is unbecoming of a party that claims to want a just peace.
As the Israeli historian Benny Morris said, "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore, it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population." Legitimising the pursuit of Jewish majoritarianism ad infinitum opens the door to future actions like this.
Making matters worse is that while Washington accepts new Israeli demands, it also fails to enforce Israeli obligations. The Road Map, which called for a settlement freeze, was never enforced. This allows Israel to have its cake, eat it, and then demand even more cake.
The truth is, the main reason Netanyahu makes this demand is that he knows the Palestinians cannot accept it for all of the above reasons. Yet, he makes it, knowing it will be met with sympathy in Washington and put the Palestinians in the position of looking like rejectionists. This way, he aims to put a stop to any negotiations that would lead to an end to Israeli occupation.
After several days of the Israel attack, self-servingly code-named "Protective Edge" by Israel, US President Barack Obama has offered to mediate a return to the 2012 ceasefire that had been arranged through the good offices of Egypt after the earlier onslaught on Gaza.
Whether the US government, the undisguised patron and unconditional supporter of Israel, has the credibility to play such a mediating role is rather doubtful.
An aspect of the distorted approach to responsibility for the violence in Gaza is the refusal of the West to take note of the connection between Protective Edge and the June 12 kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli settler teenage children and the surge of revenge violence, which culminated in the grisly murder of 17-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir.
Hysterical reaction
Without ever disclosing evidence linking Hamas to such an atrocious crime, the Netanyahu government and Israeli media reacted hysterically, immediately inciting a vicious campaign against Hamas throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including air strikes in Gaza and provocatively calling upon the Israeli citizenry to strike back at the Palestinians. In this inflamed atmosphere, the Israeli government undertook a massive campaign of collective punishment, itself a war crime: hundreds of Palestinians thought to be associated with Hamas were arrested and detained; house demolitions of the homes of suspects; killings of six Palestinians; lockdown of entire cities; air strikes against Gaza.
All this was done despite the mounting belief of independent observers that the crime against the Israeli youths was carried out by two Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas, perhaps with an initial plan to bargain for the release of Palestinian prisoners in an exchange. Never has it been asserted in high profile diplomatic circles of the West that the horrible crime provided Netanyahu with a pretext for an anti-Hamas campaign, which seems less motivated by a response to the kidnapping/murder than by the political objective of punishing the Palestinian leadership for defying the Netanyahu government for recently achieving a measure of reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Further in the background is the Israeli interest in shifting responsibility away from themselves for the failure of the Kerry negotiations that collapsed at the end of April.
Israel's leaders have responded defiantly, suggesting that Protective Edge will not cease until the Hamas infrastructure is destroyed, supposedly to ensure that no rockets will ever again be fired from Gaza. When Palestinian civilians are killed in the process of pursuing such an elusive goal, this is rationalised by Israeli officials as a regrettable side effect of what Israeli leaders are claiming to be a legitimate military undertaking. In a characteristic warped statement, Netanyahu declared: "We are not eager for battle, but the security of our citizens and children takes precedence over all else."
An appropriate further response would be for the UN General Assembly to recommend an arms embargo imposed on Israel. This would be a largely symbolic gesture as Israel has become a major weapons maker, exporting arms to many countries with a sales pitch stressing the benefits of "field-tested" weaponry.
It is time to acknowledge that these talks were carried on in bad faith: while the diplomats sat around the table, Israeli settlements relentlessly expanded, apartheid structures deepened their hold on the West Bank and Jerusalem, and Gaza was cordoned off as a hostage enclave to be attacked by Israel at will and a bloody sacrifice exacted.
At least, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, condemned the "dangerous Israeli escalation", urged the Security Council to "adopt measures to stop Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip", and warned of the humanitarian consequences. Turkey and Iran issued official statements along similar lines.
There is so much regional turbulence at present that it is unlikely to hope for anything more than scattered verbal denunciations from authorities in the region preoccupied with other concerns, but given the gravity of the situation, attention needs to be refocused on the Palestinian ordeal.
Pressure on Israel is urgently needed to protect the Palestinian people from further tragedy.
November 2 marked the 97th anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration, a letter written in 1917 by Britain's then-Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the Zionist movement. In the letter, Balfour said the government viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", and would use its "best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object".
The effect of this declaration was best summed up by the late British author and journalist Arthur Koestler: "One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third."
It had no moral or legal right to do so.
The declaration contradicted Britain's previous promise of "complete and final liberation" for the Arabs if they rose up against their Ottoman rulers. Their subsequent revolt was pivotal to the weakening of the Ottoman empire, and thereby the outcome of World War I.
Balfour reneged on his own pledge in his letter to Rothschild that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
In 1919, he wrote in a memorandum: "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... Zionism be it right or wrong is more important than the wishes of 700,000 Arabs," who constituted some 94 percent of the population of Palestine at the time.
Israel's creation
The Balfour Declaration, and its implementation by the British mandate in Palestine from 1920, culminated in Israel's creation in 1948, and the wholesale dispossession of the Palestinian people. As such, every anniversary of the declaration should be used to highlight Britain's central responsibility for the Palestinians' plight, and its continued refusal to right a monumental wrong.
Labour MP Grahame Morris, who sponsored the recent legislation urging the government to recognise Palestine as a state, reminded MPs of this responsibility during the parliamentary debate. "A sacred trust ... to guide Palestinians to statehood and independence ... has been neglected for far too long," he said.
MPs overwhelmingly agreed, with 274 supporting the motion and only 12 opposing it. Prime Minister David Cameron's response to this non-binding resolution was shameful, with his spokesman insisting that the government's position "won't be changing".
Cameron is not just defying the clear will of parliament, but also the British public. Opinion polls over the years have shown that far more Brits sympathise with the Palestinians than with Israel - two and half times as many, according to a YouGov poll in August. Sympathy for the Palestinians "can be seen across party lines", said YouGov. In July, a poll on behalf of the Sunday Times showed twice as many Brits siding with the Palestinians than with Israel.
London's belligerence is also increasingly out of step with world opinion. It abstained during the UN General Assembly vote that chose overwhelmingly (138-9) to upgrade Palestine's status from "observer entity" to "non-member observer state". Almost three-quarters of UN member states voted in favour, including most of the European Union.
The upgraded status allows the Palestinians to join the International Criminal Court. This is vehemently opposed by Britain despite being one of the founding members of the ICC, and despite its stated commitment to increasing the Court's membership to eventual universal jurisdiction. A Foreign Office strategy paper last year said this "will increase accountability and help challenge impunity", which is "a fundamental element of our foreign policy".
Learnt from history?
Before rejecting Palestinian accession to the ICC, Foreign Secretary William Hague had said just a few months prior: "We have learnt from history that you cannot have lasting peace without justice, accountability and reconciliation," and that "institutions of international justice are not foreign policy tools to be switched on and off at will".
This is a blatant double standard that has global implications. "Such clear inconsistency from one of the ICC's strongest supporters is a gift to enemies of the court and of international justice around the world," wrote Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch.
British governments cannot indefinitely swim against the domestic and international tides. Of the three main political parties, Labour and the Liberal Democrats support recognition of a Palestinian state. Labour leader Ed Miliband, who said he wants to be Britain's first Jewish prime minister, supported the parliamentary motion and urged his party's MPs to do the same.
There is growing dissent even among the traditionally pro-Israel Conservative party. Dozens of its MPs voted in favour of recognising Palestine, and a growing number of important party figures are speaking out against Israel's policies.
They include former International Development Secretary Alan Duncan, Richard Ottaway (chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs Select Committee), and former Defence Secretary Nicholas Soames. Baroness Warsi resigned as Foreign Office minister in August over the government's "morally indefensible" stance vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
All this suggests that a future British government could recognise Palestine, and with elections due next year, that possibility might not be far off.
Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood is right to state that "only an end to the occupation will ensure that Palestinian statehood becomes a reality on the ground". It is high time that Britain atone for the original sin of the Balfour Declaration by contributing seriously to ending that occupation, rather than aiding and abetting the occupier militarily, politically, and economically.
The first Israeli massacre in Gaza occurred in 1956. My father was a small boy at the time, but he remembers how the men were rounded up and shot. Today, his grand-nephews and -nieces, also refugees, also born in camps, cower in terror as the third generation of Ashkenazis in Palestine shows them their place. Life in the shadows, balanced precariously on obsidian with fire on either side - that's their inheritance.
Among Israeli elites, Gaza is everything to everyone. Israeli politicians attack Gaza to enhance their electoral appeal. They use it to muzzle the opposition, to preserve a coalition or to distract from a domestic scandal. Israeli generals like to invade to provide troops with "battle" training or to test new wares, and to debut new formations and tactics; Hamas is not Hezbollah, after all.
Jewish-Israeli scientists, meanwhile, coordinate with the army to use the territory as a convenient testing ground for advanced, experimental technologies. Corporate Israel later repackages those technologies for global export. Those are the relationships - the status quo.
The recent move towards Palestinian reconciliation undertaken by the Hamas and PLO leaderships, threatened to end the political - if not material - isolation of Gaza. It posed a risk to the current state of things by providing Hamas, a political movement which came to power through elections, with a means for re-entering the realm of international legitimacy.
Jewish-Israeli scientists, meanwhile, coordinate with the army to use the territory as a convenient testing ground for advanced, experimental technologies. Corporate Israel later repackages those technologies for global export. Those are the relationships - the status quo.
The recent move towards Palestinian reconciliation undertaken by the Hamas and PLO leaderships, threatened to end the political - if not material - isolation of Gaza. It posed a risk to the current state of things by providing Hamas, a political movement which came to power through elections, with a means for re-entering the realm of international legitimacy.
More than a month after the reconciliation, it appears that Netanyahu has succeeded - his balance has been restored. Israelis are free to indulge in a grand delusion of self-righteousness. "No normal country could tolerate terrorists firing missiles into its urban centres," they say.
"No normal country practises the crime of apartheid."
"No normal country demolishes the homes of suspects…
or punishes millions of people…
or seeks vengeance and vengeance and vengeance in a fit of bloody wrath," we might wearily reply.
The ostensibly pragmatic land-for-peace approach is one that says the parties will never agree on a historical narrative and must look to the future instead. But the Jewish state demand undercuts this and demands Palestinians accept the Israeli narrative that securing Jewish majoritarianism in Palestine was morally justified even if it necessitated destroying Palestinian society and created masses of Palestinian refugees. Asking Palestinians to make a deal that focuses on the future is one thing, but asking them to accept the crimes committed against them is another altogether. It is unbecoming of a party that claims to want a just peace.
As the Israeli historian Benny Morris said, "A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore, it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population." Legitimising the pursuit of Jewish majoritarianism ad infinitum opens the door to future actions like this.
Making matters worse is that while Washington accepts new Israeli demands, it also fails to enforce Israeli obligations. The Road Map, which called for a settlement freeze, was never enforced. This allows Israel to have its cake, eat it, and then demand even more cake.
The truth is, the main reason Netanyahu makes this demand is that he knows the Palestinians cannot accept it for all of the above reasons. Yet, he makes it, knowing it will be met with sympathy in Washington and put the Palestinians in the position of looking like rejectionists. This way, he aims to put a stop to any negotiations that would lead to an end to Israeli occupation.
After several days of the Israel attack, self-servingly code-named "Protective Edge" by Israel, US President Barack Obama has offered to mediate a return to the 2012 ceasefire that had been arranged through the good offices of Egypt after the earlier onslaught on Gaza.
Whether the US government, the undisguised patron and unconditional supporter of Israel, has the credibility to play such a mediating role is rather doubtful.
An aspect of the distorted approach to responsibility for the violence in Gaza is the refusal of the West to take note of the connection between Protective Edge and the June 12 kidnapping and killing of the three Israeli settler teenage children and the surge of revenge violence, which culminated in the grisly murder of 17-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir.
Hysterical reaction
Without ever disclosing evidence linking Hamas to such an atrocious crime, the Netanyahu government and Israeli media reacted hysterically, immediately inciting a vicious campaign against Hamas throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including air strikes in Gaza and provocatively calling upon the Israeli citizenry to strike back at the Palestinians. In this inflamed atmosphere, the Israeli government undertook a massive campaign of collective punishment, itself a war crime: hundreds of Palestinians thought to be associated with Hamas were arrested and detained; house demolitions of the homes of suspects; killings of six Palestinians; lockdown of entire cities; air strikes against Gaza.
All this was done despite the mounting belief of independent observers that the crime against the Israeli youths was carried out by two Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas, perhaps with an initial plan to bargain for the release of Palestinian prisoners in an exchange. Never has it been asserted in high profile diplomatic circles of the West that the horrible crime provided Netanyahu with a pretext for an anti-Hamas campaign, which seems less motivated by a response to the kidnapping/murder than by the political objective of punishing the Palestinian leadership for defying the Netanyahu government for recently achieving a measure of reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. Further in the background is the Israeli interest in shifting responsibility away from themselves for the failure of the Kerry negotiations that collapsed at the end of April.
Israel's leaders have responded defiantly, suggesting that Protective Edge will not cease until the Hamas infrastructure is destroyed, supposedly to ensure that no rockets will ever again be fired from Gaza. When Palestinian civilians are killed in the process of pursuing such an elusive goal, this is rationalised by Israeli officials as a regrettable side effect of what Israeli leaders are claiming to be a legitimate military undertaking. In a characteristic warped statement, Netanyahu declared: "We are not eager for battle, but the security of our citizens and children takes precedence over all else."
An appropriate further response would be for the UN General Assembly to recommend an arms embargo imposed on Israel. This would be a largely symbolic gesture as Israel has become a major weapons maker, exporting arms to many countries with a sales pitch stressing the benefits of "field-tested" weaponry.
It is time to acknowledge that these talks were carried on in bad faith: while the diplomats sat around the table, Israeli settlements relentlessly expanded, apartheid structures deepened their hold on the West Bank and Jerusalem, and Gaza was cordoned off as a hostage enclave to be attacked by Israel at will and a bloody sacrifice exacted.
At least, the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil al-Araby, condemned the "dangerous Israeli escalation", urged the Security Council to "adopt measures to stop Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip", and warned of the humanitarian consequences. Turkey and Iran issued official statements along similar lines.
There is so much regional turbulence at present that it is unlikely to hope for anything more than scattered verbal denunciations from authorities in the region preoccupied with other concerns, but given the gravity of the situation, attention needs to be refocused on the Palestinian ordeal.
Pressure on Israel is urgently needed to protect the Palestinian people from further tragedy.
November 2 marked the 97th anniversary of the infamous Balfour Declaration, a letter written in 1917 by Britain's then-Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the Zionist movement. In the letter, Balfour said the government viewed "with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people", and would use its "best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object".
The effect of this declaration was best summed up by the late British author and journalist Arthur Koestler: "One nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third."
It had no moral or legal right to do so.
The declaration contradicted Britain's previous promise of "complete and final liberation" for the Arabs if they rose up against their Ottoman rulers. Their subsequent revolt was pivotal to the weakening of the Ottoman empire, and thereby the outcome of World War I.
Balfour reneged on his own pledge in his letter to Rothschild that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine".
In 1919, he wrote in a memorandum: "In Palestine we do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country... Zionism be it right or wrong is more important than the wishes of 700,000 Arabs," who constituted some 94 percent of the population of Palestine at the time.
Israel's creation
The Balfour Declaration, and its implementation by the British mandate in Palestine from 1920, culminated in Israel's creation in 1948, and the wholesale dispossession of the Palestinian people. As such, every anniversary of the declaration should be used to highlight Britain's central responsibility for the Palestinians' plight, and its continued refusal to right a monumental wrong.
Labour MP Grahame Morris, who sponsored the recent legislation urging the government to recognise Palestine as a state, reminded MPs of this responsibility during the parliamentary debate. "A sacred trust ... to guide Palestinians to statehood and independence ... has been neglected for far too long," he said.
MPs overwhelmingly agreed, with 274 supporting the motion and only 12 opposing it. Prime Minister David Cameron's response to this non-binding resolution was shameful, with his spokesman insisting that the government's position "won't be changing".
Cameron is not just defying the clear will of parliament, but also the British public. Opinion polls over the years have shown that far more Brits sympathise with the Palestinians than with Israel - two and half times as many, according to a YouGov poll in August. Sympathy for the Palestinians "can be seen across party lines", said YouGov. In July, a poll on behalf of the Sunday Times showed twice as many Brits siding with the Palestinians than with Israel.
London's belligerence is also increasingly out of step with world opinion. It abstained during the UN General Assembly vote that chose overwhelmingly (138-9) to upgrade Palestine's status from "observer entity" to "non-member observer state". Almost three-quarters of UN member states voted in favour, including most of the European Union.
The upgraded status allows the Palestinians to join the International Criminal Court. This is vehemently opposed by Britain despite being one of the founding members of the ICC, and despite its stated commitment to increasing the Court's membership to eventual universal jurisdiction. A Foreign Office strategy paper last year said this "will increase accountability and help challenge impunity", which is "a fundamental element of our foreign policy".
Learnt from history?
Before rejecting Palestinian accession to the ICC, Foreign Secretary William Hague had said just a few months prior: "We have learnt from history that you cannot have lasting peace without justice, accountability and reconciliation," and that "institutions of international justice are not foreign policy tools to be switched on and off at will".
This is a blatant double standard that has global implications. "Such clear inconsistency from one of the ICC's strongest supporters is a gift to enemies of the court and of international justice around the world," wrote Clive Baldwin, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch.
British governments cannot indefinitely swim against the domestic and international tides. Of the three main political parties, Labour and the Liberal Democrats support recognition of a Palestinian state. Labour leader Ed Miliband, who said he wants to be Britain's first Jewish prime minister, supported the parliamentary motion and urged his party's MPs to do the same.
There is growing dissent even among the traditionally pro-Israel Conservative party. Dozens of its MPs voted in favour of recognising Palestine, and a growing number of important party figures are speaking out against Israel's policies.
They include former International Development Secretary Alan Duncan, Richard Ottaway (chairman of the powerful Foreign Affairs Select Committee), and former Defence Secretary Nicholas Soames. Baroness Warsi resigned as Foreign Office minister in August over the government's "morally indefensible" stance vis-a-vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
All this suggests that a future British government could recognise Palestine, and with elections due next year, that possibility might not be far off.
Middle East Minister Tobias Ellwood is right to state that "only an end to the occupation will ensure that Palestinian statehood becomes a reality on the ground". It is high time that Britain atone for the original sin of the Balfour Declaration by contributing seriously to ending that occupation, rather than aiding and abetting the occupier militarily, politically, and economically.
The first Israeli massacre in Gaza occurred in 1956. My father was a small boy at the time, but he remembers how the men were rounded up and shot. Today, his grand-nephews and -nieces, also refugees, also born in camps, cower in terror as the third generation of Ashkenazis in Palestine shows them their place. Life in the shadows, balanced precariously on obsidian with fire on either side - that's their inheritance.
Among Israeli elites, Gaza is everything to everyone. Israeli politicians attack Gaza to enhance their electoral appeal. They use it to muzzle the opposition, to preserve a coalition or to distract from a domestic scandal. Israeli generals like to invade to provide troops with "battle" training or to test new wares, and to debut new formations and tactics; Hamas is not Hezbollah, after all.
Jewish-Israeli scientists, meanwhile, coordinate with the army to use the territory as a convenient testing ground for advanced, experimental technologies. Corporate Israel later repackages those technologies for global export. Those are the relationships - the status quo.
The recent move towards Palestinian reconciliation undertaken by the Hamas and PLO leaderships, threatened to end the political - if not material - isolation of Gaza. It posed a risk to the current state of things by providing Hamas, a political movement which came to power through elections, with a means for re-entering the realm of international legitimacy.
Jewish-Israeli scientists, meanwhile, coordinate with the army to use the territory as a convenient testing ground for advanced, experimental technologies. Corporate Israel later repackages those technologies for global export. Those are the relationships - the status quo.
The recent move towards Palestinian reconciliation undertaken by the Hamas and PLO leaderships, threatened to end the political - if not material - isolation of Gaza. It posed a risk to the current state of things by providing Hamas, a political movement which came to power through elections, with a means for re-entering the realm of international legitimacy.
More than a month after the reconciliation, it appears that Netanyahu has succeeded - his balance has been restored. Israelis are free to indulge in a grand delusion of self-righteousness. "No normal country could tolerate terrorists firing missiles into its urban centres," they say.
"No normal country practises the crime of apartheid."
"No normal country demolishes the homes of suspects…
or punishes millions of people…
or seeks vengeance and vengeance and vengeance in a fit of bloody wrath," we might wearily reply.
No comments:
Post a Comment