I can’t imagine any job in the world that would be more disheartening than being Palestine’s representative at the United Nations. Every morning you get up and plan the next statement to be brought before the General Assembly or the Security Council or whatever UN body you think can best be targeted. Every day you prepare statements, liaise with fellow delegates, and make the case for Palestine. And every day your efforts take you absolutely NOWHERE!
So Palestine has complained again to the UN about settlement expansion. What is the best that the Palestine can hope for? If they are lucky the UN will eventually issue a resolution condemning the Israeli government’s actions. And what will that achieve? The historical record is unambiguous. It will achieve absolutely NOTHING!
Recourse to diplomacy has been spectacularly unsuccessful for Palestine now for so many years, and yet what alternative does that leave us? Hamas can point to a number of things that they’ve achieved through the use of force. Is this really the alternative that the Israeli government is looking for? God help us!
Father Dave
UNITED NATIONS, June 14 (KUNA) — Palestine on Friday complained to the international community about the reported expansion of Israeli settlement activities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and urged the Security Council to urgently respond.
“We reiterate our appeals to the international community, including the Security Council, to act with urgency to uphold the law, to safeguard the rights of the Palestinian people, and to salvage the waning hopes for peace,” Palestinian Charge d’Affaires Feda Abdulhadi Nasser wrote in identical letters to the Security Council President (UK) and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“The international community must firmly reject Israel’s empty, offensive pretexts and must be resolute in demanding a halt to all illegal Israeli practices in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,” she said.
This, she added, must include an end to the settlement campaign, which is gravely diminishing the viability of the two-State solution and sabotaging the hopes for meaningful peace negotiations to be resumed to bring an end to this tragic conflict.
“To remain permissive of settlement activities, regardless of the manifestation, is to allow for the trampling of international law and the destruction of the two-State solution, with far-reaching consequences for the prospects for Palestinian-Israeli peace as well as for the region and for our global community,” she warned.
She also complained about the provocative statements by Israeli officials, including the Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, who in recent media comments stated that “there will never be a Palestinian State” and suggested Jordan as an alternative.
These provocations, she argued, reveal the “true nature and intentions of the current (Israeli) Government, and which undermine the serious peace efforts of US Secretary of State John Kerry and regional and international partners.”Earlier in the day, Ban described as “worrisome” reports about continued Israeli expansion of settlements and urged Israel to freeze such activities which are in violation of international law.
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on Jun 16th, 2013. Comment. 
Another excellent piece of analytical work from Jonathon Cook – unraveling the rhetoric to reveal the stone-cold logic behind John Kerry’s latest proposal for ‘economic peace’ for Israel/Palestine.
By focusing on economic development, Kerry directs attention away from the real issue – the Occupation! At the same time, if the Palestinian leadership balks at the proposal for economic aid they will be held responsible (once again) for scuttling the peace process. It’s a genuine lose-lose situation for the Palestinians.
Father Dave
Jonathon Cook
source: mondoweiss.net…
Kerry’s plan – Palestinians to be cast as fall guys . . . again
by Jonathon Cook
Under heavy pressure from the US, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has paid grudging lip service over the past four years to the goal of Palestinian statehood. But his real agenda was always transparent: not statehood, but what he termed “economic peace”.
Ordinary Palestinians, in Netanyahu’s view, can be pacified with crumbs from the master’s table: fewer checkpoints, extra jobs and trading opportunities, and a gradual, if limited, improvement in living standards. All of this buys time for Israel to expand the settlements, cementing its hold over the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
After 20 years of pursuing Palestinian statehood implied in the Oslo Accords, the US indicated last week it was switching horses. It appears to be adopting Netanyahu’s model of “economic peace”.
The US secretary of state, John Kerry, flanked by the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, and the Palestinian Authority chairman, Mahmoud Abbas, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan, revealed an economic programme for getting peace talks on track.
Some 300 Israeli and Palestinian business people were on board, he said, and would invest heavily in the Palestinian economy in a venture that was “bigger, bolder and more ambitious than anything since the Oslo accords”.
No more details were forthcoming, except that it will be overseen by Tony Blair, Britain’s former prime minister who has been the Quartet representative, the international community’s “man in Jerusalem”, since 2007.
He is a strange choice indeed, given that the Palestinian leadership has publicly dismissed him as “Israel’s defence attorney” and privately argued — as revealed in the Palestine Papers leaked in 2011 — that he advocates “an apartheid-like approach to dealing with the occupied West Bank”.
Kerry’s claims for his programme were grand yet vague. Some $4 billion in private investment over three years would boost the Palestinian economy by 50 per cent; agricultural production and tourism would triple; unemployment fall by two-thirds; wages rise by 40 per cent; and 100,000 homes would be built.
But the proposal left few impressed, and for good reason.
Kerry is simply repackaging the task Blair was entrusted with six years ago. His job has been to develop the Palestinian economy and build up Palestinian institutions in preparation for eventual statehood, so far to little effect.
As David Horovitz, editor of the right wing Times of Israel newspaper, scoffed: “If there was $4 billion to be had in private investment in the Palestinian economy, you can rest assured that Tony Blair would have found it.”
Or seen another way, the Palestinian economy’s problem is not a lack of investment; it is a lack of viable opportunities for investment.
Palestinians have no control over their borders, airspace, radio frequencies, water and other natural resources, not even over the currency or internal movement of goods and people. Everything depends on Israel’s good will. And few investors will be prepared to bet on that. Israel has repeatedly shown itself more than ready to crush the PA’s finances by, for example, withholding Palestinian tax revenues it collects and is mandated to pass on.
Blair’s role has been heavily criticised because his narrow focus on economic development has not only failed to foster a climate conducive to talks but has served as cover for Israel and Washington’s inaction on Palestinian statehood. Instead of rethinking Blair’s failed mandate, Kerry appears set on perpetuating and expanding it.
Abdallah Abdallah, a senior Fatah official, summed up the Palestinian response: “We are not animals that only want food. We are a people struggling for freedom”.
Israel, meanwhile, is only too ready to push Kerry down this hopeless path.
From Israel’s perspective, the US plan usefully distracts attention from the Arab Peace Initiative, the Arab states’ renewed offer last month of full diplomatic relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal from most of the occupied territories.
Netanyahu, worried the offer might corner him into serious talks, has responded with stony silence. At the same time, Yair Lapid, the supposedly centrist finance minister who was originally promoted by the West as a peacemaker, has squashed the idea of a deal with the Palestinians as unrealistic. He told the New York Times last month that he supported expanding the settlements.
Israel, it seems, hopes that the Palestinian Authority, now permanently mired in financial crisis, can be arm-twisted with promises of billions of dollars in sweeteners. According to Palestinian sources, Abbas is facing intense pressure from the US, with the Kerry plan intended to leverage him into dropping his condition that Israel freeze settlement growth before negotiations restart.
Israel is keen to win that concession. Despite reports that Netanyahu has quietly promised the Americans he will avoid embarrassing them for the next few weeks with announcements of settlement building, a rash of projects is in the pipeline.
At the weekend, media reports disclosed a plan for 300 new homes in East Jerusalem, while nearly 800 more are to be released for sale. Several settlement outposts established without authorisation from the Israeli government are expected to be made legal retrospectively, including hundreds of homes in Eli, near Ramallah.
Reuters reported yesterday that Kerry expects a decision on restarting peace talks within two weeks – or, his officials say, he will walk away from the peace process. He told a meeting of the American Jewish Committee the same day: “If we do not succeed now, we may not get another chance.”
For Netanyahu, such threats are hollow. If the US absents itself from the conflict, Israel will simply be left with a freer hand to intensify its subjugation of the Palestinians and the theft of their land.
Even though much more is at stake for the Palestinians, the PA has so far been quietly dismissive of the Kerry plan. It has stated it will not make “political concessions in exchange for economic benefits” – a diplomatic way of saying it will not be bribed to sell out on statehood.
But the real danger for the Palestinians, as they remember only too well from the 2000 Camp David talks, is that they are being set up as the fall guy. Should they refuse to sign up to the latest version of economic peace, Israel and the US will be only too ready to blame them for their intransigence.
This is win-win for Netanyahu, and another moment of disastrous slippage in the diplomatic process for the Palestinians.
Filed under israel and palestine articles, israel and palestine conflict by on Jun 6th, 2013. Comment.
I was fascinated to see this video. Here Khaled Meshaal answers many of the questions that have left me perplexed:
- why did he move his headquarters from Damascus to Doha?
- What went wrong between him and Bashar el-Assad
- Why is Hamas supporting the ‘Free Syrian Army’
Meshaal answers each question succinctly. Whether he answers them truthfully of course is another question. He claims that, despite all appearances to the contrary, he has not switched sides in the Syrian conflict, and yet he is living now in the very heart of FSA territory!
Meshaal is also questioned about whether Hamas still denies ‘Israel’s right to exist’. He answers like a true politician, but truly it is an offensive question. No one ever demands of the Israelis that they acknowledge Palestine’s right to exist. Indeed, all the indications are that they don’t and never will unless they are forced to.
Father Dave
If you can’t view this video, click here.
Filed under israel and palestine conflict by on Jun 1st, 2013. Comment.
“If Syria falls, so will Palestine” - this was the claim made by Hassan Nasrallah in his May 25 address to a rally in Beirut. It sounds like an extraordinary claim. The far less contentious claim, I would think, is that if Syria falls, so will Lebanon.
Lebanon is a country that is already crowded with its population of 4.3 million. It is also already home to 600,000 Palestinian refugees. If the conflict in Syria continues, there will soon be more than a million Syrian refugees added to that mix! There is no way that the infrastructure of the country will handle a refugee population that could number more than 50% of its citizenry!
Perhaps Nasrallah was only throwing Palestine into the mix to broaden the appeal of his message. After all, support for Palestine against Israel is the common denominator between all states in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Even so, the fate of Syria certainly has broad implications for the region.
Apart from the threat to Lebanon, the isolation of Iran would be the most immediate ramification of the fall of Syria, and this is surely what Syria’s enemies are striving for. It is Iran that is resisting US/Israeli control of the region. As far as the super-powers are concerned, the Syrian people are just the canon-fodder in the broader battle for regional hegemony.
Father Dave
Hassan Nasrallah
source: www.haaretz.com…
If Syria falls, so will Palestine, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah warns in speech
By Jack Khoury
In a televised speech, Nasrallah says Israel ‘fears rockets’ and cautions that militant factions taking over Syria ‘pose a threat to Lebanon.’
Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah opened a front against al-Qaida and its affiliated groups, especially in Syria, stressing on Saturday that his organization was prepared to send tens of thousands of combatants to defend Syria.
In a televised speech marking the 13th anniversary of the Israeli pullout from southern Lebanon, Nasrallah also said that “if Syria falls, so will Palestine, the West Bank, Gaza, and Jerusalem. We will enter a very dark phase.”
He also spoke about Israeli preparations for a possible conflict with Hezbollah and said that Israel formed a new government portfolio dedicated to protecting the home front. “In Israel everything is geared up for a conflict year round and all year they hold maneuvers. Israel fears rockets, because we have no air force. The Israelis built towns along its borders. They are bringing in Jews from Ethiopia, Romania, and Argentina, and placing them by our borders and providing them with money and arms. On our side of the border, our towns are nearly empty.”
Nasrallah did not present the fighting as a conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, but rather as one waged between heathens serving a Western Zionist agenda and the Syrian resistance that refuses to accept the dictates of the West.
Nasrallah unequivocally stressed that the fall of the Syrian regime would be a blow to the “resistance.” “Syria is the backbone of the ‘resistance,’ that cannot sit still and wait while its backbone is being broken,” he said. “If Syria falls in the hands of the Americans and the Israelis and the American representatives in the region, the ‘resistance’ will be isolated and Israel will enter Lebanon and force its laws upon it. Lebanon will return to the Israeli era.”
In his speech, Nasrallah tied the U.S. and Israel to Jihadist organizations working under the aegis of al-Qaida in Syria: “These combatants coming from many countries received many allowances to leave their countries and arrive at Syria, this is the American method of destabilizing Syria from the inside, using these organizations that brand everyone is heathens, those organizations that had killed more Sunni Muslims than anyone else. An example of this is what is happening in Iraq, Pakistan, and Somalia. We think that the armed forces taking over Syria are a great danger to Lebanon and all the Lebanese, not only Hezbollah or the Lebanese Shiites.”
A great deal of Nasrallah’s speech was devoted to the situation in Syria, with Nasrallah reiterating his support for Assad’s regime. He added that “What is taking place in Syria is very important to Lebanon and is crucial to our future. We are on the border. We have the courage to talk and act and thus we will speak honestly – our position was clear from the get go. The demand for reforms is acceptable and this government has a place. Reforms should begin along with political dialog.”
Regarding Hezbollah’s involvement in the fighting in Syria, Nasrallah said: “We started getting involved only a few months ago. We tried to initiate contact through all our channels but they didn’t listen, stubbornly they decided to reject the dialogue – they want to overthrow the government at any costs.”
Nasrallah went on to say “We are in a delicate point in history. There is no time to burry our heads in the sand, it is time to raise our heads and stand tall in the face of the hurricane. So, in all honesty, what has this country [Lebanon] done? The Lebanese nation isn’t prepared to face the Israeli threat.”
According to him “The Lebanese resistance changed the Israeli equation. Currently, we are protecting Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria.”
Filed under Israel and Palestine by on May 31st, 2013. Comment.
This is an excellent essay from my friend, Paul Larudee.
What does the Palestinian struggle have to do with Anti-Semitism? What indeed?! Cries of ‘anti-Semitism’, like references to the Holocaust, only function to distract us from the real issues.
Father Dave
Paul Larudee
source: dissidentvoice.org…
The Palestine Liberation Movement is not about Anti-Semitism
by Paul Larudee / May 23rd, 2013
Without regard to the validity of Joseph Massad’s exposition of the historical and dialectic relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism, why is Massad trying to justify the Palestine liberation movement on the basis that it is a battle against anti-Semitism? Of course, Massad is by no means the only Palestinian to make Jewish issues and anti-Semitism central to the Palestinian struggle. Ali Abunimah has made something of a campaign of assuring the Jewish community that the Palestine liberation movement is free of anti-Semitism. In addition, several large Palestinian solidarity organizations and coalitions have anti-anti-Semitism as one of their core statements.
Since when are Palestinian rights and liberation about Jews, Jewish issues and anti-Semitism? Why are Palestinians allowing Jews and Jewish issues – including Zionism and anti-Semitism – to set the Palestinian agenda?
The term “Semite” was born of the assumption that all the languages of the world are the result of the sons of Noah – Shem, Ham and Japheth – going to different parts of the globe after the flood and creating different language groups: Semitic, Hamitic and Japhetic. The sons of Noah? Are we seriously entertaining such nonsense?
To make matters worse, this absurdity was extended to fictitious “races,” not just languages. “Anti-Semitic” therefore is descriptive of the Hamitic and Japhetic races turning on the descendents of Shem, the third brother. No one seriously speaks of Hamitic and Japhetic races. Is it not time to recognize the absurdity of the Semitic “race” as well?
Even more absurd is the attempt to use such mythological concepts to measure the virtue of the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cause has nothing to do with Jews, Semites, anti-Semitism, God, Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Noah, Jacob, Ishmael, Shem, Ham and Japheth, whether you believe in them or not. It has nothing to do with the Holocaust, colonialism, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Turks or the British.
It has everything to do with the expulsion of Palestinians from their land and with denial of their right to sovereignty, to self-determination and above all their Right to Return. It does not matter who expelled them. It is their land and they have the right to return. It does not matter who denies their existence. They have a right to return.
It does not even matter if they are nice people or despicable, whether they are racists or humanists, whether they are Muslims, Christians, Jews, Buddhist or Shinto, whether they are clean or dirty, educated or ignorant, rich or poor, democrats or monarchists. They have the right to return to their homes and to reclaim their country.
Their rights cannot be held hostage to the rights of others. If justice for Palestinians cannot be bought at the price of injustice for others, neither can justice for others be bought at the price of injustice to Palestinians. Justice may be indivisible, but we need not wait for justice to happen everywhere in order for it to happen in Palestine.
Palestinians cannot wait for CO2 levels to drop below 350 parts per million, nor for the population of blue whales to rise, nor for the persecution of Rohingyas to end in Myanmar, nor even for ethnic cleansing to end in Congo, nor for the European victims of World War II and their descendants to be made whole, nor for indigenous peoples everywhere to regain their rights and heritage.
Justice may be indivisible, but the restoration of justice anywhere raises the level of justice everywhere. The restoration of justice in Palestine benefits the entire world and gives hope to justice that is still struggling to restore itself in other places and to other peoples.
Anti-Semitism is no more relevant to Palestinian liberation than anti-Hamitism or Anti-Japhetism or any other attempt to gauge the worthiness of the Palestinian cause by its endorsement or rejection of someone else’s values. Please remove such irrelevance from the discussion of Palestinian rights.
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on May 26th, 2013. 2 Comments.
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