By PHOEBE GREENWOOD
The Guardian

If Joseph and Mary were making their way to Bethlehem today, the Christmas story would be a little different, says Father Ibrahim Shomali, a parish priest in the town. The couple would struggle to get into the city, let alone find a hotel room.
“If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed,” says the priest of Bethlehem’s Beit Jala parish. “He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists.
“This really is the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?”
Bethlehem is the heart of Christian Palestine and it swells with pride every Christmas. Manger Square is transformed into a grotto of lights and stalls crowned by a towering Christmas tree. Strings of illuminated angels, stars and bells festoon the streets. But just a few minutes’ drive to the north, the festive atmosphere stops abruptly.
A strip of Israeli settlements built on 18 sq km of what was once northern Bethlehem threatens to cut the city off from its historic twin, Jerusalem. To the Israeli authorities, these have been neighbourhoods of Jerusalem since 1967. One of the settlements, Har Homa, is built on land where angels are said to have announced the birth of Christ to local shepherds. A narrow corridor of land between Har Homa and another settlement, Gilo, still connects Bethlehem to Jerusalem but the construction of Givat Hamatos, a new settlement announced in October, will fill this in a matter of years.
The European Union and United Nations routinely denounce Israel’s unilateral settlement expansion but in October, EU high commissioner Baroness Catherine Ashton warned the construction of Givat Hamatos was “of particular concern as [it] would cut the geographic contiguity between Jerusalem and Bethlehem”.
European concern is not slowing Israel’s progress. Last week, 500 new units were approved for Har Homa and a further 348 in Betar Illit, on Bethlehem’s western boundary. Earlier this month, an additional 267 units were sanctioned for settlements running up to the edge of the city’s southern suburbs, where the Ministry of Defence also gave settlers permission to start a farm on Palestinian land. This is in addition to the 6,782 new apartments already slated for Har Homa, Gilo and Givat Hamatos.
In the short term, the closure won’t make a big difference to everyday life in Bethlehem: the separation wall already prevents Palestinians from entering Jerusalem from the town without an Israeli permit.
But this ring of settlements will permanently change the geography of the biblical landscape: if a peace agreement razes the separation wall, the two cities will remain divided.
Israeli activist Hargit Ofram, director of Peace Now, reads a clear political intention in Israel’s plans: “These efforts are being made to prevent a possible two-state solution because in order for that to work, you would need a viable Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem.
“If that capital is going to be surrounded by settlements, Israel would have to remove them. The more Israel is building, the higher the price of a Palestinian state is becoming.”
A coalition of 20 rights organisations including Oxfam and Amnesty International warned this month that the number of Palestinian homes demolished in the West Bank and East Jerusalem by Israeli authorities had doubled in the past year.

Under the terms of the Oslo Accords, 13% of Bethlehem now falls within Areas A and B controlled by the Palestinian Authority. This area houses 87.6% of the Palestinian population. The rest falls in Area C, where Israel controls who builds what.
The al-Makour valley is Bethlehem’s last green space and one of few areas left for urban expansion. It is in Area C and overlooked by Gilo checkpoint at one end and Har Homa settlement on the other. Israel’s separation wall is slated to run through the middle of the valley. No Palestinian has been given a permit to build here since 1967.
Despite Israel’s building restrictions, Miranda Nasry Qasasfeh spent every weekend of the past year renovating a stone storehouse owned by her husband’s family for 150 years. She built a new iron roof and had planted almond, plum and eskadinia trees, which were about to bear their first fruit. Hers was one of four Palestinian structures in al-Makour demolished on 12 December. Most of the trees were uprooted.
Qasasfeh’s 75-year-old father rushed to the site of the demolition, where he found his daughter in deep distress. Hours later, he suffered a stroke and is now paralysed down his left side. Given the events of the past week, Qasasfeh has postponed putting up Christmas decorations.
“The Israeli commander told me that I have nothing here, that it is not my land. But it is and we need to live and expand. What other choice do we have? Should I go an build on someone else’s land?” she asks.
But despite the destruction of her property, Miranda Qasasfeh still has hope that the political situation will change. She has threatened to disown her eldest son if he carries out his threat of leaving Bethlehem to find work elsewhere.
“I keep telling my children, planting it in their minds, there is nowhere else in the world like this. We cannot leave.” She adds: “And we have Christmas. For a few days at least we can forget, or try to forget, what is happening here.”
Father Shomali’s outlook is more glum: “When I look down my church register, many of the historic family names from the area have already gone. In 20 years, I think we will have no more Christians in Bethlehem.”
Dr Jad Isaac, an expert in Bethlehem’s demographics and a consultant to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, says aside from the physical restrictions on development, Bethlehem’s economy is being strangled by the loss of land and restrictions on Palestinian movement.
With work in Jerusalem now impossible to all but the 6,000 granted permits to work inside Israel, unemployment in Bethlehem sits at 23%, poverty levels simmer at 18%. Many have little option but to work illegally for £25 a day building the nearby settlements. Dr Isaac’s forecast is bleak.
“The little town of Bethlehem? It will soon be the little ghetto surrounded in all directions by Israeli settlements,” he predicts. “We’ve already passed the stage where Bethlehem can be saved. Frankly, that’s why I don’t celebrate Christmas any more.”

By Michael Gillespie, Contributing Editor

Craig and Cindy Corrie, parents of martyred 23-year-old Evergreen State College student and International Solidarity Movement activist Rachel Corrie, killed in Rafah, Gaza, by an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer on March 16, 2003, spoke in Des Moines on December 5.  The Corries are Iowa natives.

Cindy Corrie began her presentation to about 40 people gathered in the Simmerman Lounge at Westminster Presbyterian Church by talking about the family’s Iowa roots and thanking their Iowa friends and supporters.

“Rachel could relate to her Iowa relatives, farmers who worked on the land here, and how her family here might feel if things like she saw happening to Palestinian farmers, orchards destroyed and that sort of thing, were happening to them.  That Iowa connection was really important to Rachel and how she understood Palestine,” said Corrie

“I can’t say enough about the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and the support we have received here in Des Moines and across the country.  In many ways, people at AFSC were our mentors early on and they continue to be extremely supportive, and we are very, very appreciative of that.” said Corrie.

“The Des Moines Catholic Worker recently named one of their houses for Rachel, and Craig and I visited the house yesterday.  I was so pleased to learn that their intention is to have it be a respite place for people who do international solidarity work and who need a place to come back to, to reflect and to rejuvenate themselves.  Two of the young people who have been involved in making this happen have spent time in Palestine and in Columbia, so I am really looking forward to staying connected with them,” said Corrie.

Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine is an important issue and one that Americans are increasingly aware of, said Corrie, “and it impacts every one of us, whether we are conscious of that or not.”

Corrie described how she and her husband had learned of their daughter’s death in a call from their son-in-law who, while he and his wife were enjoying their morning coffee, received a call from a friend who had seen and heard the news of Rachel’s death on television.  Rachel’s sister Sarah turned on the TV and, as they spoke, the news broadcast was updated.

“On the screen, running across the bottom, were the words, ‘Rachel Corrie of Olympia, Washington, killed in the Gaza Strip.’  That was how our family learned that our lives had changed in an irrevocable way,” said Corrie.

“Rachel was many things.  She was a writer, a poet, and artist, a sister, a daughter.  And she had dreams.  In 1990, in her 5th grade year book, she wrote that the wanted to be a lawyer, a dancer, an actor, a mother, a wife, a children’s author, a distance runner, a poet, a pianist, a pet store owner, an astronaut, an environmental and humanitarian activist, a psychiatrist, a ballet teacher, and the first woman president,” said Corrie.

“Rachel grew up in Olympia, Washington, where Craig and I now live.  It’s a beautiful place with mountains and water, forests and rain, salmon and coffee, and Rachel loved all those things. … The world tugged at Rachel. Her response to 9/11 was to become very involved in the peace movement in our community where she focused on some of the negative aspects of the U.S. war on terrorism, the war in Afghanistan, and the U.S. Patriot Act.  In April 2002, she led an effort to create a flock of doves for Olympia’s Earth Day tribute, which is called the Procession of the Species, which honors all life.  After she celebrated, she wrote, ‘I danced down the street with 40 people, from the age of seven to 70, dressed as doves.  In a lot of ways, the procession is a values statement.  I am happy to see a peace message included in that. I think it’s important for people who oppose war and oppression to speak about who we are as a community.  We are not outside.  I think it’s important that human rights and resistance to oppression be included in the way we define ourselves as a community,’” said Corrie.

“Work, study, and people in Olympia led Rachel to Palestine and Israel.  She wrote, ‘Why do I want to go?  I’ve been organizing in Olympia for a little over a year on antiwar and global justice issues, and at some point it started to feel like this work is missing a solid connection to the people who are most immediately impacted by U.S. foreign policy.  I have this underlying need to go a place and meet people who are on the other end of the portion of my tax money that goes to fund the U.S. and other militaries,’” said Corrie.

“After studying and saving, Rachel left Olympia in January 2003 and made her way to Beit Sahour … to train with the International Solidarity Movement.  This is a Palestinian led movement that engages Israelis and Internationals in nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.  There are only two stipulations for being involved in the ISM.  One must believe in freedom for the Palestinian people, and one must agree to use only nonviolent forms of resistance.  Rachel chose to go to Rafah, which is at the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt.  She knew that it was a very isolated place with possibly the greatest need in all of the Occupied Territories,” said Corrie.

“When she got there, she wrote to us, ‘I couldn’t even have believed that a place like this existed, but even more, can you believe there are children here? Forget the fear – they tell me that at night – Forget the fear.  I am ashamed that I am afraid for my own body and dying anonymously inside a house in one of the most populous places on earth, where children die as martyrs of the Occupation, which we pay for, quietly, without ever knowing their names.  We need more people.  I love all of you, Rachel,’” said Corrie, quoting from one of her daughter’s messages.

Corrie said there were two IDF Caterpillar bulldozers on the scene as well as an armored personnel carrier the day Rachel was killed.  In each bulldozer were two soldiers, the driver and a commander who is supposed to act as second set of eyes.  Seven International eye witnesses were present, said Corrie.

“It is documented in U.S. Senate testimony that President Bush personally telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Sharon to request a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation in Rachel’s case, and that he was given personal assurances by the prime minister that there would be one.  In May 2003, the Israeli military’s Advocate General’s office closed the case, however, concluding that the two soldiers in the bulldozer didn’t see her.  Seven International witnesses say she was visible.  No charges were brought.  The Israeli government declined to release its report of the investigation to the U.S. government,” said Corrie.

Corrie noted that several U.S. State Department officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff, Larry Wilkerson, have said that the Israeli investigation was not thorough, credible, or transparent.  Despite U.S. laws and regulations governing arms exports and financing that could be used to force Israel to conduct a credible investigation, the Israeli government, the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, has stonewalled all requests by the U.S. Department of State for a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation of Rachel Corrie’s death.

On the advice of U.S. officials, the Corrie family filed a civil suit in Israel in 2005.  During the trial, which is scheduled to conclude in April 2012, the Israeli government has withheld evidence, including video of the incident which has been aired on Israeli television.

“There have been 14 hearings, 22 testimonies, and over 2,000 pages of recorded court transcripts.  And we have had all of those translated into English from Hebrew in order to know what has been said,” said Corrie.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak authorized a security certificate that prevented the Corries from seeing some of the IDF personnel who testified from behind a screen.

“We weren’t able to see the driver or the commander of the bulldozer.  It was very disappointing,” said Corrie, who noted that the driver of the bulldozer testified that he could not remember the time of day, morning, noon, or evening, that he drove his bulldozer over her daughter.

“We did not hear any remorse; indifference was the way it came across to us,” said Corrie.

The family made four trips to Haifa, Israel, for the trial, spending nearly seven months in Israel during the testimony period of the proceedings.

We were struck by the lead investigator’s failure to look for evidence, failure to secure evidence, failure to resolve conflicting evidence, and failure to turn evidence over to the court, said Corrie.

It appeared, said Corrie, that the investigating team set out with the intention of exonerating the IDF.

“It was really clear that that was their goal, rather than to impartially determine what actually happened on March 16, 2003,” said Corrie.

During the Q&A, Craig Corrie responded to The Independent Monitor’s questions about the co-operation the family has received from the Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Israel during the Bush and the Obama administrations.

Corrie noted that the family was able to establish contact with Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff Larry Wilkerson early on and has maintained contact with various DoS and embassy officials over the years.

Corrie described a memorable moment during one meeting with high-level officials.

“One of those people who was a special envoy to Jerusalem said, ‘I want to tell you that I’ve gained great respect for the ISM and the members of the ISM who I’ve met while I was in Jerusalem,’ and nobody [in the room seemed shocked by the observation.] They’re all nodding their heads!  So, a lot of times, when we’re talking, these people agree with us – but it doesn’t change policy,” said Corrie.

“There has been a lot of support in one way, in trying to do this lawsuit, OK?  But on the other hand, the head of a state gave a promise to our state, promising a credible and transparent investigation.  As a father, I can’t enforce that.  And as heads of state, they’re not enforcing it,” said Craig Corrie.

“And we’re sending them $30 billion anyway, so there is a lot of frustration,” said Cindy Corrie, noting that members of the Corrie family have visited the Washington office of every member of the U.S. Congress to provide information about Rachel and the need for a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation of her death.

“Of course, there are new people there now and we may have to start over,” said Cindy Corrie.

By Michael Gillespie – Contributing Editor

A Palestine-Israel conference at Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart (OLIH) Catholic Church in Ankeny, IA attracted a large and diverse audience on the weekend of October 14-15.

“US Policy in Palestine-Israel: Engaging Faith Communities in Pursuit of a Just Peace,” organized by Joe Aossey of Cedar Rapids and Kathleen McQuillen of American Friends Service Committee’s Iowa Middle East Peace Education Project, featured 16 speakers and workshop leaders from across the nation and around the world.

About 150 conference attendees gathered in the OLIH sanctuary on October 14 to hear Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, deliver one of two keynote addresses.

“The Arab Spring has challenged the existing order in ways that nothing else in recent history has,” said Bennis, “and in our own country in the last five or six years we’ve gone from the automatic assumptions that the US should be supporting Israel’s role in the Middle East, that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, that Israel is ‘our friend,’ sort of came with the territory … but all of that is beginning to change.  We have seen enormous change in how people think about these issues, in how people talk about these issues, and that is the starting point for change in policy and in how our children get educated on these issues,” said Bennis.

Two books, Jimmy Carter’s Palestine Peace Not Apartheid and Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer’s The Israel Lobby, broke the longstanding taboo against serious criticism of Israeli policy, said Bennis.

“They were able to do that because the discourse was already beginning to change, and they were able to push that change much further,” said Bennis.

During the 2008-2009 Israeli attack on Gaza, for the first time polls showed that American opinion was evenly split on the question of whether Israel or the Palestinians were responsible for the violence, said Bennis.

“If you take a step back and look at the disparities in the violence, that’s an outrage.  Fourteen hundred Palestinian [dead], overwhelmingly civilians, many of them children, many of them women, versus 13 Israelis, of whom all but three were soldiers,” said Bennis.

But compared to earlier polls, the shift in public opinion was “huge, 15 or 20 percent,” said Bennis.

Bennis also pointed to polls reflecting similar shifts in American public opinion regarding illegal Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank.

“The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign … has seen enormous victories.  Agrexco, the big Israeli agricultural export agency, is bankrupt, and they can’t even find a buyer in the private sector … because it can’t sell stuff anymore,” said Bennis.

A 2010 decision of the European Court of Justice ruled that products from Israeli settlements are not eligible for preferential trade tariffs under the EU Israel Agreement.

Israel has refused to differentiate between produce grown in Occupied Territories and produce grown in Israel, so EU countries are no longer allowing the import of produce from Israel, said Bennis.

“The lost their market,” said Bennis.

Bennis also noted that the city of Stockholm had cancelled a contract for the construction of a light rail system after BDS activists called attention to the French contractor, Veolia, which built an Israeli light rail system in the Occupied Territories.

Veolia has come under pressure across the EU and in the USA for its involvement in Israeli projects in the Occupied Territories.

Bennis compared the nascent OWS movement to the Palestinian Intifada, intifada meaning to shake up or shake off.

“Whatever happens with the Occupy Everywhere movement, it may get legs, it may become something more powerful than what it is now.  I hope so.  But whether it does or not, I think it will continue to shake up ordinary day-to-day life in this country, ordinary politics,” said Bennis.

“It’s shaking up our assumptions about what ordinary people can do,” said Bennis.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is largely composed of “new people,” said Bennis, “people who for the first time are taking the power into their own hands to send a message that Wall Street has too much power, that the banks and their money is corrupting our government,” said Bennis,

“It’s an amazing moment!  We don’t know what’s going to happen in the future.  Is the military in Egypt going to turn over power to an elected government?  Will that election be both free and fair?  What will happen to human rights under an Egyptian government?  What’s going to happen in Bahrain?  What’s going to happen in Libya, where a new government is fast coming to power backed by the US and NATO? What’s going to happen in Yemen, in Syria?  We don’t know the answers, but we know that the region has been shaken up by an intifada of a whole new kind, and that is what is so exciting about all of this,” said Bennis.

“Israel is more isolated than ever, not because people don’t think Israel has a right to exist. …  Countries don’t have rights; people have rights.  Peoples have rights to exist; Israelis like everyone else have a right to exist in safety and security. … Rights are for people, and in that context, Israel is losing the war for legitimacy because of its policies, because of its policies of apartheid, forced separation, ethnic cleansing, because of its policy of occupation, because of its policy of denying the right of return to refugees,” said Bennis.

It’s those policies that are losing Israel credibility around the world, that are making it so hard for Israel to find any supporters, except for our government.  That’s our big challenge.  The US and Israel are losing the moral high ground,” said Bennis.

Noting recent and wildly implausible claims by the Obama administration that Iran was involved in a plot to hire Mexican drug cartel assassins to bomb the Saudi ambassador to the US in a Washington restaurant, Bennis asked, “Who benefits from that?  … I don’t think we’re being told the whole story,” said Bennis.

The bottom line is that Israel is losing its moral high ground and has also lost its important strategic allies, Egypt and Turkey, “which it could count on, however grudgingly, to defend Israel against the opposition of their own people.  They’re not doing that anymore, Turkey largely because of the [Gaza humanitarian relief] flotilla incident, Israel’s failure to apologize and offer reparations, Egypt because there has been a revolution and you no longer have a government that is dependent solely on US military and economic aid,” said Bennis.

“How do we turn all of that into a shift of US policy?” asked Bennis.

Obama’s Cairo speech “was one for the ages, but his policies do not reflect it,” said Bennis, and “we have the obligation to make him” live up to it.

“It is no longer political suicide to criticize Israeli policy,” said Bennis, “but the politicians don’t know that.  That’s our job.”

“Our job is to make clear to members of Congress, the President, and the Senate, and the city councilors, and the governors, and the mayors, and the county boards of supervisors, and the university administrations that it is now political suicide to support Israeli policies, and if they continue to do so, that’s when they will lose their positions, their power,” said Bennis to sustained applause.

“It won’t be easy,” said Bennis, who explained that Americans now need to focus on their own government’s role in Israeli policy, rather than Israel’s policies.

The US must stop being “a co-conspirator, an enabler” of Israeli policies.  US aid to Israel is immoral, and America needs to stand on the side of international law and human rights, said Bennis.

“One of the first things people say to me is, ‘How do I do this work and make sure than I don’t get called an anti-Semite?’” said Bennis.

“And I say to them, ‘There’s no guarantee.  Don’t be an anti-Semite.  Call it out when you see it. … And don’t let the threat that somebody might call you an anti-Semite be an excuse to not do your work. … People used to get called anti-Semites all the time.  People like me used to get called self-hating Jews all the time. Now, it happens, but not nearly as much.  The Jewish Defense League shot into my house in LA 20 or 30 years ago because they didn’t like what I was doing.  They don’t do that anymore, not because they’re not violent creeps, but because they no longer think that they have the moral high ground and the majority is on their side, and they’re right,” said Bennis.

“Political discourse has changed and it is no longer on their side.  They are the ones who are out of step with the public, not us.  That is what has changed, and our job is to figure out how to galvanize the new public opinion and make it operative.  It means reclaiming our democracy,” said Bennis.

Laila El-Haddad, a Palestinian freelance journalist, author, political analyst, and parent-of-two from Gaza, presented the second keynote address on October 15.  Plenary and workshop presenters included Yaser Abu Dagga, Jennifer Bing, Dr. Jeremy Brigham, Mohammed Fahmy, Mahmoud Hamad, Remi Kanazi, Liz Knott, Pat Minor, Rachel Orville, Lynn Pollack, Josh Ruebner, Ron Stone, Rev. Don Wagner, and Rev. David Wildman.

Co-sponsors and conferences supporters included Afifi, Adel, and Larry; AFSC Middle East Peace Education Project; Albert Aossey; Joe and Laila Aossey; Board of Church and Society, Board of Global Ministries, Iowa Annual Conference, United Methodist Church; Mary Caponi; Catholic Peace Ministry; Clinton Franciscan Center for Active Nonviolence and Peacemaking; Concerned Iowans for Middle East Peace; Darul Arqum Islamic Center; Des Moines Area Ecumenical Committee for Peace; Des Moines Catholic Worker House; Des Moines International Eucharistic Community; Des Moines Valley Friends Meeting; Eye On Palestine; First Presbyterian Church (in memory of Ruth Keraus and Jeff Koch); Holy Trinity Catholic Church Peace and Justice Committee; Iowa City Friends Meeting; Iowans for a Free Palestine; Islamic Center of Des Moines; Islamic Services of America; Israeli Coalition Against House Demolitions-USA; Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace Parish, Pax Christi; Margaret Kiekhaefer; Lois Olsen Memorial Fund, Iowa City Friends Meeting; Kathleen McQuillen; Methodist Federation for Social Action-Iowa; Evalee Mickey; Midamar Corporation; Jack Mithelman; OLIH Peace and Justice Committee; Palestine Human Rights Action Network; Paulina Friends Meeting; Peace Iowa; People for Justice in Palestine; Plymouth Congregational Church Peace Committee; Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice; Sabeel-North America; SE Iowa Synod Evangelical Lutheran Church; Sisters Council Leadership Team, DM Catholic Diocese; Sisters of Humility of Mary, Des Moines Region; Hugh Stone; Social Ministries Task Force of the Presbytery of Des Moines; Lee Tesdell; Western Iowa Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Westminister Presbyterian Church; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Des Moines.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners transferred to Rafah ahead of the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

The first phase of the prisoner swap between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement is under way.

Palestinian inmates were transferred to Rafah, on the Egyptian border, ahead of the release of the Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit.

A convoy of vehicles left the Israeli Katsiout prison in Naqab, near the Egyptian border, before dawn on Tuesday. Vehicles carrying female prisoners also left HaSharon Prison in central Israel

The swap, in which a total of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners are to be released in two phases, began a day after Israel’s supreme court rejected appeals to halt the deal.

Relatives of Israelis killed by some of the Palestinians set to be released had urged the court to intervene, but it ruled against them, saying the matter was a political decision outside its domain.

The actual release process was expected to begin with Shalit being handed over to either a Red Cross representative or an Egyptian official in Gaza who will confirm to Israel that he is alive and well.

Israel will then release 27 women prisoners after which Shalit will cross into Egyptian Sinai.

Shalit, now 25, was captured in June 2006 by fighters who crossed into Israel from the Gaza Strip, governed by Hamas.

After his return, Shalit will be flown by helicopter to an air base in Israel where he will be greeted by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, other leaders and close family. Later he will be flown to his home in northern Israel.

Palestinian celebrations

Hamas has declared Tuesday a national holiday and erected a giant podium in Gaza City’s Al-Katiba Park, where it plans to transport the prisoners after they cross into the Palestinian enclave from Egypt.

Ismail Haniya, the prime minister, and members of the de facto Hamas government in Gaza, leaders of other factions, relatives and tens of thousands of onlookers were expected to welcome the prisoners.

But not everyone will be celebrating. More than 4,000 Palestinian “security prisoners” will remain in Israeli jails.

A short walk from the park, relatives have set a up a tent in solidarity with prisoners who began a hunger strike on September 27, because Israel dropped some of their privileges, such as the opportunity to study for an academic degree.

Three days of celebrations were planned across the occupied West Bank, with President Mahmoud Abbas welcoming returning prisoners.

Of the first tranche, 297 will be released into Gaza and 117 will return the West Bank, including 15 to East Jerusalem.

Another 40 Palestinians will be exiled overseas to countries which so far include Turkey, Syria and Qatar, Hamas officials said.

The vast majority of the prisoners to be freed are members of Hamas. But Hamas included a few dozen fighters of its rival, Fatah, in its list of prisoners it demanded that Israel free in exchange for Shalit

A Hamas official who spoke to Al Jazeera on Monday declared that the swap agreement was a “victory” for all Palestinians, regardless of party affiliation; and that the group negotiated for the release of prisoners from all parties.

A recent poll by the Yediot Aharonot daily showed that eight out of ten Israelis support the swap.

Al Jazeera’s Cal Perry, reporting from Jerusalem, said security had been raised across Israel ahead of the swap amid massive media coverage.

“This is a huge story, a historic story for the Israeli media,” he said. ”There will be helicopters in the air, there will be cameras around this country as you’ve never seen … with reporters spread across the country”.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has said that the prisoner swap marks a positive step towards peace.

“The recent announcement of the exchange of prisoners is welcome, it is a positive movement for peace,” he said.

Article and photo courtesy Al Jazeera English online

By Yousef Munayyer

The statehood bid didn’t change the occupation, but it did force international players to show their cards.

1. Washington is broken and won’t be fixed any time soon

The Palestinians came to the United Nations in the hopes of putting forward a membership application because they had come to understand that domestic dynamics in the United States made it impossible for Washington to be an even-handed broker. If the Obama administration can’t get Netanyahu’s right-wing government to halt settlement expansion – an Israeli obligation under international law and the US-initiated Road Map for Peace – how could they possibly press Netanyahu to dismantle settlements, divide Jerusalem and admit refugees when the time came to get serious?

The United States is an exceptional place and it is a country that believes in its exceptionalism. Washington likes to believe it can do anything, and it can do and has done many things. But there is one thing it simply cannot do and that is even-handedly broker a deal between Israel and Palestinians. This has to do almost entirely with US domestic politics. Whether you blame the Israel lobby or accept the narrative that Americans en masse have a special connection with Israel, there is no doubt that America is solidly in Israel’s corner.

The Israelis have long since recognised this; that is why they insist no other state or alliance of states mediates this conflict. Most Palestinians have long since recognised this and now, after 20 years of failed negotiations, even those among the Palestinians which have been most committed to a US-led peace process have come to the same conclusion.

If there was any doubt about how Washington’s domestic politics handicaps its ability to broker, it was erased by President Obama’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly. Without even a modicum of recognition of Palestinians’ suffering and without one word of condemnation for Israeli colonialism, President Obama rang in the US election season.

Might this change in the future? Sure. There are certainly signs that indicate that Americans in general are becoming more educated about the Palestinian plight and are becoming more hesitant to automatically support Israel’s every move. Yet this nascent change has not transcended into the level of America’s political elite, and lawmakers are probably as solidly pro-Israel today as they have ever been. Continued Israeli intransigence, colonisation and massacres such as the 2008-2009 war on Gaza might expedite this process, but Palestinians cannot afford to wait until American policy actually changes. For Palestinians, there is already too little of Palestine left to wait another day.

Every credible Republican candidate for president in 2012 is hammering Obama for being too hard on Israel when in reality he has defended Israel at every critical juncture and made military aid to Israel the single largest expenditure in the 2010 foreign aid budget. Obama, who came to Cairo backed with the “hope and change” momentum that put him in office, was at the same time secretly providing Israel with one-tonne bombs months after the war on Gaza. Can you imagine the political storm Obama would be embroiled in if he actually exerted any real pressure on Israel?

Because of these domestic politics, the Palestinians have realised what the Israelis have long sought after: the reality that Washington won’t make Israel do what is necessary to create a Palestinian state. Frankly, it’s about time.

2. Palestinian unity is a necessity

Many people might put the beginning of divisions in the Palestinian polity at 2006 when the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) routed Fatah in Legislative Council elections. In reality, divisions have been developing for decades – in large part due to the decaying of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and its unofficial marriage to the Palestinian Authority.

For months, PLO Chairman and Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas travelled the world in the hopes of securing votes and recognition for Palestinian statehood. The PLO leadership executed a series of complex and calculated diplomatic manoeuvres to bring Palestine’s case for statehood to the United Nations. Indeed, this was planned for some time and required a significant investment of time from the leadership. Yet, when the moment of truth arrived and when Palestine’s case was brought before the UN, despite dramatic pressure from the United States and its allies, the Palestinians, who needed more than ever to be united, were split on this critical issue.

Hamas refused to endorse the statehood bid and much of the Palestinian diaspora, as well as advocates on behalf of Palestinian refugees, did not back the endeavour because they either believed it would leave them disenfranchised or that it would fail to change the status quo. In the mere weeks prior to the confrontation in New York, an intense legal debate was taking place over whether or not this statehood bid would jeopardise various Palestinian rights.

Regardless of what one’s position or political affiliation is, it is hard to deny that the UN bid underscores the significant challenge facing Palestinians: the desperate need for reformed and representative institutions to speak for them. As Palestinians brace for what is to come and formulate strategy on how best to achieve their goals, there has never been a better or more urgent moment for Palestinian leaders and advocates of all stripes to unite in the face of Israeli occupation.

Mahmoud Abbas made important strides toward aligning himself with Palestinian public opinion and popular regional sentiments by standing up to the United States under pressure and delivering a strong speech at the UNGA. This is the kind of stance that most Palestinians can unite behind as they have grown tired of the failed strategy of negotiations. He could be doing himself and Palestinians a favour if he takes this opportunity to create a broad and representative coalition of allies, based on confronting the Israeli occupation despite its main sponsor the United States. Of course, his words must be followed by actions.

3. Security collaboration is very valuable to Israel

The extremely pro-Israel Chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, did her best impression of the big, bad wolf when she convened a hearing the week before the UN General Assembly and invited some of the most right-wing analysts on this issue to testify on the question of cutting aid to the Palestinian Authority in the wake of the UN bid. But as much as the Chairwoman, her pro-Israel colleagues and the witnesses huffed and puffed, no one was ready to blow the PA house down.

Why? Well, as a number of the witness pointed out, the prospect of cutting aid to the PA meant the likely collapse of the US-funded and trained PA security apparatus which is in close and consistent communication with the IDF on security.

At a time when the Palestinians were moving to further isolate Israel in the international community by requesting statehood at the UN, the Israel-friendly US Congress was hog-tied. They couldn’t use PA funding as leverage because of the risk it posed to Israel, and if there was any doubt, one only had to read a report from the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs supporting continued aid to the PA despite the UN bid. Ultimately, Congress may have passed non-binding resolutions on the PA aid issue, but it’s unlikely they will use the power of the purse in ways that might indirectly cost Israel.

What this means is that the Palestinians have gained a better understanding of the precise value of security collaboration with the Israelis. It is clear that Israel would rather risk further isolation than risk losing PA security collaboration. One of the main reasons why the occupation persists is because Israel reaps the benefits of the occupation including land and water resources, but pays minimal costs in exchange.

Completely disbanding Palestinian security so that chaos ensues will not help anyone, especially not the Palestinians, but there is also no sense in the Palestinians providing Israel with cost-free security and getting nothing in return – except continued settlement expansion. Now that it is clear just how valuable this security coordination with the Israelis is, the Palestinians should use it for leverage and halt all coordination.

4. Israel is vulnerable to international isolation, but so is Washington

Remember in February when the US Ambassador to the United Nations essentially vetoed US policy on Israeli settlements when she cast the lone “no” vote in a UN Security Council session? Fourteen states voted for the resolution and only the United States voted against, even though the resolution was actually pieced together from statements made by US officials. It was not an unfamiliar position for the United States. In fact, before that veto, the United States has been the sole veto on 41 previous UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israeli violations of international law since 1972.

But something was different this time. The United States was furiously lobbying to secure “no” votes on the Security Council, precisely because it did not want to be seen as the primary obstacle to Palestinian statehood. Why do the optics suddenly matter after decades of automatic and contempt-free American vetoes for Israel’s sake?

Simply put, the world is a different place today than it was a mere eight months ago. When Susan Rice had last raised her hand alone, Hosni Mubarak was one week out of power and the United States was still trying to figure out what was happening in a region where they have traditionally held sway. Egypt has since demonstrated that public opinion is likely to play a much greater role in policy toward Israel. Turkey, another major regional player and long time NATO ally, has all but terminated relations with Israel after the travesty of justice called the Palmer Report.

This is yet another sign of America’s waning influence in the region. But it is also another important signal to the Palestinians. Yes, America may continue to support Israel blindly because of its domestic politics, but at the same time the costs for doing so continue to increase. Going forward, Palestinian strategies that further expose the incongruence between US policy vis-à-vis Israel and its interests in the region will only force more American elites to ask the all important questions that too few are asking today.

5. Real – not symbolic – changes alone will alter the status quo

The UN General Assembly came and went and, just as most serious observers expected, there is little change on the ground. The Israeli occupation – the status quo – still persists. The reason the status quo has continued is because there are entrenched interests on both sides which make it difficult for either party to make game-changing decisions. The Israeli occupation will only end when the costs of maintaining it exceed the benefits of further entrenching it. Right now, the costs of the Israeli occupation to the Israelis are minimal. It benefits from usurping land and resources and avoids the politically costly move of dismantling settlements.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority is assisting in alleviating the costs of occupation through extensive security collaboration with Israel. International donors are largely footing the bill for the PA’s security apparatus.

The Ramallah-based Authority’s most significant challenge to this, thus far, has been in the form of the statehood bid. While further international isolation will raise the costs of occupation for the Israelis, it won’t have an immediate impact.

Palestinians must recognise that shifting the dynamic that perpetuates the status quo involves real changes on the ground and not simply symbolic gestures. If the statehood bid results in the ability to redress grievances with Israel in the International Criminal Court than that might raise the costs of occupation in the long term, so long as other states are compliant in enforcing legal decisions. But that’s the long term, and in the long term we will all be dead, and given the rate of Israeli settlement expansion, aiming for the long term means there will not be anything of Palestine left for the Palestinians.

The shift away from the cost-free occupation dynamic has to happen immediately and Palestinians can begin to do this in the way their counterparts across the Arab world made revolutionary change happen. Through mass mobilisation, ending no-strings-attached security collaboration and encouraging sanctions on the state and popular level against Israel until it meets it obligations, the Palestinians can begin to do to the Israelis what the so-called broker Washington failed to do: make them realise the occupation has to end.

The UN statehood bid didn’t change the world – it didn’t even change things on the ground in occupied Palestine – but what it did do is to make a number of international players show their cards. The Palestinians would be remiss if they did not use this information to build strategies for the future.

Yousef Munayyer is a writer and political analyst based in Washington, DC. He is currently the Executive Director of the The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development.

Article courtesy Al Jazeera, Yousef Munayyer, and The Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development

By Jonathan Cook

Amid the enthusiastic applause in New York and the celebrations in Ramallah, it was easy to believe — if only a for minute — that, after decades of obstruction by Israel and the United States, a Palestinian state might finally be pulled out of the United Nations hat. Will the world’s conscience be midwife to a new era ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians?

It seems not.

The Palestinian application, handed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon last week, has now disappeared from view — for weeks, it seems — while the United States and Israel devise a face-saving formula to kill it in the Security Council. Behind the scenes, the pair are strong-arming the Council’s members to block Palestinian statehood without the need for the US to cast its threatened veto.

Whether or not President Barack Obama wields the knife with his own hand, no one is under any illusion that Washington and Israel are responsible for the formal demise of the peace process. In revealing to the world its hypocrisy on the Middle East, the US has ensured both that the Arab publics are infuriated and that the Palestinians will jump ship on the two-state solution.

But there was one significant victory at the UN for Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, even if it was not the one he sought. He will not achieve statehood for his people at the world body, but he has fatally discredited the US as the arbiter of a Middle East peace.

In telling the Palestinians there was “no shortcut” to statehood — after they have already waited more than six decades for justice — the US President revealed his country as incapable of offering moral leadership on the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If Obama is this craven to Israel, what better reception can the Palestinians hope to receive from a future US leader?

One guest at the UN had the nerve to politely point this out in his speech. Nicholas Sarkozy, the French president who himself appears to be wavering from his original support for a Palestinian state, warned that US control of the peace process needed to end.

“We must stop believing that a single country, even the largest, or a small group of countries can resolve so complex a problem,” he told the General Assembly. His suggestion was for a more active role for Europe and the Arab states at peace with Israel.

Sarkozy appeared to have overlooked the fact that responsibility for solving the conflict was widened in much this way in 2002 with the creation of the Quartet, comprising the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.

The Quartet’s formation was necessary because the US and Israel realised that the Palestinian leadership would not continue playing the peace process game if oversight remained exclusively with Washington, following the Palestinians’ betrayal by President Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000. The Quartet’s job was to restore Palestinian faith in — and buy a few more years for — the Oslo process.

However, the Quartet quickly discredited itself too, not least because its officials never strayed far from the Israeli-Washington consensus. Last week senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath spoke for most Palestinians when he accused the Quartet’s envoy, Tony Blair, of sounding like an “Israeli diplomat” as he sought to dissuade Abbas from applying for statehood.

And true to form, the Quartet responded to the Palestinians’ UN application by limply offering Abbas instead more of the same tired talks that have gone nowhere for two decades.

The Palestinian leadership’s move to the UN, effectively bypassing the Quartet, widens the circle of responsibility for Middle East peace yet further. It also neatly brings the Palestinians’ 63-year plight back to the world body.

But Abbas’ application also exposes the UN’s powerlessness to intervene in an effective way. Statehood depends on a successful referral to the Security Council, which is dominated by the US. The General Assembly may be more sympathetic but it can confer no more than a symbolic upgrading of Palestine’s status, putting it on a par with the Vatican.

So the Palestinian leadership is stuck. Abbas has run out of institutional addresses for helping him to establish a state alongside Israel. And that means there is a third casualty of the statehood bid – the Palestinian Authority. The PA was the fruit of the Oslo process, and will wither without its sustenance.

Instead we are entering a new phase of the conflict in which the US, Europe, and the UN will have only a marginal part to play. The Palestinian old guard are about to be challenged by a new generation that is tired of the formal structures of diplomacy that pander to Israel’s interests only.

The young new Palestinian leaders are familiar with social media, are better equipped to organise a popular mass movement, and refuse to be bound by the borders that encaged their parents and grandparents. Their assessment is that the PA – and even the Palestinians’ unrepresentative supra-body, the PLO – are part of the problem, not the solution.

Till now they have remained largely deferential to their elders, but that trust is fast waning. Educated and alienated, they are looking for new answers to an old problem.

They will not be seeking them from the countries and institutions that have repeatedly confirmed their complicity in sustaining the Palestinian people’s misery. The new leaders will appeal over the heads of the gatekeepers, turning to the court of global public opinion. Polls show that in Europe and the US, ordinary people are far more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than their governments.

The first shoots of this revolution in Palestinian politics were evident in the youth movement that earlier this year frightened Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas into creating a semblance of unity. These youngsters, now shorn of the distracting illusion of Palestinian statehood, will redirect their energies into an anti-apartheid struggle, using the tools of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. Their rallying cry will be one person-one vote in the single state Israel rules over.

Global support will be translated into a rapid intensification of the boycott and sanctions movement. Israel’s legitimacy and the credibility of its dubious claim to being a democracy are likely to take yet more of a hammering.

Events at the UN are creating a new clarity for Palestinians, reminding them that there can be no self-determination until they liberate themselves from the legacy of colonialism and the self-serving illusions of the ageing notables who now lead them. The old men in suits have had their day.

Article courtesy Jonathan Cook and CounterPunch.org

By Michael Gillespie

People for Justice in Palestine hosted a presentation titled “A Long Wait for a State: Palestine on Hold” at the Iowa City Public Library on September 15.  Dr. Patrick Hitchon, an Iowa neurosurgeon; Shams Ghoneim, Coordinator of the Iowa Chapter of the Muslim Public Affairs Council; and John Dabeet, President of Americans and Palestinians for Peace, spoke to an audience of about 60.

Hitchon spoke first providing his listeners with an overview of the history of Palestine from its earliest period to the present.

“The state of Israel was never a negotiated settlement between Arabs and Israelis,” said Hitchon.

“It was approved and divided by the United Nations, thousands of miles away from the land of Palestine,” said Hitchon, noting that Palestinian Arab interests were not adequately or fairly represented in the process.  Hitchon quoted U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk saying, “‘The pressure and arm-twisting applied by American and Jewish interests in capital after capital to get that affirmative vote is hard to describe.’”

“About 700,000 to 800,000 Palestinians were forcefully expelled,” said Hitchon, who noted that his own family was among those forced to leave Palestine.

“These people did not leave of their own accord,” said Hitchon, adding that in many cases Israelis demolished Palestinian homes and villages while expropriating other Palestinian homes for use by Israelis.

Hitchon quoted Israeli historian Ilan Pappe to document his claim.

“‘Israelis made a concerted effort to forcefully expel and terrorize 800,000.  They demolished 530 villages, and 11 urban neighborhoods were displaced.  This is a true example of ethnic cleansing.’  I’m not saying this was ethnic cleansing.  Ilan Pappe, a Jew who was a professor of history at Haifa and who now teaches at the University of Exeter in the UK, says this was ethnic cleansing,” said Hitchon.

“These refugees are now scattered in more than 50 refugee camps across the Middle East.  They’re in Lebanon, they’re in Syria, they’re in Jordan, and they’re in Gaza,” said Hitchon.

Hitchon reminded his audience that United Nations General Assembly Resolution (UNGAR) 194 declares the refugees right to return to their land and homes and if not they have a right to compensation.

Many Israelis scoff at USGAR 194 because General Assembly resolutions are recommendations that lack the force of international law, unlike Security Council resolutions (UNSCR), which are binding upon member states.  UNSGR 273 admitted Israel to the United Nations on May 11, 1949 after Israel consented to implement other UN resolutions including resolutions 194 and 181.

“Israel has refused to accept a single Palestinian refugee back to his homeland or to provide compensation.  The US has done nothing to enforce [the resolutions.]  Similar resolutions 242 and 338 after the 1967 war again stated that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by military means.  Israel should withdraw from acquired territories and acknowledge the sovereignty and the territorial integrity of the indigenous population,” declared Hitchon.

“Dealing with Israel on a one-to-one basis has taken us nowhere.  I think it’s high time we go ahead and apply for full membership to the United Nations just like Israel did,” said Hitchon.

Ghoneim, who is originally from Egypt, spoke about her experiences and about interfaith relations.

“The world is actually at the dawn of a potential new age in the history of the Holy Land,” said Ghoneim, “one that, if Israel and Israeli voices everywhere in the world are smart, they will take advantage of.  It’s an opportunity, and it can be lost very soon.

“The region, all around the state of Israel, is flowing with freedom seekers, from Egypt to Tunisia to Libya to Jordan to Bahrain and the list goes on.  Those who are for equity and a two-state solution – it’s not too late – really think that there is no way under heaven the status quo will remain,” said Ghoneim.

Intransigence on the issues of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine and Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty is only increasing Israel’s isolation in the international community, said Ghoneim, who called her listeners’ attention to the fact that in most of the countries where the Arab Spring has broken out, the protests are peaceful, even in the face of violent repression, “guns and bullets.”

“I believe, from looking at what has happened in Egypt and Syria, that the time has come for people to come together and get really serious,” said Ghoneim.

Pointing out the obvious, Ghoneim characterized the Palestinians effort to be recognized as a state by the UN as, “another way – a peaceful way – of resolving their long-running struggle for freedom.”

Noting that interfaith conversations are vitally important in times of great social and political change, Ghoneim gave credit to and encouraged Christians and Jews to continue speak out in behalf of peace and cooperation.

It is difficult for Muslims to speak to Jews about issues related to Israel if the Jewish person has always looked at the matter from one side, and the same is true vice versa, said Ghoneim, not least because the issues are very emotional ones in the aftermath of so much violence, so many wars, and so much death and destruction since the founding of Israel in 1948.

Everyone in the region, Muslim, Christian, and Jew, has been touched by loss and has a story of loss, said Ghoneim.

“It takes patience, but once you build respect and trust, I believe it is possible,” declared Ghoneim.

Dabeet, a Palestinian American who recently returned from Ramallah and consultations with Palestinian leaders, addressed many of the political issues involved in the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition.

“Palestine’s bid for United Nations statehood has the intention of peace and is not a declaration of war,” declared Dabeet.

“We need everyone to know that we are standing for justice.  We are standing for self-determination.  We are standing to live side-by-side, but in dignity – and that’s very important – in dignity and in freedom,” said Dabeet.

Dabeet described different scenarios that Palestinian leaders are evaluating and considering.  Palestinian leaders may apply for full UN membership through the UN Security Council, but the United States has vowed to use its veto in the council to block recognition there.  Were nine of the fifteen members of the Security Council to approve of the Palestinian application for full membership, and were there no veto, Palestine could then be admitted upon a vote of two-thirds of the General Assembly.  Second, Palestinian leaders may decide to apply to the UN General Assembly for non-member state observer recognition, which Palestine would be granted upon the vote of a simple majority of the member states of the General Assembly, which is seen as very likely because about 120 nations have already recognized Palestine as a state.  The UN General Assembly currently has 193 member states.  At present, there is only one non-member state observer, the Vatican, said Dabeet.

“With [non-member state observer recognition], you get a lot of advantages,” said Dabeet, who noted that, currently, the Palestinians can only take an issue before the UN by going through a member state, asking that member state to speak in behalf of Palestine.

“If we become a non-member state observer, we can go straight to the issue.  Not just that, this will give us the advantage of serving on many, many organizations that are part of the United Nations,” said Dabeet.

Dabeet said he is confident that Palestinian leaders will present a request to the United Nations very soon.

During a Q&A that followed their formal remarks, Dabeet declared, “I don’t think that there is any Palestinian refugee living in a camp in poverty and squalor who wants to continue living as a refugee.”

Ghoneim spoke about Palestinian unity saying, “I think it is very important for the Palestinian people to have a unity government.”

PJP is a nonpartisan group of people from the Iowa City community who have joined together to support a just and lasting peace for the peoples of the region on the basis of their understanding that a lasting peace is impossible while the Israeli occupation continues.

By Richard Falk

Even if nothing further were to happen, the proposed Palestinian initiative for statehood, combined with the furious negative responses in Tel Aviv and Washington, has given a much-needed visibility to the ongoing daily ordeal of the Palestinian people, whether living under the rigours of occupation, consigned for decades to miserable refugee camps, or existing in the stressful limbo of exile.

The only genuine challenge facing the world community of states and the UN is how to end this ordeal – which has lasted now for 63 years – in a manner that produces a just and sustainable peace. It is the entanglement of geopolitics with this unmet challenge that signifies the moral, legal, and political inadequacy of the contemporary world order.

The Israel-Palestinian conflict, along with the continued presence of nuclear weaponry and the persistence of world poverty, exhibits the failure of international law and morality, as well as of common sense and enlightened realism, to guide the behaviour of leading sovereign states.

In the face of this failure, the frustrations, injustice, and extraordinary suffering experienced by the Palestinian people has come to dominate the moral and political imagination of the world. No issue has generated this level of solidarity among the peoples of the world since the anti-apartheid campaign toppled the racist regime in South Africa more than twenty years ago.

To the surprise of many and the comprehension of few, it is not only Israel that opposes this initiative of the Palestinian Authority (PA). A crucial part of the background is the division among Palestinians as to the wisdom and effects of the statehood initiative at the UN.

Criticism of the bid

Palestinian critics consider the statehood application diversionary and divisive, arguing that it will shrink the dispute to territorial issues, place approximately seven million Palestinian refugees and exile communities in permanent limbo, and allow Israel to treat the outcome of this UN shadow play as the end game in their long effort to transform what was to be a temporary occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank into a condition of permanent, if de facto, annexation.

The question that underlies this debate is whether the diplomatic claim of statehood in this form legitimately represents the Palestinian people in their several dimensions, or merely fulfills, at a price, the ambitions of the PA. In the background is the organisational complexity of the Palestinian community, with the future of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) drawn into question.

Whereas the councils of the PLO include representatives of the Palestinian diaspora, the PA is a political formation intended to address the circumstances of occupation in the post-Oslo period, and has as its primary goal the promotion of the withdrawal of Israeli occupying forces. To carry out this mission it has been seeking with some success (achieving favourable progress reports from the World Bank and IMF) to demonstrate that it possesses the institutional capabilities needed for stable governance, including maintaining security and preventing anti-Israeli activism.

How this sense of political priorities relates to the claims of refugees confined in camps in neighbouring Arab countries, as well as the several million Palestinians living around the world, seems to be the deepest issue dividing the Palestinian people as a whole. A closely related concern, but one that is more widely appreciated, is the refusal of Hamas to lend support to this initiative, despite the fanfare surrounding the unity agreement brokered by Egypt in early June.

What Palestinian opponents of the statehood bid most fear is that the issue of representation will be wrongly resolved from their perspective. This issue of representation lies at the political core of the internal Palestinian struggle to achieve their rights under international law, above all to define the Palestinian “self” that is entitled to self-determination.

There are worries among Palestinians living outside of the occupied territories that the statehood bid, whatever its outcome, will have an adverse spillover effect on the still-unresolved representation issue. In addressing this concern, the non-participation of Hamas in this kind of Palestinian diplomacy cannot be ignored, nor can Hamas be dismissed due to its alleged refusal to accept an Israel that lies within its 1967 borders.

It should be appreciated, without necessarily being accepted as reliable, that Hamas leaders have periodically indicated a willingness to sign onto a long-term coexistence agreement of up to 50 years if Israel withdraws completely to the Green Line that was treated as Israel’s border until the 1967 War.

Such an agreement is highly unlikely to overcome genuine Israeli anxieties or correspond to Israeli perceptions of Hamas and its intentions; furthermore, its implementation would thwart Israel’s territorial ambitions by requiring the dismantlement of the settlements. At the same time, the realisation that what has been tried has not worked suggests that this admittedly imperfect alternative to negotiations in the search for a sustainable peace should not be unconditionally rejected.

Doesn’t Israel want peace?

Against such a background, how can we explain the furious Israeli and US opposition to this Palestinian initiative? Should not Israel and the United States welcome, even encourage, this PA initiative as a way of reducing the conflict to its land-for-peace dimensions, maybe getting rid of the right of return issue once and for all?

Joseph Massad has perceptively analysed the statehood bid as presenting Israel with a win/win situation. Even so, the intensive US efforts to thwart the bid by vetoing or getting a majority to vote against it in the Security Council is easy to understand.

On any question that comes before the UN in which Israeli policy is seriously questioned or its behaviour is subject to criticism, the United States leaps to Israel’s defense, regardless of the merits, whenever necessary using its veto power in the Security Council. This has been true during the Obama presidency on UN efforts to censure unlawful settlement expansion, to carry forward the accountability recommendations of the Goldstone Report, or to allow civil society to break the unlawful blockade that has entrapped the people of Gaza for more than four years.

Casting a veto here or working behind the scenes to cobble together a majority, as the respected international law expert Balakrishnan Rajagopal has noted in a recent column in the Huffington Post, is both politically imprudent and unmindful of UN members’ responsibility to uphold the legal rights of every political community to enjoy the privileges of statehood if it qualifies as a state.

It is a tribute to the UN that the most important of these privileges is now access to the United Nations system with the status of a sovereign state. It should be observed that another highly-regarded international jurist, John Quigley, in a scholarly book published by Cambridge University Press two years ago, argued that Palestine was already a state from the perspective of international law, and had been so recognised by well over 100 governments.

This diplomatic crusade to block Palestinian statehood also undermines confidence in US claims to serve as a world leader promoting the global public good. This primacy of hard-power geopolitics will raise serious questions about the capacity of the UN to serve as a vehicle for the realisation of global justice and to uphold the basic rights of peoples.

‘We the hegemon’

Need we be reminded once again that the inspiring opening words of the UN Charter, “we the peoples”, has always given way to “we the governments”? More starkly since the end of the Cold War, as this controversy sadly highlights, it has been replaced by “we the hegemon”.

We should by now understand that the United States government does whatever Israel wants it to do, but why does Israel seem to mind so much if the Palestinian initiative were to succeed? After all, even the Netanyahu leadership claims it supports Palestinian statehood and the two-state solution.

And if the Palestinian critics of the PA are even partially correct, would not the further territorialisation of the conflict and its narrowing of the negotiating agenda serve Israeli interests?

This interpretation seems reinforced by Mahmoud Abbas’ reassurances that PA security forces will prevent any Palestinian violence targeting Israelis, that the path to direct negotiations is more open than ever, and that this initiative in no way is meant to challenge the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Since the events of the Arab Spring, Israel has shown almost no capacity to act in support of its real interests in the region, as exemplified by its botched relations with Turkey and Egypt, and perhaps this response at the UN is just one more illustration. Such an explanation cannot be ruled out, but there are more sinister interpretations that seem more plausible given Israel’s overall pattern of behaviour.

By insisting that only “direct negotiations” can produce statehood Israel is providing itself with a gold-plated pretext for refusing to negotiate at all for years to come. Netanyahu almost comically suggested that the delay could last 60 years. And for what reason? Another line of explanation gives the settler leadership its own veto power, and it has already vowed to carry out provocative “sovereignty marches” into the West Bank during the UN discussions.

In this conflict, time has never been static, or neutral. Each extra day of occupation, refugee status and involuntary exile, in effect, lengthens a prison sentence imposed on the entirety of the Palestinian people. This is bad enough, but, in addition, Israel has taken consistent advantage of the passage of time to expand its unlawful settlements, alter the demographics of East Jerusalem in its favour, build a separation wall found to be a violation of international law by a vote of 14 to 1 in the World Court, and to isolate Gaza from the rest of the Palestinian territories and the world.

‘Creating facts on the ground’

During the Oslo peace process that gave rise to the mantra of direct negotiations or nothing, Israel has more than doubled the settlement population, and steadfastly refuses to impose even a temporary freeze on expansion in the West Bank during negotiations, and has never been willing even to consider a freeze on settlement construction in East Jerusalem.

Israeli leaders talk openly, even boast, about “creating facts on the ground”, more discreetly referred to by Hillary Clinton as “subsequent developments”, and more realistically understood as the ratification of massive illegality. Such a political posture exposes the lie beneath an Israeli claim of a commitment to “direct negotiations” as a path to peace. Direct negotiations for almost 20 years have brought the parties no closer to peace, and arguably have had as their main effect the undermining of the conditions for a sustainable two-state solution.

What direct negotiations have done is to buy time for Israel’s unacknowledged ambitions and to calm international criticisms of this prolonged and cruel occupation.

Unfortunately, however the diplomatic confrontation unfolds, little is likely to be resolved. The charade of direct negotiations remains on the table. Parties on all sides ignore the revelations of the Palestine Papers, published a few months ago by Al Jazeera English, that showed beyond reasonable doubt that even the supposedly more moderate Olmert government of Israel seemed totally disinterested in a resolution of the conflict, even in the face of repeated PA concessions on fundamental issues made in confidential backroom talks at the highest levels.

Add to this the mockery of fairness that arises from allowing the United States to play the role of intermediary, the “honest broker” in such negotiations. Imagine trying to settle a marriage breakup by asking the elder brother of the wealthy husband to arbitrate a fight over assets with his penniless wife. How could such a framework ever hope to achieve peace that is just and sustainable? And what seems deeply flawed in theory has been shown to be even worse in practice. The parties are further from peace than ever: Palestinian rights and expectations have been continuously shrunk as time passes, and the occupation helps to consolidate a permanent Israeli presence.

Gallows humour

In the end, these questions of tactics and principle bearing on the right of self-determination need to be resolved by the Palestinian people.

Neither Israel, the United States, nor even the United Nations can displace this fundamental Palestinian responsibility for selecting a road that they believe will lead to peace with justice. But it is a display of gallows humour to expect most Palestinians to look with favour at the resumption of peace talks under the framework that has been used since the Oslo framework was agreed upon in 1993.

It has repeatedly demonstrated the futility of direct negotiations, especially given the continuing refusal of Israel to make even the most minimal gestures of real commitment, such as suspending settlement expansion indefinitely and dropping their deal-breaking insistence on being confirmed as “a Jewish state”, a claim that flies in the face of the presence in Israel of a Palestinian minority numbering more than 1.5 million.

If Israel is to retain its claim to be a democratic state, it must not insist on such an exclusivist formal identity. There is no way for claims of ethnic or religious exclusivity to be reconciled with the legal, moral, and political promise of human rights that have become the main signifiers of legitimate government at this time in history.

Richard Falk is Albert G Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Research Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades. His most recent book is Achieving Human Rights (2009).

He is currently serving his fourth year of a six-year term as a United Nations special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

Article and photo courtesy Al Jazeera English online

By Joseph Massad

What is at stake in Barack Obama’s vehement refusal to recognise Palestine as a mini-state with a disfigured geography and no sovereignty, and his urging the world community not to recognise it while threatening the Palestinians with retribution? What is the relationship between Obama’s refusal to recognise Palestine and his insistence on recognising Israel’s right to be a “Jewish state” and his demand that the Palestinians and Arab countries follow suit?

It is important to stress at the outset that whether the UN grants the Palestinian Authority (PA) the government of a state under occupation and observer status as a state or refuses to do so, either outcome will be in the interest of Israel. For the only game in town has always been Israel’s interests, and it is clear that whatever strategy garners international support, with or without US and Israeli approval, must guarantee Israeli interests a priori. The UN vote is a case in point.

Possible outcomes

Let us consider the two possible outcomes of the vote and how they will advance Israeli interests:

The ongoing Arab uprisings have raised Palestinian expectations about the necessity of ending the occupation and have challenged the modus vivendi the PA has with Israel. Furthermore, with the increase in Palestinian grass-roots activism to resist the Israeli occupation, the PA has decided to shift the Palestinian struggle from popular mobilisation it will not be able to control, and which it fears could topple it, to the international legal arena. The PA hopes that this shift from the popular to the juridical will demobilise Palestinian political energies and displace them onto an arena that is less threatening to the survival of the PA itself.

The PA feels abandoned by the US which assigned it the role of collaborator with the Israeli occupation, and feels frozen in a “peace process” that does not seek an end goal. PA politicians opted for the UN vote to force the hand of the Americans and the Israelis, in the hope that a positive vote will grant the PA more political power and leverage to maximise its domination of the West Bank (but not East Jerusalem or Gaza, which neither Israel nor Hamas respectively are willing to concede to the PA). Were the UN to grant the PA its wish and admit it as a member state with observer status, then, the PA argues, it would be able to force Israel in international fora to cease its violations of the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions, and numerous international agreements. The PA could then challenge Israel internationally using legal instruments only available to member states to force it to grant it “independence”. What worries the Israelis most is that, were Palestine to become a member state, it would be able to legally challenge Israel.

This logic is faulty, though, because the Palestinians have not historically lacked legal instruments to challenge Israel. On the contrary, international instruments have been activated against Israel since 1948 by the UN’s numerous resolutions in the General Assembly as well as in the Security Council, not to mention the more recent use of the International Court of Justice in the case of the Apartheid Wall. The problem has never been the Palestinians’ ability or inability to marshal international law or legal instruments to their side. Instead, the problem is that the US blocks international law’s jurisdiction from being applied to Israel through its veto power. The US uses threats and protective measures to shield the recalcitrant pariah state from being brought to justice. It has already used its veto power in the UN Security Council 41 times in defense of Israel and against Palestinian rights. How this would change if the PA became a UN member state with observer status is not clear.

True, the PA could bring more international legal pressure and sanctions to bear on Israel. It could have international bodies adjudicate Israel’s violations of the rights of the Palestinian state. The PA could even make the international mobility of Israeli politicians more perilous as “war criminals”. This would render Israel’s international relations more difficult, but how would this ultimately weaken an Israel that the US would shield completely from such effects as it has always done?

Implications of the UN vote

This presumed addition of power the Palestinians will gain to bring Israel to justice will actually be carried out at enormous cost to the Palestinian people. If the UN votes for the PA statehood status, this would have several immediate implications:

(1) The PLO will cease to represent the Palestinian people at the UN, and the PA will replace it as their presumed state.

(2) The PLO, which represents all Palestinians (about 12 million people in historic Palestine and in the diaspora), and was recognised as their “sole” representative at the UN in 1974, will be truncated to the PA, which represents only West Bank Palestinians (about 2 million people). Incidentally this was the vision presented by the infamous “Geneva Accords” that went nowhere.

(3) It will politically weaken Palestinian refugees’ right to return to their homes and be compensated, as stipulated in UN resolutions. The PA does not represent the refugees, even though it claims to represent their “hopes” of establishing a Palestinian state at their expense. Indeed, some international legal experts fear it could even abrogate the Palestinians’ right of return altogether. It will also forfeit the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel who face institutional and legal racism in the Israeli state, as it presents them with a fait accompli of the existence of a Palestinian state (its phantasmatic nature notwithstanding). This will only give credence to Israeli claims that the Jews have a state and the Palestinians now have one too and if Palestinian citizens of Israel were unhappy, or even if they were happy, with their third-class status in Israel, they should move or can be forced to move to the Palestinian state at any rate.

(4) Israel could ostensibly come around soon after a UN vote in favour of Palestinian statehood and inform the PA that the territories it now controls (a small fraction of the West Bank) is all the territory Israel will concede and that this will be the territorial basis of the PA state. The Israelis do not tire of reminding the PA that the Palestinians will not have sovereignty, an army, control of their borders, control of their water resources, control over the number of refugees it could allow back, or even jurisdiction over Jewish colonial settlers. Indeed, the Israelis have already obtained UN assurances about their right to “defend” themselves and to preserve their security with whatever means they think are necessary to achieve these goals. In short, the PA will have the exact same Bantustan state that Israel and the US have been promising to grant it for two decades!

(5) The US and Israel could also, through their many allies, inject a language of “compromise” in the projected UN recognition of the PA state, stipulating that such a state must exist peacefully side by side with the “Jewish State” of Israel. This would in turn exact a precious UN recognition of Israel’s “right” to be a Jewish state, which the UN and the international community, the US excepted, have refused to recognize thus far. This will directly link the UN recognition of a phantasmatic non-existent Palestinian state to UN recognition of an actually existing state of Israel that discriminates legally and institutionally against non-Jews as a “Jewish state”.

(6) The US and Israel will insist after a positive vote that, while the PA is right to make certain political demands as a member state, it would have to abrogate its recent reconciliation agreement with Hamas. Additionally, sanctions could befall the PA state itself for associating with Hamas, which the US and Israel consider a terrorist group. The US Congress has already threatened to punish the PA and will not hesitate to urge the Obama administration to add Palestine to its list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” along with Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria.

All of these six outcomes will advance Israeli interests immeasurably, while the only inconvenience to Israel would be the ability of the PA to demand that international law and legal jurisdiction be applied to Israel so as to exact more concessions from that country. However, at every turn the US will block and will shield Israel from its effects. In short, Israeli interests will be maximised at the cost of some serious but not detrimental inconvenience.

The second possible outcome, a US veto, and/or the ability of the US to pressure and twist the arms of tens of countries around the world to reject the bid of the PA in the General Assembly, resulting in failure to recognise PA statehood, will also be to the benefit of Israel. The unending “peace process” will continue with more stringent conditions and an angry US, upset at the PA challenge, will go back to exactly where the PA is today, if not to a weaker position. President Obama and future US administrations will continue to push for PA and Arab recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state” that has the right to discriminate by law against non-Jews in exchange for an ever-deferred recognition of a Palestinian Bantustan as an “economically viable” Palestinian state – a place where Palestinian neoliberal businessmen can make profits off international aid and investment.

Either outcome will keep the Palestinian people colonised, discriminated against, oppressed, and exiled. This entire brouhaha over the UN vote is ultimately about which of the two scenarios is better for Israeli interests. The Palestinian people and their interests are not even part of this equation.

The question on the table before the UN, then, is not whether the UN should recognise the right of the Palestinian people to a state in accordance with the 1947 UN Partition Plan, which would grant them 45 per cent of historic Palestine, nor of a Palestinian state within the June 5, 1967 borders along the Green Line, which would grant them 22 per cent of historic Palestine. A UN recognition ultimately means the negation of the rights of the majority of the Palestinian people in Israel, in the diaspora, in East Jerusalem, and even in Gaza, and the recognition of the rights of some West Bank Palestinians to a Bantustan on a fraction of West Bank territory amounting to less than 10 per cent of historic Palestine. Israel will be celebrating either outcome.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.

Article courtesy Joseph Massad and Al Jazeera Engilish on-line

By Ahmed Moor

Israel is under pressure. The decline of American influence in the Middle East has combined with the Arab revolutions, Turkey’s regional ascendancy and the Palestinians’ statehood bid at the UN, to erode its global position.

Additionally, an increased awareness of Israeli apartheid around the world has worked to undermine the historically sufficient “security” argument used to justify the occupation of Palestine. It has been a short 20 years since the theatrical Arafat-Clinton-Rabin lawn party, and Israel has already traversed most of the distance to comprehensive global isolation.

Israeli analysts were right in their assessments of the consequences of the revolution in Egypt. In that country, most people are sensitive to the Palestinian point of view. Many of them believe that Zionism, which is Jewish nationalism in historical Palestine, is only the most recent iteration of European colonialism.

They are unsympathetic to the argument that it was necessary to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to establish Israel. Moreover, they believe apartheid – the system by which Israel governs the Occupied Territories - is an atrocity.

For decades an imperious Egyptian dictatorship worked to protect Israel from popular opinion in Egypt. Its primary inducement was American money – about $2bn of it annually. But the revolution capsized Hosni Mubarak’s American jackboot and today Israel is forced to confront the irrepressible Egyptian call for Palestinian freedom.

Now Hosni Mubarak is on trial and the Egyptian-Israeli relationship is being similarly scrutinised. The Israeli ambassador’s recent flight from Cairo is a reasonable indication of where the relationship stands today. It is also probably a forward indicator.

History blindsided the Israelis in February; there was nothing they could do to preserve their strongman in Cairo. With Turkey, however, Israel’s political leadership worked with bizarre zealousness to undermine a reliable ally. By orchestrating a series of moves that showcased Israel’s contempt for Turkish lives, pride, property and humanitarian concerns, Tel Aviv succeeded in poisoning the only normal relationship it had with a Muslim-majority country.

Significantly, this occurred as Turkey sought to play a greater leadership role in the region.

Ignoring all the signals

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan signalled in 2009 – during Israel’s war on Gaza, which killed 1,400 Palestinians – that Israeli attacks on civilians would not be tolerated. The following year, Israeli commandos killed eight unarmed Turkish civilians and an American on international waters. The Turkish response was to demand an apology and compensation for the victims’ families. The Israelis refused, further incensing the Turkish leadership.

The relationship between the two countries worsened in recent weeks with the leak of a UN report on the flotilla. The report had been pushed by the Americans, who sought to use it as a vehicle for mending Ankara’s relationship with Tel Aviv. Significantly, it was to have been published after the Israelis apologised for the deaths of eight of the nine civilians (Obama has not asked Netanyahu to apologise for killing the American teenager).

Absent the apology, however, the report appeared to absolve Israel of its responsibility for the deaths, even going so far as to justify its illegal maritime siege of the Gaza Strip. The Turks reacted angrily and instructed the Israeli ambassador to return to Tel Aviv. The Israeli diplomatic mission was formally downgraded, and Turkey suspended all military ties between the two countries. Ankara also announced that Turkish naval vessels would accompany the next humanitarian mission to Gaza. The move is a direct challenge to de facto Israeli control of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Tel Aviv’s serial miscalculations vis-a-vis Ankara can be attributed to a myopic analytical scope.

The Israelis failed to successfully interpret macro-level developments in Europe and their impact on Turkey’s regional alignment; the advantages of joining the European Union have steadily declined as the financial crisis has grown more severe.

Simultaneously, the prospect of playing a regional leadership role has grown to outweigh the bit-player role Europe seemed to offer. NATO, of which Turkey is a member, has decreased in strength and influence, permitting the Turkish leadership to exercise greater national autonomy.

It is understandable, then, that the Israelis have reacted to an insistent Turkey with bewilderment. Historically, US influence in both Ankara and Cairo insulated the Israelis from the consequences of their boastful and bellicose self-regard.

Today, however, hegemonic decline means that for the first time in decades Washington cannot rescue Israel’s leaders from their own bad decisions. That reality continues to go unrecognised in Israel, where the leadership persists in making bad decisions.

Last week, for instance, Israeli Major General Eyal Eisenberg threatened the region with “all-out total war“ and the “possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used“ (Israel is the only country in the region with nuclear armaments). More recently, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested that Israel ought to arm and support PKK terrorists in Turkey.

Meanwhile, the Palestinians are taking action on their own behalf.

The Palestinian observer delegation at the United Nations formally submitted its bid for statehood this week – a move that has long been anticipated by observers. The Americans, who still enjoy defending Israeli belligerence, have promised a veto. Despite that, the vote will result in greater Israeli isolation internationally due to widespread recognition that apartheid is wrong.

Most indications suggest that Israel’s increased global isolation will continue apace. The new Egyptian leadership – no matter who it is comprised of – will continue to object to Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. An increasingly assertive Turkey will not be mollified by American entreaties and will continue to apply pressure on behalf of the Palestinians, who will pursue their right to freedom through international forums.

Indeed, the only way for Israel to gain acceptance in the broader Middle East is by ending the occupation. But that is a decision the Israelis don’t appear ready to make.

Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American freelance journalist based in Cairo. He was born in the Gaza Strip, Palestine.

Article courtesy English Al Jazeera.net