Apartheid Israel Report

SUBHEAD: If anyone doubts that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, he should read the UN report.

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar on 21 March 2017 for Counter Currents -
(http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/03/21/apartheid-israel/)


Image above: "Control + Alt + Delete" graffiti on Israeli "defense" wall separating Palestinians from Jewish state. From (https://www.flickr.com/photos/54853721@N03/5081744059).

If anyone doubts that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, he should read the report “Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid” commissioned by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA).

The report released on the 15^th March 2017 and posted on the ESCWA website has now been removed on the orders of the UN Secretary-General, pressurized, it is alleged, by the governments of Israel and the United States both of whom have denounced the report in harsh terms.

The withdrawal of the report prompted the ESCWA Executive Secretary and UN Under-Secretary-General Dr. Rima Khalaf, to submit her resignation. In her words, “I resigned because it is my duty not to conceal a clear crime and I stand by all the conclusions of the report.”

 It is worth noting that the report carried a clear disclaimer that “the findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the UN or its officials or Member States.”

The report was co-authored by two distinguished American scholars — Richard Falk, Professor Emeritus of International Law Princeton University who, from 2008 to 2014, also served as UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and Virginia Tilley, Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University and author of Beyond Occupation: Apartheid Colonialism and International Law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Carefully worded, incisively analyzed and succinctly articulated, the report is a significant milestone in the endeavor to understand one of the longest political conflicts in modern times.

Using international human rights law as a basis, the report provides ample evidence to show why Israel practices apartheid in various facets of governance. Land policy is one example.

Land occupied by Israel between 1948 and 1967 can only be owned and used by Jews and by law excludes non-Jews some of whom have documentary claims to the land that go back a few centuries.

An even more insidious mechanism employed by the Israeli regime to exercise control and domination is the fragmentation of the Palestinian population into various categories.

The authors of the report call them ‘domains.’ Domain 1 comprises those who are citizens of the state of Israel. They receive inferior social services, limited budget allocations, and are subjected to restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities.

They live in segregated residential areas and are aware that  access to public benefits are by and large reserved for those who qualify as citizens under the Citizenship Law and the Law of Return, meaning by which Jews.  This creates a system of covert racism and renders Palestinians second-class citizens.

Domain 2, also under Israeli rule, is made up of Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem. They are also victims of discrimination like their counterparts in Domain 1. They have limited access to good educational and health care facilities.

In addition, a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem can have his residency revoked if he cannot prove that Jerusalem is his “center of life.” Between 1996 and 2014, residency was revoked for more than 11,000 Palestinians.

Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank, territories occupied by Israel since 1967, would constitute Domain 3. They are governed by military law. Though Hamas has limited authority over Gaza, it is Israel that has exclusive control over its borders.

And since 2007, Israel has imposed a blockade upon Gaza that affects all aspects of life in that tiny peninsula. While the residents of both West Bank and Gaza are subject to military law, the 350,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank are governed by Israeli civil law.

This dual legal system underscores stark racial discrimination which manifests itself in many other ways. In contrast to the parlous state of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza, Jewish settlements continue to flourish.

Jews from all over the world are offered various incentives to move to these well-endowed settlements,including employment guarantees, agricultural subsidies, school grants and special recreational facilities.

Unlike the first three domains, Palestinians in Domain 4 are the only ones who are not under Israeli control. These are Palestinians who are refugees from the wars and expulsions since 1948 and their descendants who have been living outside original Palestine, in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt and a number of other countries in West Asia and North Africa (WANA). There are some who for generations have been staying in Europe and North America.

All of them are affected by one vital dimension of Israeli policy. They are barred from returning home. While they are prohibited from returning to the land of their ancestors, a Jew who does not have the flimsiest link to Israel or Palestine is encouraged to settle down in these territories.

This is yet another blatant example of apartheid.

The report prepared by Falk and Tilley argues eloquently that the emergence of the domains and the apartheid practiced by various Israeli governments cannot be separated from the desire and the drive in the Zionist movement from the turn of the 20^th century to establish an exclusive Jewish state in Palestine.

Bringing in Jewish immigrants long before the Israeli state was created, the wars, the expulsions and the laws to prevent Palestinians from returning to their land were all part of that mission.

Indeed, there has been deliberate ethnic cleansing of Palestine — a point which has been elaborated with much lucidity by the outstanding Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe in his ground breaking book, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

In its conclusion, the Falk-Tilley report establishes, “on the basis of scholarly inquiry and overwhelming evidence that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.” It then proposes that an international tribunal examine the report and make an assessment that will be truly authoritative.

If such an authoritative assessment concurs with the finding of the report, the UN and its agencies, regional outfits and national governments should act. They have a collective duty to de-legitimise an apartheid regime and render it illegal. They cannot allow such a regime to continue.
 
The report also urges civil society groups and non-state actors to step up their campaign against apartheid Israel. Some of them are already doing quite a bit through the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. They should organize and mobilize much more through the alternative media.

That the media has given so little attention to the contents of the report on apartheid Israel is an indication of the power and influence of the states and vested interests that do not want the truth about Israel to be known to the world.

This is what we have to struggle against in order to ensure that truth triumphs and justice is done to the people of Palestine.

• Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Malaysia.
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Israeli Settlements Are Illegal

SUBHEAD: United Nations' report calls for Israel to immediately stop further illegal settlement construction.

By John Heilprin on 31 January 2013 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/un-panel-israeli-settlements-illegal_n_2589394.html)


Image above: Israeli settlements, such as this West Bank Jewish settlement of Beitar Ilit is precluding possibility of two state solution. From (http://www.salon.com/2009/11/05/settlements/).

The United Nations' first report on Israel's overall settlement policy describes it as a "creeping annexation" of territory that clearly violates the human rights of Palestinians, and calls for Israel to immediately stop further such construction.

The report's conclusions, revealed Thursday, are not legally binding, but they further inflame tensions between the U.N. Human Rights Council and Israel, and between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli officials immediately denounced the report, while Palestinians pointed to it as "proof of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing" and its desire to undermine the possibility of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians also hinted that they could use the report as a basis for legal action toward a war crimes prosecution.

In its report to the 47-nation council, a panel of investigators said Israel is violating international humanitarian law under the Fourth Geneva Convention, one of the treaties that establish the ground rules for what is considered humane during wartime.

This was the first thematic report on Israel's settlements with an historical look at the government's policy since 1967, U.N. officials said. Previous U.N. reports have taken a look at Israeli settlement policy only through the lens of a specific event, such as the 2009 war in the Gaza Strip, when Israel launched an offensive in response to months of rocket fire by the ruling Hamas militant group.

The Israeli government persists in building settlements in occupied territories claimed by Palestinians for a future state, including east Jerusalem and the West Bank, "despite all the pertinent United Nations resolutions declaring that the existence of the settlements is illegal and calling for their cessation," the report said.

The settlements are "a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian State and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," the report concludes.

More than 500,000 Israelis already live in settlements that dot the West Bank and ring east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital. Israel annexed east Jerusalem, with its Palestinian population, immediately after capturing the territory from Jordan in 1967 and has built housing developments for Jews there, but the annexation has not been recognized internationally.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the council of taking a systematically one-sided and biased approach towards Israel, with the report being merely "another unfortunate reminder" of that bias.

"The only way to resolve all pending issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including the settlements issue, is through direct negotiations without pre-conditions," the ministry said. "Counterproductive measures – such as the report before us – will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

French judge Christine Chanet, who led the panel, said Israel never cooperated with the probe, which the council ordered last March.

Because it was not authorized to investigate within Israel, Chanet said, the panel had to travel to Jordan to interview more than 50 people who spoke of the impact of the settlements, such as violence by Jewish settlers, confiscation of land and damage to olive trees that help support Palestinian families. The report also references legal opinions, other reports and a number of articles in the Israeli press.

Another panel member, Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir, said the settlements "seriously impinge on the self-determination of the Palestinian people," an offense under international humanitarian law.

At a news conference, Chanet called the report "a kind of weapon for the Palestinians" if they want to take their grievances before The Hague-based International Criminal Court.

The Palestine Liberation Organization appeared to suggest it might seek such action, in a statement that called the report's legal framework a clear indictment of Israeli policy and practice.

"All the Israeli settlement activities are illegal and considered to be war crimes according to the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute as well as the Fourth Geneva Convention. This means that Israel is liable to prosecution," said PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi. The settlements, she added, are "clearly a form of forced transfer and a proof of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing."

In November, the U.N. General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in a vote that was largely symbolic but infuriated Israel. In December, the Palestinians accused Israel of planning more "war crimes" by expanding settlements.

The Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council was set up in 2006 to replace a 60-year-old commission that was widely discredited as a forum dominated by nations with poor rights records. The United States finally joined the council in 2009, and U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said earlier this month that while all countries should appear for their review "we also consistently registered our opposition to the council's consistent anti-Israel bias."

Earlier this week, Israel became the first nation to skip a review of its human rights record by the council without giving a reason. Diplomats agreed to postpone their review until later this year based on Israel's request for a deferral.

The council, which could have proceeded with the review or canceled it, said its agreement to defer would set precedent for how to deal with any future cases of "non-cooperation."

All 193 U.N.-member nations are required to submit to such a review every four years, and council diplomats said they worried that if a nation were let off the hook that could undermine the process.
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Israeli Occupation to expand

SUBHEAD: Israel to expand its settlements in occupied territory after UN statehood vote on Palestine.

By Bill Van Auken on 2 December 2012 for Global Research -
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-to-expand-settlements-after-un-vote-on-palestine-2/5313819)


Image above: One of several Palestinian children's drawings of occupation. Note crying trees. From (http://www.palestinalibre.org/articulo.php?a=34626).

The right-wing Zionist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued the go-ahead for the construction of 3,000 new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank and is putting 1,000 more on a fast track for permits. These moves are in retaliation for the United Nations General Assembly vote late Thursday night recognizing the Palestine Liberation Organization as a nonmember state.

According to Israeli officials cited Friday by the Jerusalem Post, the government’s action will give a green light to the long-planned expansion of construction in the area known as E-1, forming a contiguous block of Israeli construction stretching from Jerusalem to Ma’aleh Adumin, the third-largest Israeli settlement inside the occupied West Bank.

The action would establish new facts on the ground rendering futile any negotiations for a so-called “two-state solution,” comprised of Israel and an independent Palestinian state in areas occupied by Israel in the 1967 war. In the first instance, it would wall off the city of Jerusalem from the Palestinian territories on the West Bank, making a mockery of the long-standing demand that East Jerusalem serve as the capital of a Palestinian state. It would also further divide the West Bank into a patchwork of discontiguous bantustans, making any pretense of an independent state farcical.

Washington had formally opposed the E-1 project, and a White House spokesman Friday declared the new construction plan “counterproductive,” making it “harder to resume direct negotiations or achieve a two-state solution.”

The Obama administration’s reaction to Israel’s provocative and illegal action in the occupied West Bank was considerably more restrained than its condemnation the day before of the largely symbolic vote granting Palestine observer status at the UN.

Washington voted with Israel and just seven other countries—including Canada, the Czech Republic, Panama and four South Pacific mini-states, three of them US semi-colonies—against the UN resolution, while 138 countries voted for it and 41 others abstained.

The vote provided a distorted but unmistakable reflection of Washington’s isolation because of its predatory and hypocritical policy in the Middle East and the overwhelming international revulsion over the US-backed Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people.

After this resounding defeat for the US position, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice delivered a petulant statement, declaring, “Today’s unfortunate and counterproductive resolution places further obstacles in the path of peace.” Despite its overwhelming international support, she branded the resolution “unilateral,” meaning it was passed without the permission of Washington and Tel Aviv.

Rice, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other US officials condemned the resolution as a diversion from the so-called peace process, the US-mediated negotiations between Israel and the PLO that have dragged on for over two decades, producing only an ever-expanding land grab by Israel.

The UN action triggered calls for collective punishment in the US Congress, with bipartisan threats in both the House and Senate to cut off all US aid to the Palestinian territory.

The vote came 65 years to the day after the passage by the United Nations, at Washington’s instigation, of a 1947 resolution partitioning Palestine, then a British mandate. Under this plan, the territory, which was then 65 percent Arab and 35 percent Jewish, was split in two, with 56 percent of the land designated as a Jewish state and 43 percent as an Arab one.

Subsequent wars reduced the size of the Arab territory to just 22 percent of the original mandate, comprised of the divided territories of the West Bank and Gaza, which were themselves occupied by Israel in the 1967 war.

While the UN vote was met with limited celebrations in Ramallah, the capital of the West Bank, many Palestinians appeared to greet the action with political skepticism. “People here know that when they wake up on Friday they’ll still be living under an Israeli occupation,” Al Jazeera’s Nadim Baba reported from Ramallah. “They won’t, for instance, be in control of their own borders.”

The UN vote was largely promoted as a means of boosting the badly flagging prestige of Mahmoud Abbas, the chief of the Palestinian Authority. Rendered largely irrelevant during last month’s Israeli siege of Gaza and the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire that brought it to an end, Abbas had gone so far as to claim that Israel’s murderous actions were an attempt to derail his UN bid.

In addressing the UN General Assembly before the vote, Abbas vowed that he was not trying to “delegitimize” Israel, but rather to “affirm the legitimacy” of a Palestinian state. He continued, however, by referring to the recent assault on Gaza, which killed 165 Palestinians and left many hundreds more wounded.

“What permits the Israeli government to blatantly continue with its aggressive policies and the perpetration of war crimes stems from its conviction that it is above the law and that it has immunity from accountability?” he said. “The moment has arrived for the world to say clearly: Enough of aggression, settlements and occupation.”

The visceral hostility of the US and Israel to granting the Palestinian Authority upgraded status at the UN stems in large part from concern that this would allow it, or indeed any successor Palestinian government, to bring war crimes charges against Israel and its leaders at the International Criminal Court.

The British government reportedly spearheaded an effort to browbeat the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership into inserting language in the UN resolution foreswearing any use of the ICC. While the PLO refused to accept such humiliating conditions, its spokesmen have insisted that it has no immediate intention of going to the ICC. Britain abstained over the ICC issue. France, which voted for the resolution, had also sought some guarantee that the ICC would not be used against Israel.

What is universally recognized by the US and its allies in Western Europe is that the Israeli occupation, the Zionist settlements and the continuous military attacks on the Palestinian are all war crimes, which these powers support. They want to insure that the Israeli state can continue to act with impunity. Israel would inevitably brand any attempt to prosecute its war crimes as an act of “terrorism.”

The turn by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to the UN is symptomatic of the dead end reached by the Palestinian national project and a tacit admission that the US-sponsored “peace process” represents a two-decade-long fraud perpetrated upon the Palestinian people.

Institutionalized with the 1993 Oslo Accords and dedicated to the realization of a “two-state solution,” this process has succeeded only in creating a terminally corrupt and dictatorial regime headed by Abbas in the West Bank, which acts as an auxiliary police for the Israeli occupation. Abbas’ goal of achieving a mini-state on some portion of the 22 percent of Palestine lying outside Israel’s pre-1967 borders has nothing to do with liberating the Palestinian people, but only with securing the fortunes of himself, his family and his cronies, who have become multimillionaires from USAID, CIA and European Union contracts and stipends.

The actions by Israel and the US make it clear that even such a mini-state is excluded. The continued oppression of the Palestinians combined with the right-wing social and economic policies of the Israeli government make new revolutionary convulsions in Palestine and Israel itself inevitable.
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Palestine and the World

SUBHEAD: Despite those countries voting "no" against Palestine in the UN, it is clear the majority of the world disagrees.

By John V. Whitbeck on 2 December 2012 for Aljazeera -
(http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/2012122165114321474.html)


Image above: Palestinians dance in front of the Israeli separation wall in the West Bank town of Bethlehem in celebration of the Palestinian bid for “nonmember observer state” status at the United Nation. From (http://972mag.com/photos-palestinians-celebrate-un-victory/61105/).

The UN General Assembly has now voted, by 138 votes to 9, with 41 abstentions and 5 no-shows, to recognise the existence as a state "of the State of Palestine on the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967".

The "no" votes were cast by Israel, the United States, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama.

The Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, all former components of the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, are "freely associated states" of the United States, with US zip/postal codes and "Compacts of Free Association" which require them to be guided by the United States in their foreign relations. They more closely resemble territories of the United States than genuine sovereign states - rather like the Cook Islands and Niue, "freely associated states" of New Zealand which make no claim to sovereign statehood and are not UN member states. They snuck into the UN in the flood of new members consequent upon the dissolutions of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, when the previous standards for admission were effectively ignored.

Nauru, a tiny island of 10,000 people in the central Pacific, has, since the exhaustion of the phosphate deposits which briefly made it the country with the world's highest per capital income, had virtually no sources of income other than marketing its UN votes (reliably joining the United States in voting against Palestine) and diplomatic recognitions (joining Russia, Nicaragua and Venezuela in recognising Abkhazia and South Ossetia) and housing in tents aspiring illegal immigrants who had been hoping to reach Australia. It is a sad place, an island with no beaches, the world's highest obesity rate and no real alternative to diplomatic prostitution.

Accordingly, only three "real" states joined Israel and the United States in voting against Palestine and the two-state solution: Canada, the Czech Republic and Panama. They must make their own excuses.

In population terms, the opponents of Palestine represent approximately 5 per cent of the world's population, 370 million out of over 7 billion, and, of those, the United States accounts for 314 million. It follows that countries with less than one per cent of the world's population supported the United States in this vote.

The 41 states abstaining in the vote were Albania, Andorra, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Colombia, Congo (DRC), Croatia, Estonia, Fiji, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Rwanda, Samoa, San Marino, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Togo, Tonga, the United Kingdom and Vanuatu.

It is worth noting (and a bit puzzling) that 15 of these states (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Congo (DRC), Hungary, Malawi, Mongolia, Montenegro, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Togo and Vanuatu) have extended diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine, although most of the formerly communist states of eastern Europe did so when they had communist governments.

They have been more than balanced out by the 27 states which have not yet recognised the State of Palestine but which voted in favour of Palestine: Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Eritrea, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Jamaica, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mexico, Myanmar, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago and Tuvalu.

Five states did not vote: Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Liberia, Madagascar and Ukraine. Kiribati is no surprise. For economic reasons, it is the only UN member state which does not maintain a permanent mission in New York. Why the other four, all of which have extended diplomatic recognition to the State of Palestine, failed to push any of the three buttons is a mystery.

The European Union vote was 14 "yes", 1 "no" and 12 abstentions. Aside from Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, all of the old "Western" members voted for Palestine. All ten of the new "Eastern" members (the three Baltic states, formerly part of the USSR, the six former members of the Warsaw Pact and Slovenia) abstained or, in one case, voted against Palestine. These "Eastern" states have passed from domination by one empire to domination by another empire without ever daring to fully assert their independence. That said, all except the Czech Republic did at least dare to abstain.

It may take some time for the results of this vote to be fully digested. In the best of all possible worlds, one might hope that the United States would finally recognise that, on the issue of Palestine, it is totally divorced and isolated from the moral and ethical conscience of mankind and must now stop blocking progress toward peace with some measure of justice, step aside and permit other states with a genuine interest in actually achieving peace with some measure of justice to take the lead in helping Israelis and Palestinians to achieve it.

Since we do not live in the best of all possible worlds, and since Americans persist in believing that they are the "indispensable" nation, other states will need to make clear to the United States that its vote on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People has definitively disqualified it not only from its prior monopoly control over the "Middle East peace process" but even from any further role in it and that its further involvement in the preeminent moral issue facing the international community is no longer needed or wanted.

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Abbas and Israel

SUBHEAD: The Palestinian president has accomplished more for Israel than he has for Palestine.

By Ali Abunimah on 2 December 2012 for Aljazeera -
(http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/2012122165114321474.html)

A day after the UN voted to admit "Palestine" as a non-member state, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly praised the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas for its collaboration with the Israeli occupation army.

Speaking at a Zionist think tank in Washington on Friday, Clinton defended the PA from criticism by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. According to Ha'aretz Clinton said, "With very little money, and no natural resources, they [the PA] have accomplished quite a bit, building a security force that works every single day with the IDF (Israel Defence Forces). They have entrepreneurial successes. They are nationalistic - but largely secular. Israel should support them."

This is the same "IDF" that just a few days ago was massacring entire Palestinian families in Gaza and shooting dead West Bank Palestinians who dared to protest those crimes.

And during and after its latest attack on Gaza, the same Israeli army embarked on a rampage of arrests in the West Bank, detaining hundreds of people for expressing their views. In light of Clinton's comments, it is legitimate to ask how much the PA participated in these acts of rage and vengeance by Israel for its failure in Gaza.

Clinton could have added that daily collaboration with the occupation was not the only notable "accomplishment" of the Abbas-led US-backed PA. For years, the PA has been equipped and trained under US supervision to act as an auxiliary for Israeli occupation forces to suppress any and all forms of Palestinian resistance, to beat and suppress Palestinians expressing their views and to arrest and harrass journalists who dare to criticise it.

This is exactly the kind of repressive client regime the United States has always supported in Arab countries, and why Clinton commended the PA to her Israeli partner.

A shameful record

The Abbas PA's record of collaboration with Israel, against the interests of the Palestinian people is long, shameful and well documented. It includes plotting secretly with Israel, the US and the former Mubarak regime in Egypt to overthrow the elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority after 2006, colluding with Israel to bury the Goldstone report into Israel's war crimes in Gaza in 2008-2009, begging Israel not to release Palestinian prisoners so as not to give credit to Hamas, and more recently Abbas' public renunciation of the Palestinian right of return, a reflection of his longstanding position in negotiations.

These harsh realities should bring into focus the misguided celebrations over the UN vote, which as I explained on Al Jazeera is at best no more significant than winning an international football match, and at worst, as Joseph Massad argued in The Guardian, ratifies a racist status quo.

Bait and switch

Quite a few people nonetheless tried to market the UN vote as a great victory, answering scepticism about it by saying it would give Palestinians access to the International Criminal Court (ICC), to hold Israeli war criminals accountable. Can anyone seriously believe that the Abbas-led PA that has done all this, and which Clinton praises for its close collaboration with the the occupation army, will do anything to bring Israeli war criminals to justice?

Already, the bait-and-switch has happened. Just a day after the UN vote, Abbas poured cold water on any such hope. "We now have the right to appeal the ICC, but we are not going to do it now and will not do it except in the case of Israeli aggression," Abbas told reporters. While Palestinians in Gaza still mourn, and those in the West Bank struggle to retain their land as Israel and its settlers steal it, the ostensible Palestinian leader sees no Israeli "aggression".

A hollow strategy

The emptiness of the UN vote could not have been more clearly illustrated than by what has happened - or not happened - since.

On Thursday, the UN General Assembly voted to admit "Palestine" as a non-member state. On Friday, Israel announced its intention to build thousands more settler housing units on the territory of this supposed state. What now will be the international response in the wake of the UN vote?

Other than ritual condemnations, will there be real, specific action - including sanctions - by the 138 countries that voted for "Palestine" to force Israel to halt, and begin to reverse its illegal colonisation of the 1967 occupied territories? Sadly, that is unlikely, an indication that the UN vote was nothing more than a hollow gesture and a substitute for effective action to halt Israel's crimes.

It is also a reminder that there is no "two-state solution". There is one geopolitical entity in historic Palestine. Israel must not be allowed to continue to entrench its apartheid, racist and colonial rule throughout that land.

What ought to give us hope are not more empty gestures at the UN, but the growing Palestinian-led grassroots solidarity movement, pushing to hold Israel accountable. This movement scored a significant milestone this week when international music legend Stevie Wonder pulled out of a benefit gig for the Israeli army after an activist campaign.

Actions like this by prominent cultural figures indicate that the Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, modelled on the one that helped end apartheid in South Africa, is gaining strength and legitimacy. It is a movement based not on trading Palestinian rights for a West Bank mini-state under a dictatorial US-backed regime, but on restoring the rights of all Palestinians everywhere.

Ali Abunimah is author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He is a co-founder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada and a policy adviser with Al-Shabaka.
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Killing before the Calm

SUBHEAD: Israeli attacks on Palestinian Civilians with F-16s and drones escalated before cease-fire.

By Eva Bartlett on 23 November 2012 for In Gaza Blog-
(http://ingaza.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/killing-before-the-calm-israeli-attacks-on-palestinian-civilians-escalated-before-cease-fire/)


Image Four year old Reham Maher Nabaheen dies on emergency room after she was hit by Israel drone. From original article.

Gaza: November 21, al Aqsa hospital, Deir al Balah. At approximately 2pm, Mubarak Ibrahim Abu Houly, 24, was walking among the olive trees on his land when the drone hit him, tore off his left leg… not that it mattered…he was instantly dead.

Drone strikes come without any warning. The sky is continually filled with the buzzing of the drones, and eventually you tune them out, they become background noise.

Abu Houly lived in central Gaza’s Nusseirat camp, an area that has been hammered by Zionist bombings this past week.

In Deir al Balah’s al Aqsa hospital morgue—a small room with two three-drawer fridges—Mubarak’s body, awaiting burial, is another testament to the Israeli drone strikes occurring throughout the Strip. Yes, they are precision, but no, they are not merely targeting Israel’s wish list, they are targeting anyone, anywhere.

A branch of the olive tree he was killed near lies above his head on the morgue slab, his face marked by shrapnel but intact, likewise his torso. It is at his hipbone when the shredded, burnt flesh appears, the only evidence of where a leg was.

\The staff at Aqsa hospital say, as do news reports from around Gaza, that a high percentage of the martyred were on their land, in or outside their homes, civilians in residential areas.

Two days earlier, three men in their twenties, two from the Abu Bashir family in Deir al Balah, had just harvested tomatoes from their greenhouse, loaded the flatbed truck, and begun returning to the town when they were targeted by an Israeli warplane.

4:26 pm: an ambulance rushes into the hospital’s small parking lot, medics jumping out to rush a tiny body into emergency. The girl, 4, dies on the emergency table as doctors try in vain to revive her. Reham Maher Nabaheen died at 4:27 from the shrapnel lodged in her head after an Israeli army drone strike targeted her family outside their home in Nusseirat.

Her father, in the simple, ragged clothes of Gaza’s poorest, moves between Reham’s bed and that of his wife, injured in the drone strike, sobbing uncontrollably.

The next martyr is rushed in shortly after the morgue fridge door closes on Reham, wrapped in her white, blood-stained, bed-sheet shroud.

Rami Abeid, 37, is the first of five martyrs to be brought into Aqsa hospital after the Israeli F-16ing of the Abu Kmeil house in al Mughraqa, Nusseirat. His body, covered with the dust of rubble, is in one piece. But his face is crushed, bloated. The crushing of his head leaves a thick blood-stain on the stretcher he was carried in on, under which is the debris from the rubble he was trapped under. Quickly enough, he is packaged in the standard white bed-sheet shroud and wheeled into the tight morgue for storage.

The next martyr brought in, wrapped, and stored likewise leaves behind a blood-stain in the form of a head on the metal gurney. One of the civil defense rescuers who helped bring 35 year old Mohammed Abu Eteiwy to the hospital is wracked with sobs: Abu Eteiwy was a rescuer colleague, off-duty and visiting the Abu Kmeils when their home was bombed.

It’s now 6:15 and dark out. The drones continue their ominous humming, the scene is almost out of some horrible futuristic, end-of-the-world movie…and it feels as much. The medics tell us after delivering Abu Eteiwy that they are still searching for the other martyrs. One is half-visible, the others completely buried.

Palestinian medics are among the bravest people alive. They continually face the Zionist tactics of double or triple bombing a targeted site. The medics in their quest for survivors and the martyred go head first into such sites. Some pay the price dearly. In the 2008-2009 Israeli attacks on Gaza, 16 medics were killed in Israeli army attacks while aiding Palestinian injured or bringing in the martyred.

The good-natured cameraman who yesterday sobbed at the loss of his journalist colleague—Mohammed Bader, killed while going to document the recently-bombed Abu Tama’a home in Deir—is today stoically back at work, determined to document everything. “I’ve been here everyday since these attacks began,” he tells us. “I sleep at the hospital, 2 or 3 hours, then get back to work.”

At 6:25, an ambulance delivers the body of Sady Abu Kmeil, 26, whose concrete-dusty corpse resembles that of the two men before him.

Across from the empty emergency room bed where Sady Abu Kmeil’s body no longer is, a woman lies on a hospital bed, arms in the air shaking uncontrollably.

“Psychotic trauma,” one of the doctors tells me. “She is the sister of Mohammed Abu Eteiwy.” When I ask if he sees many cases of psychotic trauma, he answers without pause, “oh, yes!”

The brother of Rami Abeid, the first martyr brought in, is at the hospital, tells us his dead brother and friends were just sitting in the house when the Israeli army bombed it.

The next body, that of Nidal Hassan, 32, is brought in and out, same routine to the morgue.

The Civil Defence ambulance which just delivered him backs up in the small parking lot before turning around to go off for more victims. It’s backing alert is, instead of a beep, incongruously a cheerful children’s song. In the dark, drones droning, the night gets more surreal.

7:07 pm, waiting for the last of the Abu Kmeil home martyrs. Another Israeli-dropped bomb blasts out over the drones’ buzz.

Six minutes later the last martyr, Ahmed Abu Kmeil, 23, is brought in, wrapped, stored. His body is intact, but his face and ears have melted from the bombing. An older woman sitting comatosely quiet is, a doctor tells me, his relative, and is also in psychotic trauma.

Only 7 minutes later a new victim is brought in: 14 year old Nader Abu Mghaseeb.

His is one of the most horrifying corpses I’ve seen yet, including those martyred in the Israeli war on Gaza 4 years ago. When targeted by an Israeli drone strike, the 14 year was wearing the kind of plastic sports watch and bright t-shirt teens wear. His appendages are still nominally attached to his body, but his legs are bloated, shredded, and when the medics move him from stretcher to gurney, his feet and ankles twist unnaturally, revealing the threads that just barely keep them attached.

I sob.

His father waits outside the hospital, still crying, unable to return to his eastern Gaza home in Abu Agine, near the border with Israel. It isn’t only the lack of taxis; if any were on the road, they wouldn’t dare to go to that area, so close to the occupying army.

He tells us the story. It was a couple of hours before the “cease-fire” and Nader wanted to go to the shop nearby…I have young kids, he adds. Nader went to buy some food for his siblings. The father didn’t want him to leave, but Nader was confident, there was to be a cease-fire. When he didn’t return after 10 minutes, the father began to worry, called Nader on his cell phone and kept calling him until, terrified, he went to look at the shop. He found Nader a bomb-blasted mess on the street.

One of the emergency room doctors is from the same area, knows the Abu Mghaseebs. He was a good boy, the doctor said, good at school, no trouble.

The drone buzzing increases at 7:30, an hour and a half before the “cease-fire”. Another strike sounds out somewhere in central Gaza.

A young couple with a 4 month old baby are in the hospital lobby. Their baby is ill, not related to the bombings. But the couple couldn’t find a taxi or anyone to drive them to the hospital. So they walked the 15 minutes there, in the dark, potential drone targets.

An old woman, in the hospital for whatever reason, hobbles out the parking lot, on her way home, also ride-less. All of the taxis, normally so keen for fares, are too afraid to be the next target. The streets, aside from those brave medics, are empty.

7:45 The hospital buzzes with word that the cease-fire might actually happen. But it isn’t only the bomb blast that occurs minutes later that makes it impossible to believe, it’s the steady stream of martyrs that have come in these past hours before a cease-fire. Nader Abu Mghaseeb’s mutilated legs are etched in my mind.

8:01 An F-16 has been circling where the drones are loudest. Flares go off under the warplane, flares almost always accompanied by a blast soon after.

8:45 A nusseirat apartment is targeted, the injured comes in minutes later.

8:55 Five minutes before the “cease-fire” the drones and F-16s are as loud as ever.

9:10 A journalist at the hospital gets word that the Israeli army has bombed a media office in Khan Younis; there is one martyr.

Although sceptical, we eventually leave the hospital to go home, passing by streets no longer ghost-like. People have poured out of their homes and are jubilous. Victory, they say, we did not kneel to the Israeli army.

A hefty price to pay for this victory: by the end of Israel’s assault on Gaza, 162 Palestinians have been killed, the vast majority civilians not involved in resistance activities, including 42 children, 11 women, and 18 elderly.

Another 1222 were injured, including 421 children, 207 women, 88 elderly.

25 schools, 1 hospital, 35 mosques, 2 bridges, and 100s of homes were damaged or destroyed.

Past the celebrating crowds of people so happy to be out of their homes and walking freely again, back in the dark of our neighbourhood–the power is out, the siege still exists–the sounds of drones and F-16s continue through the night.

• Eva Bartlett, a 33-year-old ISM volunteer who entered Gaza on a siege-breaker boat in November 2008 -- just one month before Israel launched its horrific, 22-day invasion. she is still there. Her blog is http://ingaza.wordpress.com . Here is a profile of Eva that appeared in PalestineTelegraph http://www.paltelegraph.com/palestine/gaza-strip/4824-eva-bartlett-follows-in-the-footsteps-of-rachel-corrie




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US Paralyzed on Palestine

SUBHEAD: Mamoud Abbas has played the game fair and square and deserves serious consideration on Palestinian nationhood.

 By Robert Naimon on 26 September 2011 for TruthOut - 
(http://www.truth-out.org/mahmoud-abbas-jackie-robinson-palestine/1317045647)

 
Image above: Mamoud Abbas in a reversed baseball cap.
 
On Friday, Mahmoud Abbas - backed by more than 80 percent of Palestinian public opinion in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem - formally requested full United Nations membership for Palestine.

The logic of turning to the UN is straightforward: the US-sponsored "peace process" - bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians under US auspices - has failed, because a key premise of that process was that the US government could bring the Israeli government to the table for a serious negotiation that would produce real Israeli compromise necessary for a solution. That premise has turned out to be spectacularly false.

The US hasn't been able to bring the Israeli government to the table for a serious negotiation, not because it would be theoretically impossible to do so, but because "domestic political constraints" - the "Israel lobby" - have prevented the US from exerting effective pressure on the Israeli government to move. Therefore, if the world wants to see resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict anytime soon, it has to wrest control of the issue from Washington. And that's why moving the arena to the United Nations makes perfect sense.

Former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy summed it up in The New York Times: "The US cannot lead on an issue that it is so boxed in on by its domestic politics," Levy said. "And therefore, with the region in such rapid upheaval and the two-state solution dying, as long as the US is paralyzed, others are going to have to step up."

In his address to the United Nations on Wednesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy directly challenged US control of the Israel-Palestine issue, explicitly stating French support for upgrading the Palestinians' status at the UN to nonmember observer state and implying that US efforts have totally failed.

You might think: who cares? What is France compared to the US? And in a one-on-one confrontation, you might be right. But this is not a one-on-one confrontation. This is the US against Turkey and Egypt and the Arab and Muslim worlds and most of Latin America and Africa and Asia. And so, for France to throw its weight to the other side is potentially a very big deal. It opens up a broader path for the Palestinians - and the Egyptians and the Turks and everyone else - to contest US-Israeli policy in Europe. And there is no question that there are many levers on the US and Israeli governments in Europe that have not been used.

In September 2010, Israel became a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Turkey could have vetoed Israel's membership, but it didn't. At the time, if Turkey had decided to take this stand, it might have been isolated. But the world has changed since September 2010; if Israel applied for OECD membership today, the outcome might be different.

In December 2010, a group of 26 former European Union (EU) leaders called for EU sanctions on Israel for settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In response, Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign affairs chief, wrote that the EU's response to Israeli settlement expansion would remain unchanged for the time being. What will happen in the future? The pressure to follow up European words with European action will increase.

UN membership for Palestine - even nonmember observer state status - could broaden the path to the prosecution of Israeli officials at the International Criminal Court for the policies of the occupation. It could enable Palestine to join the Law of the Sea Treaty as a means to challenge the Israeli blockade of Gaza. There are many levers to pursue. But the potential of these levers will depend greatly on governments and public opinion in Europe and elsewhere.

And this is the context - what will Europe and the others do? - in which the diplomatic strategy pursued by the Palestinian leadership makes perfect sense. In recent years, the Palestinian leadership has pursued a "no excuses" policy: not to give the US and Israel any excuse for blocking Palestinian national aspirations, neither by failing to condemn violence, nor by failing to cooperate on issues of security.

This policy has been controversial among Palestinians. Many have basically said: Israel is hitting us - stealing our land, shooting and imprisoning our children - and you're not hitting back; instead, you are cooperating with Israel and the US to prevent others from hitting back.

What's being tested now is this: what is the diplomatic and political fruit of the "no excuses" policy? It certainly hasn't been movement in the Israeli government position; it certainly hasn't been movement in the US government position. But it could be movement in world opinion, it could be movement by European governments, it could be movement by other governments. It could result in greatly increased political, legal and economic pressure on the Israeli government to end the occupation.

Venezuela is probably going to support the Palestinians as much as it can no matter what. Probably, US policy will defer to Tel Aviv for the foreseeable future. But for other countries - like France - what they are going to do is much more of a jump ball. What will they do to stand up to the US? Will they support EU sanctions on Israeli settlement expansion? Will they support Palestine's admission to the Law of the Sea Treaty? Will they support the prosecution of Israeli officials for war crimes at the International Criminal Court?

When Branch Rickey recruited Jackie Robinson to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, they made a bargain. If Robinson would maintain discipline, standing strong against efforts to provoke him into retaliation with racist taunts and assaults, Rickey would stand strong in fighting efforts to keep Robinson from playing. Mahmoud Abbas has held up the Jackie Robinson side of the bargain. The question now is whether the "international community" will hold up the Branch Rickey side of the bargain..

Impending Collapse of Israel

SUBHEAD: The Palestinians are advised to sign nothing with Israel and wait for Zionism to collapse.

By Francis Boyle on 2 October 2010 for Dissident Voice -
(http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/10/the-impending-collapse-of-israel-in-palestine/#more-22728)

Image above: Phoenix rising is part of a Palestinian mural on Israeli security wall. From (http://osieonline.com/Home_Page.html).

[IB Editor's note: Prof. Francis Boyle has been a lawyer representing the Palestinians at the Hague (World Court) as well as an advisor to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. See Island Breath:Francis Boyle on Kauai 12/28/04)]

On November 15, 1988 the Palestine National Council (P.N.C.) meeting in Algiers proclaimed the Palestinian Declaration of Independence that created the independent state of Palestine. Today the State of Palestine is bilaterally recognized de jure by about 130 states.

Palestine has de facto diplomatic recognition from most of Europe. It was only massive political pressure applied by the U.S. government that prevented European states from according to Palestine de jure diplomatic recognition. Palestine is a member state of the League of Arab States and of the Islamic Conference Organization. When the International Court of Justice in The Hague—the so-called World Court of the United Nations System—conducted its legal proceedings on Israel’s apartheid wall on the West Bank, the World Court invited the State of Palestine to participate in the proceedings. In other words, the International Court of Justice recognized the State of Palestine. Palestine has Observer State Status with the United Nations Organization, and basically all the rights of a U.N. Member State except the right to vote.

Effectively, Palestine has de facto U.N. Membership. The only thing keeping Palestine from de jure U.N. Membership is the implicit threat of a veto at the U.N. Security Council by the United States, which is clearly illegal. Someday Palestine shall be a full-fledged U.N. Member State. From a world-order perspective, the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence created a remarkable opportunity for peace with Israel because therein the P.N.C. explicitly accepted the U.N. General Assembly’s Partition Resolution 181(II) of 1947 that called for the creation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in the Mandate for Palestine, together with an international trusteeship for the City of Jerusalem, in order to resolve their basic conflict:

 Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty and national independence.

The significance of the P.N.C.’s acceptance of the Partition Resolution in the Palestinian Declaration of Independence itself could not be over-emphasized. Prior thereto, from the perspective of the Palestinian People the Partition Resolution had been deemed to be a criminal act that was perpetrated upon them by the United Nations Organization in gross violation of their fundamental right to self-determination as recognized by the United Nations Charter and general principles of public international law. The acceptance of the Partition Resolution in their actual Declaration of Independence signaled the genuine desire by the Palestinian People to transcend the past century of bitter conflict with the Jewish People living illegally in their midst in order to reach an historic accommodation with them on the basis of a two-state solution.

The very fact that this acceptance of Partition Resolution 181 was set forth in their Declaration of Independence indicated the degree of sincerity with which the Palestinian People accepted Israel. The Declaration of Independence was the foundational document for the State of Palestine. It was intended to be determinative, definitive, and irreversible. As the P.N.C. well knew at the time, their Declaration of Independence was not something that could be amended or bargained away. Nonetheless, the Palestinians have now fruitlessly spent the past twenty-two years trying to negotiate in good faith with Israel over the two-state solution set forth in Resolution 181. They have gotten absolutely nowhere. Israel has never demonstrated one iota of good faith when it came to negotiating a comprehensive Middle Peace settlement with the Palestinians on the basis of a two-state solution.

Even the 1993 Oslo Agreement was nothing more than an Israeli-drafted interim Bantustan arrangement for five years that was rejected in Washington, D.C. by the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations for that precise reason. Both Israel and the United States now want to make the Oslo Bantustan permanent and, incidental thereto, destroy the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as required by U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 1948 and general principles of public international law. In this regard, shortly before he died on September 24, 2007, I called up the former Head of the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations, Dr. Haidar Abdul Shaffi at his home in Gaza in order to review the entire situation with him. According to Dr. Haidar:

“The Zionists have not changed their objectives since the Basel Conference of 1897!” 

In other words, the Zionists want a “Greater” Israel on all of the Mandate for Palestine together with as much ethnic cleansing of Palestinians out of Palestine that the Zionists believe they can get away with internationally. After twenty-two years of getting nowhere but further screwed to Israel’s apartheid wall on the West Bank and strangulated in Gaza, it is now time for the Palestinians to adopt a new strategy, which I most respectfully recommend here for them to consider: Sign nothing and let Israel collapse!

Recently it was reported that the United States’ own Central Intelligence Agency predicted the collapse of Israel within twenty years. My most respectful advice to the Palestinians is to let Israel so collapse! For the Palestinians to sign any type of comprehensive peace treaty with Israel would only shore up, consolidate, and guarantee the existence of Zionism and Zionists in Palestine forever. Why would the Palestinians want to do that? Without approval by the Palestinians in writing, Zionism and Israel in Palestine will collapse.

So the Palestinians must not sign any Middle East Peace Treaty with Israel, but rather must keep the pressure on Israel for the collapse of Zionism over the next two decades as predicted by the Central Intelligence Agency. The correct historical analogue here is not apartheid South Africa, but instead the genocidal Yugoslavia that collapsed as a State, lost its U.N. Membership, and no longer exists as a State for that very reason. All the demographic forces are in favor of the Palestinians and against the Zionists.

The United States government is tired of its blank-check support for Israel because this policy seriously undermines and conflicts with America’s imperial objective to obtain the oil and gas lying beneath Arab and Muslim states by hook or by crook. Israel is ridden with and paralyzed by so many internal contradictions and conflicts that they are too numerous to list here. Indeed, from the very moment of its inception as a direct result of the Zionists’ genocidal al Nakba in 1948, Israel has been the proverbial failed state, and still is so today. Israel would have never come into existence without the support of Western colonial imperial powers throughout the twentieth century. And the same is true today.

Without the political, economic, diplomatic, and military support provided primarily by the United States, and to a lesser extent by Britain, France, and Germany, Israel would immediately collapse. The international Campaign for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (B.D.S.) against Israel is quickly whittling away Israel’s domestic support in those countries. Israel’s own serial barbarous atrocities perpetrated against the Palestinians and the Lebanese have revealed the true face of Zionism for the entire world to see: genocide.

In fact, Israel has never been a State but just an Army masquerading as a State — a Potemkin Village of a State. Israel is the archetypal Great Band of Robbers described by St. Augustine in Book 4, Chapter 4 of The City of God: Kingdoms without justice are similar to robber barons. And so if justice is left out, what are kingdoms except great robber bands? For what are robber bands except little kingdoms? The band also is a group of men governed by the orders of a leader, bound by social compact, and its booty is divided according to a law agreed upon.

If by repeatedly adding desperate men this plague grows to the point where it holds territory and establishes a fixed seat, seizes cites and subdues peoples, then it more conspicuously assumes the name of kingdom, and this name is now openly granted to it, not for any subtraction of cupidity, but by addition of impunity….

All of these political, economic, military, diplomatic, sociological, psychological, and demographic forces are working in favor of the Palestinians and against Israel and the Zionists in Palestine. It will take a few more years for these historical forces to predominate and then to prevail. But the proverbial handwriting is on the wall for the Zionist Enterprise in Palestine for the entire world to see, including and especially the C.I.A. Even large numbers of Zionists living in Israel have already prepared their parachutes, and their exit plans, and their landing zones to go elsewhere in the world.

There is no reason for the Palestinians to give the Zionists a new lease on life in Palestine by signing any sort of peace treaty with Israel. It is obvious that soon Zionism will enter into Trotsky’s “ashcan” of history along with every other nationalistic “ism” that has plagued humankind during the twentieth century: Nazism, Fascism, Francoism, Phalangism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. The only thing that could save Zionism in Palestine is for the Palestinians to conclude any type of so-called comprehensive Middle East Peace treaty with Israel.

It is for precisely that reason then that the Palestinians must sign nothing and let Israel collapse of its own weight over the next two decades. Millions of Palestinians have waited in refugee camps since 1948 in order to return to their homes, that is for 62 years. They can wait a little longer until Israel collapses within 20 years. Otherwise, for the Palestinians to sign a comprehensive peace treaty with Israel means that they will never be able to return to their homes as required by Resolution 194 of 1948. History and demography are on the side of Palestine and the Palestinians against Israel and the Zionists.

But the Palestinians must allow history and demography a little bit more time in order to produce the collapse of Israel and Zionism in Palestine. Twenty years is but the blink of an eye in the millennia-long history of the Palestinian People, who are the original indigenous inhabitants of Palestine. God had no right to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and give Palestine to the Jews to begin with. A fortiori the United Nations had no right to steal Palestine from the Palestinians and give Palestine to the Zionists in 1947. In the meantime, the Palestinians must keep up the pressure on Israel, Zionism and the Zionists in Palestine.

The Palestinians have a perfect right under international law to resist an illegal, colonial, genocidal, criminal, military occupation regimé of their lands and of their homes and of their People that goes back to 1948 so long as it is done in a manner consistent with the requirements of international humanitarian law.

Simultaneously, the Palestinians must continue to build their state from the ground up as they have been doing successfully since the first Intifada began in 1987 with its grassroots Unified Leadership of the Intifada. Internationally, the Palestinians must continue their diplomatic and political and legal offensive against Israel. Palestine has gained enormous ground since November 15, 1988 when the P.N.C. proclaimed the independent State of Palestine. Palestine will continue to gain more support internationally over the next two decades, including the accelerating B.D.S. campaign that will delegitimize Israel and Zionism all around the world.

At the same time, Israel will continue its rapid descent into pariah state status along the lines of the genocidal Yugoslavia that collapsed as a state and no longer exists. Israel will meet the same fate as the genocidal Yugoslavia provided the Palestinians do not sign any type of international peace agreement with Israel. When Israel collapses, most Zionists will have already left or will soon leave for other states around the world. The Palestinians will then be able to claim all of the historic Mandate for Palestine as their State, including the entire City of Jerusalem as their Capital. Palestine will then be able to invite all of its refugees to return to their homes pursuant to Resolution 194.

Some Jews will remain in Palestine either voluntarily or involuntarily. Palestine and the Palestinians will treat the remaining Jews fairly. Palestine and the Palestinians will not do to the Jews what Israel, Zionism, and the Zionists have done to the Palestinians.

The Palestinians must sign nothing and let Israel collapse!

See also:

Ea O Ka Aina: Israel as a Failed State 1/4/09

Ea O Ka Aina: Ironic Reply of Excuse 6/8/10

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Israel Redefines "Chutzpah"

SUBHEAD: Something to you can boycott. Better Place is an Israeli manufacturer of chargers for electric vehicles to be used in Hawaii. Image above: Better Place's CEO Moshe Kaplinksy at the first of his electric parking lots in Israel. From (http://sunhomedesign.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/the-end-of-petroleum-for-personal-transportation). DEFINITION: Chutzpah; (noun, slang) 1. 1. unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall. (origin - Yiddish khustpa - Aram huspa) unmitigated

By Larry Geller on 11 June 2010 in Disappeared News -

(http://www.disappearednews.com/2010/06/israel-redefines-chutzpah.html)

My usual working definition of the popular Yiddish word “chutzpah” is: A man kills both his parents and then appeals to the judge for mercy because he is an orphan.”

That’s still the best I’ve seen, but Israel is coming up with its own definition. Because of its tight, damaging and illegal blockade of Gaza, the boycott Israel movement is gaining some steam around the world, and there is a separate boycott movement in the West Bank. So now a bill introduced in the Israeli parliament would force the Palestinian Authority to compensate Israel for its losses due to boycotts.

The Land of Israel, a right-wing parliamentary lobby group committed to Jewish settlement of the West Bank, submitted the bill with the support of 25 politicians from right wing and centrist parties. If approved, it could theoretically force the Palestinian Authority (PA) to pay thousands of dollars in compensation to Jewish businesses affected by the Fayyad-led boycott campaign, a scenario that would likely spark furious reaction from Palestinians.

The move comes amid a growing global backlash against Israeli policies, which has intensified since Israel launched its bloody raid on a Turkish-led humanitarian convoy trying to breach the blockade of the Gaza Strip. [The Independent (UK), Israel plans to send bill to Palestinians over boycotts, 6/11/2010]

For more information on the worldwide Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, see the website for the Global BDS Movement. For an article on the boycott of goods made in the illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, see Fayyad Challenges Israelis With Boycott of Settler-Made Goods (Bloomberg/Business Week, 6/11/2010).

It may be hard to find Israel-made products in Hawaii to boycott. One obvious target, not here yet, will be one of the darling electric vehicle projects embraced by Governor Lingle and DBEDT. Better Place is an Israeli company that will manufacture electric vehicles and charging stations to be used in Hawaii.

More about Better Place in this article. According to the article, Better Place has already installed charging stations at illegal settlements in the West Bank. Palestinians themselves are not even allowed to use those roads.

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