Statehood? Or Statehood Denial?

Elizabeth Samson is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute and an attorney specializing in International Law and Constitutional Law and she has writtn on Palestinian Statehood and International Law for the inFocus Quarterly, Fall 2011 issue.

One short extract:

...The Palestinian Authority has explicitly stated its plans to use the UN declaration as a tool to make further claims against the Jewish state. As PA President Mahmoud Abbas explained in a May 16, 2011 op-ed in The New York Times, UN recognition of Palestinian statehood "would pave the way for the internationalisation of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice."

Further clarifying the PA's plan, in an interview printed in the Qatari newspaper Al Watan at the end of August and just weeks away from his bid at statehood, Abbas said, "when Palestine gains international recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, it will be a country under occupation, thus our reference will be the United Nations (UN), and we will discuss our issues there according to article four of the Geneva convention."
In short, the PA plans to use UN recognition to evade sitting down and negotiating a settlement to the decades-long conflict with Israel. Recognition will simply be another tool in the Palestinian arsenal used to delegitimize Israel in the international arena.

Think about that.

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A "State of Palestine" is a State of Mind

No more.

Poor Mahmoud.

A picture worth a thousand words.

Check out here.


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No Jews Allowed in the Pal. State

The Palestine Liberation Organization's ambassador to the United States made several declarations this past week in an interview with USA Today that should bury the idea of a Pal. state among true liberals, humanists and progressives.

He said:

a)

After 44 years of Palestinian-Israeli conflict, "it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," PLO Ambassador Maen Areikat says. "After the experience of the last 44 years of military occupation and all the conflict and friction, I think it would be in the best interest of the two people to be separated," Maen Areikat, the PLO
ambassador, said during a meeting with reporters sponsored by The
Christian Science Monitor.

That, of course, would be the first country to officially prohibit Jews since Nazi Germany.

It also would assist those forces in Israel who might suggest all the Arabs resident in the state should move into the new "Palestine".

I have used that argument, together with the suggestion to start terming Arab cities and villages in israel as "settlements", to pressure our liberals and ask them if they accept the Pal. position, why not this theoretical Jewish position.

Areikat further said

"We are trying to preserve the concept of a two-state solution and to make the Israelis understand there will be consequences for their actions."

But isn't that a two-edged sword? Are the pals. never to assume the responsibility for their actions and their consequences?

And read more here.

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Not The Best of Ideas

At EoZ:-

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My Slogan for Pal. UDI

.

September 20:

It won't be the end of the world.

It won't be the start of

a "Palestine state".

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When HL Becomes HS - A Diplomatic Typo

Steven Edwards notes that a:

UN ‘typo’ turns Mahmoud Abbas into head of state

The story:

The United Nations has assigned head-of-state status to the leader of the Palestinian Authority ahead of an anticipated vote by the world body on whether to recognize Palestinian statehood, a speakers list for the world body’s annual debate shows. An “HS” designation means that Mahmoud Abbas, as the Palestinian Authority president, can speak towards the beginning of the Sept. 21-27 summit alongside other heads of state – and ahead of most heads of government, such as Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

In previous years, Abbas has been listed as an “HL” – or “high level” delegate...the UN department responsible for issuing the list insisted it was a typo.

Edwards comments:

Yet how coincidental that the “mistake” comes in a year that the Palestinian Authority has pledged to seek official UN recognition of an independent Palestine that sits alongside an Israel with borders clipped to those that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War.

Anne Bayefsky of Eye on the UN first highlighted the mistake and said

“The UN has pre-judged any vote that might take place on Palestinian statehood...the entry reflects the deep-seated bias at the organization against Israel.”

I repeat the remark Yonatan Silverman made:

The only state the Palestinians

will get in September

is a state of mind.

(k/t=EK)
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Spain for Palestinian Statehood But For Catalonia...?

JPost reports:

The Palestinian Authority announced on Thursday that Spain has decided to recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines before September. A spanish diplomat told Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath that Spain would support making the state of Palestine a UN member.

Aw, and all that Catalonia gets is autonomy?

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When The UN Would Betray Its Own 'Land for Peace' Formula

The reasoning for that is in the op-ed of Efraim Karsh and Asad Romirowsky, Land for War.

Excerpts:-

...in putting the Palestinian demand for statehood to a vote, Abbas will end up subverting the international organization's longstanding solution to the Arab Israeli-conflict—U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—with unpredictable results...242 established the principle of "land for peace" as the cornerstone of future peace agreements between Israel and the Arabs, to be reached in negotiations...

...the resolution reflected acceptance by the Security Council of the existential threat posed by the 1949 armistice line, memorably described by Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban as "Auschwitz borders." The Security Council expected negotiations between Israel and the Arabs to produce a more defensible frontier for Israel, one consistent with, in the words of the resolution's other key formulation, the right of every state in the region "to live in peace with secure and recognized boundaries."

...Israel has persistently striven to make peace with its Arab neighbors. It withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula, constituting more than 90% of the territories occupied in 1967...As for the Palestinians, their rejection of resolution 242 was absolute. In 1967, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) rejected the U.N. proposal as a plot...When the Carter administration informed Arafat of its readiness to inaugurate Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, should he accept resolution 242, the PLO chairman categorically turned the offer down. "This is a lousy deal," he told an intermediary. "We want Palestine. We don't want bits of Palestine."

It was not until 1988, more than two decades after the resolution's passage, that the Palestine National Congress grudgingly accepted resolution 242...Salah Khalaf (better known by his nom de guerre of Abu Iyad), declared that "the establishment of a Palestinian state on any part of Palestine is but a step toward the whole of Palestine." Two years later, he reiterated this view at a public rally in Amman, pledging to liberate Palestine "inch by inch from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river." Arafat remained committed to the PLO's phased strategy even after signing the 1993 Oslo Accords.

...The Palestinians have consistently misrepresented the resolution as calling for Israel's complete withdrawal to the pre-June 1967 lines, while claiming that its stipulation for "a just settlement of the refugee problem" meant endorsement of the Palestinian "right of return"—the standard Arab euphemism for Israel's destruction through demographic subversion. When Israel offered at the American-convened July 2000 peace summit in Camp David to cede virtually the entire territory of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state and made concessions with respect to Jerusalem, Arafat responded with a campaign of terror unmatched in the history of the Jewish state.

...Were the U.N. General Assembly to fall for the Palestinian ploy, it will not only reward decades of duplicity, intransigence, and violence and betray its own formula of "land for peace," but will be introducing a new and dangerous stage in the century-long feud between Arabs and Jews: that of "land for war."

I still say let the Arabs who desire to be "Palestinians" set up their state in Jordan and if that works out, then we can renegotiate.

Of course, since "territorial compromise" is the overriding principle, what territories are they to compromise on, after maintaining a campaign of terror between 1949 - 1967?

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Words of Wisdom on a "Palestinian State"

.

The only state the Palestinians
will get in September
is a state of mind.

Yonatan Silverman, Sartaba


__________________

UPDATE

Check out Steve Rosen's piece in FP.

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Solway Makes It A Simple Message

Here, in The Palestinian Agenda: End Israel, Not Found a State - Understanding the real goal explains the missed opportunities:

...the Palestinians want a state, but it is not the state that Israel has offered to facilitate and that Western politicians perceive as the gleaming destination at the end of the road map.

The Palestinians want a totalistic entity built on the debris of Israel...the state they do not want is Israel — as the Fatah charter, like the Hamas covenant, makes abundantly clear. Neill Lochery justly remarks in Why Blame Israel? that this is the reason they have repudiated every concrete proposal for statehood in the early negotiations when Israel did not yet exist as an internationally recognized nation. That, he writes, “would have led to the establishment of a Jewish state.” The rejectionist position still holds.

It really is simple and plain sometimes.

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Would You Like A Pal. State Looking Over Your Shoulder?

Think about it:-

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An Academic Who Thinks Okay

He's on the mark:-

Professor Nathan Brown teaches political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He said, "The political split between the West Bank and Gaza is so severe, that you cannot even have any kind of democratic procedures. When you move outside the realm of administration you find real serious political diseases. The political party system is basically disintegrated. It does not really exist in any healthy form anymore. Palestinian politics, if you compare it to the 1990's, is in a state of serious decay."

Brown argues that even if there is a peace agreement within the next year, the Palestinian political system is so broken there would be no way to ratify or implement it. "Why are we pretending that there is a viable diplomatic process? You have got no parliament, you have got a PLO that is dead, and you have got a president whose term is expired. He has no authority to negotiate this agreement and certainly to implement it, even if he had the authority to negotiate it. What you have got to do is fix the Palestinian political system first."

See also this
and this.

- - -

US Consulate General Forges Ahead in Creating a "Palestinian Heritage"

Item of interest:

U.S. Consulate General Supports the Opening of the Al-Jib Museum in the West Bank

On May 18, the West Bank community of Al-Jib inaugurated its first cultural heritage museum showcasing Palestinian artifacts and cultural arts. The museum and its gift shop, which features handicrafts made by local female artisans, was made possible through a grant from the U.S. Department of State’s Ambassador’s Fund for Cultural Preservation to the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE)...The grant provided much needed support and assistance to three historic villages in the West Bank – Beitin, Aboud, and Al-Jib – as these communities work to preserve their cultural heritage and to promote local tourist destinations.

...The director of PACE and members of the local community, including the mayor and governor, attended the opening ceremony of Al Jib’s cultural heritage museum, and thanked the Consulate General for its support. Cultural Affairs Officer Cynthia Harvey addressed the audience, congratulating them on the success of their program and the launching of the museum, which will benefit Al-Jib residents for the years to come.

In order to have successful peace negotiations, I guess the State Department needs to create also a "Palestinian heritage" so that there should be a "Palestinian people" so that there may be a "Palestinian state".

That's a lot of creative diplomacy.


P.S.


Even Gaza gets in the act, literally:

Gaza Theater Group Presents American Classic Steinbeck’s “The Pearl”

“Basma” (Smile), a Gazan cultural arts organization, held its first performance of John Steinbeck’s classic story “The Pearl” on May 12 in Gaza. With a $20,000 grant from the Consulate General’s Public Affairs office, Basma translated Steinbeck’s work into classical Arabic and hired actors and a director to stage the play. Approximately 200 people attended the initial performance including intellectuals, artists, and civil society leaders.

Dogmatism About a "Palestinian State"

How they (he writer is co-chairman of the Abraham Fund Initiatives, which advances coexistence and equality between Arabs and Jews in Israel) just insist:-

In an column headlined "Crime Without Punishment" (Haaretz, April 6 - actually the title is given as: Israel's biggest challenge: Integrating its Arab minority) Moshe Arens proposes a two-pronged policy for dealing with Israel's Arabs: an uncompromising fight against the Islamic Movement's radical northern branch and strenuous action to integrate the minority into the fabric of Israeli society. In innumerable other columns, Arens has voiced his total opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Calls for integration of Israel's Arabs have become increasing popular recently, peaking in the "economic leadership bus tour" of the Arab sector organized by President Shimon Peres and a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Arab and Jewish industrialists.

Other right-wingers, like Minister Benny Begin, have also expressed support for the integration and equality of Israeli Arabs. Even though this trend has appeared late, it is of course welcome. But there can be no integration and equality for Israel's Arabs as long as there is no Palestinian state.

Of course we are for integration. As Jabotinsky wrote:

There will happily prosper and benefit the son of Arabia, the son of Nazereth and my son

As for a "Palestinian state"

a) they don't really want it for all they want is an instrument to deny the Jews our state;
b) they'd be quite satisfied to be part of another Arab state;
c) Syria would love them to be part of Greater Syria;
d) can they maintain statehood?
e) would Jordan permit them?

But How Long Will It Last?

Akiva Eldar has a story in Haaretz:-

Palestinian PM to Haaretz: We will have a state next year

I could go into deep philosophical and political analysis but, you know, I'm going to open a bet:

How long will it last?

Four Who Can't Think

Ethan Bronner reported this about Mahmoud Abbas' resignation threat:-

Four top officials made the same point in separate interviews. Mr. Abbas, they say, feels at a total impasse in negotiations with the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has declined to commit to a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders including East Jerusalem. Mr. Netanyahu favors negotiations without preconditions.

I may be missing something but these Arabs want Israel to commit to a Pal. state when, to my chagrin, astonishment and disappointment, that's what Netanyahu has done.

Last June:-

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, reversing himself under U.S. pressure, but saying the Palestinians would have to lay down arms, a condition they swiftly rejected.

A week after President Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would also have to recognize Israel as the Jewish state — essentially saying Palestinian refugees must give up the goal of returning to Israel.

With those conditions, he said, he could accept "a demilitarized Palestinian state alongside the Jewish state."

That's fairly clear, no?

Yes, you could argue about whether the Netanyahu definition of the Pal. state is a precondition or not or a fact-of-life factor like one state should not make war against another.

But if those Arabs can't grasp that Netanyahu agreed in principle to a state and all they have to do is accept a little to get a lot, do they deserve a state?

Maybe this

saying the Palestinians would have to lay down arms, a condition they swiftly rejected

is the problem?

Yes, I admit, I am hoping they continue in their obtuseness and stubbornness but, goodness, the Pals. seem to be missing another opportunity.

Pal. Statehood Preparation, Oh Really Now

You read this:

In a Security Council briefing on Thursday, the UN's Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert Serry, said: "The Palestinian government is resolved to complete preparation for statehood in less than two years. I am convinced they can do it, if indeed they haven't already."

I am convinced they can do it, if indeed they haven't already?

Really?

Well, I'm not convinced and I think Serry



isn't really convinced as well. And I know that they haven't already made adequate, reliable, long-termed efforts to do so, are still in a terrorist organization stage of development, no true party democracy, transparency of administration, guarantees of civil liberites, independent judiciary, etc. And most importantly, a free media devoted to peace and ocexistence, not to mention religious conscience.

I heard a talk by Serry sponsored by the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem as was not impressed. Serry is a lackey of the Pal. position, and lacking a comprehensive grasp of the conflict's history and its ideological underpinnings.

The 50-Something-Or-Other State?

The main American in Jerusalem wants a state:

The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, unveiled a government program on Tuesday to build the apparatus of a Palestinian state within two years, regardless of progress in the stalled peace negotiations with Israel.

...The United States consul general in Jerusalem expressed approval for the plan...Jacob Walles, the American consul general, spoke of the plan in an interview here on Monday, before Mr. Fayyad’s announcement. He said that it was the first time he had seen such a “concrete plan” and that the Palestinians were working in a practical way toward their goal.



Mr. Walles added that under the premiership of Mr. Fayyad there had been “a lot of progress in the West Bank” in economic, security and other spheres.

Yuval Steinitz, the finance minister of the conservative Likud Party, called Mr. Fayyad’s ideas “disappointing...There is no place for unilateralism, no place for threats, and of course, there will be no Palestinian state at all, if any, without ensuring the state of Israel’s security.”

Daniel Ayalon, the deputy foreign minister of the nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, said that “artificial dates and arbitrary deadlines never worked in the past, but caused only damage and would not work now.”...

So, one side can do whatever it wants outside the formal framework of negotiations.

It Need Not Take Two To Go Nowhere

Dr. Alex Grobman is a Hebrew University trained historian. His is the author of a number of books including Nations United How The UN Undermines Israel and The West and a forthcoming book on Israel's moral and legal right to exist as a Jewish State. He sent me a great article which I have excerpted below:

The Two-State To Nowhere: Another Futile Attempt At Appeasement

“There is reason to believe that [the president] cherished the illusion that presumably he, and he alone, as head of the United States, could bring about a settlement –if not a reconciliation—between Arabs and Jews. I remember muttering to myself as I left the White House after hearing the President discourse in rambling fashion about Middle Eastern Affairs, ‘I‘ve read of men who thought they might be King of the Jews and other men who thought they might be King of the Arabs, but this is the first time I ‘ve listened to a man who dreamt of being King of both the Jews and Arabs.’”1

Herbert Feis, a State Department economic advisor, did not say this about President Obama’s address in Cairo in June 2009, but after Franklin D. Roosevelt met with Ibn Saud, King of Saudi Arabia, in February 1945. Roosevelt wanted the Arabs to allow thousands of Jews from Europe to immigrate to Palestine to which Ibn Saud responded, “Arabs would choose to die rather than yield their land to Jews.”2
George Antonius, an Arab nationalist, reiterated this point when he said, “no room can be made in Palestine for a second nation except by dislodging or exterminating the nation in possession.”3

Attempts to solve the Arab/Israeli conflict regularly fail because of the refusal to acknowledge that this dispute has never been about borders, territory or settlements, but about the Arabs refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist...

...For Hamas liberating all of Palestine to establish an Islamic state requires a holy war against Israel. Anyone daring to sign away even “a grain of sand in Palestine in favor of the enemies of God…who have seized the blessed land” should have their “hand be cut off.”5

...One-sided concessions have convinced the Arabs of the rightness of their policies and the efficacy of using violence to cleanse the country of Jews and Christians.
What compelling reason do Arabs have to stop launching rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities, refuting the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, destroying artifacts and Jewish holy sites, dehumanizing Jews...if the West does not hold them accountable?

...Comparing the plight of the Arabs with that of African Americans is a distortion of history and demeans the experiences of the millions of Africans who were brutally abducted from their homes, transported under inhuman conditions aboard slave ships and exposed to torture, murder and rape. Nothing remotely like this has ever occurred with the Arabs in Israel...

...Those claiming that Jews have a moral obligation to cede land to the Arabs do not understand Israel’s legal right to exist as a Jewish state...There are no comparable legal documents conferring the same right on the Arabs living in Palestine at that time or since. 6

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1. Herbert Feis, The Birth of Israel: The Tousled Diplomatic Bed (New York: W.W. Norton, Inc. 1969):16-17.
2. Charles E. Bohlen, Witness to History 1929-1969 (New York: W.W. Norton, Inc. 1973):203-204.
3. George Antonius, The Arab Awakening, the Story of the Arab National
Movement (New York: Capricorn Books, 1965): 412.
5. Jacob L.Talmon, Israel Among The Nations (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), 172.
6. Lloyd George, The Truth About The Peace Treaties vol. II, (London: Gollancz Ltd, 1938),1149-1201; Howard Grief, The Legal Foundation And Borders Of Israel Under International Law (Jerusalem: Mazo Publishers, 2008): 136-147, 493.

What Exists, Destroy; What Doesn't Exist, Who Needs?

From Barry Rubin's thinking:

...What did Obama say in Cairo? First, he said that the Palestinians, have “suffered in pursuit of a homeland” for more than 60 years. Second, he insisted that “the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable.”

As I pointed out at the time, the first statement was a misrepresentation of history, the second a false picture of the present.

Now if Obama was right, the Palestinians should be eager for a state. So if Netanyahu calls on them to recognize Israel as a Jewish state — what do they care if they are accepting to live alongside it permanently? — and have their own state. Yes, that state would be “demilitarized,” I prefer the word “unmilitarized,”...

...But how does the PA’s leader—who is always referred to as “moderate” in the Western media and is more moderate than any other Palestinian leader (it’s all relative) — react?

...Yasser Abed Rabbo, said that recognizing Israel's Jewish character would force Palestinians "to become part of the global Zionist movement".

Think carefully about what Rabbo said. Very carefully. The Zionist movement advocates a Jewish state, Israel, exists. But the PA leadership — the top “official” leadership, the most moderate people in the Palestinian movement — are still not reconciled to Israel’s existence.

Sure, there might be a country there but not a Jewish state, in their thinking. But if it isn’t a Jewish state, why call it Israel? They have another name for the future state they have in mind for Israel to become: Palestine.

...The Palestinian movement as presently constituted is irreconcilable. It wants to destroy Israel, not live alongside it. The movement prefers to sustain the conflict for decades rather than make a stable peace.