Christopher King calls on the Palestinian National Authority to press for UN recognition of Palestinian statehood, and for Palestinians to show unity behind this effort, but doubts whether the PNA can hold its nerve and press ahead its claim to nationhood.
The Palestinians are proposing to go to the United Nations to get their territory recognized as an independent state, based on the 1967 borders. These are the borders that the Israelis succeeded in having recognized on 14 May 1948. Binyamin Netanyahu’s response is to say that if the Palestinians act “unilaterally” then Israel will act unilaterally too.
This is a superb move by the Palestinian Authority (PA) – if they see it through. If the United Nations accepts Palestine as an independent nation with the1967 borders, Israel will immediately become the military occupier of a sovereign nation. All its land theft, oppression and murder of the Palestinians will be for nothing. It is difficult to see what legitimate objection Israel can have. Evidently there are various truce or cooperation agreements between Israel and the Palestinians that Netanyahu says will be voided if this action goes ahead. If this is so, why should the Palestinians care?
No matter what the Israelis say, the material facts of settlement building, the separation wall, exclusively Israeli roads and water confiscation demonstrate unambiguously that it is their intention to incorporate large areas of land and water resources outside their borders into Israel. Negotiations between Israel and Palestine are going nowhere and never will because the Palestinians cannot possibly agree to Israel’s demands. They have nothing to lose by recognizing that fact, ignoring Israel and seeking other means of gaining statehood. A Palestinian state based on scraps of land that Israel doesn’t want is impossible.
What does Netanyahu mean by his threat? The Palestinians merely propose an appeal to the world’s international court. He is really threatening violence and criminal action in one form or another and everyone knows it. That is Israel’s nature. He evidently means more war crimes on the pattern of the Gaza incursion, doubtless with the collective punishment of cutting off food, fuel, building materials and medical supplies as is the case in Gaza.
Netanyahu says that he wants peace. Within their own country, rid of Israeli occupation, Hamas would have no reason to continue its rocket attacks on Israel and would not wish to. Further attacks would have no positive effect and the new Palestine would have a great deal to lose. It would be in the interests of all Palestinians to cease armed action against Israel. True, Hamas does not accept Israel’s claim to exist as a nation on Palestinian soil and has good grounds both in law and the terrorist means by which the Jews appropriated that territory. The dispute can be continued as a legal issue if that is desired.
Of course that is what Netanyahu fears. UN-recognized Palestinian nationhood based on the 1967 borders would destroy Israel’s expansionist ambitions, undoing 40 years of appropriation and bringing other issues to the foreground. Only one disaster could be greater – right of return to Israel and repossession of their property for the dispossessed and their descendants.
The Jews have been implacable in their pursuit of Nazi war criminals, return of property confiscated by the Nazis and compensation for Nazi war crimes against them. That is their right and the world has recognized it. They and the world should therefore acknowledge no less a right for the Palestinians against whom the Goldstone Report confirms war crimes have been committed and whose land has been stolen in Palestine.
The occupation and Israel’s crimes have, until now, pushed into the background Israel’s worthless claim on the Palestinian soil on which it stands and the right of return issue. If the Palestinian Authority can hold its nerve and press its claim to nationhood through the UN, it will be a fantastic achievement. Unfortunately, the PA has shown little nerve so far. It is Israel’s own action in bribing or blackmailing the spineless PA to keep the Goldstone Report out of the UN that has caused widespread anger and triggered the need for it to take this present action in trying to regain the trust of its own people.
We have seen an instant, general threat from Netanyahu. He now will be seeking to identify sticks with which to threaten and punish together with offering carrots of concessions that will turn out to be poisonous if taken.
Now is the time to press for UN recognition and for the Palestinians to show unity behind this effort. The US and its colonies that it calls “territories” will vote against Palestinian nationhood but the world has seen the true face of the US in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and its state-sponsored terrorism and lies against Iran. This is a chance for other countries to show the sovereignty that the US makes such a show about valuing but makes every effort to subvert. It is a chance for the Europeans to show that they are not vassals of the US and move decisively toward ending the Israeli rape of Palestine.
President Obama, who was elected on a wave of hope for constructive change in foreign policy, has shown himself to be unwilling or unable to deviate from Bush’s policies. Leaving aside other continuing US outrages, Obama failed to halt the Israeli settlement programme. He was humiliated by Netanyahu and backed down on his demand to stop building. It is becoming clear that it not a matter of what Obama is prepared to do; it is a matter of who is running him. His army? The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)? Israel? Among other things, he should fire General McChrystal and get someone who at least doesn’t challenge him, register AIPAC as foreign agents, cut off funding for Israel and don’t ask them – tell them what to do. He should get some sensible advice that truly helps America. But I don’t believe he’ll do it.
Christopher King is a retired consultant and lecturer in management and marketing. He lives in London, UK.
