A decade of US sponsored Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are leaked today by Al-Jazeera and The Guardian. The documents will be published over the next few days.
The minutes were recorded by the Palestinian based, UK sponsored, Negotiations Support Unit (NSU).
They show:
- On the Palestinian side: despair, humiliation, and endless concessions.
- On the Israeli side: extreme intransigence, contempt for Palestinians, and unwillingness to achieve peace.
- On the US side: total lack of neutrality always siding with Israel, absence of a genuine will to achieve peace, and contempt for Palestinians to the point of crude cruelty.
The peace process has long been dead and successive US and Israeli administrations were playing a sadistic game with Palestinians and their aspirations for peace and statehood while trying to convince us that they were working for peace.
The full Palestine papers page at The Guardian website.
The Palestine papers page on Al-Jazeera website.
Seumas Milne: Only Authentic leaders can deliver a Middle East Peace
Showing posts with label It's All Over for Palestine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label It's All Over for Palestine. Show all posts
5.12.07
Palestine and Israel: One State to end the conflict
The School for Oriental and African Studies, London, organised a conference on the One State Solution for Israel and Palestine last November.
"Over the past several years the failure of the two-state approach has led to a resurgence of interest in a one-state solution and the London conference brings together many who have written or spoken in favor of it."
The conference gave way to a declaration on the One State Solution, published in Counterpunch. The declaration is worth reading because its clarity contrasts with the vague agenda of the two state solution. People who are still promoting the two state solution, not only failed many times, but were never specific about what a Palestinian state could or should be.
"The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.
The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core of any just solution."
Thanks, But No Thanks: A wonderful defence of the One State solution.
"But statehood as such is a relatively recent addition to Palestinian aspirations. The main Palestinian impetus after the disaster of 1948 was that of "return"; it was more about reversing the loss of Arab land and patrimony, than the fulfilment of classical post-colonial self-determination, via statehood."
"Over the past several years the failure of the two-state approach has led to a resurgence of interest in a one-state solution and the London conference brings together many who have written or spoken in favor of it."
The conference gave way to a declaration on the One State Solution, published in Counterpunch. The declaration is worth reading because its clarity contrasts with the vague agenda of the two state solution. People who are still promoting the two state solution, not only failed many times, but were never specific about what a Palestinian state could or should be.
"The two-state solution ignores the physical and political realities on the ground, and presumes a false parity in power and moral claims between a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other. It is predicated on the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora. Thus, the two-state solution condemns Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within their homeland, in a racist state that denies their rights by enacting laws that privilege Jews constitutionally, legally, politically, socially and culturally. Moreover, the two-state solution denies Palestinian refugees their internationally recognized right of return.
The two-state solution entrenches and formalizes a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically. All the international efforts to implement a two-state solution cannot conceal the fact that a Palestinian state is not viable, and that Palestinian and Israeli Jewish independence in separate states cannot resolve fundamental injustices, the acknowledgment and redress of which are at the core of any just solution."
Thanks, But No Thanks: A wonderful defence of the One State solution.
"But statehood as such is a relatively recent addition to Palestinian aspirations. The main Palestinian impetus after the disaster of 1948 was that of "return"; it was more about reversing the loss of Arab land and patrimony, than the fulfilment of classical post-colonial self-determination, via statehood."
2.9.07
Israel working to prevent any viability for a future Palestinian state
Much has been said about Israel's right to exist. Nothing has been said about Israel's right to co-exist either with a Palestinian state or in a binational state with Palestinians. In other words, while Israel is enjoying the status of an internationally recognized state built on a stolen land, nobody is preoccupied with the future of the Palestinians who live as refugees or prisoners in an apartheid like pieces in what remains of their land.
Two recent reports highlight the uncertainty, if not the impossibility, of a future Palestinian state, following facts created on the ground by the state of Israel which accelerated since 2000; the settlements in the west bank cutting Palestinian villages and communities from each other, and sometimes villagers form their own orchards, and the network of roads reserved only for the Israelis. Now that the international community is showing, a bit late, some worry about the continuity of the west bank itself which became totally compliant and dependant on Israel (let's not mention the continuity between the West Bank and Gaza and what to make of Gaza ?), and therefore the viability of a future Palestinian state, Israel, following the Sharon doctrine of 'continuity through transportation', is planning some future roads for those compliant Palestinians. The future viability of a Palestinian state will depend for example in some cases on a 16 meters road between Betlehem and Ramallah, controlled by Israel...
French philosopher Régis Debray who went on an official mission to Israel and Palestine lately wrote a pessimistic report about the viability of a future Palestinian state to the French government. You can find excerpts from his report in the August French edition of Le Monde Diplomatique: "Palestine, a policy of deliberate blindness or how the world backed itself into a corner." Debray sometimes resort to irony and sarcasm to describe the state of neglect and the contempt in which the prospects for peace and existence for Palestine and the Palestinians are held by the international community and Israel.
The main question therefore is not Israel's right to exist, not even Israel's right to co-exist, because obviously Israel decided not to coexist. The main question is: what does Israel intend to make of the Palestinians ?
Two recent reports highlight the uncertainty, if not the impossibility, of a future Palestinian state, following facts created on the ground by the state of Israel which accelerated since 2000; the settlements in the west bank cutting Palestinian villages and communities from each other, and sometimes villagers form their own orchards, and the network of roads reserved only for the Israelis. Now that the international community is showing, a bit late, some worry about the continuity of the west bank itself which became totally compliant and dependant on Israel (let's not mention the continuity between the West Bank and Gaza and what to make of Gaza ?), and therefore the viability of a future Palestinian state, Israel, following the Sharon doctrine of 'continuity through transportation', is planning some future roads for those compliant Palestinians. The future viability of a Palestinian state will depend for example in some cases on a 16 meters road between Betlehem and Ramallah, controlled by Israel...
French philosopher Régis Debray who went on an official mission to Israel and Palestine lately wrote a pessimistic report about the viability of a future Palestinian state to the French government. You can find excerpts from his report in the August French edition of Le Monde Diplomatique: "Palestine, a policy of deliberate blindness or how the world backed itself into a corner." Debray sometimes resort to irony and sarcasm to describe the state of neglect and the contempt in which the prospects for peace and existence for Palestine and the Palestinians are held by the international community and Israel.
The main question therefore is not Israel's right to exist, not even Israel's right to co-exist, because obviously Israel decided not to coexist. The main question is: what does Israel intend to make of the Palestinians ?
1.7.07
The Bush-Blair Era: synonymous of the slowly irreversible agony of the peace process in the ME
From Le Monde. A poll of their readers (12550 polled) shows that more than 60% think that the nomination of Tony Blair as special envoy of the quartet to the ME will not help reinvigorate the negociations process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Let alone the peace process. Le Monde's readers are center left and moderates.
6.6.06
''Palestine: It's All Over''
This is Alexander Cockburn's conclusion on the state of a hypothetical Palestinian State. Cockburn argues that there was a plan laid out by Israel from the beginning (1948) to reach the stage of the impossibility of a Palestinian State and that the plan was greatly helped by the active self censorship of western media in their unreporting about the illegal means Israel undertook to reach this stage, specially after 1974.
What happened after 1974 ?
Israel had won two wars against Arab countries and had established itself as the great mighty superpower in the middle east with another powerful ally, the United States. The active self censorship of western media didn't come only as a result of pressure from Israel and its allies in the west. It came, and very few would actually aknowledge this matter of fact, from public sympathy towards Israel across Europe and the US. This sympathy, as my European husband puts it, derived from the fact that Europeans felt that they were reoccupying, through Israel's victories, the countries (and the 'savages' which inhabit them) they had colonised and left not a long ago.
Europeans, as Americans, had also little faith in Arabs to trust them with the biggest oil reserves in the world for their increasing energy needs. Arabs were the Other. They were different, they were Muslims for a big majority of them and when they weren't Muslims, they had sympathies with the communists. My husband recounted to me the state of panic Europeans were in back in 1973 during the second Israeli-Arab war as this second war against Arabs didn't look as easy to win by Israel as the 1967 war, also called the six days war because of Israel's overwhelming and rapid victory.
Other factors contributed to a greater identification between the West and Israel. Among them:
1. The west's left kept his sympathies for Israel as a model for a successful socialist enterprise and still do so with such a nostalgia, even now when nothing of the kibboutzim state is left and when neoliberalism is rampant leaving many Isareli citizens on the fringes of society. In fact, socialist ideology contributed greatly to the foundation of Israel and socialists of the world are grateful that Israel was a 'living' proof of the effectiveness of their ideology. As Jean-Luc Godard says in his movie 'Our Music', with nostalgia : ''Communism existed only twice in history and only 45 minutes each time when the British football players lost at Wembley to the Hungarians because they were playing individually and the Hungarians were playing collectively''. And so socialism existes really and it existed in Israel, at the beginning. The nostalgia towards what was at the heart of the foundation of Israel still obscure many leftists judgements about this state.
2. The fall of Israel's ideal for egalitarianism among its citizens followed closely the demise of the social contract in the West and Europe in particular and the rise of neoliberalism. In that, Israel was mirrorring the economic and social evolution of the West and that made the identification more likely. Neoliberalist values, which were gaining ground among American and Eurpean political and intellectual elites from the right to the 'new' left, were introduced in Israel at the same time. And with these values came a shift in the western perspective on the Self as individualistic, egoistic, politically correct, focused without restraint on the pursuit of sexual pleasures (not only sexual liberation) and personal wealth. On the other side, Arab countries, either economically underdevelopped and socially conservative or rich but also socially conservative, offered to the western world a social façade which was increasingly at odds with its own.
I don't think that the Israeli society mirrors actually the western one, there is a lot of conservatism and political uncorrectness (racism and préjugés) in this society, however these features do not show because they are hidden under the umbrella of 'secular' judaism and zionism which supposedly defines Israel. Indeed this perception of Israel is actually more influenced by the jewish diaspora outside Israel than by Israeli society itself, as this diaspora had plenty of time to melt in western cultural values and even become secularised at this contact. The jewish french philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas*, complained in 1976 about the loss of spirituality among the jewish diaspora, a consequence, he says, of its secularisation under the influence and the contact of secular christianity in Europe.
However, when you look at the Muslim diaspora, you can hardly compare it to the jewish one: these are people who immigrated recently to Europe from previous colonised countries. The relations between these immigrants and European citizens are different in many aspects and there are great misunderstandings of the Muslim and Arab cultures produced by colonial history, wider economic and cultural gaps between countries of origin and host countries, as well as previously planned and recent spin from pro-Zionist zealots against these populations which started early on and was already full blown in the nineties.
3. What is important also is that Israel, its zionist defenders and its jewish diaspora worldwide, often act as one homogenous bloc when it comes to protect the state from international sanctions. Facing this matter of fact, and contrary to the West's perception, Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs are a mosaic of diverse opinions, interests and political agenda. So the perception of Israel facing a united Arab, palestinian and Muslim front in its struggle for 'existence' is utterly false.
4. Even if there was a western awakening to the problems facing the palestinians in their struggle for existence, Israel made sure that all the misunderstandings between the West's culture and values and those of Arabs and Muslims in general were exploited in forging the West's view of Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians which were assimilated to these two categories. This strategy proved effective. The recent terrorist threat the West attributes to Islam came to seal the fate of the Palestinians because Israel has forcefully argued for an equation between the two even if the difference between Islamist terror as advocated by OBL and Palestinian resistance is evident and can be found in European history. Indeed, it is the same difference that exists between armed resistance to facism in Spain, to the occupation of Ireland by the British or to the Nazis in France on one hand and the waves of social terror inflicted on European populations between the seventies and the nineties in Belgium, France, Italy and Germany, on the other hand.
No wonder why, in 2006, after the collapse of the Oslo agreements and the affirmation of unilateral policies by Israel, with International benediction, as well as the destruction, not only of the Palestinian hopes to a state and a decent life but of the palestinian society, culture and geographical demography, there aren't many courageous voices in the West's mainstream media outlets, governments offices and political parties, rising to condemn Israel. There are only voices of few concerned citizens and scholars which are kept outside the mainstream and marginalised as to make sure that the chorus of support given to Israel's peace damaging policies in the Middle East will stay undisputed and without restraint.
*Lévinas Emmanuel. 1976. Difficile liberté, in 'Essai sur le judaisme', Albin Michel, Paris. p.13-23
What happened after 1974 ?
Israel had won two wars against Arab countries and had established itself as the great mighty superpower in the middle east with another powerful ally, the United States. The active self censorship of western media didn't come only as a result of pressure from Israel and its allies in the west. It came, and very few would actually aknowledge this matter of fact, from public sympathy towards Israel across Europe and the US. This sympathy, as my European husband puts it, derived from the fact that Europeans felt that they were reoccupying, through Israel's victories, the countries (and the 'savages' which inhabit them) they had colonised and left not a long ago.
Europeans, as Americans, had also little faith in Arabs to trust them with the biggest oil reserves in the world for their increasing energy needs. Arabs were the Other. They were different, they were Muslims for a big majority of them and when they weren't Muslims, they had sympathies with the communists. My husband recounted to me the state of panic Europeans were in back in 1973 during the second Israeli-Arab war as this second war against Arabs didn't look as easy to win by Israel as the 1967 war, also called the six days war because of Israel's overwhelming and rapid victory.
Other factors contributed to a greater identification between the West and Israel. Among them:
1. The west's left kept his sympathies for Israel as a model for a successful socialist enterprise and still do so with such a nostalgia, even now when nothing of the kibboutzim state is left and when neoliberalism is rampant leaving many Isareli citizens on the fringes of society. In fact, socialist ideology contributed greatly to the foundation of Israel and socialists of the world are grateful that Israel was a 'living' proof of the effectiveness of their ideology. As Jean-Luc Godard says in his movie 'Our Music', with nostalgia : ''Communism existed only twice in history and only 45 minutes each time when the British football players lost at Wembley to the Hungarians because they were playing individually and the Hungarians were playing collectively''. And so socialism existes really and it existed in Israel, at the beginning. The nostalgia towards what was at the heart of the foundation of Israel still obscure many leftists judgements about this state.
2. The fall of Israel's ideal for egalitarianism among its citizens followed closely the demise of the social contract in the West and Europe in particular and the rise of neoliberalism. In that, Israel was mirrorring the economic and social evolution of the West and that made the identification more likely. Neoliberalist values, which were gaining ground among American and Eurpean political and intellectual elites from the right to the 'new' left, were introduced in Israel at the same time. And with these values came a shift in the western perspective on the Self as individualistic, egoistic, politically correct, focused without restraint on the pursuit of sexual pleasures (not only sexual liberation) and personal wealth. On the other side, Arab countries, either economically underdevelopped and socially conservative or rich but also socially conservative, offered to the western world a social façade which was increasingly at odds with its own.
I don't think that the Israeli society mirrors actually the western one, there is a lot of conservatism and political uncorrectness (racism and préjugés) in this society, however these features do not show because they are hidden under the umbrella of 'secular' judaism and zionism which supposedly defines Israel. Indeed this perception of Israel is actually more influenced by the jewish diaspora outside Israel than by Israeli society itself, as this diaspora had plenty of time to melt in western cultural values and even become secularised at this contact. The jewish french philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas*, complained in 1976 about the loss of spirituality among the jewish diaspora, a consequence, he says, of its secularisation under the influence and the contact of secular christianity in Europe.
However, when you look at the Muslim diaspora, you can hardly compare it to the jewish one: these are people who immigrated recently to Europe from previous colonised countries. The relations between these immigrants and European citizens are different in many aspects and there are great misunderstandings of the Muslim and Arab cultures produced by colonial history, wider economic and cultural gaps between countries of origin and host countries, as well as previously planned and recent spin from pro-Zionist zealots against these populations which started early on and was already full blown in the nineties.
3. What is important also is that Israel, its zionist defenders and its jewish diaspora worldwide, often act as one homogenous bloc when it comes to protect the state from international sanctions. Facing this matter of fact, and contrary to the West's perception, Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs are a mosaic of diverse opinions, interests and political agenda. So the perception of Israel facing a united Arab, palestinian and Muslim front in its struggle for 'existence' is utterly false.
4. Even if there was a western awakening to the problems facing the palestinians in their struggle for existence, Israel made sure that all the misunderstandings between the West's culture and values and those of Arabs and Muslims in general were exploited in forging the West's view of Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians which were assimilated to these two categories. This strategy proved effective. The recent terrorist threat the West attributes to Islam came to seal the fate of the Palestinians because Israel has forcefully argued for an equation between the two even if the difference between Islamist terror as advocated by OBL and Palestinian resistance is evident and can be found in European history. Indeed, it is the same difference that exists between armed resistance to facism in Spain, to the occupation of Ireland by the British or to the Nazis in France on one hand and the waves of social terror inflicted on European populations between the seventies and the nineties in Belgium, France, Italy and Germany, on the other hand.
No wonder why, in 2006, after the collapse of the Oslo agreements and the affirmation of unilateral policies by Israel, with International benediction, as well as the destruction, not only of the Palestinian hopes to a state and a decent life but of the palestinian society, culture and geographical demography, there aren't many courageous voices in the West's mainstream media outlets, governments offices and political parties, rising to condemn Israel. There are only voices of few concerned citizens and scholars which are kept outside the mainstream and marginalised as to make sure that the chorus of support given to Israel's peace damaging policies in the Middle East will stay undisputed and without restraint.
*Lévinas Emmanuel. 1976. Difficile liberté, in 'Essai sur le judaisme', Albin Michel, Paris. p.13-23
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