OP-ED: When will time run out for a two-state solution?

Yousef Munayyer

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Palestine Center Brief No. 198 (27 April 2010)

This article was originally published in The Guardian today.

By Yousef Munayyer

Among those involved in the Middle East peace process industry there is much talk about "time running out" for a two-state solution.

Recently, the same sentiments were echoed by the US state department, reflecting a shift in the way the Obama administration is publicly talking about the conflict.

On more than one occasion, the state department and other Obama administration figures have said that "the status quo is unsustainable". Notice again the element of time.

Time has been running out for a two-state solution since the beginning of Israel's colonial enterprise in occupied Palestinian territory in 1967. Yet despite this reality, analyses of the situation continue to repeat this now-meaningless cliche year after year, decade after decade. It seems that, to many, time in the Middle East can be magically be suspended. Gravity, in this war-torn region, ceases to affect the inverted hourglass.

The idea that time is running out presupposes some actual threshold beyond which time will actually have run out – a midnight hour when the Cinderella-style fantasy of a two-state solution wakes up to the embarrassing reality of facts on the ground.

However, we never hear analysts specify where the threshold lies – at what point Israeli actions of settlement construction and expansion are considered to have finally tipped it over the edge. Without this, the two-state solution becomes the consummate zombie, very much alive in the policy discussion despite being long dead in reality.

The reluctance to draw a line is founded in fears that the line may have already been crossed. Recognition that it has been crossed would, in fact, render the two-state discussion dead and force the policy discussion into an arena that is very much taboo in Washington. This is a discussion that involves three outcomes for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: continued apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or a bi-national state. The first two are unconscionable; the last is not palatable in a staunchly pro-Israel city like Washington.

However, the consequences of not drawing a line at all are far more severe. They result in a climate where Israel feels that its continued colonisation of the West Bank will not have consequences, and the facade of a two-state discussion can continue ad infinitum.

Some argue that facts on the ground do not jeopardise a two-state solution, and that all that is needed to keep the zombie walking is to have enough people on both sides – especially the Palestinian side – who believe in it. As long as there exists a Palestinian partner who will carry the two-state mantra, this argument assumes, it doesn't matter how small or disconnected the territory left for the Palestinian state will be.

Sadly, this also does little to curtail Israel's colonial ambitions and only encourages the Israelis to constantly leverage their bargaining position, since the minimum Palestinian demands can continue to shrink as long as there is a belief among some Palestinians that the two-state possibility lives.

Recent polling of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza indicates that this belief is quickly dwindling. More than ever before, Palestinians in the occupied territories are embracing the one-state outcome. Certainly, other Palestinian communities who are stakeholders in the outcome of the resolution of conflict, like those residing in Israel and those in refugee camps in neighbouring countries, would likely be more amenable a one-state outcome as well.

Regardless of one's belief about what the preferred outcome is, there is no denying that time does march forward, even in the Middle East. With every tick of the clock, every new settlement home, wall and segregated road, we've marched towards the threshold – or past it.

A line must be drawn. The political dynamics are such that policymakers in Washington fear issuing an ultimatum to the Israelis, and would rather rewrite the fairytale so that Cinderella never has to go home and the clock will never strike midnight.

It falls, then, on the Palestinians to draw the line. While the US and Israel perpetuate the two-state dream talk, it is the Palestinians that live in the apartheid nightmare. As long as the Palestinian Authority (PA) is willing to participate in the two-state discussion while little American pressure is put on Israel to comply with international law, the mystical perception of the Middle East as a land without time will continue.

However, the PA could declare a date by which the Israeli occupation had to end and settlements be dismantled. If this deadline is not met, the PA should dissolve the authority and convert the disjointed national movement into a broad civil rights movement seeking equal rights in a bi-national state. They would surely make many in Washington and Tel Aviv take notice.

Of course, the PA's entrenched interests and intuitions may make it incapable of doing this, but the Palestinian public is moving in this direction anyway.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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Why Iran won't attack Israel

Palestine Center Brief No. 197 (21 April 2010) By Yousef Munayyer

This brief appeared in the Los Angeles Times and is a response to a column written by Benny Morris that was published in the Los Angeles Times on 16 April 2010.

Palestinians are in Israel today because they managed to survive the depopulation of 1948, the year the Jewish state was founded (Arabs constitute about 20% of Israel's population). Ironically, while Benny Morris' scholarship suggests that the mere existence of these Palestinians in Israel -- and millions more in the occupied territories -- irks him, Israel's substantial Arab population also blows a hole in his argument about the need to deal with the supposed Iranian nuclear threat.

Morris is part of an increasingly vociferous chorus warning of an impending apocalypse for Israel at the hands of a nuclear Iran eager to rid the Middle East of its Jews. Yet Iran's religious leaders have repeatedly stated that such weapons are "un-Islamic" or "forbidden under Islam."

Morris' role in our understanding of the region's history is confounding. Arguably, no one played a more central role in exposing Israel's role in the depopulation of Palestinians from their homeland than Morris. In his seminal work, "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem," Morris, using declassified military documents, exposes the calculated effort by early Israeli leaders to impose a Jewish majority through ethnic cleansing.

Long considered a champion of modern Israeli historians who sought to shed light on the ugly side of Israel's birth, Morris shocked many Israelis and Palestinians alike when he later changed course. To Morris, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was no longer the problem at the heart of the conflict; in fact, he suggested that the problem was that Israel didn't finish the job in 1948.

Morris said in a 2004 interview "Under some circumstances expulsion is not a war crime. I don't think that the expulsions of 1948 were war crimes. You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. You have to dirty your hands."

Morris added later in the interview that if Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, "was already engaged in expulsion, maybe he should have done a complete job. ... If he had carried out a full expulsion - rather than a partial one - he would have stabilized the state of Israel for generations."

Yet the pesky Palestinian minority Morris wishes had been expelled decades ago serves as a deterrent from a nuclear-armed Iran, should the Islamic Republic ever build nuclear weapons and consider using them on Israel. The fact that Arab Israelis were among the casualties of the 2006 war with Hezbollah speaks to the reality that no nuclear attack on Israel could happen without the deaths of countless Palestinians and Israelis, not to mention the likely destruction of Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam.

The reality of Palestinian casualties, the destruction of Jerusalem, the onset of regional war and the immediate destruction of Iran's regime as a result of a multilateral conventional or even nuclear counterattack all serve as a credible deterrent to a nuclear Iran. The Iranian leadership has shown a demonstrable interest in self-preservation

The alarmism espoused Morris and company isn't grounded in reality. Rather - just as with Iraq, Syria and now Iran - Israel constantly needs an enemy that it says threatens its existence. Otherwise the Jewish state would have a harder time maintaining its overwhelming military supremacy in the region and continuously changing the subject from resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to practically anything else.

The ideology at the foundation of the state of Israel and the very justification for its existence requires the existence of apocalyptic anti-Semitic forces with the intent and capability to annihilate. Without these boogeymen, whether it is Saddam Hussein, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Arabs who "want to push Israel into the sea," the state of Israel ceases to have any justification for the maintenance of a Jewish majority by force or for its ongoing occupation of Palestinian lands.

The fact that Benjamin Netanyahu, the pro-colonization Israeli prime minister, has made every effort to connect the idea of a nuclear Iran to the Holocaust is evidence of this scare-mongering. Iran, like Iraq in 2003, is an inflated but necessary fear for Israel. No credible analysis of the situation envisions a scenario in which Iran would use nuclear weapons against the Jewish state. But proponents of Israel's colonial enterprise, who support maintaining a Jewish majority by the force of walls and soldiers in occupied territory, want everyone to believe that the focus should be on Iran, not on the occupation, and that Israel's security policies are justifiable against "existential threats."

The need for these inflated threats has increased in the years since Israel signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. Despite these agreements, Israel still maintains and furthers its occupation of Palestinian lands through blockade and settlement expansion.

The emperor may be naked in Tel Aviv, but he can continue avoiding attention and shame if he persuades the world to look in Tehran's direction instead.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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The US-Israel Tiff in Cartoons

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

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Op-Ed: Gaza's Youth Not 'Superfluous' by Yousef Munayyer

Palestine Center Brief No. 192 (3 March 2010)

The article below was originally publish in The Boston Globe today.

To write a letter to the editor at The Boston Globe click here.

By Yousef Munayyer

"To cut down on gang-related crimes, policies could be put in place to curb the African-American population growth in places like Harlem and Compton. The government could consider cutting off welfare benefits for families in these urban areas to discourage births of blacks and cut down the supply of ‘superfluous young men’ who have nothing else to do in their lives but be preyed on by criminal gang leaders who give them a sense of belonging. Ultimately these policies are an effective way to limit gang related crimes."

The absurdity and lack of logic in the above fictitious paragraph is overshadowed only by its offensive nature. Few would welcome such a view in 2010, but this kind of argument was made recently to an audience that received it with applause instead of disgust.

Martin Kramer, a fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, made this argument at a conference in Israel last month. The only difference was that the population he sought to limit was Palestinians in Gaza to prevent “economically superfluous young men’’ from joining radical groups. He said that “if society cannot offer dignified pursuits for the fourth and fifth and sixth sons, then someone else will.’’

He also supported lowering the fertility rate for Palestinians in Gaza and argued that this “will happen faster if the West stops providing pro-natal subsidies for Palestinians with refugee status.’’

Society? In Kramer’s version of reality, it is Palestinian society that cannot offer dignified pursuits for their children. He seems to think Gaza exists in a vacuum. He seems to be ignorant of the events and actors that have created the current situation.

The children of Gaza are not “economically superfluous’’ because they were born into large families. Their inability to be productive members of society is not the fault of society itself, but the fault of the occupying and devastating force of the state of Israel. The occupation of Gaza and the subsequent siege and attacks by Israel have destroyed lives, industry and infrastructure. With the percentage of the population relying directly on food aid increasing from 60 percent to 80 percent in the past three years and unemployment at an all-time high, it is obvious that the children of Gaza are “superfluous’’ not simply because they are born, but because of what they are born into: a hell in a prison controlled from the outside by Israel.

Yet Kramer knows full well that Israel is laying siege to Gaza. In fact, he goes on to support it. The siege, he argued in his speech, can “break Gaza’s runaway population growth - and there is some evidence that they have - that may begin to crack the culture of martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.’’

The fact that Kramer fails to make the connection between Israeli policies and the conditions that lead to economic “superfluousness’’ undergirds his logical and analytical ineptitude. This, coupled with the racist and offensive nature of his comments, should push decision makers at Harvard University to reconsider whether it should be affiliated with such individuals.

Had Kramer’s comments been about any other group, as described in the opening paragraph, Harvard might have already terminated his fellowship.

Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center. This policy brief may be used without permission but with proper attribution to the Center.

The views in this brief are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Jerusalem Fund.

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Worth Reading... Palestine Opinion Pieces

Lift the Gaza blockade
by Nick Clegg
Guardian
22 December 2009

The escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The legacy of Operation Cast Lead is a living nightmare for one and a half million Palestinians squeezed into one of the most overcrowded and wretched stretches of land on the planet.

Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses
by Amnesty International (UK) and Fifteen other NGOs
December 2009

A year after Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead military offensive on Gaza, on 27 December 2008, little of the extensive damage it caused to homes, civilian infrastructure, public services, farms and businesses has been repaired. As thousands of families still come to terms with loss or injury of their loved ones, they are being prevented from rebuilding their shattered society.

Steps to create an Israel-Palestine
by Jonathan Kuttab
Los Angeles Times
20 December 2009

With Israel in total control of the territory from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and unwilling to relinquish a significant part of the land, it's time to consider the possibility that the current situation -- one state, in effect -- will continue.

We are failing Gaza
by Chris Patten
guardian.co.uk
16 December 2009

Almost one year since Israel launched its Operation Cast Lead offensive, the lack of reconstruction in Gaza is not due to any lack of international pledges for assistance. The cause is Israeli policy.

From time to time, the Palestine Center distributes articles that enhance understanding of the Palestinian condition.

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Worth Reading... Palestine-Related Articles

When will it be our time?
by Mustafa Barghouthi
The New York Times
16 December 2009

There comes a time when people cannot take injustice any more, and this time has come to Palestine.

Enough of blaming the Goldstone Report!
by Rami G. Khouri
The Daily Star
16 December 2009

The Goldstone Report is a challenging document for all concerned, no doubt, but the attempt to align the conduct of states at war with agreed international ethical standards always is.

What David Miliband should say to Tzipi Livni
by Daniel Machover
guardian.co.uk
16 December 2009
If Britain's foreign secretary has faith in his country's standards of justice, this is the phonecall he should make

Settlements, attacks drive out Palestinians
by Sarah McDonald
Gazette Online
13 December 2009

According to a November report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “In a number of cases in recent years, systematic attacks carried out by Israeli settlers have directly contributed to the massive displacement, either temporarily or permanently, of entire Palestinian communities.”

After Ft. Hood
by Nadia Hijab
Agence Global
9 Nov 2009

People express their beliefs in the way they live their daily lives. And they often draw on their understanding of their faith to justify quite contradictory positions, depending on what the age demands.

The battle over Palestinian representation
by Nadia Hijab
Agence Global
4 Nov 2009

What the future holds for a resurgent Palestinian leadership remains an open question. What is clear is that public limits are being set on P.A./P.L.O. action so as to stop the relentless erosion of Palestinian human rights. And one of the yardsticks any Palestinian leader will be measured by, now and in the future, is: “What stand did you take on the Goldstone Report?”

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Broken CAMERA: Distorted Picture of Settlements in the LA Times

Palestine Center ED's Letter Runs in L.A. Times

by Yousef Munayyer

On December 11th, The Los Angeles Times, which has generally been more balanced on its Opinion page than many of its counterparts, ran a very disappointing op-ed piece by the euphemistically-named Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

CAMERA is an outfit devoted to the defense of anything perpetrated by the State of Israel, and has very little to do with accuracy or reporting. A cursory review of their website exposes their positions against anyone who is critical of the State of Israel and its long-standing, illegal occupation. Christiane Amanpour, Jon Stewart, Roger Cohen and a host of other American, Arab, Israeli, Muslim, Christian or Jewish writers who have suggested that Israel is in the wrong (about anything), are slammed on the home page of this “committee for accuracy”.

So when the LA Times decided to run an Op-Ed by one of CAMERA’s writers arguing that Israeli settlements in the West Bank were in fact legal, I was surprised and disappointed by the editorial staff at the Times. This is, of course, not a new argument, but it is one that has been thoroughly discredited.

Below is a letter to the editor I felt compelled to write. The Times’ editors published it today.

Nothing settled about settlements

Re “A right to build,” Opinion, Dec. 11

I was surprised to see such a propagandistic article in this paper, when The Times has routinely had higher standards.

The illegality of Israeli settlements in the West Bank is widely agreed on in the arena of international law, and suggesting otherwise is merely an attempt to legitimize the ugliness of colonialism.

When Israel began to aggressively colonize the occupied territories, President Carter's secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, requested a legal opinion on the issue. Citing a variety of legal literature, including the 4th Geneva Convention, the legal opinion concludes: "The establishment of the civilian settlements in those territories is inconsistent with international law." Every U.S. administration since has maintained this standard.

The movement to colonize the rest of historic Palestine is a repulsive thing, and it remains so even when its proponents attempt to disguise it with legalistic costumes.

Yousef Munayyer
Washington

The writer is executive director of the Jerusalem Fund and the Palestine Center.

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Israeli Concession is No Concession at All

By Yousef Munayyer
Palestine Center Executive Director

San Francisco Chronicle

Friday, December 4, 2009

The Israelis finally agreed to a 10-month moratorium on settlements in the occupied West Bank. This proposal does not include East Jerusalem, also occupied in 1967, and the would-be capital of a Palestinian state.

Israel will attempt to characterize this as a painful concession in a sincere quest for peace, but in reality this is no concession at all.

In 2003, the Road Map for Peace adopted by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and the Russian Federation, set forth that the first Israeli obligation was to stop settlements. Yet, in every year since 1994, when the Oslo Accords established a framework for peace negotiations, the world has seen more settlers, settlements and the expansion of existing settlements.

Settlements contravene U.S. policy on this issue and international law. A plethora of U.N. resolutions and the Fourth Geneva Convention (to which Israel is a signatory) decry the colonization of Palestinian land.

In effect, what the Israeli prime minister has said is "I'll stop breaking the law, in only some places, and only for a limited period of time."

This does not meet the Road Map expectations of 2003, so to frame this as a concession in 2009 makes it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will not be held accountable by any American administration.

Israeli spokesmen tell Americans that they want peace, but their consistent acts of colonization speak to different intentions.

Palestinians would be fools to fall for this ploy again after years of seeing Israel disregard its obligations while Palestinians continue to live under occupation and the threat of sanctions if they do not march to the beat of Washington's drum. In fact, only days after the announcement of this moratorium, Israel has approved many new settlement homes in the West Bank.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's exclusion of East Jerusalem is especially problematic. When Israel occupied the West Bank in 1967, it unilaterally increased the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem from 6.5 square kilometers to 71 square kilometers. This encompassed many Palestinian towns, including all of Arab East Jerusalem - home to more than 260,000 Palestinians.

Through active policies of home demolition, evictions and the revocation of residencies, Israel pursues ethnic cleansing in the epicenter of this conflict. In fact, Israel has revoked the residencies of 4,500 Palestinians from Jerusalem in 2008, far more than any other year since 1967.

To enter into negotiations without a complete stop to expanding or creating settlements, including in Jerusalem, would be a de facto relinquishing of Jerusalem as a central demand for Palestinians and political suicide for any Palestinian leader.

Netanyahu knows neither Mahmoud Abbas, nor any Palestinian, could accept this. He also knows that he can spin this to seem as if he made a generous offer and the Palestinians missed another opportunity. In short, he knows this is not a concession. That's why he made it.

Because of this, Abbas seems unsure about the American position, stating last week that Obama is "doing nothing for peace."

If the United States welcomes Netanyahu's duplicitous offer and pressures Abbas to re-enter peace negotiations while East Jerusalem continues to be colonized and cleansed, Abbas will get the message.

It's a message that many have feared to be true since that start of the peace process: The United States is incapable of being a fair mediator between the Palestinians and Israel.

See it as posted on the SF Chronicle Webpage.

Views expressed on this post or on linked web pages do not represent the Palestine Center, the educational program of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development. All content is for educational purposes only.

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Letter to the Palestine Center

A letter was addressed to the Palestine Center and we thought it was such a wonderful letter that we would post it:

Use the enclosed contribution as you see fit. Among the many reasons why I find it gratifying to make donations to you is that the money I send you actually comes from the U.S. government-my Social Security pension is my only income, and that money, of course, comes from the U.S. Treasure Department. Thus, it helps at least a little in counteracting the annual contribution of the United States government of $3 billion or more to Israel.

He PS'ed a wonderful comment about a recent ad in the Washington Post. If anybody can get in contact with the group who paid for the advertisement, they should be both applauded for putting out such an ad and scolder for spending that much money on an ad and then calling our President, his excellency??

P.S.: You may have noticed, as I did, the full-page advertisement in the Washington Post placed by some group based in Kuwait regarding the merciless attack of Israel on the population of Gaza. While that ad was well-intentioned, it showed an ignorance of American tradition. If you can get in touch with that group in Kuwait, please advise them that the President of the United States should never be addressed as "your excellency." At the time the United States was created by way of the Constitutional Convention, the term "your excellency" was rejected by the convention as identical with the way the British monarchs were referred to, and the United States (long before it became the sole superower in the world) prided itself on rejecting such monarchist terms. The ad should have addressed Mr.Obama as "Mr.President."

I also thought the ad was deficient by failing to clearly indicate that the victims in its many photographs were Palestinians. The group in Kuwait would be well advised to look for assistance from persons knowledgeable about how to prepare effective advertisements. Still, the advertisement was a step in the right direction

By Anonymous donor to the Palestine Center and the Jerusalem Fund.

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Abunimah: No peace for Israel

No Peace for Israel
By Ali Abunimah
guardian.co.uk

Whenever Israel has an election, pundits begin the usual refrain that hopes for peace depend on the "peace camp" – formerly represented by the Labour party, but now by Tzipi Livni's Kadima prevailing over the anti-peace right, led by the Likud.

This has never been true, and makes even less sense as Israeli parties begin coalition talks after Tuesday's election. Yes, the "peace camp" helped launch the "peace process", but it did much more to undermine the chances for a just settlement.

In 1993, Labour prime minister Yitzhak Rabin signed the Oslo accords. Ambiguities in the agreement – which included no mention of "self-determination" or "independence" for Palestinians, or even "occupation" – made it easier to clinch a short-term deal. But confrontation over irreconcilable expectations was inevitable. While Palestinians hoped the Palestinian Authority, created by the accord, would be the nucleus of an independent state, Israel viewed it as little more than a native police force to suppress resistance to continued occupation and colonial settlement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Collaboration with Israel has always been the measure by which any Palestinian leader is judged to be a "peace partner". Rabin, according to Shlomo Ben-Ami, a former Israeli foreign minister, "never thought this [Oslo] will end in a full-fledged Palestinian state". He was right.

Throughout the "peace process", Israeli governments, regardless of who led them, expanded Jewish-only settlements in the heart of the West Bank, the territory supposed to form the bulk of the Palestinian state. In the 1990s, Ehud Barak's Labour-led government actually approved more settlement expansion than the Likud-led government that preceded it headed by Binyamin Netanyahu.

Barak, once considered "dovish", promoted a bloodthirsty image in the campaign, bolstered by the massacres of Gaza civilians he directed as defence minister. "Who has he ever shot?" Barak quipped derisively about Avigdor Lieberman, the leader of the proto-fascist Yisrael Beitenu party, in an attempt to paint the latter as a lightweight.

Today, Lieberman's party, which beat Labour into third place, will play a decisive role in a government. An immigrant who came to Israel from the former Soviet republic of Moldova, Lieberman was once a member of the outlawed racist party Kach that calls for expelling all Palestinians.

Yisrael Beitenu's manifesto was that 1.5 million Arab Palestinian citizens of Israel (indigenous survivors or descendants of the Palestinian majority ethnically cleansed in 1948) be subjected to a loyalty oath. If they don't swear allegiance to the "Jewish state" they would lose their citizenship and be forced from the land of their birth, joining millions of already stateless Palestinians in exile or in Israeli-controlled ghettos. In a move instigated by Lieberman but supported by Livni's allegedly "centrist" Kadima, the Knesset recently voted to ban Arab parties from participating in elections. Although the high court overturned it in time for the vote, it is an ominous sign of what may follow.

Lieberman, who previously served as deputy prime minister, has a long history of racist and violent incitement. Prior to Israel's recent attack, for example, he demanded Israel subject Palestinians to the brutal and indiscriminate violence Russia used in Chechyna. He also called for Arab Knesset members who met with officials from Hamas to be executed.

But it's too easy to make him the bogeyman. Israel's narrow political spectrum now consists at one end of the former "peace camp" that never halted the violent expropriation of Palestinian land for Jewish settlements and boasts with pride of the war crimes in Gaza, and at the other, a surging far-right whose "solutions" vary from apartheid to outright ethnic cleansing.

What does not help is brazen western hypocrisy. Already the US state department spokesman affirmed that the Obama administration would work with whatever coalition emerged from Israel's "thriving democracy" and promised that the US would not interfere in Israel's "internal politics". Despite Barack Obama's sweet talk about a new relationship with the Arab world, few will fail to notice the brazen double standard. In 2006, Hamas won a democratic election in the occupied territories, observed numerous unilateral or agreed truces that were violated by Israel, offered Israel a generation-long truce to set the stage for peace, and yet it is still boycotted by the US and European Union.

Worse, the US sponsored a failed coup against Hamas and continues to arm and train the anti-Hamas militias of Mahmoud Abbas, whose term as Palestinian Authority president expired on 9 January. As soon as he took office, Obama reaffirmed this boycott of Palestinian democracy.

The clearest message from Israel's election is that no Zionist party can solve Israel's basic conundrum and no negotiations will lead to a two-state solution. Israel could only be created as a "Jewish state" by the forced removal of the non-Jewish majority Palestinian population. As Palestinians once again become the majority in a country that has defied all attempts at partition, the only way to maintain Jewish control is through ever more brazen violence and repression of resistance (see Gaza). Whatever government emerges is certain to preside over more settlement-building, racial discrimination and escalating violence.

There are alternatives that have helped end what once seemed like equally intractable and bloody conflicts: a South African-style one-person one-vote democracy, or Northern Ireland-style power-sharing. Only under a democratic system according rights to all the people of the country will elections have the power to transform people's futures.

But Israel today is lurching into open fascism. It is utterly disingenuous to continue to pretend – as so many do – that its failed leaders hold the key to getting out of the morass. Instead of waiting for them to form a coalition, we must escalate the international civil society campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to force Israelis to choose a saner path.

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Abunimah: Can Mitchell broker Belfast-style pact in Mideast?

This oped ran in the Detroit Free Press on 2 February 2009

BY ALI ABUNIMAH

President Barack Obama's appointment of former Sen. George Mitchell as his new Middle East envoy is a good choice. Mitchell showed evenhandedness uncharacteristic of U.S. officials when he led a fact-finding mission to the region in 2000.
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Had its recommendations been followed -- cessation of violence and a freeze on Israeli settlement construction on occupied Palestinian land -- the peace process might have made progress. Mitchell, who is already in the Middle East, helped broker the 1998 Belfast Agreement, the key to ending decades of strife in Northern Ireland. Because of historical similarities, that agreement is an important precedent for the Middle East.

Before 1948, European Jewish settlers in Palestine wanted their own state once British colonial rulers withdrew. But because Jews were a minority, the only way to achieve this was a partition that the majority Arab Palestinian population bitterly opposed. When Israel was established in 1948, most Palestinians were forced out. Those remaining became second-class citizens in a Jewish state.

The modern conflict in Ireland began when Great Britain, facing resistance from Irish nationalists, decided to withdraw after centuries. But the Protestant ruling class, a quarter of the population, insisted Ireland remain tied to Britain. These unionists, descended from English and Scottish settlers, refused to live in a state with a nationalist Catholic majority.

To appease the unionist minority, Britain partitioned Ireland in 1921, creating Northern Ireland, an entity whose legitimacy nationalists denied. As Israeli Jews did to Palestinians, Protestants institutionalized their own culture and religion as the official creed and violently suppressed expressions of nationalist identity.

The Mitchell-led Belfast Agreement ended Protestant hegemony in favor of equality. Decades of bloody conflict left deep social divisions, but a framework for nondiscriminatory democratic governance has allowed nationalists and unionists to begin to shed their siege mentalities. While formal partition remains, it is disappearing on the ground. Anyone can live, work and move freely, and official cross-border bodies are integrating the infrastructure and economies of the two jurisdictions.

The power-sharing executive in Belfast, led by staunchly nationalist Sinn Fein (closely affiliated with the IRA) and the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, was once as inconceivable as a government made up Hamas and Israel's current government would be today. U.S. diplomacy played a key role by putting pressure on the stronger parties -- the British government and Protestant unionists. Instead of shunning Sinn Fein, the United States -- with prodding from Irish Americans -- insisted that it be brought into the process.

By 2010, Palestinians will outnumber Israeli Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip combined. The two groups cannot be totally separated any more than Ireland's Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists could.

Like Irish nationalists, Palestinians will never recognize the "right" of another group to discriminate against them. Like Protestant unionists, Israeli Jews insist on their own state. Israel's solution is to cage Palestinians into ghettos -- like Gaza -- and periodically bomb them into submission.

If Mitchell is allowed to apply Northern Ireland's lessons, there may be a way out, but he'll face obstacles he didn't encounter in Belfast. The Obama administration remains committed to the failed partition formula of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state and maintains a misguided boycott of Hamas, which won Palestinian elections in 2006. And the Israel lobby -- much more powerful than Irish-American groups -- warps U.S. policy to favor the stronger side, an intransigent Israel. If these policies don't change, the hope Mitchell brings will be wasted, and escalating violence will fill the political vacuum.

ALI ABUNIMAH, a fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., is author of "One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse." Write to him at abunimah01@yahoo.com.

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Palestine News Roundup: Mitchell Reports

Mitchell given Middle East post (BBC News)

Profile: George Mitchell (Al-Jazeera, English)

Israel rules out opening Gaza border if Hamas gains (Reuters)

Amnesty International Calls on Israel to Urgently Disclose Weapons and Munitions Used in Gaza (Amnesty International USA)

Electoral Ban on Arab Parties Lifted (Washington Post)

UN 'shocked' by Gaza destruction (BBC News)

UN: Israel showing 'good will' towards Gaza crisis, but more needs to be done (Reuters)

Israel to Defend Itself Against Gaza War Crimes Charges (Voice of America)

Hamas Leadership Stays Undercover Amid Gaza’s Ruined Buildings (Bloomberg)

After Gaza war, Israel sees Hamas prisoner swap (Reuters)

Blogs, YouTube: the new battleground of Gaza conflict (Christian Science Monitor)

Clinton calls Palestinian leader on Mideast peace (AFP)

Israel promises to allow media into Gaza (PRESS TV)

Hamas dismisses reconciliation talks with Fatah (The Associated Press)

MORE RECENT: Hamas calls for Palestinian reconciliation (The Associated Press)

Palestinian girls tell grim stories of survival (International Herald Tribune)

COMMENTARY

Gaza conflict 'remains unsettled': Interview with Alastair Crooke, founder of the Conflicts Forum think-tank (Al Jazeera English)

Qaddafi: The Mideast's one-state solution (New York Times, reprinted in IHT)

Mitchell will make a seasoned Mideast envoy (CNN International)

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PC Fellow's Op-Ed in Washington Times

ABUNIMAH: Obama's ambiguity

What it reveals about Mideast 'peace'

Ali Abunimah
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Washington Times

Sons are not responsible for the racism of their fathers. But they do have a responsibility to let others know that they disagree vehemently with such sentiments. This is certainly the case for individuals in public service, particularly the man President-elect Barack Obama has chosen as White House chief of staff. Yet, Rep. Rahm Emanuel has not said a word regarding the troubling statement his father made to the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv.

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