Tag Archives: Palestine Liberation Organization

| Rare Video: Mandela Speaking on Palestine [Extracts]

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Rare Video: Mandela Speaking on Palestine [Extracts] ~ BDS South Africa.

REFERENCES MADE BY NELSON MANDELA

PLO: The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was created in 1964 with the purpose of advancing the struggle for Palestinian self determination. The PLO is recognised as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people” by over 100 countries with which it holds diplomatic relations. Like South Africa’s (now ruling ANC) the PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organisation until 1991. In 1993 Israel officially recognised the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.

YASSER ARAFAT: Late leader of the Palestinian people as well as chairman of the PLO.

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ABOUT THE VIDEO
– 1990 Town Hall Meeting with Nelson Mandela on Palestine, Cuba and other issues

The video consists of extracts from a 1990 town hall meeting, held in New York and chaired by Ted Koppel of ABC Networks. The meeting formed part Nelson Mandela’s first visit to the USA immediately following his release after 27 years in prison.

Much of the meeting focused on Nelson Mandela’s advocating of sanctions against Apartheid South Africa, his support for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) as well as his close friendship with Yasser Arafat (of Palestine) and Fidel Castro (of Cuba).

This meeting took place in 1990, long before the world had embraced Nelson Mandela or the ANC. However, even then, Mandela stood firm and resolute on his principles and organisation’s policies even though it could have “hurt” his and the ANC’s “image”, for example his support for the Palestinian and Cuban people.

Nelson Mandela supported the Palestinian struggle when it was unfashionable and unpopular, he was a true leader. Hamba Khale Tata…

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| Crisis: Have Palestinian-Israeli talks collapsed?

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Have Palestinian-Israeli talks collapsed? ~ Stuart Littlewood, Redress Information & Analysis.

Abbas-Netanyahu

Next stop: the International Criminal Court?

 

In an earlier article I said that if the Palestinian Authority suddenly beamed information at me I’d view it with grave suspicion. So what was I supposed to make of the press release below, received yesterday evening and purporting to be from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiations Affairs Department and relayed by the embassy in London?

I could find nothing about this bombshell on the PLO or Palestine Mission UK websites. So, I called the London embassy at 10:15 this morning, to find nobody in to confirm or deny it! The ambassador’s secretary said there was a meeting with the UK Foreign Office and everyone was probably there.

Press Release: Statement on resignation of Palestinian negotiations team

In reference to the latest reports concerning the resignation of the Palestinian negotiations team from the final status negotiations, the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department would like to announce the following:

 

1. Several days ago, Dr Saeb Erekat and Dr Muhammad Shtayyeh wrote to H.E. President Mahmoud Abbas explaining that they would not be able to continue fulfilling their duties as negotiators, and thereby requesting that the president relieve them of their positions. This request was motivated by a number of factors, including: an unprecedented escalation of colonization and oppression against Palestine and the Palestinian people by the state of Israel; a lack of seriousness from the Israeli government about reaching a two-state solution; and the Israeli government’s failure to fulfil commitments undertaken before the resumption of direct negotiations on 29 July 2013.

 

2. Of particular concern was the Israeli government’s political use of the release of pre-Oslo prisoners in order to advance its illegal and profoundly damaging settlement enterprise throughout the occupied state of Palestine. This, combined with the false allegation that an agreement between the PLO and Israel was made in order to exchange prisoners for settlements, has demonstrated bad faith and a severe lack of integrity on the Israeli side.

 

3. The resignation of the Palestinian negotiators was presented after Israel had already approved 6,296 settlement units during the first three months of negotiations. This figure is higher than the total amount of settlement units approved during the five months prior to the resumption of negotiations (5,577 units). The resignation was not presented as a response to the latest announcement by the Israeli Ministry of Housing to advance almost 20,000 settlement units, but as a response to several policies that continue to undermine the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution, including accelerated settlement activity. PM Netanyahu’s call to “reconsider steps for evaluating planning potential” in illegal Israeli settlements does not halt the thousands of units Israel has approved, and continues to approve, in the occupied state of Palestine.

 

4. This resignation relates only to the current negotiations team: it does not invalidate the commitment made by the Palestine Liberation Organization to continue negotiations until the end of the nine month period agreed with Israel and the US, which ends on 29 April 2014.

 

5. The Palestinian leadership will continue its process of internal consultations and its contacts with the Arab League, Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and the United States, along with other international partners, in order to advance the cause for a just peace between Israel and Palestine, which includes ending the 1967 Israeli occupation and reaching a solution to all final status issues based on international law.

Questions for William Hague

Meanwhile I felt another “Dear Henry…” coming on so penned the following to my member of parliament, Henry Bellingham:

Dear Henry,

If the bulletin…  is true, the so-called peace talks appear to have collapsed. Few people with an interest in these matters will be surprised.

Negotiators Erekat and Shtayyeh have resigned, saying they came to the decision because of the “unprecedented escalation of colonization and oppression against Palestine and the Palestinian people by the state of Israel [for instance the 6,296 illegal settlement units  approved by the Israelis during the first three months of negotiation]; a lack of seriousness from the Israeli government about reaching a two-state solution; and the Israeli government’s failure to fulfil commitments undertaken before the resumption of direct negotiations on July 29th 2013.”

Everyone has known this charade was designed to buy time to create more irreversible “facts on the ground” in order to make Israel’s occupation – or at least domination – permanent. The wonder is that it took this long for the Palestinians to become disgusted enough to walk away.

Would you please ask the foreign secretary:

1. Why has Her Majesty’s Government continually pushed the Palestinians into direct negotiations with their oppressor knowing full well the Israelis’ track record of conducting these matters in bad faith?

2. Since it is obvious that no peace can be sustained unless underpinned by justice and the rule of international law, will HMG now recommend the Palestinians take their claims to the International Criminal Court and help enforce the outcome with trade or other sanctions until compliance is achieved?

Kind regards, etc.

With a fog of uncertainty (or secrecy) enveloping the London end, I have emailed a communications adviser at the PLO with the question: “Does this mean the peace talks have collapsed? Can anyone be found to continue them – if so who are the new negotiators? And what reasons are there to still delay taking Palestine’s claims to the International Criminal Court?”

I received the following reply from the PLO:

1. The statement is clear: this involves only the negotiations team, not the negotiations process.

2. The president, in consultation with the leadership, will take a decision regarding the future of the negotiations team. The president has said publicly that he is trying to convince the current team to stay but, if they refuse, he will nominate a new team.

3. The only reason for not ratifying the Rome Statue, as well as other international treaties, is an agreement with the Israeli side to free 104 pre-Oslo prisoners during nine months in return of [sic] not joining new international treaties or UN institutions. The nine months end on 29 April 2014.

Will anyone step forward? Shocking blackmail regarding the prisoners. And what a grubby, disreputable deal all endorsed by Western powers.

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| Ziocolony Israel’s History of Assassinating Palestinian Leaders!

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Israel’s History of Assassinating Palestinian Leaders ~ Institute for Middle East Understanding [IMEU].

On November 6, several news outlets reported that the widow of former Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Chairman Yasser Arafat announced that the results of a Swiss investigation into her late husband’s death concluded he was poisoned with polonium, a radioactive substance.

In November 2012, Arafat’s body was exhumed in order for medical examiners to take samples of his remains to test for polonium, part of a murder investigation launched by French authorities at the request of Suha Arafat following the discovery last summer of traces of the highly toxic substance on some of his personal effects. In October 2004, after enduring a two-year siege by the Israeli military in his West Bank headquarters, Arafat fell seriously ill. Two weeks later he was transported to a French military hospital where he died. Doctors concluded he died from a stroke caused by a mysterious blood disorder.

At the time, many Palestinians suspected that Arafat was murdered. Over the years, he had survived numerous assassination attempts by Israel, and just six months before his death then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said that an agreement he had made with US President George W. Bush promising that Israel wouldn’t kill Arafat was no longer valid, stating: “I released myself from the commitment in regard to Arafat.”

Two years prior to that statement, in an interview published in February 2002, Sharon told an Israeli journalist that he regretted not killing Arafat when he had the chance during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, stating: “I am sorry that we did not liquidate him.” In 2002, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then in the opposition following his first term as prime minister (1996-1999), told the Likud party Central Committee: “We must completely and totally eradicate Arafat’s regime and remove him from the vicinity… This one thing must be understood: If we do not remove Arafat and his regime, the terror will return and increase. And only if we do remove them is there any chance of turning a new leaf in our relationship with the Palestinians.” When Arafat died, Netanyahu was serving as Minister of Finance in Sharon’s government.

PARTIAL LIST OF ISRAELI ASSASSINATIONS OF PALESTINIANS

2012 – On November 14, two days after Palestinian factions in Gaza agree to a truce following several days of violence, Israel assassinates the leader of Hamas’ military wing, Ahmed Jabari, threatening to escalate the violence once again after a week in which at least six Palestinian civilians are killed and dozens more wounded in Israeli attacks. Although Israeli officials know that Jabari is in the process of finalizing a long-term truce, and that he is one of the few people in Gaza who can enforce it, they kill him anyway, marking the start of a week-long assault on Gaza that kills more than 100 Palestinian civilians, including at least 33 children, and wounds more than 1000 others.

2012 – On March 9, Israel violates an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire and assassinates the head of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhair al-Qaisi, sparking another round of violence in which at least two dozen Palestinians are killed, including at least four civilians, and scores more wounded. As it usually does, Israel claims it is acting in self-defense, against an imminent attack being planned by the PRC, while providing no evidence to substantiate the allegation.

Following the assassination, Israeli journalist Zvi Bar’el writes in the Haaretz newspaper:

“It is hard to understand what basis there is for the assertion that Israel is not striving to escalate the situation. One could assume that an armed response by the Popular Resistance Committees or Islamic Jihad to Israel’s targeted assassination was taken into account. But did anyone weigh the possibility that the violent reaction could lead to a greater number of Israeli casualties than any terrorist attack that Zuhair al-Qaisi, the secretary-general of the Popular Resistance Committees, could have carried out?

“In the absence of a clear answer to that question, one may assume that those who decided to assassinate al-Qaisi once again relied on the ‘measured response’ strategy, in which an Israeli strike draws a reaction, which draws an Israeli counter-reaction.”

2010 – In January, suspected Israeli assassins kill senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room. As in the past, the Israeli agents believed to have carried out the killing use forged and stolen foreign passports from western countries, including Britain, France, Ireland and Germany, causing an international uproar.

2009 – On January 15, an Israeli airstrike kills Said Seyam, Hamas’ Interior Minister and member of the Palestinian Legislative Council.

2009 – On January 1, an Israeli airstrike on the home of senior Hamas military commander Nizar Rayan kills him and 15 family members, including 11 of his children.

2006 – On June 8, Israel assassinates Jamal Abu Samhadana, founder of the Popular Resistance Committees and Interior Minister of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government, killing three other members of the PRC in the process.

2004 – On April 17, Israel assassinates Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a co-founder of Hamas and its leader since the assassination of Hamas spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin a month earlier. Rantisi is considered a moderate within Hamas.

2004 – On March 22, Israel assassinates the 67-year-old wheelchair-bound spiritual leader and co-founder of Hamas, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, as he leaves prayers at a mosque in Gaza, killing nine innocent bystanders in the process.

2003 – On March 8, Israel assassinates Ibrahim Maqadma, one of the founders of Hamas and one of its top military commanders.

2002 – On July 23, hours before a widely reported ceasefire declared by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is scheduled to come into effect, Israel bombs an apartment building in the middle of the night in the densely populated Gaza Strip in order to assassinate Hamas leader Salah Shehada. Fourteen civilians, including nine children, are also killed in the attack, and 50 others wounded, leading to a scuttling of the ceasefire and a continuation of violence.

2002 – On January 14, Israel assassinates Raed Karmi, a militant leader in the Fatah party, following a ceasefire agreed to by all Palestinian militant groups the previous month, leading to its cancellation. Later in January, the first suicide bombing by the Fatah linked Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade takes place.

2001 – On November 23, Israel assassinates senior Hamas militant, Mahmoud Abu Hanoud. At the time, Hamas was adhering to an agreement made with PLO head Yasser Arafat not to attack targets inside of Israel. Following the killing, Israeli military correspondent of the right-leaning Yediot Ahronot newspaper, Alex Fishman, writes in a front-page story:

“We again find ourselves preparing with dread for a new mass terrorist attack within the Green Line [Israel’s pre-1967 border]… Whoever gave a green light to this act of liquidation knew full well that he is thereby shattering in one blow the gentleman’s agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority; under that agreement, Hamas was to avoid in the near future suicide bombings inside the Green Line…”

2001 – On August 27, Israel uses US-made Apache helicopter gunships to assassinate Abu Ali Mustafa, secretary general of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In response, PFLP members assassinate Israel’s Tourism Minister and notorious right-wing hardliner, Rehavam Ze’evi, who advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.

2001 – On August 15, undercover Israeli soldiers assassinate Emad Abu Sneineh, a member of the Fatah linked Tanzim militia, opening fire on him at close range.

2001 – On August 5, Israeli forces assassinate Hamas member Amer Mansour Habiri in the West Bank city of Tulkarem, firing missiles at his car from helicopter gunships.

2001– On July 29, Israel assassinates Jamal Mansour, a senior member of Hamas’ political wing.

2001 – On July 25, as Israeli and Palestinian Authority security officials are scheduled to meet to shore up a six-week-old ceasefire amidst the violence of the Second Intifada, Israel assassinates a senior Islamic Jihad member, Salah Darwazeh in Nablus.

1997 – In September, the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attempts to assassinate Khaled Meshaal, the chairman of Hamas’ political bureau, in Amman, Jordan. Israeli agents using fake Canadian passports attempt to kill Meshaal by injecting poison into his ear. The would-be assassins are quickly captured and in the ensuing diplomatic uproar Jordan’s King Hussein threatens to cut off relations with Israel and publicly try and hang the Israeli agents unless Israel provides the antidote to the poison. The Netanyahu government turns over the antidote, saving Meshaal’s life. As part of the deal, Israel also releases Hamas spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin from prison.

1996 – On January 5, Israel assassinates Hamas military commander Yahya Ayash, known as “The Engineer,” detonating explosives in a cell phone he is using. Over the next two months, Hamas responds by launching four suicide bombings that kill more than 50 Israelis. Israeli intelligence later concludes: “the attacks were most probably a direct reaction to the assassination of Ayash.”

1995 – In October, Israeli gunmen assassinate Fathi Shiqaqi, a founder of Islamic Jihad, in Malta, as he leaves his hotel in Valletta.

1994 – On November 2, Israel assassinates journalist Hani Abed, who has ties to Islamic Jihad, using a bomb rigged to his car.

1988 – On April 16, Israel assassinates senior PLO leader Khalil al-Wazir in Tunisia, even as the Reagan administration is trying to organize an international conference to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians. The US State Department condemns the murder as an “act of political assassination.” In ensuing protests in the occupied territories, a further seven Palestinians are gunned down by Israeli forces.

1986 – On June 9, Khalid Nazzal, Secretary of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is shot dead by Israeli agents in Athens, Greece.

1983 – On August 21, senior PLO official and top aid to Yasser Arafat, Mamoun Meraish, is shot and killed by Israeli agents in Athens, Greece. According to later Israeli press reports, future Foreign Minister (currently Minister of Justice) Tzipi Livni  is involved in Meraish’s killing.

1978 – On March 28, Wadie Haddad, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, dies in East Germany from slow-acting poison ingested several months earlier. It is later revealed that Israeli agents were behind his murder.

1972 – On July 8, Palestinian author and intellectual Ghassan Kanafani and his 17-year-old niece are killed in Beirut by a car bomb, believed to have been planted by Israeli agents. A member of the left-wing Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Kanafani was considered a major literary figure in the Arab world and beyond.

1972 – During the 1970s, Israel carries out a series of assassinations against Palestinians they accuse of being involved with the Black September militant organization, which is responsible for the hostage taking of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, resulting in the deaths of 11 Israeli athletes and officials. On October 16, 1972, Wael Zwaiter, a renowned Palestinian intellectual and the PLO representative to Italy, is shot and killed by Israeli agents in Rome. Israel accuses him of being involved with Black September, a charge strenuously denied by PLO officials and those who knew him, who pointed out that Zwaiter was a pacifist.

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| Breaking: Widow proves Arafat was poisoned with polonium!

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UPDATE 1-Palestinian leader Arafat was murdered with polonium – widow ~ Paul Taylor, PARIS.

(Reuters) – Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium, his widow Suha said on Wednesday after receiving the results of Swiss forensic tests on her husband’s corpse.

“We are revealing a real crime, a political assassination,” she told Reuters in Paris.

A team of experts, including from Lausanne University Hospital’s Institute of Radiation Physics, opened Arafat’s grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November, and took samples from his body to seek evidence of alleged poisoning.

“This has confirmed all our doubts,” said Suha Arafat, who met members of the Swiss forensic team in Geneva on Tuesday. “It is scientifically proved that he didn’t die a natural death and we have scientific proof that this man was killed.”

She did not accuse any country or person, and acknowledged that the historic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization had many enemies.

Arafat signed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords with Israel and led a subsequent uprising after the failure of talks in 2000 on a comprehensive agreement.

Allegations of foul play surfaced immediately. Arafat had foes among his own people, but many Palestinians pointed the finger at Israel, which had besieged him in his Ramallah headquarters for the final two and a half years of his life.

The Israeli government has denied any role in his death, noting that he was 75 years old and had an unhealthy lifestyle.

An investigation by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television news channel first reported last year that traces of polonium-210 were found on personal effects of Arafat given to his widow by the French military hospital where he died.

That led French prosecutors to open an investigation for suspected murder in August 2012 at the request of Suha Arafat. Forensic experts from Switzerland, Russia and France all took samples from his corpse for testing after the Palestinian Authority agreed to open his mausoleum.

“SMOKING GUN”

The head of the Russian forensics institute, Vladimir Uiba, was quoted by the Interfax news agency last month as saying no trace of polonium had been found on the body specimens examined in Moscow, but his Federal Medico-Biological Agency later denied he had made any official comment on its findings.

The French pathologists have not reported their conclusions publicly, nor have their findings been shared with Suha Arafat’s legal team. A spokeswoman for the French prosecutor’s office said the investigating magistrats had received no expert reports so far.

One of her lawyers said the Swiss institute’s report, commissioned by Al Jazeera, would be translated from English into French and handed over to the three magistrates in the Paris suburb of Nanterre who are investigating the case.

Professor David Barclay, a British forensic scientist retained by Al Jazeera to interpret the results of the Swiss tests, said the findings from Arafat’s body confirmed the earlier results from traces of bodily fluids on his underwear, toothbrush and clothing.

“In my opinion, it is absolutely certain that the cause of his illness was polonium poisoning,” Barclay told Reuters. “The levels present in him are sufficient to have caused death.

“What we have got is the smoking gun – the thing that caused his illness and was given to him with malice.”

The same radioactive substance was slipped into a cup of tea in a London hotel to kill defecting Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. From his deathbed, Litvinenko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder.

The British government refused to hold a public inquiry into his death after ministers withheld some material which could have shed light on Russia’s suspected involvement.

Barclay said the type of polonium discovered in Arafat’s body must have been manufactured in a nuclear reactor.

While many countries could have been the source, someone in Arafat’s immediate entourage must have slipped a miniscule dose of the deadly isotope probably as a powder into his drink, food, eye drops or toothpaste, he said.

BRIEF RECOVERY

Arafat fell ill in October 2004, displaying symptoms of acute gastroenteritis with diarrhoea and vomiting. At first Palestinian officials said he was suffering from influenza.

He was flown to Paris in a French government plane but fell into a coma shortly after his arrival at the Percy military hospital in the suburb of Clamart, where he died on Nov. 11.

The official cause of death was a massive stroke but French doctors said at the time they were unable to determine the origin of his illness. No autopsy was carried out.

Barclay said no one would have thought to look for polonium as a possible poison until the Litvinenko case, which occurred two years after Arafat’s death.

Some experts have questioned whether Arafat could have died of polonium poisoning, pointing to a brief recovery during his illness that they said was not consistent with radioactive exposure. They also noted he did not lose all his hair. But Barclay said neither fact was inconsistent with the findings.

Since polonium loses 50 percent of its radioactivity every four months, the traces in Arafat’s corpse would have faded so far as to have become untraceable if the tests had been conducted a couple of years later, the scientist said.

“A tiny amount of polonium the size of a flake of dandruff would be enough to kill 50 people if it was dissolved in water and they drank it,” he added.

The Al Jazeera investigation was spearheaded by investigative journalist Clayton Swisher, a former U.S. Secret Service bodyguard who became friendly with Arafat and was suspicious of the manner of his death.

Hani al-Hassan, a former aide, said in 2003 that he had witnessed 13 assassination attempts on Arafat’s life, dating back to his years on the run as PLO leader. Arafat claimed to have survived 40 attempts on his life.

Arafat narrowly escaped an Israeli air strike on his headquarters in Tunisia in 1985. He had just gone out jogging when the bombers attacked, killing 73 people.

He escaped another attempt on his life when Israeli warplanes came close to killing him during the 182 invasion of Beirut when they hit one of the buildings they suspected he was using as his headquarters but he was not there. In December 2001, Arafat was rushed to safety just before Israeli helicopters bombarded his compound in Ramallah with rockets.

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Al Jazeera exposes forensic results on Arafat’s death: http://aje.me/17MEioc

polonium2Al Jazeera exposes forensic results on Arafat’s death: http://aje.me/17MEioc

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| PALESTINE: Declaration of Independence ~ UNGA + UNSC, 18 Nov 1988.

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| PALESTINE: Declaration of Independence ~ ANNEX III, Agenda item 37, QUESTION OF PALESTINE, UNITED NATIONS, General Assembly & Security Council, A/43/827, S/20278, 18 November 1988.

On the same terrain as God’s apostolic missions to mankind and in the land of Palestine was the Palestinian Arab people brought forth. There it grew and developed, and there it created its unique human and national mode of existence in an organic, indissoluble and unbroken relationship among people, land and history.

With epic tenaciousness in terms of place and time, the people of Palestine fashioned its national identity. Its steadfast endurance in its own defence rose to preternatural levels, for despite the ambitions, covetousness and armed invasions which deprived that people of an opportunity to achieve political independence, and which were prompted by the allure of this ancient land and its crucial position on the intersecting boundaries of powerful nations and civilizations, it was the constancy with which the people adhered to the land that gave that land its identity and which imbued its people with the national spirit.

Nourished by many strains of civilizations and a multitude of cultures and finding inspiration in the texts of its spiritual and historical heritage, the Palestinian Arab people has, throughout history, continued to develop its identity in an integral unity of land and people and in the footsteps of the prophets throughout this Holy Land, the invocation of praise for the Creator high atop every minaret while hymns of mercy and peace have rung out with the bells of every church and temple.

From generation unto generation, the Palestinian Arab people has not ceased its valiant defence of its homeland, and the successive rebellions of our people have been a heroic embodiment of its desire for national independence.

At a time when the modern world was fashioning its new system of values, the prevailing balance of power in the local and international arenas excluded the Palestinians from the common destiny, and it was shown once more that it was not justice alone that turned the wheels of history.

The deep injury already done the Palestinian people and therefore aggravated when a painful differentiation was made: a people deprived of independence, and one whose homeland was subjected to a new kind of foreign occupation, was exposed to an attempt to give general currency to the falsehood that Palestine was “a land without a people”. Despite this falsification of history, the international community, in article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations of 1919 and in the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, recognized that the Palestinian Arab people was no different from the other Arab peoples detached from the Ottoman State and was a free and independent people.

Despite the historical injustice done to the Palestinian Arab people in its displacement and in being deprived of the right to self-determination following the adoption of General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 1947, which partitioned Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish State, that resolution nevertheless continues to attach conditions to international legitimacy that guarantee the Palestinian Arab people the right to sovereignty and national independence.

The occupation of Palestinian territory and parts of other Arab territory by Israeli forces, the uprooting of the majority of Palestinians and their displacement from their homes by means of organized intimidation, and the subjection of the remainder to occupation, oppression and the destruction of the distinctive features of their national life, are a flagrant violation of the principle of legitimacy and of the Charter of the United Nations and its resolutions recognizing the national rights of the Palestinian people, including the right to return and the right to self-determination, independence and sovereignty over the territory of its homeland.

In the heart of its homeland and on its periphery, in its places of exile near and far, the Palestinian Arab people has not lost its unwavering faith in its right to return nor its firm belief in its right to independence. Occupation, carnage and displacement have been unable to dispossess the Palestinians of their consciousness and their identity – their epic struggle has endured, and the formation of their national character has continued with the growing escalation of the struggle. The national will has established its political framework; and that is the Palestine Liberation Organization, the sole, legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, as recognized by the international community and represented in the United Nations and its institutions and in other international and regional organizations. Founding itself on a belief in inalienable rights, on the Arab national consensus and on international legitimacy, the Palestine Liberation Organization has assumed leadership in the battles of a great people fused in an exemplary national unity and in a legendary and steadfast resistance to carnage and encirclement within its homeland and outside. To the Arab national consciousness and to that of the entire world, the epic of the Palestinian resistance has manifested itself as one of the most conspicuous national liberation movements of the age.

The great popular uprising now mounting in the occupied territories, together with the legendary steadfastness of the camps within and outside the homeland, have raised mankind’s grasp of the true nature of the Palestinian issue and of Palestinian national rights to a level higher than that of full and mature comprehension, have brought down the final curtain on an entire epoch of falsification and conscientious indifference and have beleaguered the official Israeli mentality, prone as it is to appeal to arguments based on mythology and to resort to intimidation in its denial of Palestinian existence.

With the uprising, with the escalation of the revolutionary struggle and with the accumulation of revolutionary experience wherever the struggle is in progress, the Palestinian conjuncture reaches a sharp historical turning point. The Palestinian Arab people asserts once more its inalienable rights and its demand to exercise those rights in its Palestinian homeland.

By virtue of the natural, historical and legal right of the Palestinian Arab people to its homeland, Palestine, and of the sacrifices of its succeeding generations in defence of the freedom and independence of that homeland,

Pursuant to the resolutions of the Arab Summit Conferences and on the basis of the international legitimacy embodied in the resolutions of the United Nations since 1947, and

Through the exercise by the Palestinian Arab people of its right to self-determination, political independence and sovereignty over its territory:

The Palestine National Council hereby declares, in the Name of God and on behalf of the Palestinian Arab people, the establishment of the State of Palestine in the land of Palestine with its capital at Jerusalem.

The State of Palestine shall be for Palestinians, wherever they may be therein to develop their national and cultural identity and therein to enjoy full equality of rights. Their religious and political beliefs and human dignity shall therein be safeguarded under a democratic parliamentary system based on freedom of opinion and the freedom to form parties, on the heed of the majority for minority rights and the respect of minorities for majority decisions, on social justice and equality, and on non-discrimination in civil rights on grounds of race, religion or colour or as between men and women, under a Constitution ensuring the rule of law and an independent judiciary and on the basis of true fidelity to the age-old spiritual and cultural heritage of Palestine with respect to mutual tolerance, coexistence and magnanimity among religions.

The State of Palestine shall be an Arab State and shall be an integral part of the Arab nation, of its heritage and civilization and of its present endeavour for the achievement of the goals of liberation, development, democracy and unity. In affirming its commitment to the Pact of the League of Arab States and its concern for the strengthening of joint Arab action, the State of Palestine calls upon the members of the Arab nation for their assistance in achieving its de facto emergence by mobilizing their capacities and intensifying the efforts made to bring the Israeli occupation to an end.

The State of Palestine declares its commitment to the purposes and principles of the United Nations, to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to the policy and principles of non-alignment.

The State of Palestine, in declaring that it is a peace-loving State committed to the principles of peaceful coexistence, shall strive, together with all other States and peoples, for the achievement of a lasting peace based on justice and respect for rights, under which the human potential for constructive activity may flourish, mutual competition may centre on life-sustaining innovation and there is no fear for the future, since the future bears only assurance for those who have acted justly or made amends to justice.

In the context of its struggle to bring peace to a land of peace and love, the State of Palestine calls upon the United Nations, which bears a special responsibility towards the Palestinian Arab people and its homeland, and upon the peace-loving States and peoples of the world and those that cherish freedom to assist it in achieving its goals, in bringing the plight of its people to an end, in ensuring the safety and security of that people and in endeavouring to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

The State of Palestine further declares, in that connection, that it believes in the solution of international and regional problems by peaceful means in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the resolutions adopted by it, and that, without prejudice to its natural right to defend itself, it rejects the threat or use of force, violence and intimidation against its territorial integrity and political independence or those of any other State.

On this momentous day, the fifteenth day of November 1988, as we stand on the threshold of a new era, we bow our heads in deference and humility to the departed souls of our martyrs and the martyrs of the Arab nation who, by virtue of the pure blood shed by them, have lit the glimmer of this auspicious dawn and who have died so that the homeland might live. We lift up our hearts so that they may be filled with light from the radiance of the hallowed uprising, of the epic resistance of those in the camps, in the dispersion and in exile, and of those who have borne the manner of freedom: our children, our elders and our youth; our prisoners, detainees and wounded based on the hallowed soil and in every camp, village and city; the valiant Palestinian women, the guardians of our life and our survival and keepers of our eternal flame. To the spirits of our righteous martyrs, to the masses of our Palestinian Arab people and our Arab nation and to all free and honourable men, we give our solemn pledge to continue the struggle for an end to the occupation and the establishment of sovereignty and independence. We call upon our great people to rally to the Palestinian flag, to take pride in it and to defend it so that it shall remain forever a symbol of our freedom and dignity in a homeland that shall be forever free and the abode of a people of free men.

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate“Say: ‘O God, Master of the Kingdom, Thou givest the Kingdom
to whom Thou wilt, and seizest the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt,
Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest whom Thou wilt;
in Thy hand is the good; Thou art powerful over everything …”

Almighty God has spoken the truth—–

PAL EQUALITY 4
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| Does Netanyahu Really Support The Two-State Solution?

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Does Netanyahu Really Support The Two-State Solution? ~ IMEU.

 

Opposition to the Oslo Accords & the Gaza “Disengagement”

  • In the 1990s, while leader of the Likud party in opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu was one of the most prominent critics of the series of agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that became known as the Oslo Accords, which began under the Labor party government of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Following Rabin’s assassination in 1995 by a right-wing Jewish extremist, some Israelis, including members of Rabin’s family, even blamed Netanyahu for being complicit in Rabin’s murder by fanning the flames of incitement against him. In particular, his critics point to rallies that Netanyahu addressed at which Rabin was portrayed on signs in a Nazi uniform and accused of being a traitor.

 

  • Taking power in 1996 for his first term (1996-1999) shortly after Rabin’s death, Prime Minister Netanyahu proceeded to drag out the negotiations begun by the previous government while delaying or refusing to implement provisions of already-signed agreements, including redeployments of Israeli troops, antagonizing Palestinian negotiators as well as US President Bill Clinton. Following his first meeting with Netanyahu, in 1996, a frustrated Clintonexclaimed angrily to his aides: “Who the f–k does he think he is? Who’s the f—ing superpower here?”

 

  • While drawing out talks with Palestinian negotiators, Netanyahu increased settlement construction, following the advice of his Likud predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, who said after losing power in 1992 that if he had remained prime minister: “I would have conducted negotiations on autonomy for 10 years and in the meantime we would have reached half a million [settlers in the occupied West Bank].”

 

  • In 2001, back in the opposition, Netanyahu was caught on video bragging to a group of Jewish settlers that he had undermined the Oslo process while prime minister, stating: “I de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords.” Regarding pressure from the US, Netanyahu said: “America is a thing you can move very easily.” In the video he also told the settlers that the way to deal with Palestinians is to “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable.”

 

  • In 2005, then-Finance Minister Netanyahu resigned from his post in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud government in protest of Sharon’s plan to withdraw settlers and soldiers from Gaza and four small Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Remaining on the fence until the last minute, Netanyahu resigned despite the fact that Sharon assured his right-wing critics that the withdrawal from Gaza would actually help prevent the creation of a Palestinian state rather than hasten it, by alleviating international pressure and allowing Israel to continue settlement expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. As top Sharon advisor Dov Weisglass put it in 2004, the Gaza withdrawal supplied the “formaldehyde that is necessary so there will not be a political process with the Palestinians… until the Palestinians turn into Finns.”

 

The Bar-Ilan University Speech & Netanyahu’s Vision of a Palestinian “State”

  • Returning to power in March 2009 for a second term as prime minister (2009-2013), Netanyahu once again came under pressure from a US president, recently elected Barack Obama, and the international community, to enter into serious negotiations with the Palestinians based on the two-state solution.

 

  • In June 2009, Netanyahu gave a speech at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University where he said for the first time that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state, in a move heralded by his supporters as a bold and historic moment. However, he attached numerous conditions that effectively stripped the proposed state of any real sovereignty, and others that no Palestinian leader could accept even if they wanted to. These conditions included:

 

  • The state would be demilitarized and its borders and airspace would be controlled by Israel.

 

 

  • Palestinians would have to recognize Israel as the “state of the Jewish people,” thereby formally endorsing the institutionalized discriminationthat Palestinian citizens of Israel (who make up about 20% of the population) face living in a state that privileges Jews over non-Jews.

 

  • Palestinian refugees expelled during Israel’s creation and their descendants (also refugees) would not be allowed to exercise theirinternationally recognized legal right to return to the land they were forced to leave when Israel was established in 1948-9.

 

  • In his speech to a joint session of the US Congress in May 2011, Netanyahu reiterated and elaborated on his vision of a Palestinian “state,” saying:
    • He would refuse to base negotiations on Israel’s internationally recognized, pre-1967 borders, the foundation of previous talks and international efforts to make peace going back decades.
  • Israel would retain large so-called settlement “blocs” in and around East Jerusalem, which jut into the West Bank (the heartland of the proposed Palestinian state), effectively cutting it in two.
  • Israel would maintain “a long-term military presence” in the Jordan Valley, meaning Israel would control all entry in and out of the Palestinian “state” along with some of its most fertile agricultural land.

 

  • In late December 2012, Likud Knesset member (MK) Tzipi Hotovely told a panel discussion that the Bar-Ilan address was merely a “tactical speech for the rest of the world,” declaring: “We are opposed to a Palestinian state.”

 

Creating “Facts on the Ground”

  • During both his first (1996-1999) and second (2009-2013) terms in office, Netanyahu accelerated the building of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land, part of an effort to create “facts on the ground” designed to prevent the creation of a contiguous and genuinely independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

 

  • In 1997, a year after taking power in his first term, Netanyahu gave the final go-ahead for construction of a new settlement between East Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Har Homa, which forms part of a ring of Jewish settlements around East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank. Attempting to minimize the diplomatic and public relations damage done by the announcement, Netanyahu claimed that green lighting Har Homa was an insignificant matter and that construction probably wouldn’t begin for many years to come. Today, 16 years later, around 15,000 Jewish settlers live in Har Homa.

 

  • From the time that Netanyahu returned to power for a second term in March 2009 until July 2012, the number of Jewish settlers living illegally on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank grew by 18% according to the Israeli Interior Ministry. In November 2012, following a string of new settlement expansion announcements, including in the highly sensitive “E-1” corridor of East Jerusalem, the US State Department issued an unusually strong rebuke of Israeli settlement policies, with a spokesperson describing them as a “pattern of provocation.”

 

  • On January 16, 2013, Israel’s Peace Now, which monitors settlement growth, released a report condemning Netanyahu’s settlement policies, alleging they “disclose a clear intention to use settlements to systematically undermine and render impossible a realistic, viable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

 

Likud & Coalition Partner Opposition to Palestinian Statehood

Likud

  • Inspired by the Revisionist Zionism of Zeev Jabotinsky, who advocated the creation of a Greater Israel that included all of historic Palestine as well as Jordan, Netanyahu’s Likud party has historically opposed Palestinian statehood in the occupied territories and is strongly supportive of Israel’s settlement enterprise. In previous years, Likud’s platform explicitly prohibited the creation of a Palestinian state “west of the Jordan River.” During the most recent election, the combined Likud-Yisrael Beiteinu party electoral list released no platform, with some observers speculating that it was because neither party supports the two-state solution but didn’t want the diplomatic headaches that would be created if they declared it in their electoral platform.

 

  • Despite Netanyahu’s supposed acceptance of Palestinian statehood as detailed in his Bar-Ilan speech, his party and its rank and file members have never accepted the idea of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Key Likud members named to Netanyahu’s new cabinet who oppose Palestinian statehood include Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon, and Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin. During the previous government Ya’alon criticized his predecessor, Ehud Barak, for not approving settlement construction quickly enough, while Danon and Elkin, a settler considered one of the most right-wing members of Israel’s previous parliament, want to annex “Area C” of the occupied Palestinian West Bank (about 60% of the total area) which, according to the terms of the interim Oslo Accords falls under full Israeli security control. (See here for a UN map of Area C.)

 

Yisrael Beiteinu & HaBayit HaYehud

  • In October 2012, Netanyahu allied Likud with former Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party to run on a joint parliamentary ticket in the upcoming election. Yisrael Beiteinu and Lieberman were important players in Netanyahu’s previous government and will be again for his third term. Lieberman, a settler, has a long history of opposing peace negotiations and agreements signed with the Palestinians, and has said on numerous occasions that peace isn’t possible for at least ageneration. (See here for more on Lieberman and Yisrael Beiteinu.)

 

  • Naftali Bennett’s ultra right-wing, pro-settler HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) party is another key member of Netanyahu’s new government. While not a settler himself, Bennett is a former head of the main political body that represents Jewish settlers living in the occupied Palestinian territories and also supports annexing the 60% of the Palestinian West Bank known as Area C. In January 2013, Bennett told an interviewer: “I will do everything in my power, forever, to fight against a Palestinian state being founded in the Land of Israel.” As part of the coalition agreement signed between the governing parties, HaBayit HaYehudi added a provision requiring the government hold a national referendum on any peace agreement that involved returning occupied Palestinian land. (See here for more on Bennett and HaBayit HaYehudi.)

 

What Others Think of Netanyahu

  • In January 2013, columnist Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg news reported that US President Barack Obama was fed up with Netanyahu and his partners in the previous coalition government, and that he believed “Israel doesn’t know what its own best interests are.”

 

  • In October 2012, former US President Jimmy Carter, who brokered the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, accused Netanyahu of having “abandoned” the two-state solution by refusing to halt settlement construction.

 

  • In April 2012, Yuval Diskin, the former head of Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, blamed Netanyahu for the impasse in the peace talks with the Palestinians, stating:

    “Forget the stories they tell you about how [PLO Chairman Mahmoud] Abbas is not interested in negotiation… We are not talking to the Palestinians because this government has no interest in negotiations.

    “I was there up to a year ago and I know from up-close what is happening. This government is not interested in solving anything with the Palestinians, and I say this [with] certainty.”

 

  • In May 2012, a leaked report revealed that officials in the British Foreign Office also blamed Netanyahu for the lack of negotiations. The report stated: “Netanyahu has a history of using the incitement issue as a delaying tactic in peace talks.” Regarding Israeli claims the Palestinian Authority (PA) school system incites hatred and violence, the Foreign Office report added: “Authoritative studies agree that PA textbooks are not inciting hatred of Israel.”

 

  • In November 2011, former French President Nicholas Sarkozy was caught on a microphone complaining to President Obama that Netanyahu was a “liar,” stating: “I cannot stand him. He’s a liar.” Seeming to agree, Obama replied, “You’re fed up with him? I have to deal with him every day.”

 

  • In September 2011, former US President Bill Clinton blamed Netanyahu for the failure of peace talks, adding, “The real cynics believe that the Netanyahu government’s continued call for negotiations over borders and such means that he’s just not going to give up the West Bank.”

 

  • In February 2011, a senior German official told Haaretz newspaper that Chancellor Angela Merkel, a strong supporter of Israel, had expressed her frustration with Netanyahu during a phone conversation, complaining, “You haven’t made a single step to advance peace.”

 

  • In March 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton harshly criticized Netanyahu in a phone call after the Israeli government announced the construction of 1600 new settlement units in occupied East Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden. According to a State Department spokesman, during an angry 45-minute conversation Clinton told Netanyahu that the announcement sent a “deeply negative signal about Israel’s approach to the bilateral relationship and [was] counter to the spirit of the vice president’s trip… this action had undermined trust and confidence in the peace process and in America’s interests.” The same day, Clinton told CNN: “The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting.”

 

Influences on Netanyahu’s Views Towards the Palestinians

  • Netanyahu’s views on the Palestinians were heavily influenced by Zeev Jabotinsky, the founder of the Revisionist Zionism movement and ideological father of Netanyahu’s Likud party. Jabotinsky, who died in 1940, advocated the creation of a “Greater Israel” that encompassed not only what is today Israel, but the occupied Palestinian territories and neighboring Jordan.

 

  • Netanyahu was also deeply influenced by his father, Benzion, with whom he was close until the latter’s death in April 2012. The elder Netanyahu (who was born Benzion Mileikowsky before emigrating to Palestine from Warsaw, Poland, in 1920 and changing his name to Netanyahu) worked for a time as a secretary to Jabotinsky in the late 1930s and held uncompromisingly harsh, racist opinions of Arabs. In a lengthy 2009 interview in which he described in detail his views towards Palestinians and other Arabs, Benzion Netanyahu told the Israeli newspaper Maariv:

    “The Bible finds no worse image than that of the man from the desert. And why? Because he has no respect for any law. Because in the desert he can do as he pleases. The tendency toward conflict is in the essence of the Arab. He is an enemy by essence. His personality won’t allow him any compromise or agreement. It doesn’t matter what kind of resistance he will meet, what price he will pay. His existence is one of perpetual war.

    “The two-state solution doesn’t exist. There are no two peoples here. There is a Jewish people and an Arab population… There is no Palestinian people, so you don’t create a state for an imaginary nation… They only call themselves a people in order to fight the Jews.”

    When asked what he thought the solution to the conflict was, the elder Netanyahu replied: “No solution but force…  strong military rule. Any outbreak will bring upon the Arabs enormous suffering. We shouldn’t wait for a big uprising to start, but rather act immediately with great force to prevent them from carrying on.”

  • Asked how his views had influenced his son’s policies as prime minister, in the same 2009 interview the elder Netanyahu stated:

    “Bibi might aim for the same goals as mine, but he keeps to himself the ways to achieve them, because if he gave expression to them, he would expose his goals.

    “Because he is smart. Because he is very careful. Because he has his ways of handling himself. I am talking about tactics regarding the revealing of theories that people with a different ideology might not accept. That’s why he doesn’t expose them – because of the reaction from his enemies as well as from the people whose support he seeks. It’s an assumption, but it might be correct.”

  • In a televised interview with Netanyahu and his father after the Bar-Ilan speech in 2009, the elder Netanyahu said of the caveats that his son (who was sitting next to him) had placed on Palestinian statehood:

    “He supports the kind of conditions they would never in the world accept… That’s what I heard from him. Not from me. He put forth the conditions. These conditions, they will never accept them — not even one of them.”

    ____________________________________

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| Israel-Palestine: Six Questions for Resuming Negotiations!

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Six Questions for Resuming Negotiations ~ Palestine Liberation Organization, Negotiations Affairs Department, June 2013.

Six Questions for Resuming Negotiations
‘The freedom of the city is not negotiable. We cannot negotiate with those who say, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable”.’ ~ John F. Kennedy, Former US President.

A new international effort, led by the US, is taking place in order to resume final status negotiations. The Palestinian leadership has no doubt that Secretary Kerry’s intentions are genuine and have openly supported his efforts in this endeavor. Whether this new effort is able to produce a tangible plan, there are a series of questions which will need to be asked in order to ascertain whether real and meaningful negotiations can resume, with the eventual goal of two sovereign and democratic states on the 1967 border, living side by side in peace and security.

1. Does Secretary Kerry’s proposal allow for progress on the political track towards a just and lasting peace?

There has been discussion of economic proposals in order to improve the Palestinian economy. While economic development is always positive, the basic fact remains that any economic development will be stifled by, and will not end, the occupation. In fact, Secretary Kerry himself has repeatedly stated that the economic track cannot be made a substitute for the political track. Therefore, if Israel is only prepared to ease the occupation slightly, without offering anything that will lead to the end of its 46 year-old occupation, then this will not be sufficient to open a political horizon.
2. Has Israel shown any interest in the two-state solution?

An Israeli commitment to the two-state solution in line with the vision of Palestine and the rest of the international community would be a positive step. Unfortunately, recent statements made by prominent members of the Israeli government prove that there is a clear rift within the Israeli government on the issue of the peace process with Palestine. Many main figures of the ruling Israeli coalition are publicly opposing the two-state solution. At the same time, continued actions on the ground, many of which fall under the banner of Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise, demonstrate a clear intention to destroy the possibility of two states living side by side.
Meanwhile, it has become clear that peace with Palestine is not a priority in Israeli politics; ending the occupation failed to feature in any of the main party platforms ahead of the January 2013 elections. Many commentators and decision makers are pointing to an overall apathy among the Israeli public and the feeling that the conflict can be managed rather than resolved. Such attitudes are dangerous and detrimental to any prospect for peace.

In contrast, Palestine has fully supported the internationally-endorsed two-state solution since 1988, in line with UN Security Council Resolutions and the international consensus, as well as fulfilling its bilateral and international obligations under the Road Map (UNSC 1515).

3. Is Israel willing to fulfill its prior obligations from previous agreements?

So far, Israel has failed to fulfill the vast majority of its obligations under previous agreements.

Resumption of negotiations “without preconditions” is an oft-used Israeli line designed to portray a positive approach, that is to say a supposed willingness to resume negotiations. In reality, calling for a process with no meaning or sincere intention to reach peace merely acts as a useful smokescreen behind which Israel can continue its project of colonization within the occupied State of Palestine, in gross violation of international law and previous agreements.

4. Has Mr. Netanyahu provided a map of what a two-state solution could look like?

If Mr. Netanyahu were to produce a map, then this would show seriousness from his side, as it would demonstrate Israel’s commitment to the two-state solution and would provide a basis for meaningful negotiations. The PLO has provided a detailed map and clear negotiating positions based on UN resolutions and international law.

5. Is Israel willing to cease ALL of its settlement activities?

If Israel were willing to cease all of its settlement activities, then this would show sincere intention to reach a negotiated solution. The cessation of settlement activity is not a Palestinian precondition, but an imperative based on prior obligations and international law, under which transfer of one’s own civilian population into an occupied territory constitutes a war crime. It is, moreover, a simple logical truth that sincere negotiations cannot take place when one party is continuously prejudicing the outcome of those negotiations by colonizing the other party’s land. This truth is well known- the international community,
including the US, has a very firm position on the illegality of settlements and the requirement for Israel to end its deeply damaging settlement enterprise. Unfortunately, when the resumption of negotiations is the topic of discussion, this fact is often forgotten.

6. What are the Palestinians offering from their side?

The Palestinians have made numerous concessions and good will gestures. Although the two-state solution is common discourse today, it must be remembered that this solution is based on the Palestinian historic compromise of 1988, whereby the PLO accepted a state on a mere 22% of historical Palestine, for the sake of peace. During the past twenty-plus years of peace process, the Palestinians have entered all negotiations in good faith and have acted in accordance with agreements made.
Palestine has also joined other countries in the region in establishing the Arab Peace Initiative, which extends the offer of normalized relations for Israel with 57 Arab and Islamic countries following Israel’s full withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967, and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee issue in accordance with UNGA Resolution 194.

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| Sellout: Why is Obama letting the Oppression of Palestinians continue?

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Will Obama Let the Oppression of Palestinians Continue? ~ RASHID KHALIDI, nyt.

Is Any Hope Left for Mideast Peace?

WHAT should Barack Obama, who is to visit Israel next Wednesday for the first time in his presidency, do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

Anthony Russo

 

First, he must abandon the stale conventional wisdom offered by the New York-Washington foreign-policy establishment, which clings to the crumbling remnants of a so-called peace process that, in the 34 years since the Camp David accords, has actually helped make peace less attainable than ever.

When the most recent iteration of this process began with high hopes at the Madrid peace conference in 1991, which led to the Oslo accords two years later, there were 200,000 Israelis illegally settled in the occupied Palestinian territories: today, there are more than twice as many.

During this time, under four successive presidents, the United States, purportedly acting as an honest broker, did nothing to prevent Israel from gradually gobbling up the very land the two-state solution was to be based on.

Until 1991 most Palestinians, although under Israeli military occupation, could nonetheless travel freely. Today, an entire generation of Palestinians has never been allowed to visit Jerusalem, enter Israel or cross between the West Bank and Gaza. This ghettoization of the Palestinians, along with the unrest of the second intifada of 2000-5 and the construction of seemingly permanent settlements and of an apartheid-style wall, are the tragic fruits of the so-called peace process the United States has led.

The “peace process” has consisted of indulging Israeli intransigence over Palestine in exchange for foreign-policy goals unrelated to the advancement of peace and Palestinian freedom. In the late 1970s this involved the strategic cold war prize of moving Egypt from the Soviet column to the American column.

The Camp David accord between Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Anwar el-Sadat essentially set aside the “Palestinian question.” These constraints shaped the Oslo process, in which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization recognized each other, while all fundamental issues like borders, refugees, water, Israeli settlements and the status of Jerusalem were deferred.

Toward the end of his first term, Mr. Obama essentially abandoned his already modest peacemaking agenda in exchange for a lull in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign for war with Iran. Palestine was again sacrificed, this time to bribe a belligerent Israel for temporary good behavior.

The American-led “process” has ultimately strengthened the Israeli far right and made Palestinian self-determination more unattainable than ever. Continuing with the Orwellian grotesquerie that is the “peace process” is contrary to any enlightened definition of American self-interest. It has burnished the image of the United States as Israel’s uncritical defender and enabler. Furthermore, it insults the intelligence of the Palestinian people. Despite the complicity of some of their leaders in a process that has left them stateless while the unending colonization of the West Bank and East Jerusalem continues, they deserve to be more than prisoners in their own land.

If Mr. Obama decided to devote energy toward resolving the conflict — a big if — it would not be easy. The Palestinians are deeply divided between supporters of Mahmoud Abbas’sFatah faction, which governs the West Bank, and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza. An even bigger obstacle is Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government, hellbent on territorial expansion.

In short, if the objectives of the entire peace process are not ending the occupation, removing the settlements and providing for real Palestinian self-determination, then what is the purpose of pretending to restart it?

There are two facts Mr. Obama would do well to keep in mind.

The overwhelming dominance of Israel over the Palestinians means that the conflict is not one that demands reciprocal concessions from two equal parties. In addition, peace has to be made between Palestinians and Israelis, not between Mr. Obama and his critics in the Republican Party, the Israel lobby and Israel’s right-wing parties.

If Mr. Obama cannot face those realities, it would be far better for him to just be honest: the United States supports this intolerable reality and is willing to bear the resulting international opprobrium. People the world over realize that America for many decades has helped produce a situation where, pious invocations of support for a Palestinian state notwithstanding, there is, and for the foreseeable future will be, only one true sovereign authority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River: the state of Israel.

Only Israeli Jews are full citizens of that land, while 5 million Palestinians live in a state of subjugation or exile and 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs live in Israel as second-class citizens. A “one-state solution” based on enduring discrimination and oppression is ultimately unsustainable. Its only remaining external support comes from the United States and Europe, whose citizens are increasingly aware that such a structure is deeply at odds with their own values, as apartheid South Africa was.

For Mr. Obama, a decision is in order. He can reconcile the United States to continuing to uphold and bankroll an unjust status quo that it helped produce. Or he can begin to chart a new course based on recognition that the United States must forthrightly oppose the occupation and the settlements and support an inalienable Palestinian right to freedom, equality and statehood. There is no middle way.

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, is the author, most recently, of “Brokers of Deceit: How the U.S. Has Undermined Peace in the Middle East.”

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| Wag the Dog + punishing the Will of the World! Letter shows exactly who owns Congress!

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AIPAC Owns Congress!

US House Urges Obama to Close PLO office as punishment for UN Vote ~ JTA.

___________________________________________________________________

Letter signed by more than half of U.S. House of Representatives also calls for defunding of UN-affiliated organizations that similarly enhance PLO membership.
___________________________________________________________________

WASHINGTON – Just over half of the U.S. House of Representatives called on President Obama to shut down the PLO office in Washington as punishment for its ascension in United Nations status.

“One important way of expressing U.S. disapproval would be to send the message that such actions are not cost-free and that, at a minimum, they result in setbacks to U.S.-Palestinian relations,” said the letter sent Dec. 21, initiated by the incoming and outgoing leaders of both parties on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and signed by 239 members, including leaders such as Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader, and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip.

“We can do this by closing the PLO office in Washington, D.C. We can also call our Consul-General in Jerusalem home for consultations,” the letter said.

The Palestine Liberation Organization had its status elevated last month to non-member observer state, which could facilitate efforts to charge Israel with war crimes in the international court system.

The letter was initiated by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Ed Royce (R-Calif.), respectively the outgoing and incoming chairs, and Reps. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), respectively the outgoing and incoming ranking Democrats.

The letter also calls for defunding of UN-affiliated organizations that similarly enhance PLO membership.

The letter was backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

The letter follows an attempt earlier this month to attach a similar amendment to a Senate defense funding law; that amendment never came to a vote.

Notably, the letter sent Dec. 21 did not include a call to defund the PLO-affiliated Palestinian Authority, as the Senate amendment did.

Separately, Ros-Lehtinen and 59 other lawmakers from both parties sent a letter of thanks Dec. 21 to the seven nations to join the United States and Israel in what was a lopsided 138-9 U.N. General Assembly vote in favor of enhanced Palestinian statehood status, with 41 countries abstaining.

The seven countries are: Canada, the Czech Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Panama.

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 * Full text of the letter, initiated by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, with all the signatories here.

ALSO SEE:

Ileana Ross-Lehtinen: A Profile in Treason ~ Ariadna Theokopoulos.

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| FACT SHEET: 25th Anniversary of the First Intifada!

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FACT SHEET: 25th Anniversary of the First Intifada ~ IMEU.

Twenty-five years ago this weekend, a large-scale popular uprising by Palestinians began against Israel‘s then 20-year-old military occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Sparked by an incident in which four Palestinians were hit and killed by an Israeli driving in Gaza on December 8, 1987, Palestinian frustration at living under repressive Israeli military rule and Israel’s growing colonial settlement enterprise erupted, grabbing international headlines and drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians living in the occupied territories. On this 25th anniversary, the IMEU offers the following fact sheet on the First Intifada.

intifada-23-1.jpg

GAZA. Ahli Arab hospital, young Palestinian wounded during a demonstration in December 1988 PHOTO: Jean-Claude Coutausse

 

– THE FIRST INTIFADA (1987-1993) –

FACTS & FIGURES

  • During the First Intifada, Palestinians employ tactics such as unarmed demonstrations, including rock throwing against soldiers, commercial strikes, a refusal to pay taxes to Israeli authorities, and other acts of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance. They are coordinated largely by grassroots ad hoc committees of Palestinians in the occupied territories rather than the PLO leadership abroad.

 

  • In response, Israeli soldiers use brutal force to repress the mostly unarmed popular rebellion. Then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin implements the infamous “broken bones” policy, ordering security forces to break the limbs [WARNING: Graphic video] of rock-throwing Palestinians and other demonstrators.

 

  • More than 1000 Palestinians are killed by Israeli forces during the First Intifada, including 237 children under the age of 17. Many tens of thousands more are injured.

 

  • According to an estimate by the Swedish branch of Save the Children, as many as29,900 children require medical treatment for injuries caused by beatings from Israeli soldiers during the first two years of the Intifada alone. Nearly a third of them are aged ten or under. Save the Children also estimates that between 6500-8500 Palestinian minors are wounded by Israeli gunfire in the first two years of the Intifada.

 

  • In 2000 it is revealed that between 1988 and 1992 Israel’s internal security force, the Shin Bet, systematically tortures Palestinians using methods that go beyond what is allowable under government guidelines for “moderate physical pressure,” Israel’s official euphemism for torture. These methods include violent shaking, tying prisoners into painful positions for long periods, subjecting them to extreme heat and cold, and severe beatings, including kicking. At least 10 Palestinians die and hundreds of others are maimed as a result.

 

  • Approximately 120,000 Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel during the First Intifada.

 

  • In 1987, Hamas is founded in Gaza, formed from the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. During the 1980s, Israeli authorities encourage and tacitly support the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, viewing them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the PLO, part of a strategy of divide and conquer.

 

  • In 1992, in the face of protests from the international community, including the UN Security Council through Resolution 799, Israel deports more than 400 suspected members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to southern Lebanon, including one of the founders of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar, and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ top leader in Gaza today. Refused entry by the Lebanese government, which doesn’t want to confer legitimacy on Israel’s illegal deportation of Palestinians, the exiles spend a harsh winter outside in a no-man’s land limbo. Many observers consider this a turning point for Hamas, whose members are given assistance to survive by the Lebanese paramilitary group Hezbollah. In addition to basic sustenance, Hezbollah gives the Palestinians advice and military training honed during a decade of struggle against Israel’s occupation of Lebanon that began following the bloody Israeli invasion of 1982. Hamas subsequently begins to use suicide bombers against Israeli targets, a tactic that was a signature of Hezbollah’s resistance to Israel’s occupation. Under pressure from the US, Israel agrees to let the exiled Palestinians return to the occupied territories in 1993.

 

  • The First Intifada gradually tapers off in the face of brutal Israeli repression and political co-optation by the PLO, ending by 1993.

POLITICAL REPERCUSSIONS: MADRID, OSLO & BEYOND

  • The outbreak of the First Intifada surprises nearly everyone, including Israeli military and intelligence officials, and the leadership of the PLO, which is then based in Tunisia after being forced out of its base in Lebanon in 1982 by Israel’s invasion.

 

  • The First Intifada creates immense international sympathy for the Palestinian cause, and leads to international pressure on Israel to address Palestinian demands for freedom and self-determination.

 

  • While initially caught off guard, the PLO under Yasser Arafat attempts to harness the Intifada and exploit it politically. In 1988, the PLO recognizes the state of Israel. This is a major and historic compromise on the part of the Palestinians, who effectively renounce claim to 78% of historic Palestine. (See map here.)

 

  • Despite this compromise and pressure from the international community, the Israeli government of Yitzhak Shamir (1989-1992) refuses to acknowledge the PLO or to engage in peace talks with Palestinian representatives. Frustrated at Israel’s intransigence, US Secretary of State James Baker famously reads off the White House switchboard telephone number during congressional testimony, adding to Shamir, who isn’t present, “When you’re serious about peace, call us.”

The Madrid Conference

  • Following threats by the administration of George H.W. Bush to withhold $10 billion in loan guarantees unless Israel ends settlement construction, Israeli Prime Minister Shamir finally agrees to meet with Palestinian representatives – but not PLO officials, despite the fact that the PLO is considered the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the UN and international community. Talks between Palestinians based in the occupied territories, who are in close contact with PLO officials behind the scenes, begin in Madrid in 1991.

 

  • Soon afterwards, in an attempt to bypass the Palestinian representatives sent to Madrid, the Israeli government begins secret negotiations with the PLO, weakened politically since the disaster of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and Arafat’s support for Iraq during the first Gulf War, believing it will be more willing to compromise on issues such as settlement construction and fundamental Palestinian rights like the right of return for refugees expelled from their homes during Israel’s creation in 1947-9.

Oslo

  • In 1993, the PLO and the government of Israel under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin (1993-1995) exchange official letters in which the Palestinians formally recognize “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security. In return Israel only acknowledges the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Pointedly, Israel does not recognize or accept the notion of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied territories.

 

  • The exchange of letters paves the way for the first of a series of agreements known as the Oslo Accords. In September 1993, Rabin and Arafat sign the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn. Oslo creates the Palestinian National Authority (PNA or PA), which is headed by Arafat.

 

  • Oslo is supposed to be an interim agreement leading to a final peace agreement within five years, however the Israeli government under Rabin (1992-1995) and subsequent prime ministers has no intention of allowing the creation of a genuinely sovereign Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Although Rabin publicly agrees to a settlement freeze, Israel continues to build Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land unabated. Israeli officials also refuse to agree to any provisions in Oslo that would explicitly call for an independent Palestinian state, going so far as to refuse to allow the title of President to be used for the leader of the Palestinian National Authority (in the years to come, this title slowly comes into common use by journalists and others, despite Israel’s opposition.)

 

  • During the Oslo years (1993-2000), Israel begins to impose more severe restrictions on Palestinian movement between Israel and the occupied territories, between the occupied West Bank and Gaza, and within the occupied territories themselves. This is part of a policy intended to separate Palestinians and Israelis, and to separate the West Bank from Gaza, which are supposed to be a single territorial unit under the terms of Oslo.

 

  • Israel also rapidly expands its settlement enterprise. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem), nearly doubles, from 110,900 to 190,206 according to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Accurate figures for settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, which are mostly built and expanded before 1993, are harder to find, but as of 2000 the number of settlers in East Jerusalem stands at more than 167,000 according to B’Tselem. (See here for Peace Now’s up-to-date interactive “Facts on the Ground” settlement map.)

 

  • Settlements, which are illegal under international law, are strategically placed in locations to divide the occupied territories into a number of cantons, with Palestinian population centers isolated from one another and from the outside world. The settlements are connected to one another and to Israel by a network of roads and highways, most of which only Israelis are allowed to use, forming part of what has been dubbed Israel’s “matrix of control” over the occupied territories. Today, nearly 20 years after the start of Oslo, there are more than half a million Israeli settlers living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

 

  • In October 2000, Palestinian frustration at seven years of fruitless negotiations, during which time Israel further entrenches its occupation rather than rolling it back, boils over into a second, more violent uprising, sparked by a provocative visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon, who is reviled by Palestinians for his brutal record as an officer in the Israeli military and as defense minister, to the Noble Sanctuary mosque complex in occupied East Jerusalem.

 

  • In July 2010, a video surfaces showing Benjamin Netanyahu speaking to a group of settlers in 2001, when he was in the opposition, bragging that he had sabotaged the Oslo peace process during his first term as prime minister (1996-1999), stating: “I de facto put an end to the Oslo accords,” adding that “America is a thing you can move very easily.” In the video, he also tells the settlers that the way to deal with Palestinians is to “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable.”

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