If there's anyone more sorry about Obama's victory than Mitt Romney then it's probably the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. After four years of an increasingly testy relationship, which has seen unusual political friction between the White House and an Israeli government, Obama is now less constrained by domestic politics if he decides to return to the stand he took in the months after he took office and press Netanyahu toward negotiating seriously with the Palestinians. Obama sought to pressure the Israeli prime minister to halt Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, at their first meeting in the spring of 2009. Netanyahu not only resisted but humiliated the president by publicly lecturing him about Jewish history. Since then, the Israeli leader has managed to take Palestine off the agenda by shifting the focus to Iran's nuclear programme. Obama has pursued a twin approach of doing more than almost any other US president to bolster Israel's security with military assistance while attempting to stave off an Israeli attack on Iran. All the while the US administration has quietly brooded about the president's treatment by Netanyahu. Obama now has a freer hand to press the Palestinian issue if he chooses. He is no longer as vulnerable to the drum beat of charges from the right that by pressing Israel to end the occupation he is endangering the Jewish state and therefore America. The president has an incentive to shift more of his attention to foreign policy because it will be hard to force any radical domestic legislation past the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Bill Clinton was in a similar position when he decided to push the Middle East peace process and came close to forging an agreement. Obama is dealing with a more truculent Israeli leader in Netanyahu, who is now aligned with political leaders who are opposed to giving up land. But that does not mean the US president is without means, including public pressure that any Israeli leadership - sensitive to its own electorate which sees good relations with the US as crucial to the Jewish state's security - will hesitate to resist too far. If Obama's strategy of sanctions and diplomacy defuses the crisis with Tehran, that will undercut Netanyahu's tactic of using Iran to deflect attention from the occupation while Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and tighten its grip on East Jerusalem. The question is whether Obama has the desire to return to the fight.
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By: Amira Hass
Date: 27/05/2013
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Slain Bedouin girls' mother, a victim of Israeli-Palestinian bureaucracy
Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them. In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B. The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories). In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long. The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.
By: Phoebe Greenwood
Date: 27/05/2013
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John Kerry unveils plan to boost Palestinian economy
John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector. The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace. Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago. Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid. Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority". Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations. "Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."
By: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Date: 27/05/2013
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Isolation Devastates East Jerusalem Economy
Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops. “All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive. Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him. “I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.” Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay. “It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.” He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?” Illegal annexation Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect. “After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote. Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation. Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce. Extreme poverty Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower. While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line. “How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”. “Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked. “You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS. Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities. Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn. Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent. “Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population. To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones. It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services. “Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”
By the Same Author
Date: 08/01/2013
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Chuck Hagel 'not antisemitic for saying pro-Israel lobby has a powerful voice'
The author of a book that quotes Chuck Hagel criticising the influence of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington has defended him from charges of antisemitism, and said the president's nominee for defence secretary was speaking a truth many other politicians will not voice. Aaron David Miller, who served six US secretaries of state as an adviser on Arab-Israeli negotiations, told the Guardian that Hagel's use of the term "Jewish lobby" to describe pressure groups was mistaken, because active support for Israel is much wider in the US than the country's Jewish population. But he said that Hagel was describing "a fact" when he spoke about the considerable influence of the lobby on Congress in an interview the then senator gave in 2006 for Miller's book, The Much Too Promised Land. Miller added that he does not regard the criticisms of Hagel as being primarily about his previous statements on Israel. "This is about a lot of other things. Number one, it's about a conviction that Hagel's appointment presages where Obama is on these issues. The attack on Hagel, in some respects, really is an attack on the president," he said. Critics have been agitating against Hagel for weeks, focusing on his statements about Israel, including to Miller about why as a senator he declined to sign many of the letters of support for Israel distributed by the influential lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), on Capitol Hill – including one giving unconditional support to Israel when the second Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000. "The political reality is that … the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here," he said. Hagel later apologised for the use of the term "Jewish lobby", saying he should have said "pro-Israel lobby", an issue of particular sensitivity because it touches on antisemitic tropes about Jewish control, but also because it is inaccurate, given the wider support for Israel among Americans, notably Christian evangelicals. But Hagel did not back down over the thrust of his comments. Miller said Hagel was only saying what many members of Congress think but do not voice. "Hagel talked about the issue of domestic political pressure. Most sitting senators and congressmen don't. But it's a fact: the pro-Israeli community or lobby has a powerful voice. It does not have a veto over American policy but it has a powerful voice. To deny that is simply to be completely out of touch with reality," he said. That has not stopped a barrage of accusations against Hagel. William Kristol, a prominent neo-conservative and editor of the Weekly Standard, accused him of harbouring an "unpleasant distaste for Israel and Jews". Hagel was denounced in the Wall Street Journal by Bret Stephens, who was editor of the Jerusalem Post 10 years ago when it called for Israel to kill the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. Stephens described Hagel's comments as prejudiced, saying that their "odour is particularly ripe". Opposition has come from some pro-Israel groups, including the American Jewish Committee, which wrote to members of the Senate urging them to vote against Hagel's appointment as defence secretary. Officials in pro-Israel organisations are also opposing the nomination, including Josh Block, the chief executive of the Israel Project and former Aipac spokesman. But other major groups, including Aipac, have yet to state a public position, perhaps hesitant to openly stand against Obama over the appointment of officials. Abe Foxman, leader of the Anti-Defamation League, said he would not have nominated Hagel but respected the president's prerogative. Other pro-Israel organisations have come to Hagel's defence, including the Washington-based J Street, which called the criticisms an "outrageous smear campaign". Hagel has also drawn accusations that he is not supportive enough of Israel, because of statements backing the Palestinian claim to East Jerusalem as the capital of an independent state, for criticising Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon, and for his opposition to stronger sanctions against Iran while advocating negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme. Critics have latched onto comments by Hagel to supporters of Israel at a meeting in New York, in which he said: "Let me clear something up here, if there's any doubt in your mind. I'm a United States senator. I'm not an Israeli senator. I support Israel. But my first interest is: I take an oath of office to the constitution of the United States. Not to a president, not to a party, not to Israel." Republican senator Lindsay Graham said it was provocative of the president to nominate a man who expressed such views. "This is an in-your-face nomination of the president to all of us who are supportive of Israel," Graham told CNN. The Republican Jewish Coalition has said Hagel's appointment would be a "slap in the face for pro-Israel Americans". Miller said that, again, Hagel's crime was to speak a truth that many in Congress dare not. "I think Hagel has a view that is not commonly expressed among senators and representatives, and that is, yes, we have a special relationship with Israel, but that special relationship is not exclusive," he said. "There will be times when in effect, whether it's settlements, whether it's what to do about the peace process, whether it's what to do about Iran, that the interests will not coincide. Very few sitting senators and representatives, although I think they know that to be the case, are willing to express themselves in this subject." Hagel has also come challenge over his opposition to the appointment by President Bill Clinton of the US's first openly gay ambassador, who he described as "aggressively gay". Former congressman Barney Frank, a leading voice on gay rights issues, accused Hagel of "aggressively bigoted opposition" to the appointment and of a long history of bigotry, and has openly opposed his nomination as defence secretary. But on Monday, Frank told the Boston Globe he has changed his position, because of Hagel's support for an early withdrawal from Afghanistan and in favour of cuts to defence spending. "I was hoping the president wouldn't nominate him," he said. "As much as I regret what Hagel said, and resent what he said, the question now is going to be Afghanistan and scaling back the military. In terms of the policy stuff, if he would be rejected [by the Senate], it would be a setback for those things." Following Obama's announcement of Hagel's nomination on Monday, former US secretary of state Colin Powell said he "wholeheartedly endorsed" it. The National Jewish Democratic Council also threw its support behind Hagel in spite of concerns about his past. "While we have expressed concerns in the past, we trust that when confirmed, former senator Chuck Hagel will follow the president's lead of providing unrivalled support for Israel – on strategic cooperation, missile defense programs, and leading the world against Iran's nuclear program," it said. Miller said he expects Hagel to be confirmed, in part because the dispute over his nomination is now shaping up as a party political fight. Although Hagel was a Republican senator, he broke with the party on many issues, including the invasion of Iraq. "Republicans are struggling to define a new foreign policy for themselves and they're really at sea. Obama has waged a fairly competent foreign policy. No spectacular failure but no spectacular successes either, with the exception of killing Bin Laden. And foreign policy of the Bush years is now under a review and a critique by Republicans but there are some who don't want to give it up. It's a kind of crusader Republican theology as opposed to what Hagel is which is a realist Republican theology," he said.
Date: 17/12/2012
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International criminal court is a lever for Palestinians on Israeli settlements
When Israel's routine hostility toward Gaza once again flared into full-on battle last month, Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic party leader in the US Congress, sent out a tweet:
Nancy Pelosi That was pretty much the sentiment of just about everyone in the US political establishment, from the president to the unanimous support in both houses of Congress for a resolution giving unconditional backing for Israel's bombing of Gaza. So, it was with the solid opposition to the Palestinian request for recognition of a state at the United Nations. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, may have looked isolated in casting the only vote by a major power against Palestinian statehood, but Washington's political establishment was fully behind her. On one issue, however, America's vehemently pro-Israel politicians are much more muted – and it may reveal to Palestinians a chink in Israel's armour in the US. The prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, decided to punish the Palestinians for the UN vote by announcing the expansion of existing Jewish settlements and advancing a plan, known as E1, to link Jerusalem with one of the biggest Israeli colonies in the West Bank, Maale Adumim. That would eat significantly into any Palestinian state and, more importantly, further seal off occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank, as part of the long term Israeli strategy to claim the entire city. Netanyahu argued that the Palestinians going to the UN was a threat to peace. Almost everyone else regarded the settlement announcement as a far bigger blow to an agreement to end the conflict. The White House finally spoke up: Barack Obama criticised the E1 plan as "especially damaging". Congress did not rush to condemn him. Even the pro-Israel lobby, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) did not thrust itself to the forefront of defending Israel. And Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, last year called the settlements "illegitimate". Now, the Palestinians are floating the prospect of going to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the settlements. It would be a smart move – if they can resist the inevitable pressure from the west not to do it. In all the wrangling over recognition of a Palestinian state at the UN, there was much hand-wringing in western capitals over the Palestinians gaining access to the ICC. And the Israelis are more fearful of the court than they let on publicly. The US and the British tried to get the Palestinians to renounce the right to accede to the ICC, on the grounds it would complicate a nonexistent peace process. However, it is hard to imagine that Washington and London were not also worried about the implications if the court moved on from accusing African despots and warlords to charging soldiers and officials of a close ally, armed by the west, with war crimes in Gaza. But now, the Palestinians have raised the prospect of a different ICC action, over the settlements, following the E1 announcement. The Palestinian foreign minister, Riad Malki, said this week that if Israel pushes ahead with the settlement construction, his government will look to the court for redress. "Then we would be able to prosecute Israel for all the war crimes it perpetrated against our people in the past, especially the construction of settlements," he told Voice of Palestine radio. "It all depends on whether Israel would continue with its settlement plan." Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said much the same during a visit to Turkey. Israel's colonies in the West Bank are a clear breach of international law under Article 49 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which bans on an occupying power from moving its civilian population onto occupied territory – a clause included, in large part, because of Nazi attempts to colonise areas of occupied Poland by planting Germans there. Israel's defence is that the West Bank is not strictly occupied territory because it does not belong to another state. But the UN vote has arguably changed that. Israel has also tried to say the settlements fall under the conventions' allowance of construction as a military necessity. But it's hard to make a case for defence when the Israeli government's policy is to funnel Jewish immigrant families into the settlements and to give tax breaks to encourage people to move to them. In any case, the United Nations security council, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice and the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions all say the Israeli colonies are a breach of Article 49. No government other than Israel, not even the US, regards the settlements as legal. The Israelis are nervous about legal action. They call it "lawfare". It is potentially effective because taking on the Jewish settlements does not threaten Israel's right to exist. It is not violent. It is not terrorism. And there's not many governments going to rush to Israel's defence. A legal fight at the ICC would lay bare the annexation and dispossession behind Israel's settlement strategy – the theft of land from Palestinians, the practice which sees Jewish colonies enjoy unlimited cheap water, while nearby Arab villages are subject to rationing and higher charges, the policy that says a Jewish immigrant from Russia has a greater claim to the land than a Palestinian born on it. And that's without even getting into the broader scheme to claim as much territory as possible for Israel and leave a rump Palestinian state. Israel's settlement policy has been to act piecemeal and count on the rest of the world not having the stamina for a fight – successfully, as it turns out. What it does not want to have to do is defend the settlements in their entirety before an international court, with the risk of being ruled a rogue state in breach of the laws of war. There's also a domestic concern. An ICC case might even prompt a more robust debate in Israel where opinion polls show there is no great support for the settlements. If the ICC were to declare the settlements illegal, it would raise other interesting possibilities for Palestinian legal action. Would foreign banks still be prepared to transfer the millions of dollars donated by Americans to settlement construction, or to buy property in the occupied territories, if they knew it was a breach of international law? Europe is already moving in that direction. European Union foreign ministers said this week that agreements with Israel do not apply to Jewish settlements in the occupied territories – a move Israel fears is laying the groundwork for economic measures, such as the labelling of exports originating in the colonies. The EU said all of its agreements with Israel "must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 – namely, the Golan Heights; the West Bank, including east Jerusalem; and the Gaza Strip." The EU is also talking about banning violent settlers, responsible for a string of attacks on Palestinians, who are not prosecuted by the Israeli authorities, from within its borders. An ICC ruling in favour of the Palestinians might have another effect. When Obama first came to power four years ago, he attempted to strong-arm Netanyahu into taking an agreement with the Palestinians seriously. The president began by demanding a total freeze on settlement construction. The Israeli prime minister outmanoeuvred and humiliated Obama, and carried on as before. If the US president wants to revisit the fight now he's been re-elected, it would not do any harm to have the ICC hovering in the background.
Date: 28/11/2012
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Palestinians warn: back UN statehood bid or risk boosting Hamas
The Palestinian leadership is warning Europe and the US that failure to support its bid for statehood at the United Nations on Thursday will further strengthen Hamas after the Gaza fighting by suggesting that violence, rather than diplomacy, is the way to win concessions from Israel. Senior Palestinian officials believe the vote is a crucial test of whether there is a future for President Mahmoud Abbas's diplomatic strategy after his credibility was badly damaged among Palestinians by what they regard as the success of Hamas in the conflict with Israel this month. Many ordinary Palestinians believe the conflict showed that standing up to Israel delivers results, in contrast to years of concessions under US peace plans, and drawn-out negotiations. European diplomats concede that the fighting has shifted the ground before the Palestinian request for recognition as a "non-member state". Failure to support Abbas could risk further undermining his increasingly weak position, to Hamas's advantage, they warn. France has said it will vote in favour, and Spain is shifting in that direction. But the US and Britain are attempting to weaken the impact of a UN vote in support of statehood by putting considerable pressure on the Palestinian leadership to offer guarantees that it will not take advantage of the new status to accuse Israel of war crimes at the international criminal court (ICC) or seek territorial rulings at the international court of justice. Palestinian officials said Britain and the US had pressed Abbas to sign a confidential side letter, which would not be presented to the UN general assembly, committing the Palestinian Authoritity not to accede to the ICC. France has been pressuring the Palestinians to amend the resolution to make it clear that Israel could not be taken to the ICC retroactively for any alleged war crimes committed before the UN votes to recognise Palestinian statehood. Israeli officials are particularly concerned over an investigation of its assault on Gaza four years ago, Operation Cast Lead, which was widely condemned as a war crime because of the scale of Palestinian deaths and the level of destruction. The Palestinians have already drawn up the necessary application to go to the ICC. It caused consternation when the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, presented ths document at a meeting with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, earlier this month. A Palestinian close to the talks quoted Clinton as responding: "Don't you even go there." Britain and the US also want Abbas to agree to begin negotiations immediately with the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. The Palestinian leadership is demanding evidence that Israel is serious about talks after years of futile discussions during which the Jewish state continued its rapid expansion of settlements in the West Bank and other measures to seize land the Palestinians regard as part of a future state. Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian official who has played a leading role in shaping the statehood request, told the Guardian before leaving for the meeting in New York that the Israeli assault on Gaza strengthened the case for seeking UN recognition. He said the Palestinian leadership would not be deterred by threats, such as the warnings from Washington and Israel that they could cut funds to the Palestinian Authority. "Not to go to the UN would be suicidal for the Palestinian Authority. All these people [in Gaza] took the brunt of the attack and now we should chicken out because they [the US and Israel] will cut off some money? What we're doing is not violent; it's not military; it's not illegal," he said. "The world should see that if they keep maintaining the status quo, it will get you nothing but more bloodshed. That's the lesson from Gaza." Shaath said the vote was an important test of whether there was a future for diplomacy, when talks had produced almost no progress toward a Palestinian state in years. "Clinton just a few days before Gaza said it would be a very long time before the Palestinian issue is going to get attention. Which means what: we only get attention when we use force? If we get this vote, people will feel nonviolence produces results; if we do not, they will reach the opposite conclusion," he said. Later, Shaath told a meeting with foreign diplomats it would be "immoral" for their countries to oppose the statehood resolution. The Palestinian Authority has warned countries with embassies in Ramallah, including Bosnia and Cameroon, that if they do not support the UN move they will be expelled. The US, Israel and European countries have accepted that attempts to get the Palestinians to back down from seeking UN recognition have failed and that the move is all but guaranteed to pass, with the support of a majority of the general assembly. But Washington and London are putting considerable pressure on the Palestinian leadership over the ICC because, as one European official put it, "taking Israel to the court is a real red line". For now, it appears the Palestinian leadership would prefer to retain the option to go to the ICC as a bargaining chip for future negotiations. But the pressure will only grow in meetings in New York immediately before the vote. Britain says it is concerned at the Israeli response to Palestinian statehood after Israel's foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has threatened to cancel all or parts of the Oslo peace accords and topple Abbas from power. And the UK says the statehood bid could end up harming Palestinian interests if the Israeli reaction is so severe that it sets back the prospects for peace. But Palestinian officials are dismissive of the argument, saying there is no peace process to speak of and that Israel has done little to enhance Abbas's credibility by continuing to expand Jewish settlements and treating him with contempt. Britain also pressed the Palestinians to delay the vote until after the Israeli general election, in January, fearing that Netanyahu's response may be made stronger by electoral considerations. Israel recognises that the general assembly is all but certain to back the Palestinian move so it has focused its efforts on pressing European governments in particular to oppose or abstain in an effort to deny the vote legitimacy. Israel reasons that if most European governments and the US fail to support implicit recognition of a Palestinian state then it will be able to argue that Abbas has only the backing of dictatorships and less free countries. European attempts to forge a common position have foundered, with Germany opposing the Palestinian request and France's president, François Hollande, wavering but then favouring it again. Britain has also come under pressure from Arab countries that have made clear they regard the vote as a test of whether the UK is serious about pressing a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Israeli push against the statehood bid includes cartoons on YouTube that show Netanyahu and world leaders gathered around a dinner table waiting for Abbas to arrive for peace talks. "I am on my way to the UN. I am not coming to the table," he says. A second video shows Abbas driving a bus toward a cliff by pursuing the UN bid. The Palestinians chose 29 November as the date to submit the statehood request because it is the anniversary of the 1947 UN decision to partition British-mandate Palestine between Israel and an Arab state.
Date: 08/11/2012
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Obama's in-tray - Israel / Palestine
If there's anyone more sorry about Obama's victory than Mitt Romney then it's probably the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu. After four years of an increasingly testy relationship, which has seen unusual political friction between the White House and an Israeli government, Obama is now less constrained by domestic politics if he decides to return to the stand he took in the months after he took office and press Netanyahu toward negotiating seriously with the Palestinians. Obama sought to pressure the Israeli prime minister to halt Jewish settlement expansion in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem, at their first meeting in the spring of 2009. Netanyahu not only resisted but humiliated the president by publicly lecturing him about Jewish history. Since then, the Israeli leader has managed to take Palestine off the agenda by shifting the focus to Iran's nuclear programme. Obama has pursued a twin approach of doing more than almost any other US president to bolster Israel's security with military assistance while attempting to stave off an Israeli attack on Iran. All the while the US administration has quietly brooded about the president's treatment by Netanyahu. Obama now has a freer hand to press the Palestinian issue if he chooses. He is no longer as vulnerable to the drum beat of charges from the right that by pressing Israel to end the occupation he is endangering the Jewish state and therefore America. The president has an incentive to shift more of his attention to foreign policy because it will be hard to force any radical domestic legislation past the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Bill Clinton was in a similar position when he decided to push the Middle East peace process and came close to forging an agreement. Obama is dealing with a more truculent Israeli leader in Netanyahu, who is now aligned with political leaders who are opposed to giving up land. But that does not mean the US president is without means, including public pressure that any Israeli leadership - sensitive to its own electorate which sees good relations with the US as crucial to the Jewish state's security - will hesitate to resist too far. If Obama's strategy of sanctions and diplomacy defuses the crisis with Tehran, that will undercut Netanyahu's tactic of using Iran to deflect attention from the occupation while Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank and tighten its grip on East Jerusalem. The question is whether Obama has the desire to return to the fight.
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