Will the Palestinians Take Their Case to the U.N.?

Will the Palestinians Take Their Case to the U.N.?


By Tony Karon




The Obama Administration likes to imagine its Middle East peace process is in a holding pattern until after the midterm elections — but a holding pattern implies momentum, a quality conspicuously lacking in the current negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, the Administration's effort has effectively stalled at the first hurdle: the impasse over Israel's continued settlement construction which the Palestinians say prevents them from returning to the table. The situation offers more evidence that the gulf between the two sides is too great to bridge by simply talking things out. Amid mounting frustration, Palestinian leaders have begun telling the world that they are considering taking matters to the U.N. Security Council — emphasis, of course, on considering.
The Palestinian leadership believes that the current Israeli government has given no indication that it will offer what Palestinians would consider to be a credible peace agreement absent pressure from Washington. And they have grown exasperated at a U.S. mediating role perennially tilted — for domestic political reasons — in Israel's favor. The spectacle of the Obama Administration in recent weeks offering the Israelis such far-reaching inducements as U.S. support for long-term Israeli military control of the Jordan Valley even after it becomes part of a Palestinian state, just to keep talks going for another 60 days, underscores Palestinian pessimism over the current process. That's why, Palestinian officials report, they have begun debating whether to take their case against Israel's settlement construction, and even their demand for a state based on Palestinian territory outside Israel's 1967 borders, to the U.N. Security Council. (See behind the crisis in Obama's mideast peace process.)

Relying on international law rather than on the good offices of the United States certainly has some advantages. While U.S. officials tend to use euphemisms such as "unhelpful" when describing Israeli settlement construction on land conquered in the 1967 war, even the mild-mannered U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon made clear, earlier this month, that "all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory" and demanded an immediate halt to all Israeli construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. No government in the world supports Israel's settlement policy, so taking the matter to the Security Council would arguably be a slam-dunk.

Nor should the Palestinians have much trouble persuading the Security Council that the 1967 borders are the basis of a Palestinian state — Israel's declaration of independence in 1948 claimed recognition of its own statehood by referring to a 1947 resolution to partition the Holy Land into separate Jewish and Arab states. No Arab state came into being, of course — the 1948 war changed the contours of partition to give Israel a substantially bigger share than that envisaged by the U.N. plan, while the West Bank and Gaza were occupied by Jordan and Egypt respectively in 1948, and then by Israel in 1967. (See pictures of 60 years of Israel.)

The prospect of the geographical extent of Palestinian statehood being settled in a forum where Israel's overwhelming advantages (forces on the ground, and Washington's political influence) are negated by an international consensus sympathetic to the Palestinian case, has prompted some anxiety among Israel's leaders and their American supporters. "Any attempt by the Palestinians to circumvent [the Obama Administration's] process by going to international organizations is not realistic and will not in any way advance the peace process," warned Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week. And Anti-Defamation League President Abraham Foxman, a strong Israel supporter in Washington, urged the Obama Administration to "close every exit door" for the Palestinians from the U.S.-run process by making clear the U.S. would oppose the U.N. route — Washington has veto power in the Security Council. (See photos of Mahmoud Abbas pressing the flesh for peace.)

Foxman and Netanyahu may have no immediate need to worry, however. While the PLO leadership is discussing going to the U.N. as an option, the organization's Washington ambassador Maen Areikat on Wednesday told TIME that his organization "remains committed to bilateral negotiations with the Israelis" as its basic approach to seeking Palestinian statehood. And he emphasized that going to the U.N. would not be a step taken "unilaterally," but "would have to be coordinated with the international community, and with the United States, in order to achieve success." Translation: The Obama Administration still holds effective veto power over whether the P.L.O. takes the matter to the U.N. (Comment on this story.)

The downside of the Palestinian U.N. option, of course, is that while U.N. recognition of a state based on the 1967 borders would "give" the Palestinians more territory than they might achieve in a U.S.-mediated negotiation process, the international body would not address the problem of getting Israel to concede possession — and the "facts on the ground" created by Israel since 1967 include nearly half a million Israelis living on occupied territory, more than 200 settlements and outposts, and roads reserved for Israeli use that reduce the Palestinian-controlled West Bank to a kind of fragmented camouflage pattern. So getting U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders would establish a principle, but brings its implementation no closer — and would probably be the prelude to a protracted struggle between the two sides.

The history and political interests of the current Palestinian leadership, which has shown little appetite for confrontation with Israel, suggest that the prospect of going to the U.N. may be being dangled in order to press the Obama Administration and the Israelis on the settlement freeze and also to make the 1967 borders the basis of negotiations. But even if turns out to be an empty threat for now, the arc of events suggests that the view is growing — although not a consensus — even within the PLO leadership that relying on bilateral talks with the Israelis, mediated by the United States, is a strategy of diminishing returns.

The Organization That Cries Wolf

The Organization That Cries Wolf

BY JOSH RUEBNER

My late grandfather was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. Many other members of my extended family were not so fortunate and perished in the Holocaust.

Organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), established in 1913, were designed to fight against this scourge of anti-Semitism in particular, and racism in general. However, sadly, the ADL has long since strayed from its original core mission "to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment to all."

In recent decades, the ADL has racked up a checkered history of spying on domestic peace and justice organizations, fanning the flames of Islamophobia, and ironically defaming many who speak out against Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians and dare to believe that "justice and fair treatment to all" should also apply to Palestinians.

Last week, the ADL added to its clownish "boy-who-cried-wolf" reputation by publishing its list of what it calls the top ten "anti-Israel" organizations in the United States. Unsurprisingly, the organization for which I work--the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation--made the list.

The US Campaign is a national coalition of more than 325 organizations working to end U.S. support for Israel's illegal 43-year military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip, and to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality. Hardly the white robe-wearing, cross-burning stuff that the organization should be challenging.

If the ADL considers supporting human rights and international law to be "anti-Israel," then it reveals more about the organization's narrow-mindedness, McCarthyite silencing tactics, and support for Israel's oppressive treatment of Palestinians than it does about our alleged motivations.

Indeed, it would seem that for an organization to be considered "pro-Israel" by the ADL, it would need to march in virtual lock step with Israel's ongoing efforts to colonize and ethnically cleanse the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem, besiege the Gaza Strip, repress nonviolent Palestinian organizers (both citizens of Israel and those living under Israeli military occupation), and deny the claims of Palestinian refugees to their right of return home.

In the ADL's absurd reckoning, many Israeli organizations doing work on the ground analogous to our work in the United States must be "anti-Israel" as well. Gush Shalom promotes a boycott of Israeli settlement products. The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (whose U.S. affiliate is part of our coalition) rebuilds Palestinian homes destroyed by the Israeli military. B'tselem meticulously records each time Israel kills an innocent Palestinian civilian (more than 3,000 over the past ten years, many of whom are killed with weapons provided by U.S. taxpayers). Anarchists Against the Wall supports the nonviolent, popular demonstrations of Palestinians in the West Bank against the construction of Israel's Apartheid Wall. Zochrot documents and marks former Palestinian villages depopulated and razed by Israel when it was established in 1948.

There are dozens of such Israeli organizations that work admirably and conscientiously to dissent against their government's dismal human rights record and apartheid policies toward Palestinians. Although Palestinian citizens of Israel (who comprise approximately 20% of its population), such as civil rights advocate Ameer Makhoul, continue to face intense repression when trying to exercise their democratic right to dissent, at least these Jewish Israeli organizations are able to provide hope that liberal Israeli civil society will one day be strong enough to change its government's oppressive policies.

Just as these Israeli organizations dissent from their government's subjugation of Palestinians, so too do organizations such as ours dissent from U.S. diplomatic and military support for these Israeli government policies. It is this dissent--both in the United States and in Israel--that the ADL is attempting to stamp out by publishing its top ten list of so-called "anti-Israel" organizations.

Fortunately, the ADL is swimming against the historical tide. Millions of people around the world were awakened to the brutality of Israel's policies during its 2006 war on Lebanon and 2008-2009 war on the Gaza Strip. Unprecedented numbers of people, including, as the ADL correctly notes, some Members of Congress who have appeared at our events, are speaking out against these policies. Across the globe, a movement of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel's policies--similar in strategy and tactics to the movement that helped bring down apartheid in South Africa--is flourishing.

The ADL's ineffectual campaign to cow groups such as ours into silence through the publication of a blacklist will backfire. As the ADL itself acknowledges, groups such as ours are helping to change the discourse about our county's policies toward Israel/Palestine in profound ways. Such transformations in public opinion are always a precondition to policy change. It is only a matter of time until politicians in the United States catch up to these attitudinal changes and end U.S. support for Israel's brutal policies toward Palestinians. Only then will Israel feel compelled to negotiate with Palestinians in good faith and treat them as human beings with equal rights. Nothing could be more deeply "pro-Israeli" and "pro-Palestinian" than this.

Josh Ruebner is the National Advocacy Director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and a former Analyst in Middle East Affairs at Congressional Research Service (CRS

Second-class citizens

Second-class citizens

George Bisharat and Nimer Sultany August 15, 2010

Should Israel be encouraged to enact legislation guaranteeing equal rights for all of its citizens as part of any peace agreement with the Palestinians?

Israel's systematic discrimination against Arabs was highlighted recently when Donna Shalala, University of Miami president and former Health and Human Services secretary, was detained for three hours, grilled and subjected to an extended luggage search upon her departure from Israel.

Shalala, of Lebanese Arab descent and a long-time supporter of Israel, had visited the country with other university leaders at the invitation of the American Jewish Congress, but had stayed beyond the planned itinerary for several days. It seems evident that, despite her stature, she was a victim of profiling.

But the indignities that Shalala suffered pale in comparison to those faced by the 1.3 million Palestinian citizens of Israel on a daily basis, and not just at the airport.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel, counts more than 35 Israeli laws explicitly privileging Jews over non-Jews. Other Israeli laws appear neutral, but are applied in discriminatory fashion. For example, laws facilitating government land seizures make no reference to Palestinians, but nonetheless have been used almost exclusively to expropriate their properties for Jewish settlements.

Consider what it would be like if:

• Our Constitution defined the union as a ``white Christian democratic state?''

• Our laws still barred marriage across ethnic-religious lines?

• Our government appointed a Chief Priest, empowered to define membership criteria for the white Christian nation?

• Our government legally enabled immigration by white Christians while barring it for others?

• Our government funded a Center for Demography that worked to increase the birth rates of white Christians to ensure their majority status?

These examples all have parallels in Israeli practices.

While Israel's Palestinian citizens have rights to vote, run for office, form political parties and to speak relatively freely, they remain politically marginalized. No Palestinian party has ever been invited to join a ruling coalition. In recent years, Palestinian politicians and community leaders have been criminally prosecuted or hounded into exile.

Nadim Rouhana, social psychologist and director of Mada al-Carmel (a center studying Palestinian citizens of Israel) reports: ``Our empirical research reveals that many Palestinian citizens are alienated from the Israeli state. At a deep psychological level, the daily message conveyed in Israeli public discourse is: `You are not one of us. You don't belong here. You are permanent outsiders.' Imagine: we, whose families have lived here for centuries, hear this even from recently immigrated Jewish Israeli politicians.''

Palestinian rights are not respected in the Israeli legal system. Israel has no written constitution, only ``Basic Laws'' that were enacted piecemeal over time. None enshrines equality, and efforts by Palestinian lawmakers in Israel's Knesset to add an explicit guarantee of equal rights have been rebuffed.

The 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence promised equal rights to all citizens in a Jewish state, and has occasionally been cited by the Israeli High Court. But a declaration of independence does not play the same legal role as a constitution or basic law. As students of American history know, the U.S. Declaration of Independence held that ``all men are created equal'' but failed to provide legal leverage to dismantle slavery, or to empower women to vote. Equal rights were only installed by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and women's suffrage only by the 19th Amendment. Lacking the necessary tools, the Israeli High Court has failed to consistently protect equal rights for Palestinian citizens.

Shalala's treatment in Israel was, no doubt, demeaning. The incident's effect nonetheless will be constructive if it serves to alert more Americans to Israel's discrimination against its Palestinian citizens -- and creates pressure on Israel to adopt equal rights for all. Only then will durable peace prevail in the Middle East.

George Bisharat is a professor at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. Nimer Sultany is a civil rights attorney in Israel and doctoral candidate at Harvard Law School.


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