SEPTEMBER: PALESTINIAN UNILATERALISM AND THE ESCALATING WAR AGAINST ISRAEL

DECLARING A PALESTINIAN STATE
WILL DERAIL THE PEACE PROCESS
Miriam Ziv

National Post, August 6, 2011

 

The Palestinian leadership has made clear its intentions to seek recognition of an independent Palestinian State at the United Nations this coming September.

Some might question why such action would be detrimental to the peace process and therefore problematic for Israel. After all, every Israeli government for nearly a decade has explicitly supported the idea of two-state solution and has worked hard to facilitate conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state.…

While a declaration of statehood may provide the Palestinian Authority with a modicum of symbolic international support, its real outcome is likely to derail prospects of Palestinian-Israeli peace and to be tragically self-destructive for the Palestinian people. By choosing the route of unilateralism, the Palestinian leadership would be foregoing the only real means to achieve their desired ends: direct negotiations with Israel.

A unilateral declaration harms true peace, challenging the most basic principles of Mideast peacemaking. It undermines all internationally accepted frameworks for peace, including UN Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, 1850, the Roadmap for peace and the principles of the Quartet. All encourage mutually-negotiated and agreed resolution of the conflict. All reject unilateral actions.

A unilateral declaration of statehood would not only undermine international frameworks, but it would also serve to jeopardize the long list of agreements that exist between Israelis and Palestinians, including crucial economic and security arrangements. Such a move would diminish co-operation, heighten tension and, as a result, threaten the current state of stability and growth in the West Bank.

For years, Israel has made painstaking concessions for the sake of peace. In more than one instance, Israeli leaders have offered comprehensive peace proposals that would allow for the creation of an independent Palestinian state, and each time they were met by Palestinian rejection. Since 2008, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, has refused to sit down at the negotiating table with Israel, despite a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in 2009 and numerous calls by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss terms of peace.

Now, after pulling the plug on direct negotiations, the Palestinian Authority has turned toward the United Nations to achieve independence regardless of the fact that it fails to meet the legal and practical criteria for statehood. On the ground, there exists no serious foundation for a stable democratic Palestinian state, no stable electoral process, no transparent accounting and no leaders willing to step up, compromise and negotiate.…

If the aim of the international community is to bring about a real and lasting end to the conflict, it should encourage a mutually-agreed upon, bilateral approach, rather than reward unilateralism, rejectionism and quite possibly even terrorism, in light of the recent reconciliation agreement between Hamas and Fatah. It is unclear how support for a Palestinian state, in which Hamas could play an integral role, would serve to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and encourage the vision of two states living peacefully side-by-side.

The latest changes in the Middle East have brought hope and possibility to the region, providing the international community an opportunity to encourage positive actions that move the peace process forward. The passing of this resolution will only serve to distance the parties and diminish the likelihood of real peace.

(Mrs. Ziv is Israel’s Ambassador to Canada.)

 

TIME TO CALL THE PALESTINIANS’ UN BLUFF
Jonathan S. Tobin
Contentions, August 10, 2011

 

Both the United States and Israel are expending a great deal of time and effort trying to convince United Nations member states to oppose the Palestinian effort to gain the world body’s recognition for their independence in the 1967 lines. The UN gambit has been viewed as a terrible threat to Israel, where leaders have warned a vote on the Palestinians’ request could set off a “diplomatic tsunami.” But as harmful as this debate may be to Israel’s standing in the world, it is becoming increasingly clear the effort is a gigantic bluff.

Haaretznoted yesterday the London-based Arab daily Al Sharq al-Awsat newspaper reported the Palestinian Authority was planning to delay its UN bid. The article said they feared setting off an economic crisis in the territories because the effort was bound to cause a cut-off of American aid. Though this was quickly denied by the PA’s Saeb Erekat, who claimed the “train had already left the station,” the disastrous implications for the Palestinians of this effort to evade peace talks and escalate the conflict are clear.

For all of the scare mongering that has been going on in Israel and the United States about the PA’s UN plans, it is the Palestinians who have the most to lose from this strategy.

It is true a U.S. veto of Palestinian statehood in the UN Security Council will cause trouble for the United States. The possibility of a nonbinding General Assembly vote that will endorse Palestinian statehood will also make life more difficult for Israel, especially its diplomats. But the opposition of the United States and the West to the PA effort dooms it from the start. Even Western European nations unsympathetic to Israel understand what is going on here. The PA has turned to the UN because it fears going back to peace talks where their unwillingness to accept a deal that recognizes the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn will again be exposed.

However, the consequences of this move will be catastrophic for both the Palestinian people and their leadership. The aftermath of the certain failure of this initiative may lead to more violence. Perhaps the PA leadership believes another intifada would be preferable to peace talks, but they must also fear another round of bloodshed will strengthen their Hamas rivals.

Just as important is the fact this initiative is rightly viewed by the Obama administration as a direct challenge to its leadership. The PA’s tactics are sufficiently insulting to the United States that it just may motivate the administration to make good on threats to cut off American aid. Since the PA and its ruling Fatah faction cannot exist without the foreign funds to pay off supporters via government jobs, closing the spigot of U.S. money could create a crisis that could sink the already shaky Palestinian economy and the hopes of its ruling elite.

No matter what Erekat or his boss Mahmoud Abbas says, their UN plan is a bold bluff they cannot back up. The United States and Israel must stand firm in their refusal to be bulldozed into concessions that might tempt the Palestinians to back off. In particular, Israel must not succumb to pressure to pay dearly for a Palestinian decision to stay away from the UN. Doing so would reward the Palestinians and give them something they couldn’t win on their own. If they follow through on their UN threat, the Palestinians, not Israel or the United States, will be the big loser.

 

THE NEXT INTIFADA
Jonathan Schanzer

NY Post, August 9, 2011

 

Palestinian leaders are publicly calling for nonviolence in massive protests planned for next month—but another intifada may well be in the cards.

The Palestinian Authority seeks UN recognition of it as a state—a resolution that America is expected to veto, based on the belief that Palestinian unilateralism will neither help the Palestinians create a viable state nor pave the path to peace with Israel. Palestinian newspapers report plans for a mass rally the day of the September UN vote, which leaders have called “Palestine 194,” marking their desire to become the UN’s 194th member state.

Al-Jazeera quotes Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo calling for “millions to pour into streets.” Marwan Barghouti, a political leader now serving five life sentences in Israel for terrorism, has expressed support for mass protests.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, architect of the statehood drive, is also pushing for the protests. With plans to retire soon, he views the UN maneuver as his legacy to the Palestinian cause.

He insists that the rallies be peaceful—but, as Palestinian columnist Daoud Kuttab warned recently, “If this [UN] path is blocked, there is no telling which route the Palestinians will take.”

Actually, it’s pretty easy to guess the route: another intifada, the same route the Palestinians took in 1987 and 2000. Both uprisings yielded more bloodshed than either side could bear.

Leaders of Hamas (which controls Gaza), Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terror groups are now openly preparing for just that. Committed to Israel’s destruction, they welcome any chance to mobilize large crowds for their violent aims. Journalist Walla Karaja confirms that “the military trainings have increased in the [Gaza] Strip, and we heard that huge quantities of weapons arrived from the outside.”

“Outside” is code for Iran, the chief source of Palestinian weapons. Tehran would love to draw attention from the bloody protests against its ally in Syria and direct the Muslim world’s anger, conveniently, back to the Palestinian problem. For that matter, some Arab states would also welcome a new intifada, to draw fire away from their own embattled regimes.

Will the Palestinians oblige? While many wish to live in peace, many others surely want the Palestinian issue back on center stage after the Arab Spring. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in May showed that more than 70 percent of Palestinians think a new uprising is around the corner.

Many Facebook pages have popped up in recent months calling for orchestrated Palestinian uprisings against Israel. (One enterprising radical even created a “Third Palestinian Intifada” iPhone app, which Apple later removed.)

Former Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz last week announced that the country will call up military reservists in advance of the UN vote. “A sufficient quantity of nonlethal anti-riot ammunition has been procured,” adds another senior official, and “units underwent training, simulating possible real intifada events.”

Simulations may be redundant. For months, small numbers of Palestinians appear to have prodded Israeli forces to test their response. Late last month, Palestinians threw stones at Israeli vehicles and held large demonstrations in the villages of Ni’lin and Bil’in, west of Ramallah.

The protests—in May for Nakba day, commemorating the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation, and in June for Naksa day, marking the Arab defeat in the 1967 war—were initially billed as nonviolent. But Israeli forces soon had to deal with a hail of rocks and Molotov cocktails.

Some 120 countries support the ill-fated Palestinian unilateral declaration of independence at the UN. But raising Palestinian expectations will only increase frustration when the symbolic vote fails to change reality—pouring fuel on the fires of a region already burning with rage.

(Jonathan Schanzer is vice president for research
at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.)

 

WHAT ARE THE PALESTINIANS PLANNING AFTER SEPTEMBER?
Pinhas Inbari
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, July 2011

 

…For the most part, the international community is tired of the unending Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the prospect of the United Nations “ending” it in September by recognizing Palestinian statehood is appealing to many.…

Hence, the PLO’s declared policy of seeking UN recognition in September has gathered international support and encouragement and challenged Israeli diplomacy as never before. A key point that makes the Palestinian position so attractive is the simple notion that the future Palestinian state will suffice with the 1967 borders and immediately engage in peace negotiations to end the conflict. The tired world is happy to hear that finally a Palestinian state will come into being and, as a “peace-loving state”—as required for state membership in the United Nations—will engage in peace and not in war or conflict.

If that was really the case, and the application for statehood was aimed at completing peace negotiations on a “state-to-state” footing, this would have been a reasonable course of action deserving all possible support. However, if one studies the details of what the Palestinians really envisage after September, serious doubts arise. What they are actually planning is the opposite: to exploit a UN endorsement of statehood in order to legitimize an escalation of the conflict while destabilizing the entire Middle East during a critical period when the region is already agitated.

The Palestinians do not want to declare a state, but, rather, to leave the conflict open. After having the 1967 lines recognized so as to negate the results of the Six-Day War, they plan to seek recognition of the 1947 partition lines and thereby end the refugee problem—while attempting to inflict economic losses on Israel by suing it for “occupation damages,” suing IDF officers on war crimes charges, causing civil war in Israel over settler evacuation, and creating strife between Israel and the United States to the extent of ending their historical special relationship, if possible.…

The 1947 Borders

The most striking phenomenon in the internal Palestinian discourse is the revival of the 1947 UN partition plan. With the PLO declaring that the September move involves enshrining the 1967 lines, why is so much attention being given to the 1947 lines?

The answer can be found in PLO leader Mahmoud Abbas’ recent New York Times op-ed.Abbas ignited the anger of the Israeli government in what it called a distortion of history. His description of the 1947 events ran counter to recorded history as Israel knew it: whereas Abbas claimed that only Israel received its share of the partition plan, then attacked the Palestinians and expelled them, Israel recalled the fact that the Palestinians and the Arabs rejected the plan and attacked Israel, and Palestinians fled the country as a result of a war their side had initiated.

Abbas, however, is no historian, and he did not write the article as a historical thesis but as a statesman who has a claim. His claim is that, with the United Nations having given Israel its share of the partition plan, it is now the Palestinians’ turn to get their share. Thus, even before the United Nations has recognized the 1967 lines as borders, the PLO is raising the claim for the 1947 borders.…

The revival of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and the 1947 borders is not a new Palestinian strategy. In May 1999, when the PLO argued that the Oslo Accords were about to expire, Nabil Sha’ath, who was the Palestinian Minister of International Cooperation, proposed reviving Palestinian claims to the 1947 lines.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has used the argument that the Palestinians do not need at present to declare a state since Yasser Arafat already made such a declaration on November 15, 1988, in Algiers. The basis of Arafat’s declaration was Resolution 181. Therefore, from the Palestinian perspective the borders of 1947 are still a point of reference for future Palestinian claims.

The Third Intifada

…There are signs that…[Mahmoud Abbas’] Fatah organization is already preparing for the “Third Intifada.”

This intifada is not planned to be a terrorist one as the Palestinians—including Hamas—have well learned the lessons from the terror they practiced in the Second Intifada. Instead it is planned to be an “intifada by peaceful means.…” Although the methods will not be terroristic, the aims of this Third Intifada are by all means terroristic and posit the destruction of Israel as the final goal.…

The Third Intifada is a joint project of all parties in the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the diaspora: Hamas, radical leftists, Fatah, and even the PA government in Ramallah. The only difference appears to be that, whereas the actors outside the framework of government responsibility are outspoken, the governmental circles are more cautious. One cannot discern any sort of dispute within the Palestinian political body, but, rather, a consensus.

How do the Palestinians define the aims of the Third Intifada? A leading figure among the “Facebook” activists is Ahmad Abu Ruteima, a Hamas [proponent] in Gaza. As he describes the objective of the Third Intifada: “The struggle is about the very existence of Israel and not about the 1967 borders. The defense minister, Ehud Barak, confirmed that the [Israeli] army is incapable of confronting a human influx from all directions.” [Abu Ruteima] is confident that the Israeli public (“settlers” as he defines them) “cannot withstand an attrition war” of this kind, and that “the persistence of these marches [will send a message] that the owners of the land are standing at the borders, ready to enter at any moment, and Israeli society will be constantly concerned…regarding whether to stay in a region encircled by enemies or return to live in the places they came from.”

Senior Fatah figure in Lebanon Munir Maqdah said: “Raising the Palestinian flag on the borders…is a declaration of all the Palestinians that the Palestinian state is from the sea to the river.… The third generation [of refugees] is the generation of liberation…and return.…”

It is true that the…above-quoted figures represent the extremes of the Palestinian political spectrum. The problem is that no one in the mainstream has contradicted them; Fatah websites sanction those views.…

One might have expected that PLO leader Abbas, who is leading the campaign for the 1967-borders state, would express reservations or even lead the argument for a compromise based on those borders; but he has not. Instead he praised [this past May’s] Nakba Day marchers [who were attempting to infiltrate Israel’s sovereign territory], mourning the dead “whose spilled blood will not be wasted.…” Along the same lines, the PA’s Waqf minister, Mahmoud al-Habash, said in the Muqata’a mosque in Ramallah: “The occupation even 63 years since the Nakba was not able to uproot us from the land, and we are stronger [in our right] to this holy land…because we are owners of this land.”

Many believe Abbas is sincere in his quest for peace.… The Nakba events, however, were a test for his leadership, and he did not dispute the open, radical calls for Israel’s destruction including from the midst of his own Fatah power base.…

Prosecuting Israel in International Tribunals

…One may wonder why [land] swaps that are based on the current demographic reality, as recognized in President Bush’s letter to former Prime Minister Sharon, are so strongly rejected by the PLO?

The answer takes us to another aspect of what the Palestinians are preparing for after September: causing Israel the greatest possible hardships, including igniting internal conflicts, inflicting economic disaster, and dragging IDF officers to international war crimes tribunals.

In his New York Times article, Abbas was straightforward: “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”

Actually the PLO has been preparing to pursue such claims for a long time, well before the current crisis and even during the “serious” negotiations with the Kadima government. The PLO’s Palestinian Monitoring Group of its Negotiations Affairs Department used to publish…a “Daily Situation Report” in which it meticulously recorded all sorts of damage inflicted by Israel…on the Palestinians in a variety of ways: direct damage by soldiers or settlers, checkpoints, the “wall,” and so on. This steady accumulation of data has only one logical function: to be forwarded in due time to international tribunals in order to sue Israel in a multibillion-dollar damage claim.

The Maan news agency reported that in the application documents prepared by the PLO for September, there is also an annex for a Palestinian application for a seat on the international legal tribunals at The Hague after being recognized as state.

Indeed, the PLO needs statehood recognition in order to overcome what has so far been the major impediment to its outreach to the international tribunals: not having the status of a state, since only states can appeal to these courts.… The statehood status that the United Nations will be asked to grant the PLO in September is about meeting this need, not about establishing a state. What the Palestinians plan to do then is not to exercise statehood but to declare themselves a “state under occupation” in order to legitimize the escalation of the struggle.…