TRANSLATE
MOBILIZING FOR
SEPTEMBER?
Jeff Halper - April 14, 2011
The reconvening of the UN in late September and
the possible recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967
borders may be a crucial political moment in the struggle for
Palestinian liberation – or not. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak
has characterized it as a looming “diplomatic tsunami” for Israel;
Ali Abunimah, a prominent Palestinian-American commentator, calls it
a “sideshow,” an “elaborate farce.” As yet, there has been little if
any substantial discussion among activists regarding its
significance or lack thereof, or whether and how we should mobilize
around it.
In fact, there are a number of key events (or, it
appears, non-events as well) leading up to September which also
deserve our attention:
·
On April 15th the
Quartet (the US, Europe, Russia and the UN) was to meet for an
already delayed, last-ditch attempt to “restart” negotiations.
Britain, France and Germany, frustrated by the inability of the US
to pressure Israel into agreeing on the bare minimum for getting
talks started again (a halt to Israeli settlement construction and
an agenda that deals squarely with final status issues: borders and
sovereignty, Jerusalem, refugees, water and security), had prepared
a tough statement on settlements. The US summarily cancelled the
meeting, explaining that “It was not the right time.” With no
prospect for a meaningful “Bar Ilan 2” speech outlining a “new”
Israeli peace initiative and no more scheduled Quartet meetings, it
is clear that “negotiations,” begun twenty years ago in Madrid, are
finally over.
That is a good thing. The “fog of negotiations”
must be cleared since, as part of an empty, interminable “peace
process,” it serves one purpose only: prolonging the Israeli
Occupation. The American cancellation of the April 15th
meeting is especially significant (and hypocritical) given that the
excuse Americans gave for vetoing the Security Council resolution on
settlements last month was that negotiations are the only way to end
the conflict. Ideally, the response of the other three Quartet
members would be to formally declare the “peace process” ended,
opening the way to the only other alternative, the acceptance in
September of Palestine as a member state of the UN within recognized
borders. That will not happen publically, so it is crucial that the
Palestinians declare it, making it clear that it was Israel that led
to the collapse of negotiations. Only in that way can they prepare
the ground for an independent state in September.
·
There are as yet, however, a
few more way stations on the road to the UN. In May, Netanyahu may
address, for the second time, a joint session of the American
Congress. This is his audience: Democrats and Republicans, liberals,
conservatives and Tea Party Christian Zionists. Congress represents
Israel’s trump card. Netanyahu believes, with perfectly good
reasons, that it will prevent the Administration from putting undue
pressures on Israel, will ensure that it not allow any resolution of
Palestinian statehood to come before the UN, and if it does, will
certainly dictate another American veto.
·
In late May the latest
Freedom Flotilla, fifteen boats with activists from more than twenty
countries, will attempt to break the Israeli siege of Gaza. The
Israeli government has already called on the UN and the
international community to stop it; in the past few days it has
indicated that it might actually allow the Flotilla into Gaza. These
are signs of Israel’s rising desperation as September closes in.
There will undoubtedly be other feeble attempts
to derail September. Netanyahu, who himself admits there is nothing
to negotiate, is mulling a unilateral withdrawal of Israeli troops
from parts of the West Bank and giving the PA a little more land.
More likely, Israel will try to deflect the trajectory towards
September by attacking Gaza – Israeli officials are already talking
openly about Operation Cast Lead 2 – or carrying out the ultimate
act of deflection, an attack on Iran.
The Palestinian Authority, which over the years
has failed to mobilize its greatest resource and ally, grassroots
activists the world over, also needs to provide them with guidance
and leadership. We have no idea where the PA is heading. Fayyad, the
(non-elected) Prime Minister, has declared an intention of seeking
Palestinian membership in the UN in September, the culmination of
his two-year plan of building a Palestinian state “from below.”
Abbas is being coy. At times he suggests that declaring statehood is
the only way forward, at other times he explicitly rejects such a
move. After the failure to convene the April 15th Quartet
meeting and faced with American intentions to “a
new push to promote comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace” – code for yet
more interminable “negotiations” leading nowhere –
it should be clear that the negotiation phase of
the phony “peace process’ is over. The Fog of Negotiations has
cleared. UN acceptance of a Palestinian state within recognized
borders becomes the only option left for the Palestinians. Abbas
should say this loud and clear. In this context attempts to
reconcile with Hamas so as to form a united front takes on added
urgency.
If Abbas has other ideas, if in fact he is
unwilling to abandon fruitless negotiations and does not intend to
approach the UN in September, he should tell us
September
Should the Palestinians ask the UN to accept them
as a member state within the borders of 1949/1967? This is a
question that preoccupies many activists, especially those who have
abandoned the two-state solution for that of one state, be it
unitary or bi-national. The judgment is ultimately a Palestinian
one, of course. We non-Palestinians can only hope for a vigorous
debate within Palestinian society – in the Occupied Territory,
within Israel, in the refugee camps and across the Diaspora – which
will point us the way. Does September represents a momentous
political moment? Israeli General Amos Gilad,
head of the Ministry of
Defense’s diplomatic-security bureau, warned that “the beginning of
Israel's isolation in September will be no less severe than war.”
If so, how should we react? If not, what are the alternative paths
for resolving the conflict?
Leaving aside these questions for the moment,
what is likely to happen in September? There appear to be two
possible scenarios: either a Palestinian state within specified
borders is accepted as a full member of the UN or, for whatever
reason, it is not. Let’s trace out these scenarios with an eye to
civil society’s role.
Scenario 1: Palestine becomes a member state of
the UN within recognized borders.
Having (hopefully) prepared the ground well for
its admission to the UN, the Palestinian leadership (ideally a broad
unity government) would first declare Palestinian independence
within specified borders and then
submit an application to
the Secretary-General, confirming its obligations to the UN Charter.
The application then goes to the Security Council. If the
Palestinian application wins the support of nine of the 15 Security
Council members and all the five permanent members, a recommendation
for admission goes to the General Assembly, which must approve it by
a two-thirds majority. The Palestinian application would receive
near unanimous approval, especially given the pre-condition that the
US vote in the Security Council is either a “yes” or an abstention.
There are those who
dismiss such an initiative as merely symbolic, with no pragmatic
consequences for the Palestinians. Although it is impossible to
predict how post-acceptance events would play out, admission to the
UN would have several important repercussions:
·
A
recommendation for admission of the Security Council, followed by an
overwhelming endorsement by the General Assembly (with only Israel
and Micronesia, its staunch ally in the Pacific voting “no”), would
place Palestine formally among the member states of the UN. Not only
would it have ambassadors in the capitals of the world, it would
also enjoy unmediated access to all the instruments of the
international community: the right to introduce UN resolutions, to
participate fully in international conferences and to pursue the
application of international law against the Israeli Occupation,
including access to the International Court of Justice.
·
Palestine would have recognized borders (the 1949 armistice lines,
upon which there is an international consensus) and would no longer
be pressured to negotiate territorial swaps, to “adjust” borders to
accommodate Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank
or to accept exaggerated Israeli security demands such as exclusive
Israeli control over water, borders with Arab countries, Palestinian
air space and Palestinian communications, even over the ability to
enter freely into foreign alliances.
Admission to the UN would
also end all ambiguity over occupation itself, which has allowed
Israel to avoid accountability under international law. Admission to
the UN forecloses the need for negotiations. East Jerusalem is
Palestinian. Period. The Israeli presence in sovereign Palestinian
territory is illegal. Period. Continued occupation by Israel, which
would now clearly violate the most fundamental principle of
sovereignty upon which the entire international system is based,
would become intolerable. This would activate international
sanctions on Israel that could not be prevented by the US and
Europe.
And what about the
settlements? Easy. All settlements built on private Palestinian land
must be removed. As to the others, including the large settlement
blocs, the Palestinian government could simply: you, the settlers,
are welcome to stay in your homes, but you will be living in
Palestine, subject to Palestinian laws, with Palestinians free to
purchase homes in your communities. The likelihood, of course, is
that the settlers would leave voluntarily, their homes sold to
Palestinians for whom they would represent a bank of high-quality
housing. If played right, the settlement issue in this scenario
would merely dissipate.
·
In a
recent article in The Guardian, Oxford academic and former
PLO negotiator Karma Nabulsi argued that the time had arrived for a
truly representative Palestinian government. Elections should be
held for the Palestinian National Council, the Palestinian
parliament in exile, which represents the entire Palestinian people:
those in the refugee camps as well as those under military
occupation, those living in Israel as well as those in the far-flung
Diaspora. Placed within an effort to achieve independence by
September, elections for the PNC could lay the foundations for a
transitional government similar to the ones arising in the wider
Arab world.
The chances of the US
actually allowing a Palestinian state to emerge in September is
minimal, if only because Congress would not allow it. But if,
surprisingly, it does happen, what should be the civil society
response? The issue seems clear: removing the Israeli presence from
Palestine. The BDS movement would certainly be a part of this
effort, but now it would receive significant backing from
governments, including some European governments, that is presently
lacking. And the campaign would have the backing of international
law as well. Again, in this scenario we would have instruments at
our disposal that are today lacking, in particular tribunals for the
application of international law and sanctions, both international
and of individual countries.
Scenario 2: Palestine does not become a member
state of the UN.
If the Security Council
does not recommend Palestine for membership, the General Assembly
may send the application back to the Council with a strong
recommendation to reconsider. We could speculate over what would
happen and whether in that case an American veto might become an
abstention, but the likelihood is that a Palestinian state will not
become a member of the UN in September.
What then? The PA cannot
survive when there is neither a credible political process nor any
prospect of Palestinian independence; it is likely to either resign
or collapse. If this happens and the Occupation is thrown back into
Israel’s lap, it will likely have to reoccupy the Palestinian cities
and, so as to prevent Hamas from stepping into the breach, Gaza as
well. Merely the threat of that would inflame the entire Muslim
world – and beyond. Even the threat of such a thing happening would
force the hand of the international community. Whether the US would
be pulled into joining international efforts to resolve the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict once and for all or whether the rest of
the world would simply pass it by is an open question, but the
status quo would become intolerable.
Who knows where this would all lead? Three
things, however, seem certain:
(1) That the present situation is unsustainable,
if only because of the global disruption it is causing;
(2) That the lineal “peace process” of the past
twenty years – defining the problem, negotiating its solution and
then actually resolving it – is bankrupt and over; and
(3) That the present deadlock, if not resolved by
the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state with recognized
borders, will lead to collapse and chaos. If we are faced with
nothing but another American-led “push” for negotiations, then this
is a good thing. Only the bursting apart of the exhausted “peace
process” will lead to new opportunities to resolve the conflict, new
openings and possibilities, a new logic and strategy, even new
players (such as Palestinians outside of the Occupied Territory, new
Palestinian leadership and governments joining actively with civil
society to resist the Occupation). Hopefully the very threat of
collapse and chaos turning into violence will ensure a peaceful
transition to resolving the conflict.
In such an open-ended and unpredictable scenario,
the role of civil society becomes even more central than today. We
must act to protect the Palestinians from a renewed, violent and
even more repressive Israeli occupation; we must effectively
advocate for sanctions and the application of international law,
engaging with governments in ways we have not until now, making any
attempt at re-occupation unthinkable; and we must become watchdogs
monitoring any subsequent political process to ensure that it does
not perpetuate the Occupation or lead to Israeli apartheid or,
worse, the permanent warehousing of the Palestinians. Perhaps not
agreeing on a particular solution, we should be able to agree on a
set of principles that must guide any attempt to achieve a
just solution. At a minimum they would be:
·
A lasting peace inclusive of
all the peoples living in Palestine/Israel;
·
A peace that provides
economic viability to all the parties;
·
A peace based on human
rights, international law and UN resolutions;
·
An addressing of the refugee
issue, based on the right of return and Israeli acknowledgement of
the role it played in driving the refugees from the country;
·
Addressing the security
concerns of all the parties and countries in the region; and
·
Addressing the other
outstanding regional issues that stand in the way of equality,
justice, peace and development.
The Challenge of September
There is, I suppose, a third scenario: finessing.
Netanyahu told EU representatives recently that the UN has often
adopted “anti-Israel” resolutions, that the “peace process” has
experienced repeated ups-and-downs and that “no one can impose a
peace on Israel.” Under US pressure, the EU and its member states,
never truly keen on crossing swords with either the US or Israel,
could agree to yet another interminable round of negotiations,
accompanied perhaps by some nominal Israel concessions, that would
get them past September. Then we enter 2012, the year of the
American elections, and any attempt to resolve the Palestine issue
is effectively put off till 2013 or longer. Whether or not the PA
would go along with this ploy would constitute a precise measure of
whether it is a collaborationist regime or not. Regardless, it will
not last until 2013, meaning that the scenarios laid out above –
with or without a general conflagration in the Occupied Territory
and the region – will likely hold even after September.
How to respond to the current political moment is
a challenge to all grassroots movements and organizations. Until now
there has been virtually no discussion among the hundreds of
grassroots groups working on the Palestine issue of September and
how we should address it. There has been no leadership on this issue
on the part of Palestinian organizations, either in the Occupied
Territory or abroad, and no hint that any of the activist community
– Palestinian, Israeli or international – is considering any new
forms of action or initiative. Collectively we have done amazing
work over the past decade and more, raising the Palestine issue to
the level of the anti-apartheid struggle. If we have reached the
present crisis, it is due in no small part to our exposing the
deceitfulness of “negotiations” and making the Occupation truly
intolerable. Do we now ignore the political moment before us or
engage, and how?
Ali Abunimah’s critical views expressed in his
recent essay Recognizing Palestine? point to an urgent need
for urgent civil society consultations. Activists in Palestine, in
Israel, in every corner of the earth should be sharing their
analysis, views and ideas. September is coming whether we are ready
or not. Like it or not, we are part of a political process together
with governments. That process, moreover, has a clear political
goal: ending the Occupation and achieving a just peace between
Israelis, Palestinians and their neighbors. I would argue with Ali
that our ongoing campaigns and actions, from BDS, lobbying,
international mobilization and pressing for the implementation of
international law through resisting house demolitions and the
displacement of Palestinians in Bil’in, Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and
the Jordan Valley, are important and must continue. But I don’t
think they alone add up to a political force capable of ending the
Occupation or of achieving a one-state solution. We are in a bad
marriage with governments – the Palestinian Authority included. We
the people can only bring the issue so far. We are not elected, have
no defined constituencies, do not negotiate and cannot sign treaties
or peace agreements. We alone cannot resolve the Palestine/Israel
conflict. At some point we must pass the baton to governments.
Preferring conflict management over conflict resolution, they will
not do the right thing on their own. They will move towards a
genuinely just solution only with our constant prodding, and even
then we must monitor the process closely in order to keep it honest.
If the PA will engage with the grassroots in
Palestine, Israel and internationally, if they see it as a strategic
necessity to mobilize their base – us – then perhaps September can
be turned from a farce into leverage for genuinely ending the
Occupation. September will in no way not mark the end of the
struggle. The broadly representative government envisioned by Karma,
over which young people in Palestine are demonstrating daily, must
replace the PA, and a focused international campaign to clear Israel
out of Palestinian territory must be launched. It must be made clear
as well that the “two-state solution” is merely a stage towards the
eventual emergence, peacefully and by consent, of a single state,
whether democratic or bi-national. And that, in the meantime, the
right of return must be affirmed and the rights of Palestinian
citizens of Israel protected.
The September initiative does not exist on its
own. It is part of a wider political campaign. But by the same
token, if it does represent a significant opportunity to further the
liberation of Palestine, do we have the luxury of ignoring it? The
discussion must be held, and soon.
Jeff Halper is the
Director of The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).
He can be reached at <jeff@icahd.org>.
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