Apr 26th 2011

Let the U.N. Act on Palestine

by James J. Zogby

Dr. James J. Zogby is the President of Arab American Institute

The Middle East is in turmoil, its political map being rewritten by revolts against the status quo. But in the heart of this region, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, actors, on all sides, appear to be stuck playing out the same stale scenes.

In recent weeks, the U.S. President, the U.N. Secretary General, and a host of other heads of state have weighed in on the importance of resolving this conflict. But other than to lamely insist that "the parties must return to the negotiating table", no one seems to have an original idea as to how to do it. This insistence on resuming negotiations, of course, ignores political reality.

There have been on again, off again negotiations for 20 years, all to no avail. With the Palestinians holding no cards and having no leverage, they come to the table more as supplicants, than negotiators. And the Israelis who, for their part, hold all the cards, and declare, in advance, which cards are "off the table"; they do more dictating than negotiating.

The Israelis insist, for example, that they want good faith negotiations, without preconditions. At the same time, they refuse to stop construction in West Bank settlement blocs, which they claim "everyone knows will revert to us in a final peace agreement" and in what they call "Greater Jerusalem" (an illegally annexed land mass that includes a number of Palestinian villages in the heart of the West Bank), claiming that "Jerusalem is our eternal capital" and cannot be negotiated. With the rights of Palestinian refugees and the maintenance of a security zone in the Jordan Valley also termed non-negotiable items, one can only wonder, what do the Israelis mean by "no preconditions"?

And so here we are two and one half years into the Obama Administration's efforts to resolve this matter, and the only creative ideas have come from the Palestinians, the weakest and most vulnerable party to the conflict. On the one hand, Prime Minister Salam Fayyed has successfully reformed Palestinian governance on many levels winning endorsement from international institutions, all of whom now concur that the Palestinians are now prepared for statehood. Fayyed has endorsed other measures aimed at promoting self-reliance and passive resistance to the Israeli occupation. The Prime Minister knows he can't create a state while Palestine is divided, under military rule, and cut off from the outside world. But he is taking the steps to make sure that when Palestinians achieve independence, they are ready for good self-governance.

At the same time, the Palestinian Authority has embarked on a campaign to win international support for their claim to statehood, pledging to go to the United Nations in the fall to seek a resolution recognizing a State of Palestine. While some analysts in the West dismiss this effort as a hollow gesture, insisting that no state can be achieved without negotiations, the Israelis have become mildly hysterical (they have termed this United Nation's vote "a diplomatic tsunami") with some threatening the equivalent of a political temper tantrum should the Palestinians persist in their efforts.

This overreaction is as hypocritical as it is downright silly. How, one might ask, can the Israelis and their supporters in the U.S. denounce this Palestinian diplomatic push for recognition as an "unhelpful unilateral act", while ignoring Israel's settlement and annexation program in Jerusalem and the West Bank? And where are the whoops and yells of displeasure when the U.S. Congress initiates its own "unilateral acts" (which in this case are truly "unilateral" since they involve one country and not the entire international community) pressuring the President to recognize Israeli "sovereignty over all of Jerusalem", or proposing to cut off U.N. funding should that body pass a statehood resolution or fail to denounce and rescind the Goldstone report?

And while those who insist that no U.N. resolution can, by itself, create a state (since the U.S. can still veto a formal acceptance in the Security Council), are right, why deny the Palestinians their right to a vote on recognition? And why is all this creating such hysteria both in Israel and among its supporters in the U.S? Is it that they just don't want to see a vote, or is it that they can't bear to lose a vote or fear just losing control of the discussion?

In any case, with the September U.N. session fast approaching, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing another grand appearance in Washington, in an effort to win the one and only vote he feels he needs to block international pressure. Concerned that President Obama may soon present his own plan laying out a U.S. framework for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, Netanyahu has wrangled an invitation to address the U.S. Congress. It is expected that he will attempt to preempt the President by unveiling his own proposal, which from all indications will amount to no more than an agreement to take the minimum steps he should have taken and refused to take 15 years ago when he rejected the Oslo process. While this will surely be seen by Palestinians and most of the world as "too little, too late", it will no doubt win the Prime Minister thunderous applause in Congress, emboldening the Israelis to stand fast and do no more.

This is the third time that Republicans in Congress worked with Netanyahu in an effort to undercut and sabotage peace-making efforts. The first of these came in 1996 when then Speaker Newt Gingrich hosted the Israeli to deliver remarks before Congress where he declared his intention to end the Oslo peace process. In 2002, once again a group of GOP Senators invited Netanyahu to speak to their colleagues. At that time, they were seeking to frustrate then Secretary of State Colin Powell's peace mission to the Middle East-a role Netanyahu was only too happy to play.

The question remains, assuming that Netanyahu will emerge victorious in Congress, what will and can the U.S. President do in response? He can preempt the Israelis by delivering his own speech before Netanyahu arrives in Washington, laying down firm markers on outcomes and steps to be taken to achieve peace. But this will only be effective if the outline includes the sanctions that will be incurred should the parties fail to take the required steps. Here the President has limited leverage, since Congress will most likely not support any cuts in aid or other punitive acts against Israel (preferring to limit their use of such measures to the Palestinians). But should the speech fail to include real sanctions for non-performance, it will only be another speech and it will not be taken seriously by the Israelis or other parties for that matter.

Recognizing this weakness in the U.S. position, the President could decide to get out of the way and let the U.N. have its say by letting the General Assembly vote and declare Palestine a state, and then allowing the measure to pass in the Security Council. At that point Israel can be found to be in violation of international law since it is occupying, annexing and illegally settling on the territory of a member state. And the Palestinians will be free to take their case to other, more impartial, international bodies.

If the U.S. can't do more than it has done to date, then doing nothing, and letting Israel face the music in the fall might be the smartest thing it can do.

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More Current Affairs

Apr 13th 2022
EXTRACTS" "Ukraine and Russia produce a substantial amount of grain and other food for export. Ukraine alone produces a whopping 6% of all food calories traded in the international market. At least it used to, before it was invaded by the world’s largest nuclear power." ...... "When it comes to cereals like wheat, corn, rice and barley, the big players talk about millions of metric tonnes, or MMTs. A single MMT of wheat contains about 3.4 trillion food calories,." ....."Ukraine produced about 80 MMT of grain (a category that includes wheat, corn and barley) in 2021, and is expected to harvest less than half of that this year. A shortfall of 40 MMT is enough missing calories that a country like the UK could only make it up by having everyone stop eating for three years. That’s the thing about tonnes of grain: a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’ve got a real issue on your plate."
Apr 11th 2022
EXTRACT: "I don’t even know the little girl’s name. All I do know is what a friend of a friend wrote on Viber: that her relative, a senior nurse in one of Kyiv’s hospitals, “saw in the morgue a child with 20 varieties of sperm on her small body.” Since this information was conveyed in a private conversation, there is no reason to doubt its veracity."
Apr 8th 2022
EXTRACT: "Russian society has so far failed to stop Putin, just as German society failed to stop Hitler. And so, like a poisoned chalice, that task has fallen to the West, as it did in 1939. The West must now treat Putin and his regime the same way that Winston Churchill treated Hitler: Don’t talk to him, just defeat him. Dead-enders such as Putin are too fanatical and desperate to be reliable negotiating partners."
Apr 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "From 1807 to 1814 on the Iberian peninsula, Napoleon had to fight Spanish, Portuguese and British armies while beset by ubiquitous, ferocious insurgents. He described this war as his “bleeding ulcer”, draining him of men and equipment. It is the west’s aim to make Ukraine for Putin what Spain was for Napoleon. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, Ukraine and Nato will continue to grind away at Russia’s army, digging away at that bleeding ulcer and prolonging Russia’s agony on the military front, as the west continues its parallel assault on its economy. If Putin’s plan is to proceed with the Korea model, he will fail. There is a strong possibility that Putin has only a limited idea of how badly his army is faring. So be it – he’ll find out soon enough that there is now no path for him to military victory."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Policymakers expected that the country would be able to secure its energy supply entirely from renewable sources, so they resolved to phase out coal and nuclear energy simultaneously. The last three of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants are set to be shut down this year." ---- ".... the share of wind and solar power in Germany’s total final energy consumption, which includes heating, industrial processing, and traffic, was a meager 6.7%. And while wind and solar generated 29% of the country’s electricity output, electricity itself accounted for only about a fifth of its final energy consumption." ----- "If Germany suddenly halted Russian gas imports, gas-based residential heating systems – on which half the German population, approximately 40 million people, rely – and industrial processes that rely heavily on gas imports would break down....."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "For Putin, the past that matters most is the one the dissident author and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exalted: the time when the Slavic peoples were united within the Orthodox Christian kingdom of Kievan Rus’. Kyiv formed its heart, making Ukraine central to Putin’s pan-Slavic vision. ---- But, for Putin, the Ukraine war is about preserving Russia, not just expanding it. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently made clear, Russia’s leaders believe that their country is locked in a “life-and-death battle to exist on the world’s geopolitical map.” That worldview reflects Putin’s longstanding obsession with works of other Russian emigrant philosophers, such as Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev, who described a struggle for the Eurasian (Russian) soul against the Atlanticists (the West) who would destroy it. ---- Yet Putin and his neo-Eurasianists seem to believe that the key to victory is to create the kind of regime those anti-Bolshevik philosophers most detested: one run by the security forces. A police state would fulfill the vision of another of Putin’s heroes: the KGB chief turned Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov."
Apr 1st 2022
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Mar 31st 2022
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Mar 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Referencing past legacies as a justification for present-day political decisions is often effective – such appeals trigger emotional reflexes and contribute to thinking about politics in terms of rivalry and defence. The irony within the tragedy of the current situation is that Putin will assuredly go down in history as the figure that did more to unite the Ukrainian people (albeit against Russia) than any other in recent memory."
Mar 24th 2022
EXTRACT: " Despite the death and destruction that Russia rains down daily on them, the vast majority of Ukrainians are bullish about the future: 77% believe the country is moving in the right direction, 93% think they can beat back Russia, and 47% expect to win in the next few weeks.  Ukrainian policymakers are no less bullish, driving a hard bargain in negotiations with the Russians. Several factors account for this remarkable optimism."
Mar 21st 2022
EXTRACT: "As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, China’s role has been thrown into sharp relief. Prior to the war, some commentators suggested that China would openly side with Russia or seek to act as a mediator – so far Beijing appears to have resisted doing either. As Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the US, wrote recently in the Washington Post, Beijing has nothing to gain from this war, arguing “wielding the baton of sanctions at Chinese companies while seeking China’s support and cooperation simply won’t work”. Ambassador Qin also stressed that Beijing had no prior knowledge of the conflict,...."
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "The second source of Russian power is of course the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons would not deliver victory in a conventional war, but they could destroy a country in the blink of an eye. This brings us to a terrifying question: What will Putin do when he realizes that he cannot win his war in Ukraine by conventional means?"
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "An influential Shanghai-based academic commentator on international affairs, Hu Wei, recently advanced a cautionary argument that has been circulated widely in Chinese-language publications. In his commentary, which is unlikely to have been published without the approval of some of Xi’s senior courtiers, Hu wondered how Chinese communists would react if the war escalated beyond Ukraine, or if Russia was clearly defeated." ------- "For Hu, the answer for China’s leaders is simple. They should wash their hands of the relationship with Putin, ....."
Mar 12th 2022
EXTRACT: "Meanwhile, Xi seems to have realized that Putin has gone rogue. On March 8, one day after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had insisted that the friendship between China and Russia remained “rock solid,” Xi called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to say that he supported their peacemaking efforts."
Mar 7th 2022
EXTRACTS: "........Russia has been isolated by draconian Western sanctions that could devastate its economy for decades,...." ---- "Russia’s prospects are bleak, at best; without China, it has none at all. China holds the trump card in the ultimate survival of Putin’s Russia."
Mar 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "Although Ukraine’s armed forces are outnumbered by those of Russian President Vladimir Putin invading our country, we take heart from the growing support we are receiving from friends abroad. Nobody should forget that this is not just an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; it is an assault on the free world. ---- Putin has been at war with the free world for decades. "
Mar 2nd 2022
EXTRACT: "Moreover, with China sharing the Kremlin’s interest in containing the advance of liberal democracy around the world, Putin could count on the Chinese to provide an additional economic lifeline by purchasing Russian gas. But this new relationship will not be costless. As the world continues to divide into separate technological and economic blocs, Russia will become even more dependent on China, implying a loss of strategic autonomy. Russia may have a powerful military; but with a GDP similar to that of Spain and Italy, it is far from being an economic power."
Mar 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "The financial measures just announced against Russia are unprecedented for a country of its size. This of course means it’s impossible to predict exactly how their impacts will reverberate around the Russian – and global – economy. And we still need to see the exact details of the plan. But on their face they threaten the collapse of the Russian ruble, a run on Russian banks, hyperinflation, a sharp recession and high levels of unemployment in Russia, as well as turmoil in international financial markets."
Feb 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Putin apparently assumes that China will back him. But while he launched the invasion just weeks after concluding something akin to an alliance agreement with Xi in Beijing, Chinese officials’ reactions have been very distant with calls for “restraint.” Given Putin’s near-total reliance on China for support in challenging the US-led international order, lying to Xi would have no political or strategic advantage. That is what is so worrying: Putin no longer seems capable of the calculations that are supposed to guide a leader’s decision-making. Far from an equal partner, Russia is now on track to become a kind of Chinese vassal state."
Feb 25th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Russia’s ascent to global power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in numerous tragedies not only for the neighbors it subjugated and gradually absorbed, but also for its own people. China’s current leaders, in particular, should be mindful of this history, considering that imperial Russia seized more territory from China than from anyone else." ----- "Putin is taking Russia hurtling back toward the nineteenth century, in search of past greatness, whereas China is forging ahead to become the defining superpower of the twenty-first century. While China has achieved unprecedentedly rapid economic and technological modernization, Putin has been pouring Russia’s energy-export revenues into the military, once again cheating the Russian people out of their future."