UN is solidly behind Palestinians

-DR. ABDUL RUFF 

_________

I

As expected, the United Nations stands solidly behind the besieged Palestinians seeking full membership of UN to exist peacefully on their own lands. Obviously, USA got used to using the veto to protect the illegal Israeli regime, has not got the worst ever slap on the issue when most of the members of UN expressed their sympathy and concern for genuine Palestinian bid for statehood with full UN membership. USA is hanging around with veto to bully Israelis and threaten Palestinians. It is indeed the most positive development but much delayed one too.  

After undergoing enormous psychological stress due to US nasty pressure tactics, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has submitted his bid to the United Nations for recognition of a Palestinian state and made a speech, to rapturous applause, to the General Assembly.  Abbas said the Question of Palestine is intricately linked with the United Nations via the resolutions adopted by its various organs and agencies. Earlier, he told the Palestinian community in New York that there are small countries in the world that have gained their freedom and independence, but Palestinians we still haven’t got theirs so far.

Extending his hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peacemaking, Abbas insisted on building the bridges of dialogue instead of checkpoints and walls of separation, and build cooperative relations based on parity and equity between two neighboring States - Palestine and Israel - instead of policies of occupation, settlement, war and eliminating the other.

The speech papered over any Palestinian culpability for the negotiations stalemate. In a scathing denunciation of Israel's settlement policy, Abbas declared that negotiations with Israel "will be meaningless" as long as it continues building on lands the Palestinians claim for that state. Invoking what would be a nightmare for Israel, he went so far as to warn that his government could collapse if the construction persists. "This policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to salvage the peace process," said Abbas, who has refused to negotiate until the construction stops.

Most of the assembled delegates, stood up to cheer and clap when the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas came to the podium to declare his application for membership. The American delegation, grim-faced, sat on their hands.

Israel says the UN statehood bid would not deliver any immediate changes on the ground: Israel would remain an occupying force in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and continue to restrict access to Gaza.  General Assembly shortly after Abbas, Netanyahu said his country was "willing to make painful compromises" in its quest for peace but opposes negotiations based on 1967 lines, saying a return to those frontiers would expose Israel's heartland to rocket fire from the West Bank. He argued that rocket fire on Israel from evacuated territory in south Lebanon and Gaza showed that territorial compromise would not automatically resolve the conflict. Netanyahu also demanded a continuing Israeli military presence along what would become an independent Palestine's border with Jordan. But the Palestinians want to control their own borders. Netanyahu ruled out any right of return of Palestinian refugees to Israel.

Madam Clinton said the Quartet proposal for resumption of "talks" and produce a road map to draw up an agenda for peace talks within a month and produce comprehensive proposals on territory and security within three months represents the firm conviction of the international community that a just and lasting peace can only come through negotiations between the parties. In the absence of any credible outcome from talks, such hopes and false are mere myth.

II

The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war, in conformity with the resolutions of international legitimacy.

UN vote would be valuable to the Palestinians because of the implicit recognition that negotiations would be based on lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967. It would also give the Palestinians access to international judicial bodies such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which Israel fears would target them unfairly. Hanging heavy in the air was the threat of renewed violence over frustrated Palestinian aspirations.  Besides dealing a blow to Israel’s position in future peace negotiations, UN recognition of a Palestinian state could allow increased international rights, which some fear the Palestinians may use to launch legal action against Israeli military action.

The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war, in conformity with the resolutions of international legitimacy.

UN vote would be valuable to the Palestinians because of the implicit recognition that negotiations would be based on lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967. It would also give the Palestinians access to international judicial bodies such as the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, which Israel fears would target them unfairly. Hanging heavy in the air was the threat of renewed violence over frustrated Palestinian aspirations.  Besides dealing a blow to Israel’s position in future peace negotiations, UN recognition of a Palestinian state could allow increased international rights, which some fear the Palestinians may use to launch legal action against Israeli military action.

Palestinians want a capital in East Jerusalem. Netanyahu spoke of painful compromises for peace. Netanyahu is a long way from offering what would be necessary for a deal with the Palestinians. Even when he spoke of giving up land that has been occupied and illegally settled since it was captured in the 1967 Middle East war, he chose a defiant tone. His predecessor Ehud Olmert offered much more but ended his rule by a holocaust of Palestinians in Gaza Strip.

Talks for all intents and purposes broke down nearly three years ago after Israel went to war in Gaza and prepared to hold national elections that propelled Netanyahu to power for a second time. A last round, backed by the pro-Zionist USA, was launched a year ago, with the ambitious aim of producing a framework accord for a peace deal. But it broke down just three weeks later after an Israeli settlement construction slowdown expired.

Maybe, Obama believes that the changes sweeping through the Middle East will affect Israel too, and that some bold steps are needed to head off worse crises in the future. But, as a man of pretensions, Obama made a speech that was so pro-Israeli it shocked even the Israelis. With next year's presidential election starting to loom large, the season for traditional CIA-White House caution on Israel-Palestine has arrived to tilt more towards Israel.  President Obama's speech at the UN on 21 Sept was welcomed by almost all major American Jewish organizations and billed in the media as his most pro-Israel yet.

The current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls target the Jewish vote bank and they are deadly anti-Palestine and eager to promote and justify Zionist crimes.  Texas Governor Rick Perry, the frontrunner for White House blamed the president for encouraging the Palestinians to seek membership at the UN.

Israel regretted Palestine's UN step. But they will regret more in future if they continue to obstruct the creation of Palestine state. Israeli officials have warned of harsh retaliatory measures if the Palestinians succeed in their bid, including a halt to funding for the Palestinian Authority. Right-wing members of the government have gone so far as to call for annexation of the West Bank.

In a sign of the tensions, a Palestinian was shot dead in clashes with Israeli troops that erupted after settlers attacked a village near Nablus on the West Bank. But fearing a spurt of violence, some 22,000 Israeli police and border police were on high alert with forces deployed along the Green Line between Israel and the West Bank, in annexed east Jerusalem, and around Arab Israeli towns.

USA and Israel hope that in the absence of a positive outcome in the council, the Palestinians will turn to the General Assembly, which would be expected to approve a lesser status upgrade from permanent observer to nonmember observer state. But Palestinians are not struggling for a mere nonmember observer state!

Many Americans and Israelis praise Obama on the attack in Pakistan on an unarmed Osama: "You got Bin Laden. Good riddance!" That is the level of their collective thinking, hiding whole truth in gimmicks. 

III

US-Israeli game-plan created internal rift in Palestine and produced dueling governments in the West Bank and Gaza. Now threatened by USA and Israel on UN vote, Abbas also threatens to dissolve his limited self-rule government, born of the landmark accords Israel and the Palestinians signed in the 1990s. Israeli is annoyed.

Infested by Mossad and other Jewish people, USA has over years developed strong military terror links with Israel and opposed Palestine. But in Europe the Palestinians might have more support. Israel and the US pressurize their European allies to follow their example.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails. This policy, which constitutes a breach of international humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions, is the primary cause for the failure of the peace process, the collapse of dozens of opportunities, and the burial of the great hopes that arose from the signing of the Declaration of Principles in 1993 between the PLO and Israel to achieve a just peace that would begin a new era for the region.



The Obama regime along with Israeli agents had been working very hard, and to no avail, to persuade the Palestinians not to apply, but failed. US diplomacy also failed but ti has a powerful but shameless veto like a garland in monkey's hand.  

US-Israeli terror twins are apt in proclaiming that Palestinians can never make a Palestine state of their own to exist peacefully without their joint permission. Put it diplomatically, Israel and the US say a Palestinian state can only be achieved through talks with Israel - not through UN resolutions. They want the Palestinians to waste more years and decades by keep bogus-talking with an arrogant fanatic Israeli leadership which is focused on holocaust of Palestinians and stealing their lands. Abbas' response was that Israel only wasted times all these years and had offered "nothing to build on".



What is more disastrous for  US diplomacy is the fact that the US Congress is anti-Palestinians and anti-Islamic and it remains a bastion of pro-Israel sentiment, as witnessed by numerous recent threats to block $50m (£33m) in aid to the Palestinian Authority if it continues its pursuit of UN membership. For the Congress fascist Israeli Netanyahu is a hero. The fanatic members rose to their feet for three dozen standing ovations, the sort of treatment B. Obama can only dream of.  Many corrupt Congressmen, especially the Republican, want the introduce supposedly pro-Israel legislation, including a resolution endorsing Israel's right to annex the West Bank - proposed by a Republican - and a move to cut off military aid to any country supporting the Palestinian bid for UN membership, sponsored by a Democrat. Even these are pure gimmicks to fool the US Jews, it is still atrocious. 

His speech to Congressional lawmakers was punctuated by around 30 standing ovations. Some of the biggest came when he listed the things Palestinians would have to accept to make a deal with him.

The reception B. Netanyahu had from Congress shows why he feels politically strong enough not just to ignore but to reject President B. Obama's suggestion that Israel's permanent borders should be more or less what they were before the 1967 war, adjusted by land swaps. For him, the 1967 boundaries are indefensible. He does not appear to believe that the new Middle East that is emerging will demand fresh thinking.

In New York, Abbas' speech was interrupted repeatedly by thunderous applause as he told the largely sympathetic gathering of world leaders that the Palestinians had had enough of negotiations that have foundered for nearly two decades and yielded few tangible results for the millions who live under Israeli occupation. The new Palestine he envisioned would be in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in 1967.

Palestinians were seized by the historic nature of the moment, which comes more than six decades after the creation of Israel in 1948. Across city centers in the West Bank giant television screens has been set up so residents could watch Abbas deliver his historic address to the 193 member states of the UN General Assembly. In Ramallah, the political capital of the West Bank, many cars were flying the Palestinian flag, and posters of Abbas and his late predecessor Yasser Arafat festooned the streets.

An Observation

UN vote will disallow Israel to continue its occupation of Palestine territories and dismantle all settlement inside Palestine. Palestine will have control over its lands and sea waters.

It is absurd to believe that Americans would not appreciate any real peace moves of their president Obama in favor of creation of Palestine state after so much of bloodshed. Are all Americans, then, incurable mad dogs in democracy dresses like the Republicans and neocon criminals?

True, after wasting years of bogus talks with roguish, essentially fanatic-terrorist Israeli leaders, the Palestinians have now at long last made history in their long quest for statehood as Abbas formally asked the UN on Friday the 23rd Sept to admit Palestine as a full member state. In fact they should have done it early so that it could come into existence long ago.  However, better too late than never!

Ban will now pass the landmark request to the UNSC where the USA might use its trump veto to create nuisance for the world, further complicating the Mideast crisis, but a vote on admitting the Palestinians as a full member state could take weeks, leaving time for more diplomatic wrangling. Quartet envoys -the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations – met Friday. They are shielding Zionist crimes and now trying to hammer out a possible statement, which could bring the two sides back to direct talks, which have stalled since September 2010. Obama also insisted to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday that only new Israeli-Palestinian talks could bring lasting peace. Speech sparked angry demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza, with Palestinians accusing Obama of a double standard for praising the Arab Spring protests while seeking to block Palestinian dreams of statehood.

 Abbas is clear in his thoughts saying they would have meetings with Israel but only after the UN vote for Palestine. Abbas would leave New York after giving his UN speech to return to the Palestinian territories for consultations on the next step forward.

Palestinians do not have oil resources or extra cash to offer to USA for ensuring their support for the establishment of Palestine state. Israel continues to collect taxes n Palestine and refuses to give to the Palestine government or PLO or even Fatah party.  Cruelly, Israel keeps the blockades intact by ignoring all international outcries against them. Palestinians somehow exist even with a crippled economy and weakened security without no proper finances even to pay their staff, people who work in offices and other jobs. Many Palestinians are being gainfully employed by US-Israeli settlement contractors for work on the illegal sites on Palestinian lands.

A pro-US and pro-Zionist Abbas has learned the Zionist ideology by being close to them both.  Frustrated by their gimmicks, he no longer trusts them now. Hamas could join hands with Fatah to form a unity government to create the necessary conditions for quickly establishing Palestine state.

Frustrated  by their gimmicks, Abbas also no longer trusts the US-Israeli terror twins. In fact, none trust them.