This post consists of my responses to questions put to me by a Greek journalist, C.J Polychroniou, who long followed intellectual thought in the West, and is a keen analyst of the current European economic crisis.
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1. What prompted the Palestinian Authority to seek UN recognition for Palestine at this historical juncture in the struggle for justice and the creation of an independent Palestinian state?
I think the essential motivating feature was long overdue disillusionment with the ‘peace process’ as derived from the Oslo Framework of Principles agreed upon in 1993, and looking toward the resolution of final status issues (borders, refugees, Jerusalem, settlements, security, water) within five years. More recently Obama in his 2011 speech to the UN General Assembly appeared committed to the establishment of a Palestinians a state within a year, but awkwardly backed away from this kind of assessment in 2012 when he merely declared that it was difficult to achieve peace, and that only hope was direct negotiations without any preconditions. The published Palestine Papers on confidential negotiations behind closed doors between representatives of Israel and of the Palestine Authority, leaked to Al Jazeera several months ago, reinforced the impression that the Israeli leadership was not at all interested in a negotiated end to the conflict even when offered far reaching concessions by Palestinian interlocutors. Negotiations that lead no where serve Israel’s interests far better than would a clear declaration that acknowledges Palestinian rights under international law as the necessary foundation of a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Another line of explanation for the statehood bid relates to the efforts of the PA Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, to engage in state-building while under occupation, both to demonstrate the credibility of a viable Palestinian state able to govern effectively when Israeli withdrawal takes place and as an alternative path to statehood than that offered by direct negotiations. Several international institutions, including the IMF, have been impressed by these efforts to achieve governmentality despite the difficulties of occupation. There are varying assessments of the degree of success of this Fayyad program of action, both in relation to its approach to economic development, societal wellbeing, and Palestinian self-determination.
Finally, it is important to realize that these periodic failed negotiations have not been neutral as between the parties. They are good for Israel, bad for Palestine. Settlement building and its accompanying infrastructure encroach increasingly on the occupied remnant of historic Palestine. To continue with negotiations without a permanent freeze on settlement expansion is to put an end to any prospect of a two-state solution, and thereby threaten the PA role as providing leadership for the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. The United States has further aggravated the situation by treating the unlawful settlements as ‘subsequent developments,’ in Israeli parlance as ‘facts on the ground,’ that are to be incorporated into Israel rather than undone.
2. The US has called UN recognition of Palestine a “mistake,” with Obama apparently threatening Abbas with significant repercussions, but even some Palestinians have questioned the move, saying it would be mainly a symbolic victory and would not change the reality of the Israeli occupation. What are your views on the matter?
Threatening the PA for taking this perfectly legal initiative of seeking recognition of its statehood and gaining membership in the UN shows the extent of America’s willingness to do Israel’s bidding, however unreasonable its behavior. It is coupled with American silence in the face of blatant Israeli criminality as with the Gaza blockade and 1998-99 attacks, the flotilla incident of May 2010, and the recurring instances of excessive use of force by occupying Israeli forces.
There are complexities on all sides of these questions of why Palestinian statehood and why now. If the Abbas leadership is weakened, it increases the possibility of the extension of Hamas influence on the West Bank. Certainly the United States, and probably Israel, fears such a result. It is possible that Israel would be ambivalent in the face of such a development as it would tend to justify the ongoing dynamic of de facto annexation that has been a byproduct of the settlement phenomenon combined with the rise of Israeli extremist leadership that seems disinterested in any outcome that involves the establishment of a Palestinian sovereign state.
On the Palestinian side, there are also critics of the statehood bid. Some are concerned that the PA may be transforming the conflict into an essentially territorial dispute over land, thereby marginalizing if not abandoning the right of return of Palestinian refugees and those several million Palestinians living in exile. Closely related is the concern, especially among some respected Palestinian NGOs and throughout the Palestinian diaspora, that the PA is trying to displace the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The PLO, unlike the PA, gives Palestinians living outside of the occupied territories representational rights, including a majority of seats in the now dormant Palestinian National Council. It should be observed that Abbas in his speech tried to provide reassurance as to the PLO role, promising that it will remain the sole representative of the Palestinian people so long as the conflict persists. Also of concern to Palestinians is the fear that Israel will, in effect, tell the Palestinians that now they have their state, and there is nothing more to discuss. The conflict is resolved with Israel retaining control of the borders, internal security, and settlements, producing the sort of surrealistic outcome that apartheid South Africa attempted to impose on the black South African majority by creating ten Bantustans.
3. In his historic speech of September 23rd to the UN General Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas spoke of Israel’s policies as “colonial” and “ethnic cleansing” and violation of “international humanitarian laws.” Does this speech represent a change of strategy for PLO or was it for domestic consumption, i.e., in order to promote solidarity among Palestinian supporters?
The use of this appropriately strong language was the most notable feature of the Abbas speech, and a dramatic shift in tone from earlier appeals to the international community. It is this feature as much as the statehood/membership bid that made the speech ‘historic.’ It also served to enhance the legitimacy of the PA, whose reputation has been eroded by its quasi-collaborative relationship with Israel and the United States.
4. Israel has threatened PLO with “punishment” for taking the move to seek UN recognition of Palestine. What more barbaric actions can it take?
The U.S. can withhold financial assistance, a course of action that is likely to be insisted upon by the U.S. Congress in any event unless the Security Council fails to support the statehood bid by a majority of nine or more of its fifteen members, thereby sparing the U.S. the embarrassment of so inappropriately using its veto. America’s right wing Congress is gunning for the UN in any event, and it will seize upon this Palestinian challenge to demonstrate again its unconditional support for Israel’s demands, however unreasonable and cruel in their effects, and to do so at the expense of the UN will be doubly sweet for Tea Party Republicans.
5. Any intuition into what the future holds for the Palestinian question?
I think the overall regional developments are supportive of the Palestinian struggle for a just and sustainable peace. Any Arab government, especially Egypt, will now find it easier to satisfy their restive public opinion at home by confronting Israel than by enhancing the material wellbeing of their own population. In this respect, politics is easier than economics! Whether this prospect will do more than strengthen the hand of Israeli extremism is anyone’s guess.
Turkey has shown the way in these respects, and has embarrassed Arab governments that have been passive for many years in the face of Palestinian suffering and Israeli outrages, including remaining on the sidelines despite the harsh blockade imposed on the 1.6 million people of Gaza as a collective punishment for their willingness to give electoral support to Hamas in the 2006 national elections. If the international community and the Palestinian solidarity movement exerts sufficient pressure for a just solution to the conflict it may eventually give rise to an internal Israeli involving the rediscovery of Israeli realism. One of the costs of Netanyahu/Liebermann hegemony has been to make Israel unable to understand and act upon its own interests, which not only prolongs the Palestinian ordeal but severely endangers Israel’s own security and wellbeing.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
Obama’s AIPAC Speech: A Further Betrayal of the Palestinian People
24 MayOn Sunday, May 22, 2011, President Barack Obama spoke at an AIPAC Conference, three days after giving his decidedly pro-Israeli speech at the State Department on his broader Middle East foreign policy. It was a shockingly partisan speech to the extremist lobbying group that has the entire U.S. Congress in an unprecedented headlock that has become the envy of even the National Rifle Association. Of course, I assume that Obama’s handlers regarded a speech to AIPAC as obligatory given the upcoming presidential election in 2012. The dependence of political candidates for almost any significant elective office in the United States on Jewish electoral and funding support has become an article of secular political faith, and particularly so for a national office like the presidency. Nevertheless, the enactment of this political ritual by Obama seemed excessive even taking full account of the role of Israeli Lobby as to be worth noting and decrying.
What is worse, the mainstream media typically misconstrued the AIPAC event in a manner that compounds the outrage of the speech itself. For instance, the NY Times headline says it all: “Obama Challenges Israel to Make Hard Choices for Peace.” As Obama pointed out himself in his remarks, “there was nothing particularly original in my proposal; this basic framework for negotiations has long been the basis for discussions among the parties, including previous U.S. administrations.” The supposed hard choices involve Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders with agreed land swaps, only restating the generalized international consensus that has often been articulated by American leaders and in a variety of authoritative settings. This is hardly a hard choice, especially as interpreted by the White House’s former Special Envoy, George Mitchell, as including Israel’s perceived security requirements. That is, the land swaps now seem to embrace not only the unlawful settlement blocs that had been conceded by George W. Bush, but now appear to incorporate Netanyahu over the top demands for strategic depth at the expense of Palestinian land, demanding the appropriation of portions of the Jordan Valley along with the deployment of Israeli troops within a hypothetical demilitarized Palestinian state.
What is more, the alleged hard choice is never set against the background of the aftermath of the 1948 War that deprived of about half of the territory they had been given according to the UN partition plan embodied in General Assembly Resolution 181. And as is widely known, the Palestinian rejected that partition as being grossly unfair, imposed from without and awarding the Jewish minority population about 56% of historic Palestine. In effect, the willingness of the Palestinians, expressed first by the 1988 session of the Palestinian National Council to live within the 1967 borders meant agreeing to have their Palestinian state on 22% of the British mandate. This was indeed a hard choice! The land swaps involving settlement blocs, and their bypass roads, and further security zones claimed are all encroachments upon that 22%, and the fact that such further Palestinian concession can be proposed is indicative of just how unfair has become the American led approach to the resolution of the underlying conflict. It is further notable that this fundamental territorial redefinition of the two-state consensus is never acknowledged or even mentioned. In effect, what was thought to be two states in 1947 was dramatically diminished by what became the contours of two states after the 1967 War, and has been further diminished in dramatic form ever since by the settlement process and the various unilateral changes introduced by Israel in the course of administering Jerusalem.
The speech to AIPAC is significant not for these non-existent ‘hard choices,’ but for the scandalously obsequious pleading tone adopted by an American president that acknowledges with pride everything about the U.S. Government’s relationship to the conflict that should disqualify it from ever again having a shred of diplomatic credibility as a third party intermediary. Starting with the fawning “[w]hat a remarkable, remarkable crowd” to his heartfelt words of sympathy for Israeli victims of violence without even a scintilla of empathy for the far, far greater suffering daily endured by the entire Palestinian people: dispossessed, living under occupation, blockade, in refugee camps and exile, or as persons displaced physically and psychologically.
The passage on military assistance to a prosperous Israel should have come as a shock to American taxpayers but passes without notice by the Western media. I quote in full because it so shamelessly overlooks Israeli defiance of international law and its militarist outlook toward the future: “..I and my administration have made the security of Israel a priority. It’s why we’ve increased cooperation between our militaries to unprecedented levels. It’s why we’re making our most advanced technologies available to our Israeli allies. It’s why, despite tough fiscal times, we’ve increased foreign military financing to record levels. And that includes additional support—beyond regular military aid—for the Iron Dome anti-rocket system.” It is not surprising that there was loud applause after each sentence in the paragraph just quoted, but it is surprising that an American president would try to please even an AIPAC audience this abject manner. After all, others are listening! Or should be!
Obama similarly brushes aside any concern about the unlawfulness of the Israeli occupation or its uses of force against a defenseless population in Gaza in its massive attacks launched at the end of 2008, and carried on for three weeks. Obama brushes aside the Goldstone Report by name, suggesting that its assessment of Israel’s wrongdoing somehow challenges Israel’s right of self-defense when in actuality the Goldstone legal analysis does just the opposite, and far more ardently and unconditionally than appropriate, in my view. There is not a word about the Flotilla Incident of a year ago or the recent excessive use of lethal force at the Israeli borders in response to the ‘right of return’ demonstrations associated with the Palestinian remembrance of the 2011 Nakba.
Going beyond the negativity of his State Department comments, Obama mimics Netanyahu in condemning the moves toward Palestinian Authority/Hamas reconciliation and unity. He has the temerity to insist that “the recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace.” Actually, reasonably considered, the agreement should have been welcomed as an indispensable step toward creating the possibility of peace.
Not a word of challenge is uttered by Obama in front of this AIPAC audience about settlements, Jerusalem, and refugees. Not a word about the Palestinian ordeal, or diminished horizons of possibility, and no White House plan announced to give a talk before a Palestinian audience. The Obama talk was so outrageously one-sided, so contrary to American strategic interests, that it implicitly suggests that the Palestinians are so weak and passive as to let it slip by in silence. Only a justifiable outburst of Palestinian rage could begin to counter this impression of diplomatic surrender.
Palestinian prudence would go further that an angry reaction. After such a speech the only responsible response by the Palestinian leadership is to conclude once and for all, however belatedly, that it is no longer possible to look to Washington for guidance in reaching a peaceful, just, and sustainable resolution of the conflict. Indeed, to allow such a Washington framing of peace at this point, in light of this Obama/Netanyahu posturing, would further disclose the incompetence and illegitimacy that have long handicapped the Palestinian struggle for self-determination based on a just and sustainable peace and founded on respect for Palestinian rights under international law.
Tags: American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, George W. Bush, Israel, Palestinian National Council, Palestinian people, United States