A crippled Palestine: Rises up to its feet

On November 29, 2012, sixty five years to the day of the 1947 UN General Assembly decision to partition British-mandate Palestine between Israel and an Arab state, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to raise the status of Palestine from ‘observer entity’ to ‘non-member observer state’. It is only fitting that the UN made its decision on the ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People’.

The UN decision signified a turning of the tables in a way, with the Palestinians celebrating the possible beginning of the end of Nakba, the 'catastrophe' that befell them with the partition, while the Israeli Jews looked on despondently: in 1947 the Palestinians rejected the partition plan of the then 56 member UN General Assembly and the Israeli Jews revelled, naming a Jerusalem street ‘29 November Street’.

The long overdue resolution of the UN General Assembly to raise the status of Palestine from ‘observer entity’ to ‘non-member state observer’ is highly significant because the resolution reads that the UN “reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”.

This particular form of wording makes it abundantly clear that the resolution is the first step of the collective endorsement of the international community of the establishment of a Palestinian state in the territories captured by Israel in 1967, the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Over two-thirds of the UN member states have already individually recognised the ‘state’ of Palestine and it will only be a matter of time before the UN’s collective recognition of Palestinian statehood is granted.

Though the modest achievement of the Palestinians only elevates them to the same status as the Vatican in the short term, it gives them a strong indication of the international sentiment against the historical injustices they have been subjected to by Israel, with the backing of the world’s ‘only super power’.

The request for recognition as an ‘observer state’ was only a compromise the Palestinians were forced to seek following the vetoing by the US of their September 2011 application to the Security Council for ‘full’ UN member status. The General Assembly does not operate on the disgraceful veto system and the US was unable to use its veto on this occasion to prevent the democratic operation of the world body. The will of the large majority of the 193 members who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause prevailed.

Efforts of Israel, US and the UK to undermine the resolution failed

The overwhelming UN General Assembly vote of 138 to 9 in favour of Palestine, with 41 abstentions, was an embarrassing diplomatic defeat for Israel and the US. According to Palestinian President Mahamoud Abbas' spokesman, there was pressure “around the clock from all sides in order to prevent us going to the General Assembly.” Israel clearly viewed the Palestinians’ bid to internationalise their helpless plight as a grave threat to its hegemony. The strident US and Israeli campaign that preceded the vote to coerce the Palestinians to withdraw their request to the UN, and pressure on other nations not to vote ‘yes’ typified the arrogant, high-handed manner in which the Palestinians have always been treated since 1947.

Following the insistence of the Palestinians to go to the UN at any cost, Israel demanded a clause be included in the resolution, stressing that the UN decision is a mere symbolic gesture that grants no sovereignty over the West Bank, Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem. Israel also demanded the decision to include a Palestinian commitment to renewing direct negotiations with Israel 'without preconditions'.

When all threats and other attempts to dissuade the Palestinians from going to the UN failed, Israel attempted to persuade the group of the biggest world powers and the European Union countries - which they ironically named a 'moral majority'- to exert pressure on President Abbas to postpone the bid and to vote against the Palestinians if they proceeded with the UN request.

These demands failed to be effective: France lived up to President Francois Hollande’s campaign pledge to back international recognition of a Palestinian state by promising a ‘yes’ vote on the resolution. More than half of the European Union's 27 member states including Spain and Portugal also promised to vote for the proposal, leaving countries such as Germany, the UK and Australia in a moral quandary in the face of implicit Israeli threats. These countries abstained.

Zionist agents in the UK and Australia tried to get their respective countries to show solidarity with Israel in defiance of the overwhelming world opinion: former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, one of the chief architects of the illegal British involvement in the Iraq war, crawled out of the woodwork to stress the worn-out Zionist argument that a ‘yes’ vote would ‘‘undermine Britain’s influence both with the Israelis and in the Arab world’’. The Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard attempted to merely ‘announce’ to her Cabinet and the parliamentary group that it would be a ‘no’ vote by Australia. But the majority of her Cabinet and the parliamentary group displayed their scruples in arguing against her motive, and crushed her.

The final UN vote shows the failure of the US and Israel to garner the support of many countries other than their client states Canada and the Czech Republic and a few poor, financially dependent micro-nations such as Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Panama. The scale of the defeat represented a strong and public repudiation for Israel and the US, who have once again demonstrated that they are out of step with the morals of the rest of the world.

Ridiculous reasoning for the ‘No’ vote

The US and Israel objections to the full UN membership for Palestine in 2011 and their elevation to the non-member observer status have been based on the claim that granting UN recognition to them will prejudge the outcome of future peace talks.

They insisted that the Palestinians should negotiate their statehood with Israel: any approach by the Palestinians to the UN is arrogantly branded as 'unilateral action' and 'sidestepping' talks.

In the days preceding the 29 November vote, the US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland described the Palestinian request as 'a mistake'. Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, said that the Palestinian move was 'misguided' and efforts should focus instead on reviving the stalled peace process. “The path to a two-state solution… is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York,” she said.

Such reasoning is an insult to the intelligence of the international community in view of the fact that Israel under Benyamin Netanyahu’s government has refused to enter in to any peace negotiations for years, and have gone on to build Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The resolution reflects the opinion of the international community that Israeli settlement-building on occupied West Bank and forcible acquisition of land in East Jerusalem stymies prospects for negotiations. Moreover, the US is complicit through their failure to stop such illegal Israeli acts or to challenge Israel in anyway.

The premise that only 'direct negotiations' between the Palestinian Authority and Israel without preconditions will lead to a Palestinian state is based on the unsustainable lie that the two parties are equal in military and bargaining power.

This lie ignores the obvious fact that Israel is sponsored and militarily backed by the ‘most powerful nation on Earth’, and it ritually abuses its military superiority to harass, intimidate and murder innocent Palestinians. It also ignores the fact that Israel refuses to deal directly with the democratically elected Hamas government of Gaza that represents close to half of the Palestinians.

The campaign against the Palestinian approaching the UN was really to do with the Israeli strategy of building more and more Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories while promising bilateral negotiations under different 'peace processes': preventing any referral by the Palestinians to the UN, or other international intervention, has been an essential part of the strategy of keeping the Palestinians dispossessed over the last 65 years.

Apart from the obvious ‘danger’ of attracting international attention to the plight of the Palestinians, the Israeli and US resistance to UN recognition of a Palestinian state is based on the real fear that membership of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) it accords would enable them to bring action against numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity that have been committed over several decades by Israel.

Palestinian officials have revealed that Britain, US and France pressed President Abbas to sign a confidential side letter, not to be presented the UN General Assembly, committing the Palestinian Authority not to accede to the ICC or seek territorial rulings at the ICJ. Such attempts to exert undue pressure on the Palestinians reveals that the countries who act as self-appointed guardians of rule of law and human rights the world over have been asking, in this case, the 'abused victim' to remain silent, so that the 'outlaw' is protected with immunity and impunity.

Israel has reasons to fear: prior to UN recognition, the Palestinians have tried and failed to access the ICC and seek redress, including by volunteering to become a member: in April 2012, the chief prosecutor of the ICC rejected a declaration by the Palestinian Authority unilaterally recognising the court's jurisdiction because Article 12 of the Rome Statute established that only a 'state' could become member and confer jurisdiction on the court. In instances where it was unclear whether an applicant constituted a 'state', the secretary general is required to seek the General Assembly's directives on the matter; the UN recognition removes that unfair hurdle.

The 2008 'Operation Cast Lead' assault on Gaza that caused nearly 1,400 deaths including several hundred children, widely condemned as a war crime and was designated so by Justice Richard Goldstone, would probably be one of the first cases to go before the ICC. The personal intimidation of Justice Goldstone by the Israeli government and its supporters following his report showed that they are extremely fearful of international legal mechanisms.

Previously, in 2008, a group of Lebanese lawyers submitted a formal complaint to the ICC against the Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the Army Chief Gabi Ashkenasi and others that they had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by ordering and maintaining a siege on Gaza. Many such cases are now likely to go before the ICC, removing the impunity the Israelis enjoyed with US assistance.

How will the Palestinians fare in the new state?

Palestinians had braced themselves for Israeli and US reprisals following their success at the UN. Prior to the vote, Israel threatened that they will not return to negotiations after the vote and the cancellation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords. The Palestinians totally disregarded these threats because, as the world knows, there had not been any negotiations for years and the so-called peace accords had been disregarded by Israel since the signing of them.

There is no doubt that the US would financially retaliate against the Palestinians. Following last year's move by them to join UNESCO, the US withheld funds that amounted to 22 percent of the budget of the organisation; Israel retaliated by accelerating settlement construction and withholding funds from the Palestinian government. The US Congress may freeze US $ 200 million in development aid to the Palestinian Authority. But as the Palestinian National Council member Hanan Ashrawi has pointed out, they were prepared not to desist from seeking freedom due to fear of financial reprisals: they will not cower because financial help would be forthcoming from the new leadership of post-Spring Arab countries.

Immediately following the UN vote, Israel announced plans to build 3,000 settler homes in East Jerusalem and in the highly contentious areas of the occupied West Bank.

The Palestinians will be more than compensated by a range of new legal rights accruing from their new UN observer ‘state’ status; Most importantly, all military hostilities and continued Israeli military presence in Palestine will now formally come under the applicable international laws of armed conflict and military occupation, as set out in the Geneva Conventions. High-handed, arrogant behaviour of Israel such as the continuing siege on 1.5 million residents of Gasa is collective punishment according to International Law including the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute.

Israel is now subject to international legal mechanisms and the real, wider international community would be watching as to how they behave under the new era without impunity.

The Palestinians can now stand up and be proactive in securing their own state.