Palestinians
Live in the Hour Before Dawn
| by Vijay Prashad
( December 21,
2012, New York City, Sri Lanka Guardian) On December 19, the US was saved from
having to whip out its veto to defend Israel. The UN Security Council (UNSC) debated
the issue of settlement building by Israel on the occupied Palestinian
Territories. The bloc of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) hoped for a vote that
would condemn Israeli action, with the NAM statement calling for Israel “to put
a stop to settlement construction and to provocative announcements about
building the settlements.” “Settlement activities and illegal actions by
extremist Israeli settlers,” the NAM bloc underscored, “are also causing
extensive physical, economic and social devastation throughout the Occupied
Palestinian Territory.” India’s Ambassador to the UN, Hardeep Singh Puri read
out the NAM statement. Puri’s India was one of the parties of the IBSA
(India-Brazil-South Africa) statement which called settlement building a
violation of international law and “a major obstacle to peace efforts.”
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Settlement activity picked up over the course of these two year, and so too has UN unease. In February 2011, at the high point of the Arab Spring, fourteen members of the UNSC were prepared to vote on a resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement activity. The US vetoed the resolution.
Even the
British, otherwise yoked to the side of the US, pointed out that this new
settlement activity, in the E-1 area between the settlement of Ma’ale Adumim
and Jerusalem, goes far beyond the pale. “The construction of settlements
threatens the two-state solution,” said UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, a
Middle Temple lawyer who knows more than a thing or two about international
law. Actually you don’t even need to be a lawyer to know that international law
is being violated brazenly. The 1949 Geneva Conventions (article 49) says quite
plainly, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own
civilian population into the territory it occupies.” No one doubts that Israeli
seized the West Bank in the 1967 war and has occupied it since then. No doubt
either that it is article 49 of Geneva that has motivated the UN to keep track
of this settlement issue (it was what framed Resolution 446 of the UNSC, which
affirmed “once more that the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the
Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 12 August 1949 1/ is
applicable to the Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including
Jerusalem” and so “determines that the policy and practices of Israel in
establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied
since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to
achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”).
Settlement
activity picked up over the course of these two year, and so too has UN unease.
In February 2011, at the high point of the Arab Spring, fourteen members of the
UNSC were prepared to vote on a resolution that condemned Israel’s settlement
activity. The US vetoed the resolution. Ambassador Susan Rice played a delicate
game. The veto, she said, must “not be misunderstood to mean we support
settlement activity. For more than four decades, Israeli settlement activity in
territories occupied in 1967 has undermined Israel’s security and corroded
hopes for peace and stability in the region. Continued settlement activity
violates Israel’s international commitments, devastates trust between the
parties and threatens the prospects for peace.” The US, in other words, was on
the side of the majority but could not possibly vote with them. Too much was at
risk.
Such high-stakes
cynicism returned once more this summer. The UN Human Right Council empaneled a
fact-finding mission (FFM) led by the respected French jurist Christine Chanet,
with Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir and Botswana judge Unity Dow as the other
two members. The US voted against the creation of this FFM, but could not stop
it (there is no veto in the UN-HRC). The FFM tried several times to enter
Israel, and via Israeli permission, the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Israel refused. A week before the most recent attack on Gaza, the FFM wound up
its work. Judge Chanet noted, “We continue to regret that we were not granted
access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Israel in order to carry out
further work.” The FFM’s work has been stalled. Meanwhile, Israeli settlers
went to work attacking Palestinian olive groves at harvest time. The UN’s envoy
Robert Serry told the press: “Israel must live up to its commitments under international
law to protect Palestinians and their property in the occupied territory so
that the olive harvest—a crucial component of Palestinian livelihoods and the
Palestinian economy—can proceed unhindered and in peace.” His comment went
unheeded.
Shortly after
the UN General Assembly vote to grant Palestine non-member observer status,
Israel announced that it would begin to build on E-1, thereby slicing the West
Bank into two parts. This was intolerable to the majority in the UN, which then
pushed for UNSC condemnation. The Palestinians, in their new position, pushed
for a presidential statement (which has to be unanimous) to condemn Israel’s
actions or else a council vote (where the veto might be wielded). The US
refused to allow either action. It would not sign onto the unanimous
presidential statement – the other fourteen members, including the four
Europeans (Britain, France, Portugal and Germany), had signed the statement
that condemned settlement activity. It would not allow a council vote – that
would have been too embarrassing. The President of the UNSC for this month,
Morocco’s Mohammed Loulichiki, I am told, did not insist.
The State
Department’s Victoria Nuland said that the US was “deeply disappointed that
Israel insists on continuing their pattern of provocative action,” but the US
nonetheless would not allow the UN to vote on the resolution to condemn Israeli
settlement construction.
A whisper
outside the UN suggested that it is time for Palestine to take the UN
documentation around Operation Cast Lead (2009) to the International Criminal
Court and ask for action on it. Ehud Olmert would be brought into the dock if
the ICC decided to act. Beaten up by the Israeli courts (and perhaps by his
left-wing wife Aliza), Olmert might betray a few confidences held fast by the
Israeli elite. He has always been an untrustworthy figure for the hardline, who
prefers their people not to be as idiosyncratic (he had, after all, supported
the UN bid by the Palestinians).
Such a move is
not inconceivable. Palestine’s UN envoy, Riyad Mansour, said after the
non-vote, “If the Israelis continue to ignore the wishes of all of us, and if
they continue to decide to destroy the two-state solution then we will be able
to resort to all possible options available to us to defend ourselves and our
people in a better way.” All possible options shall include a trip to the ICC
with a big binder.
Pressure has
begun to mount on the Palestinians to drop this potential maneuver. A letter
has begun to circulate in the US Congress to revoke the license of the General
Delegation of the PLO in Washington, DC. Maen Rashid Areikat, the PLO’s chief
representative in DC, sent members of Congress a letter in response on December
14, asking them to consider what it might mean to expel the PLO from the US.
“History has shown time and again that the language of threats, financial
pressure, and punitive measures simply does not work. Withholding our Economic
Support Funds (the majority of which goes towards humanitarian assistance and
development work) as Congress has been doing over the past year, or threatening
to shut down our office will not lead to changes in the Palestinian position.”
These are as strong words as one can expect from a generally pliable
Palestinian leadership. Whether it shall make sense to the ulcerated US
Congress is another matter.
Vijay Prashad’s
most recent book is Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press).
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