Training the Palestinian Security Forces for What?

by Jonathan Rosenblum, Director of Jewish Media Resources

On Thursday afternoon December 24, Rabbi Meir Chai, a 45-year-old religious school teacher, was shot and killed as he left the Shomron settlement of Shavei Shomron, in which he lived with his wife and seven children. Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade claimed responsibility almost immediately, and promised “more quality operations from us.... “

Two days later, on Shabbos, Israeli forces blockaded Nablus and surrounded the homes where the three Al-Aqsa Brigade members who plotted the attack lived. None of the three surrendered in response to a demand from the IDF forces that they do so, and each was subsequently killed in gun battles with Israeli forces.

The response of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian media to the murder of Rabbi Chai and to Israel’s subsequent killing of his murderers raises again troubling questions about the Palestinian security services forces currently being trained by American and European experts.

Since 2005, the Untied States and EU have spent hundreds of millions of dollars training thousands of members of the various Palestinian security forces on the assumption that those forces will constitute one of the key institutions of the Palestinian state in the making. Those forces have been trained both in the basic police work and tasked with anti-terrorist efforts (at least in the minds of the trainers), on the assumption that a reduction in anti-Israel terror is a key component in winning Israeli agreement to the creation of a Palestinian state.

The results so far do not justify the investment nor give much cause to hope that the Palestinians are any closer to creating a stable political entity capable of living in peace with Israel. In The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky argued that only a democratic Palestinian state, in which citizens are capable of freely proclaiming their views in the marketplace, offers any hope of long-term peace with Israel. The creation of a trained police force would not have been self-evidently the first item on the agenda in creating the basics of a civil society capable of evolving into a democratic state. Nor has the record of the Palestinian security forces provided much cause for optimism on this score. Palestinian human rights groups have raised constant complaints against the various security forces for arbitrary arrests, brutality, and shakedown operations.

Nor has the training proved successful in creating a national identity that supercedes various other identities. Almost all members of the security forces are simultaneously members of Fatah, the revolutionary Palestinian organization from which most of the current leaders of the Palestinian Authority were drawn, and profess loyalty to Fatah. In addition, American trainers are not sufficiently sensitive to the importance of clan loyalties in Palestinian society.

The latter may have played a key role in the total failure of the American and European-trained forces to prevent a Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, even though those forces enjoyed a vast numerical advantage over the Hamas forces. Many Palestinian Authority fighters simply deserted or joined with Hamas fighters. Low levels of loyalty and esprit de corps have also characterized the Palestinian Authority forces in confrontation with Palestinian gunmen on the West Bank since 2007. Palestinian Security forces proved incapable of evicting Fatah gunmen from the casbah. They proved similarly ineffective in operations against an Islamic Jihad group in the Kabatya refugee camp. And in a mock drill, fake “Hamas” operatives attacked a PA prison and freed all the prisoners after the Palestinian security forces fled the scene.

Most important from Israel’s point of view, the American-trained forces have proven to be indifferent as an anti-terrorist force. As Maj.-General Yaakov Amidror, the former head of the IDF Staff and Command College and former head of the IDF Research and Assessment Division, points out, police work may have legitimacy in Palestinian society, anti-terrorist activities do not. Israel continues to carry out 70-80% of the anti-terrorist actions in the West Bank. To the extent that the Palestinian Authority security forces have conducted such operations, it has been almost entirely out of a desire to prevent a repeat of Hamas’s takeover of the Gaza Strip in the West Bank, not out of any desire to protect Israel from terror attacks.

Indeed it would be impossible to expect Palestinian security forces to show any commitment to anti-terror action when the Palestinian Authority leadership continues to glorify terrorism. After the murder of Rabbi Chai, approximately 100 meters from the site of a recently removed security checkpoint, the Palestinian Authority issued no condemnation of his murder, even after the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade claimed responsibility. Palestinian media described Anan Subbah as the mastermind of the murder of Rabbi Chai, after the former was killed by IDF security forces. And yet Palestinian Authority President Abbas sent personal condolences to “the holy martyrs of the Palestinian revolution,” and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salem Fayyad personally visited the families of the slain terrorists. Meanwhile the official Palestinian media denounced their deaths as “murder in cold blood” and an “assassination.”

The proclamation of Rabbi Chai’s murderers as “military commanders, brave heroes and fighters,” was of a piece with the Palestinian Authority’s consistent glorification of terrorists. In late December, Abbas sponsored a celebration of the 50th birthday of Dalal Mughrabi, the mastermind of the 1979 Coastal Road Massacre, in which 37 Jews were killed. The official proclamation described her as the “bride of the cosmos,” and the Palestinian Authority daily proclaimed her “the heroine of the Palestinian heroines.”

Two high schools, numerous sports competitions, a new computer center, a Palestinian summer camp and a town square have been named after Mughrabi to date. A one-hour Palestinian television special recently celebrated the 1979 attack. In a similar vein, the Palestinian Authority just issued a musical video celebrating Wafa Indris, the first Palestinian female suicide bomber.

But while the U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces have proven largely ineffective against Palestinian terrorists of various stripes, they do threaten Israel. Twice before have CIA-trained Palestinian security forces, with whom there was a façade of cooperation with Israel, turned their guns on Israelis - the first time during the Tunnel Riots of 1996 and the second time at the outset of the Second Intifada called by Yasir Arafat after the 2000 Camp David summit. The fear is that those being trained under the supervision of U.S. General Keith Dayton may prove more effective than their predecessors. Dayton has himself stated that U.S. training has lifted Palestinian expectations of receiving their state within two years, and he raised the spectre of the Palestinian security forces turning their guns on Israel if those expectations are not met.

There is evidence that those U.S.-trained security forces include members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade responsible for the murder of Rabbi Chai. PA Prime Minister Fayyad, the great “Palestinian moderate” in Western eyes, has previously offered shelter to Brigade members in the compounds of the Palestinian security forces and paid their salaries out of PA coffers. Dan Diker, one of Israel’s most respected political analysts, writes that senior Al-Aqsa Brigade commanders have been assigned senior positions in the PA security forces, such as Aba Jabbal, the senior Palestinian Authority officer in Nablus. The mastermind of the murder of Rabbi Chai’s murder, Anan Subbuh, was found with two M-16s in his possession, even though as part of a U.S.-brokered amnesty agreement, he had foresworn any future possession of such arms.

Senior members of the Israeli defense establishment point out that the Palestinian security forces are not only receiving training from the United States and Europe, but high quality equipment. For instance, advanced surveillance equipment capable of monitoring military communications networks, intelligence networks, and cellular phones has been employed against Israeli targets. Abu Yousuf, a senior officer in Abbas’s Force 17 Presidential Guard, told the New York Sun (August 21 2007), “I do not think the operations of the Palestinian resistance [a code word for terrorism] would have been so successful and would have killed more than one thousand Israelis since 2000... without these [American] trainings.”

After the IDF eliminated the three terrorists who murdered Rabbi Chai, the United States demanded public clarifications from Israel of what had taken place. No similar clarifications were sought from the PA after Rabbi Chai’s murder and the PA’s failure to condemn it.

Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, executive vice-president of Agudath Israel of America, wrote to Secretary of State Clinton, of Mr. Abbas’s failure to disassociate himself and the Palestinian Authority from Rabbi Chai’s murder, “There is something deeply wrong here.” When the recipients of half a billion dollars in aid under the 2010 foreign aid budget law “are linked to terrorists, and even have words of praise for terrorists, it is only logical to question the wisdom, not to mention the moral rectitude of our aid,” he continued.

Indeed.

Jonathan Rosenblum is the director of Jewish Media Resources, a leading media organization dedicated to furthering an understanding of Torah Judaism. Jewish Media Resources works with foreign journalists stationed in Israel and with local journalists by providing access to leading figures within the Orthodox Jewish community in Israel, and with information and insights about the community. Jonathan also serves as an English-language spokesman for the Orthodox Jewish community with foreign journalists.

View the Post at israelbehindthenews.com

Muslim World: Iran - the End Is Not Nigh

As originally posted by the GLORIA center of IDC Herzeliya HERE

By Dr. Jonathan Spyer, Senior Research Fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Herzliya, Israel

The ongoing demonstrations in Iran are testimony to the continued strength and resilience of Iranian civil society. They make a mockery of the Islamic Republic's ambition of offering a model for successful Muslim governance to the world.

The next major manifestation of the protests is likely to be February 11 - the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution. The seventh and 40th days following the deaths of those killed this week are also likely to witness dramatic scenes.

Still, the overheated punditry of the last week predicting the imminent demise of the regime, claiming that this is the beginning of the end for the Islamists in Teheran and that a "tipping point" has been passed is misleading and should be questioned.

Two parallel movements exist in Iran, each of which seeks to change the nature of the Islamic Republic as it has existed since 1979.

The first of these has been much in evidence this week, in the protests and demonstrations that have rocked Teheran and other cities. This is the so-called "Green movement." It has no clear ideology beyond a deep dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs. Within its ranks, one may find supporters of the reformist wing of the current regime, including former presidential candidates Mir-Hossein Moussavi and Mehdi Karroubi, and reformist ex-president Mohammad Khatami.

The protest movement also undoubtedly includes individuals and groups with a far more determined and radical agenda, who would like to see the end of the regime established in 1979. But no credible, organized revolutionary leadership with a clear program for toppling the regime can yet be identified from within the broad mass of this movement.

THE SECOND "movement" exists within the regime itself. This is the trend whose most visible representative is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The coalition of hard-line conservative political associations which produced Ahmadinejad, along with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, have been steadily advancing in the institutions of the Islamic Republic over the last half-decade.

Unlike their opponents in the Green movement, this group has a clear and unifying set of ideas and goals. Their aim is a "second Islamic revolution," which will revive the original fire of 1979. What they are aiming at is the replacement of clerical rule with a streamlined, brutal police-security state, under the banner of Islam. This state will be committed to a goal of building regional hegemony - through possession of a nuclear option and the backing of radical and terrorist movements.

This year has been mixed for the Iranian hard-line conservatives. On the one hand, the electoral "victory" of Ahmadinejad and the subsequent backing given to him by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei represented their biggest advance yet. Ahmadinejad later reinforced his victory by forming a cabinet packed with hard-line conservatives and Revolutionary Guardsmen. This cabinet is currently administering Iran.

There were gains further afield, too. The closest regional allies of the hard-line conservatives - Hizbullah - have become the effective governing force in Lebanon. Iran's Palestinian clients, Hamas, are maintaining power in Gaza, as well.

But on the other hand, 2009 is also the year in which the limitations of the hard-liners and their ideas became apparent.

The ongoing unrest in Iran may not constitute an immediate danger to the regime, but it surely indicates that large numbers of Iranians have no desire to see their country turned into the instrument of permanent Islamic revolution and "resistance" envisaged by the hard-line conservatives. The domestic unrest thus hits significantly at their legitimacy and their ability to promote their regime as a model for governance to the Arab and wider Muslim world.

More tangibly, the Iranian hard-liners have not had it all their own way over the last year in the field most dear to them - the practice of political violence.

Their resistance model failed in a straight fight with the IDF in the early part of the year. Hamas's 100-man "Iranian unit" suffered near destruction in Gaza. The client Hamas regime in Gaza managed to kill six IDF soldiers in the entire course of Operation Cast Lead. This is a failure, and has been recorded by all regional observers as such.

In addition, there appears to be an attempt to demonstrate to the Iranians that the use of terrorism as an instrument of state policy is a two-way street. Hence the killing of 29 Revolutionary Guards in a bombing near the Iran-Baluchistan border in October, and the mysterious explosion in Damascus last month which killed a number of Iranian pilgrims.

These are significant setbacks. Still, the bottom line remains that for as long as they maintain the loyalty of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Basij militia, and the patronage of Khamenei, the control of the hard-line conservatives is not in danger.

Should a real challenge to the power of the hard-liners emerge, the likely prognosis would be for prolonged civil strife, rather than their swift departure. This is not a tired and decaying elite, parallel to the East European communists in 1989. The Iranian hard-liners and their allies regard themselves as the wave of the future, only now ascending to the pinnacles of power. They will not go quietly.

So the prospect is for a long struggle in Iran. The Iranian people are not about to enter the stage like a deus ex machina, with one stroke destroying the Islamist regime and solving the agonizing problem of the Iranian nuclear program.

The most determined revolutionary current in Iran remains the hard-line conservatives. Their eventual failure is a near certainty, because they are likely to fail in building the real-world basis - political, social, economic and military - which alone could support their boundless ambition. Even then, much will depend on the will of the Western and regional enemies of the regime in confronting them.

But contrary to some of the more overexcited opining this week - the playing out of all this still has a way to run. The end is not yet at hand.

Dr. Jonathan Spyer is Senior Research Fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center, Herzliya, Israel


Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, P.O. Box 167, Herzliya, 46150, Israel
info@gloria-center.org - Phone: +972-9-960-2736 - Fax: +972-9-960-2736

The Philadelphia Bulletin: New Israeli Subs to Station in the Persian Gulf

by David Bedein

Jerusalem - This week, a delegation of seven Israeli government cabinet ministers, headed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, held a joint cabinet meeting with their counterparts in Berlin, Germany.

The reported subject under discussion: Israel’s intention to station new German-made submarines in the Persian Gulf on a permanent basis. This was reported on Sunday by the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

The German newspaper reported that Israel requested from Germany to consent to subsidize the construction of a sixth submarine for Israel, manufactured in Germany.

In 2011, Israel is scheduled to receive new Dolphin submarines from Germany that are powered without fuel, and run on an electric engine that creates power from water in an innovative chemical process.

Since 1991, Germany has funded the manufacture of five Dolphin submarines for Israel in the amount of 900 million EURO. In addition, the German army, the Bundeswehr, has increased its military acquisitions in Israel. The German government already approved the construction of the sixth submarine for Israel in 2006.

View this story in the Philadelphia Bulletin
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The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel

The Palestinians' Unilateral "Kosovo Strategy": Implications for the PA and Israel

Published January 2010

The Jerusalem Viewpoints series is published by the Institute for Contemporary Affairs, founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation.

No. 575 January-February 2010

Mahmoud Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.

Senior Palestinian officials note that Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia. European and U.S. support for Kosovo's unilateral declaration has led the Palestinian leadership to determine that geopolitical conditions are ripe to seek international endorsement of its unilateral statehood bid, despite the fact that leading international jurists have suggested that the cases of Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority are historically and legally different.

The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States.

The Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" includes a campaign of delegitimization of Israel, seeking to isolate Israel as a pariah state, while driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The unilateral Palestinian bid for sovereignty will also likely turn the Palestinians into the leading petitioner against the State of Israel at the International Criminal Court. Although the PA is not a state and therefore should have no legal standing before the court, the petition it submitted to the court after the Gaza war was not rejected by the ICC.

Finally, a unilateral Palestinian quest for the 1947 lines may well continue even if the 1967 lines are endorsed by the United Nations. The PLO's 1988 declaration of independence was based on UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognizes the 1947 partition plan for Palestine, not the 1967 lines, as the basis for the borders of Israel and an Arab state.

Have the Palestinians Abandoned a Negotiated Settlement?

Washington's intensive shuttle diplomacy as well as Arab pressure may convince Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table with Israel. However, Abbas' new precondition that the international community recognize the 1967 lines in the West Bank as the new Palestinian border bolsters the assessment that the Palestinians have largely abandoned a negotiated settlement and instead are actively pursuing a unilateral approach to statehood.1

Senior Palestinian officials have also noted that Palestinian unilateralism is modeled after Kosovo's February 2008 unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia.2 European and U.S. support for Kosovo's unilateral declaration, plus Palestinian confidence in its own international case, appear to have led the Palestinian leadership to determine that geopolitical conditions are ripe to seek international endorsement of its unilateral statehood bid, with the 1967 lines as its future borders.3

This assertive Palestinian shift to unilateralism has also been bolstered by a changing balance of power between the Palestinian Authority that was established at Oslo, and its "parent," the Palestine Liberation Organization, which has embraced a unilateral approach to statehood since its 1988 unilateral declaration of independence but has not operationalized it. On December 15-16, 2009, the PLO Central Council convened in Ramallah where it unilaterally assumed the PA's legislative authority, resolved to extend Abbas' term indefinitely, and even voted to replace the PA Legislative Council that had been established as part of the internationally-sanctioned Oslo peace accords.4

The PLO Central Council meeting and its far-reaching resolutions provide another illustration of unilateral intentions that are rooted in former PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat's 1988 PLO statehood declaration. However, despite Palestinian determination and a largely sympathetic international community, it's unlikely that the Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" will end the decades-old conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, it may signal the final unraveling of the Middle East peace process.

Palestinians Invoke Kosovo's Unilateral Statehood Model

Since February 2008, when the Albanian Muslim majority government in Kosovo unilaterally declared independence and secession from Christian Serbia, winning U.S. and European support, the Palestinian leadership has publicly invoked Kosovo as a model for a prospective Palestinian state. Yasser Abed Rabbo, senior advisor to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, told Agence France Presse immediately following the Kosovo declaration, "Our people have the right to proclaim independence even before Kosovo. And we ask for the backing of the United States and the European Union for our independence."5

In late 2008, the collapse of the Annapolis peace negotiations between Abbas and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who, as Abbas acknowledged publicly, had made unprecedented concessions,6further motivated the Palestinians to embrace a unilateral approach to statehood as a default option. Abed Rabo confirmed at the time that, "we have another option. Kosovo is not better than Palestine."7

The Palestinians strengthened their bid for unilaterally-declared statehood in late 2009 and into 2010 while lobbying Europe, South America, and the UN for support, and simultaneously setting unprecedented preconditions for restarting negotiations with Israel.8 In November 2009, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat threatened to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines, arguing that "the EU recognized the state" of Kosovo before other official channels supported its claim for independence. However, U.S. and European opposition to the move would force Erekat to deny his intentions. Instead, he insisted that the Palestinian Authority merely sought UN Security Council endorsement of a Palestinian state, which also mirrors Kosovo's quest for a UN Security Council resolution proposing independence.9

Two leading international jurists have suggested that the cases of Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority are historically and legally different.10 However, from a Palestinian point of view, it seems that legal and historical context are less important than the sympathetic political perceptions that can be created in the international community by promoting what appear to be some external similarities.11 The Palestinians liken themselves to Kosovo's profile in the West as a besieged, indigenous population seeking freedom and independence from its brutal Serbian sovereign overlord, which in the Palestinian analogy is the State of Israel's "occupation" of the disputed West Bank.12

True, both Palestinians and Muslim Kosovars enjoy international support for their respective bids for independence.13 Both have established internationally-sanctioned, self-governing authorities, receive European security backing and UN financial support, and work with UN-appointed special envoys, while each has penned a constitution. However, Kosovo enjoys a NATO security presence, which Palestinian negotiators have failed to introduce into the West Bank despite several attempts to do so in past peace negotiations with Israel.14

Another point of similarity between Kosovars and the Palestinians involves territory. The Kosovo model did not require a territorial compromise on the part of the Albanian Muslim Kosavar government to take into account areas where concentrations of Serbian Christian population remained.15 Similarly, the Palestinian leadership has been reluctant to compromise with Israel over Israeli population centers and vital security requirements in the West Bank.

Politically, many in the Palestinian leadership assess that adopting a unilateral "Kosovo strategy" and seeking international legitimacy to impose the 1967 borders on Israel is their best option, which, in their view, would automatically solve the issues of Jewish settlements and the status of Jerusalem without having to negotiate with Israel, while leaving the refugee issue to be decided according to the "agreed-upon solution" specified in the Arab peace initiative.16

Israel as the Palestinians' "Serbian" War Criminal

Palestinian efforts to delegitimize Israel in the international community play a key role in their unilateral quest for independence. Mindful of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was indicted by the Hague-based International War Crimes Tribunal for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, the Palestinian leadership has aggressively pursued a diplomatic intifada against Israel as a tool of "resistance" to criminalize and isolate the Jewish state in international circles, while simultaneously "leveraging up" the PA's case for statehood.17 For example, Palestinian leaders have for years charged Israel with being an "illegal occupier" of Palestinian lands, and of building an "apartheid wall" - Israel's security fence - in the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership has also promoted internationally its denial of any historical Jewish connection to Jerusalem.18

In January 2009, following the Gaza war with Hamas, Palestinian Justice Minster Ali Khashan petitioned the International Criminal Court to charge Israel with genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.19Israel's Foreign Ministry noted that the PA was also a driving force behind the establishment of the Goldstone mission by the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), and led the campaign in the HRC and the UN General Assembly to implement its conclusions.20 Pro-Palestinian groups have filed scores of war crimes petitions in London and in other European courts, using the Rome Statute and laws of universal jurisdiction to seek the arrest of senior Israeli leaders.21

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has also advanced the notion of a "popular intifada" and has overseen the organization of committees for non-violent popular resistance against Israel that are expressed in the weekly, high-profile, Palestinian-led protests at Bil'in, Maasara, Ni'ilin, and more recently in Sheikh Jarah in Jerusalem.22 In December 2009, Fayyad characterized PA diplomacy as launching an "international intifada against Israel."23

The Influence of Fayyad's Unilateral Statehood Plan

The Palestinian leadership's numerous references to Kosovo's unilateral statehood quest, in the context of public threats by Abbas and Erekat in November 2009 to unilaterally declare Palestinian statehood, must be seen against the backdrop of the August 2009 publication of Prime Minister Fayyad's unilateral two-year statehood plan.

Western policymakers and observers have embraced the Fayyad plan as a positive development - a unilateral, "bottom up," state-building plan whose main goal is to build the infrastructure for eventual Palestinian independence.24 Some Israeli officials and legal experts have also praised aspects of the plan. However, its firm two-year deadline, and its massive state-building projects slated for Area C of the West Bank - which is under full Israeli control and includes the strategically vital Jordan Valley and its protective 3,000-foot hilltops overlooking Israel's main airport and cities - renders the plan more of a pretext to unilaterally declare statehood.25 In fact, Fayyad has provided clear indications that after two years, the establishment of a de facto Palestinian state will occur with or without Israel's agreement.26

In January 2010, Fayyad said, "Our people are determined to expunge all the distorted definitions described as Areas A, B, and C," and that "Palestinian markets should burn products coming out of Jewish settlements."27 This would seem to suggest that Fayyad advocates sidelining the principle of a negotiated agreement that was enshrined and agreed upon in the Oslo accords, even to the point of resisting such previous agreements on the ground.

Favorable Geopolitical Conditions for the Palestinians

The Palestinian leadership did not adopt the unilateral "Kosovo strategy" ex nihilo. Leading members of the European Union encouraged the Palestinians to move in this direction. PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat credited former EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana with engineering the idea.28 In July 2009, Solana told a British forum that after a fixed deadline, the UN Security Council should unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines.29 Palestinian unilateralism also received a boost in early December 2009 when Sweden, in the final thirty days of its rotating EU presidency, proposed that EU foreign ministers back its draft proposal recognizing east Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian state, thus implying EU acceptance of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood.30

The EU Foreign Policy Council partly softened its final statement days later. However, as former UN ambassador Dore Gold notes, the final EU statement still retained the proposal that envisioned Jerusalem as the future capital of two states. Additionally, the statement said that the EU "would not recognize any changes to the pre-1967 borders including with regard to Jerusalem," thereby enshrining the 1967 lines - a key Palestinian demand - as a previous political border.31 Palestinian unilateralism has also drawn encouragement from the United Nations itself. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has reportedly issued expressions of support for such moves, according to former PA security chief Mohammed Dahlan and Saeb Erekat in a November 14, 2009, interview with the Palestinian newspaper Al-Ayyam.32

U.S. Policy

The Palestinians' roller-coaster relationship with the United States over the past two years has ended up giving the Palestinians' "Kosovo strategy" a push forward. In 2008 the Bush administration had rejected the Palestinian comparison between Kosovo and the Palestinian Authority, encouraging the PA to continue to pursue the Annapolis process.33 However, the Palestinian Authority rejected Washington's opposition, despite Palestinian participation at Annapolis. Abbas' spokesman, Yasser Abed Rabo, noted, "Our people have the right to proclaim independence as the people of Kosovo did. We were occupied long before the Kosovo problem emerged."34

Since then, Palestinian disappointment with the Obama administration's policy reversal on an Israeli settlement freeze as a precondition to negotiations has fueled the unilateral Palestinian statehood bid. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's praise of Israel's settlement moratorium and her calls for an unconditional resumption of peace talks convinced Palestinians that the United States would not "deliver" Israel.35 Abbas was also worried about Secretary Clinton's statement noted in the Arabic press during her visit to Qatar that negotiations are about "give and take." He inferred that Clinton meant removing the principle of the 1967 borders from the table - which the Palestinians took as a hint that the Obama administration may have been reviving President Bush's 2004 presidential letter to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that provided U.S. presidential backing for Israeli settlement blocs and denied the right of return to Palestinian refugees. Abbas contrasted Clinton's latest statements with her much tougher statements on Israeli settlements in May 2009, when she said, "Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions."36

Former PA Minister Ziad Abu Ziad assessed that "the Palestinian leadership had thought that Obama had become more Palestinian than the Palestinians, that he would stop settlements, remove them, and establish a Palestinian state."37 Rather, U.S. pressure on Abbas to return to negotiations with Israel without preconditions has appeared to weaken Abbas both among the political echelons of Fatah and on the Palestinian street,38 and has severely compromised his ability to negotiate with Israel. Additionally, the terms of reference which Clinton had used in January 2010, to try to reconcile Israeli demands for secure and recognized boundaries with Palestinian demands for a state on the 1967 lines, seem to justify Abbas' concerns.

Despite Palestinian disenchantment with Washington, there are signs that the Obama administration position supports the Palestinian demand for a state along the 1967 lines and a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem,39 which are central objectives of the Palestinian "Kosovo strategy." According to one assessment, Obama may have even supplied the Palestinians with a letter of guarantee to that effect.40While the U.S. is publicly committed to the principle of a negotiated solution between the sides, it has grown impatient with the bilateral process. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly expressed deep frustration with both the PA and Israel, which supports the Palestinian sense that they are on the right track in pursuing a unilateral "Kosovo" option.

Internal Palestinian Considerations

The Palestinians' "Kosovo strategy" has also been bolstered by a shift in the balance of power from the internationally-sanctioned Palestinian Authority to its parent organization, the Palestine Liberation Organization. Abbas' refusal to stand for re-election and the PA's failure to hold new parliamentary elections has led to a governmental deadlock. Hamas' nominal control of the PLC since its 2006 electoral victory, as well as its rule in Gaza and its refusal to reconcile with Fatah or to cooperate in holding elections for the PA in January 2010, is another major source of the PA's paralysis. Abbas also fears a Hamas takeover of the West Bank.41

At the PLO Council's mid-December meeting, it unilaterally assumed the PA parliament's legislative authority and extended Abbas' leadership indefinitely, recognizing Abbas as Chairman of the PLO, as opposed to Chairman of the PA. By definition, the PLO move sidelined Hamas' majority control in the PA parliament.42 Despite the PLO Council's decision to delay the official replacement of the PA parliament, the meeting unilaterally restored the PLO's power in Palestinian parliamentary politics that had characterized the period under Arafat's rule.43

Should the PLO implement its recent resolution, collapse the PA, and rule the West Bank, it will create a vacuum of international legal legitimacy, as the PA was recognized by the Oslo agreements as an interim governing body. Therefore, this latest internal move will likely accelerate PLO decision-making regarding a unilateral declaration of statehood. The case has a precedent: in 1999, it was precisely this consideration that caused the Palestinian leadership to consider unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state as Oslo's five-year interim period was about to expire.

Re-energizing International Support for the PLO's 1988 Statehood Declaration

The PLO Council meeting also illustrated a strategic shift from the bilateral negotiations with Israel of the past 17 years. The PLO Council reenergized the Palestinian National Council's 1988 declaration of independence in Algiers, which had been endorsed by 104 countries and resulted in UN recognition of the PLO's proclamation.44 Beginning in 1989, this brought the UN to refer to the PLO as "Palestine," but without formal statehood status in view of firm U.S. and European opposition to the PLO declaration, since the PLO did not satisfy the basic criteria for statehood under international law.45

The PLO's unilateral statehood declaration was never shelved even during the Oslo years, despite the signed agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel affirming a negotiated solution based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which also governed all subsequent peace initiatives including the Quartet-sanctioned Roadmap and the Annapolis process.46 In fact, Arafat and other senior PLO and PA representatives had repeatedly asserted their right to declare statehood unilaterally during the Oslo period without prior coordination or agreement with Israel, and even threatened to make such a declaration on several occasions, including at the United Nations in 2000.47

That explains the far-reaching significance of the PLO Central Council's sudden reemergence as the Palestinian legislative authority. It established a new pretext to cancel previously signed agreements, both with respect to the exchange of letters with the PLO in September 1993 at the White House and to the 1995 interim agreement with the Palestinian Authority. A reinvigorated PLO strategy now seeks UN Security Council endorsement of the 1988 PLO declaration of statehood in an effort to impose the 1949 armistice lines (the 1967 borders) on Israel - which Abbas and other senior Palestinian leaders publicly sought in November 2009.48 On January 8, 2010, Abbas reiterated this threat if the United States failed to impose Palestinian preconditions on Israel as part of Washington's efforts to jump-start peace talks.49 Waleed al-Awad of the former communist Peoples Party noted that the goal of the PLO Central Council meeting was to "place an international siege on Israel."50

Prospects for Palestinian Success

The Palestinian gambit for pursuing a "Kosovo strategy" is anything but certain. The Palestinians are legally bound to negotiate a bilateral solution with Israel. Unilateral Palestinian threats to declare statehood have been rebuffed thus far by the European powers and the United States. However, the Palestinians believe that under fluid political conditions and growing U.S. impatience over getting the parties to return to the negotiating table, support for Palestinian unilateralism is possible and necessary for success. Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Malki told the London-based Asharq Alawsatthat the main goal of Palestinian diplomacy is winning U.S. support, so that when the Arab countries jointly appeal to the UN Security Council, the Obama administration will not veto a resolution that will finally affirm the pre-1967 lines as the borders of a Palestinian state.51

There is also a wide gap between Palestinian aspirations for unilateral statehood and their poor performance on the ground. Palestinian governance has been marked by several failures. The PA has not delivered reforms to its constituency. Government corruption and unemployment are still major issues. The PA failed to hold the promised 2010 elections, which resulted in the PLO Central Council resolution to replace the PA Legislative Council. But that decision has also been tabled for the interim. Meanwhile, the split between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank may prove to be irreconcilable.

The Palestinian leadership's rush to act already as a de facto state has not succeeded, even in the basic administrative tasks of issuing passports and currency.52 In December 2009, Maan, a leading Palestinian news organization, raised doubts as to the effectiveness of the PLO's "Kosovo strategy" and questioned the wisdom of turning the international arena into a confrontation line between the Palestinians and Israelis. It emphasized that unilateral "success will benefit the Palestinians, while failure will inflict political catastrophe."53

Implications for Israel

The Palestinian "Kosovo strategy" contains several major implications for Israel. First, the Palestinian delegitimization of Israel in the interim poses a strategic threat. The Palestinian state-building process has succeeded in painting Israel as a pariah state, while the hidden foreign policy agenda of the PA and PLO leaderships is to drive a wedge between Israel and the United States. Although unlikely, if the Palestinians win international endorsement of sovereignty along the 1967 lines, Israel will become persona non grata anywhere east of the "green line," including in many central neighborhoods within its own capital city, Jerusalem, that have been developed since the 1967 war.

The unilateral Palestinian bid for sovereignty will also likely turn the Palestinians into the leading petitioner against the State of Israel at the International Criminal Court. An early indication of what can be expected if the PA's "Kosovo strategy" comes to fruition may be seen in the petition submitted to the court by the PA after the Gaza war. Although the PA is not a state and therefore should have no legal standing before the court, its petition was not rejected by the ICC.

Finally, the unilateral Palestinian quest for the 1947 lines may well continue even if the 1967 lines are endorsed by the United Nations. The PLO's 1988 declaration of independence was based on UN General Assembly Resolution 181, which recognizes the 1947 partition plan for Palestine, not the 1967 lines, as the basis for the borders of Israel and an Arab state.

This threat is not theoretical. In 1999, former Palestinian UN Ambassador Nasser al-Kidwa, today a senior Palestinian official and a major proponent of UN endorsement of a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state, submitted a letter on behalf of the PLO asserting that Resolution 181 and its corresponding 1947 partition plan are accepted by the PLO and cannot be annulled, as they provide the legal basis for the existence of both Jewish and Arab states in Mandatory Palestine.54 Since then, Resolution 181 has been invoked by other Palestinian leaders. In view of the PLO's intention to replace the PA as the legitimate legal authority to carry out the Palestinians' Kosovo model, the implications of unilateral Palestinian action are far-reaching.

Dan Diker is Director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where he is also a senior foreign policy analyst. He is also an Adjunct Fellow of the Hudson Institute in Washington.

* * *

Notes

1. Khaled Abu Toameh and Herb Keinon, "Recognition of ‘67 Border Before Talks," Jerusalem Post, December 15, 2009. Abbas announced at the PLO Central Council meeting on December 15, 2009, that the Palestinians will not resume peace talks with Israel unless the international community recognized the "1967 borders" as the boundaries of a Palestinian state. Abbas' latest precondition, as well as the complete Palestinian rejection of all Israeli concessions and gestures since the failed Annapolis peace process - including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recognition of a demilitarized Palestinian state, a virtually complete settlement moratorium in the West Bank, and the granting of amnesty to hundreds of members of Palestinian terror groups - illustrates a Palestinian refusal to negotiate with Israel. See "The Palestinian Refusal to Negotiate Peace," Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, January 4, 2010, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/About+the+Ministry/Behind+the+Headlines/Palestinian_refusal_negotiate_peace-Jan_2009.

2. "Erekat: It's Time to Recognize a Palestinian State," Ma'an News, November 17, 2009. See also, "Palestinians Should Follow Kosovo Example: Negotiator," Agence France Press, February 20, 2008, http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iS_5y-7raxAQIhNgJDtMOIhadGrg.

3. "Palestinians Unveil Two-Year Development Plan for Statehood," Ha'aretz, November 15, 2009.

4. http://www.mofa-gov.ps/ar/index.php?p=main&id=22. The PLO Central Council also voted to delay implementing the replacement of the Oslo-sanctioned Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), extending the PLC's role in the interim until elections can be called "at the earliest possible date."

5. Yaakov Katz, "Taking a Cue from Kosovo," Jerusalem Post, September, 3, 2009.

6. Abbas acknowledged to the Washington Post 's Jackson Diehl after the failure of Annapolis that Olmert's offer of 97 percent of the West Bank and the recognition of the right of return (that included the return of 100,000 refugees - DD) was more generous to the Palestinians than the offers of either George Bush or Bill Clinton, and yet Abbas said: "The gaps were wide." See Jackson Diehl, "Abbas' Waiting Game,"Washington Post, May 29, 2009, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803614.html.

7. Ali Abunimah, "Kosovo and the Question of Palestine," Electronic Intifada, February 25, 2008.

8. "Erekat Unimpressed with New U.S. Attitude," January 9, 2009, Jerusalem Post,http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1262339435514 & pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.

9. Tova Lazeroff and Herb Keinon, "Erekat Denies PA Unilateralism Plans," Jerusalem Post, November 18, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258489190816&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter. In the Kosovo case, UN Security Council Resolution 1244, passed in 1999, established Kosovo as a UN Protectorate. However, similar to the Palestinian case, Kosovo has not yet won a UNSC resolution for independence, since the Security Council has been unable to agree on a resolution backing supervised independence. See International Crisis Group Analysis, http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3225&l=1.

10. Separate conversations with international law experts Professor Ruth Lapidot and Professor Irwin Cotler, former Justice Minister of Canada, in Jerusalem, December 21, 2009.

11. Kosovo - a province of Serbia - has been under international trusteeship since NATO's armed intervention in 1999. UN Security Council Resolution 1244 provided international sanction for UN trusteeship. For Serbs, Kosovo is an ancestral homeland and the site of many important Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries. They insist that the area remain under Serbian sovereignty. The current state of limbo, tension, and sporadic violence between Kosovo's Albanian majority, which is mostly Muslim, and the Serbian minority, which is mostly Orthodox Christian, has mobilized international support away from the notion of a multi-ethnic society there and ratcheted up support for Kosovo's break from Serbia.

12. Clearly, the legal analogy does not work. Kosovar independence, currently being considered by the International Court of Justice, requires the consent of Serbia, the sovereign power, notwithstanding exceptional cases of brutality that would obviate agreement of the sovereign. Ironically perhaps, legally, the Palestinians must also receive Israel's agreement in any final status arrangement over final borders, as enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242, and as agreed upon at Oslo and in the 2002 Roadmap.

13. The Kosovo case was referred by the UN General Assembly to the International Court of Justice on October 8, 2008, for an advisory opinion as to the legality of Kosovo's unilateral declaration. The ICJ opinion is still pending. See http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/141/14797.pdf.

14. http://reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3679.

15. A map of Kosovo reveals that its ethnic composition leaves the minority Serb population contained in the provinces in Kosovo's north, leaving the majority of the land to the Muslim Kosovar majority without the risk of geographical interlocking or overlapping communities.

16. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative referred to the issue of refugees thus: "Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/mar/28/israel7.

17. Dan Diker, "Why Israel Must Now Move from Concession-Based Diplomacy to Rights-Based Diplomacy," Jerusalem Viewpoints #554, June-July 2007,http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp ? DRIT=2&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=253&PID=0&IID=1607&TTL= Why_Israel_Must_Now_Move_from_Concessions-Based_Diplomacy_to_Rights-Based_Diplomacy. See also "Palestinian Refusal to Negotiate Peace."

18. See examples of Palestinian leadership denials of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in Dore Gold, The Fight for Jerusalem (Washington: Regnery Publishing, 2007), pp. 10-11.

19. John Quigly, "The Palestine Declaration to the International Criminal Court: The Statehood Issue,"Rutgers Law Record, vol. 35, (Spring 2009), http://www.lawrecord.com/files/35-rutgers-l-rec-1.pdf.

20. "Palestinian Refusal to Negotiate Peace." Daniel Reisner, former head of the Israel Defense Forces' International Law Department, pointed out in interviews on January 6, 2010, on Army Radio and Channel 10 that Fayyad's government successfully appealed to the International Criminal Court without having the status of a sovereign state. Surprisingly, Reisner noted, the court did not dismiss the appeal, which underscores the vigorous efforts of PA Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Malki to upgrade the status of the PA to a sovereign state, which would in turn leverage up the number and effectiveness of Palestinian petitions to the ICC against the Israeli government and military officials.

21. In late 2009, Defense Minister Ehud Barak narrowly escaped arrest while on an official visit to London, while Israeli opposition leader and former foreign minister Tzippi Livni cancelled a planned visit to London, fearing arrest. http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/news/international/Israeli_Military_Delegation_Cancels _Britain_Trip_Fearing_Possible_War_Crime_Charges_25944716.

22. On March 22, 2009, Fayyad convened in his bureau the committees of the "popular intifada," as opposed to the military one. These committees were charged with organizing public activities against the security barrier and the settlements. Fayyad told them: "This example of resistance received respect, appreciation and support worldwide." Al-Hayat al-Jadeeda, March 22 2009. See also Dan Diker and Pinhas Inbari, "Is the Palestinian Authority Stable Enough for Peace Talks? Assessing the Resignation and Return of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad," Jerusalem Issue Brief, vol. 9, no. 3, June 16, 2009,http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp ? DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=442&PID=0&IID=3007. For a typical anti-Israel protest website, see http://www.awalls.org/.

23. http://www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&article=548758&issueno=11341.

24. U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, visiting Ramallah in November 2009, said, "I know some people concerned that this is unilateral, but it seems to me that it is unilateral in the healthy sense of self-development." See "Fayyad, PA Getting Ready for Statehood," Jerusalem Post, November 15, 2009. See also Dan Diker and Pinhas Inbari, "Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's Two-Year Path to Palestinian Statehood: Implications for the Palestinian Authority and Israel," Jerusalem Issue Brief, vol. 9, no. 11, October 2, 2009,http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID =442&PID=0&IID=3096.

25. Alan Baker, "A Paradox of Peacemaking: How Fayyad's Unilateral Statehood Plan Undermines the Legal Foundations of Israeli-Palestinian Diplomacy," Jerusalem Viewpoints, no. 574, November-December, 2009,http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID =1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=3185.

26. Diker and Inbari, "Fayyad's Two-Year Path."

27. http://www.maannews.net/arb/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252188.

28. "Erekat: PA May Declare State via UN," Ynet News, November 14, 2009, http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3804948,00.html.

29. Assaf Uni, Jack Khoury, and Yanir Yagna, "EU Chief Urges UN to Set Unilateral Timetable for Palestinian Statehood," Ha'aretz, July 13, 2009.

30. Barak Ravid, "EU Draft Document on Division of Jerusalem," Ha'aretz, December 2, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1131988.html.

31. Dore Gold, "Europe Seeks to Divide Jerusalem," Jerusalem Issue Brief, vol. 9, no. 14, December 10, 2009.

32. Baker, "A Paradox of Peace Making."

33. "Washington Rejects Palestinian Kosovo Comparison," AFP, February, 20, 2008.

34. Ibid.

35. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1124825.html.

36. Isabel Kershner, "Israeli Settlement Growth Must Stop, Clinton Says," New York Times, May 28, 2009.

37. Khaled Abu Toameh, "Palestinians and Obama, End of a Honeymoon," Hudson Institute New York, November 24, 2009.

38. Khaled Abu Toameh, "Why Is Abbas Stonewalling?" Jerusalem Post, December 24, 2009.

39. "Obama Tells Abbas Committed to PA State," Ynet News, October 23, 2009. Following Obama's phone call to Abbas, his spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeinah, said, "It was a very important conversation for the future of the peace process and the region." As the Palestinians' sole priority has been to win U.S. and international endorsement for the 1967 lines, the PA's uncharacteristically positive reaction to Obama after Washington's reversal of its former precondition of a total Israeli settlement freeze strongly suggests an Obama commitment on the central Palestinian demand.

40. Amidst the growing tensions between the U.S. and Israel over Israeli construction in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar wrote, "The Obama administration has recently begun discussing how to appease Abbas. For example, by giving him letters spelling out U.S. support for a final status arrangement based on the 1967 borders and reaffirming Washington's position that Jerusalem is divided into eastern and western parts." See Akiva, Eldar, "Will Netanyahu's Behavior Push Obama into Abbas' Arms?" Ha'aretz, November 19, 2009.

41. Abbas reportedly revealed to a Kuwaiti newspaper that he had "verified information that Hamas was planning to take over the West Bank. Khaled Abu Toameh, "Can Hamas Be Stopped from Seizing the West Bank," Hudson Institute New York, January 5, 2010, http://www.hudsonny.org/2010/01/can-hamas-be-stopped-from-seizing-west-bank.php.

42. While many Hamas PLC lawmakers remain in Israeli custody, the Palestinian leadership wanted to remove Hamas from even formal majority control of the Palestinian Authority's Legislative Council.

43. Salim Zanoun, Chairman of the PLO's National Council, noted that the Palestinian Authority was the legal child of the PLO and the Central Council which the PNC established in 1994. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs further explained the proposed but yet to be implemented PLO takeover of the PA Parliament, saying: "The PA's duty is only to provide services to the Palestinians." Hence, the PLO and not the PA is the only legal body empowered to declare a state, http://www.mofa-gov.ps/ar/index.php?p=main&id=22. Ironically, perhaps, the PLO Council did not uproot the PA and endorsed the continued functioning of the Palestinian Authority's legislative council, in order to enjoy the ongoing receipt of billions of dollars in international donor contributions. The PA received $3 billion in 2008, according to French estimates, while the December 2007 Paris donors' conference pledged over $7 billion in aid to the PA over the years 2008-2010. See Dan Diker and Khaled Abu Toameh, "Can the Palestinian Authority's Fatah Forces Retake Gaza?" Jerusalem Viewpoints, no. 569, January-February 2009, http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=443&PID=0&IID=2842.

44. While not recognizing Palestine as a state, 104 countries recognized the 1988 Palestine Liberation Organization's Declaration of Independence. See John Quigly, "The Palestine Declaration to the International Criminal Court." See also Palestinian National Council, Declaration of Independence, November 15, 1988, UN Doc. A/43/827, S/20278, Annex III, November 18, 1988, reprinted in 27 I.L.M. 1668 (1988). The August 2009 publication of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's "Two-Year Plan to Palestinian Statehood" is seen by most Western and many Israeli observers as a unilateral state-building plan in its initial phases, but not necessarily one in which Fayyad or the PA will unilaterally declare a Palestinian state in 2011, thereby maintaining the framework of a negotiated solution.

45. Tal Becker, "International Recognition of a Unilaterally Declared Palestinian State, Legal and Policy Dilemmas," Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, http://www.jcpa.org/art/becker1.htm.

46. Baker, "A Paradox of Peacemaking."

47. Becker, "International Recognition of a Unilaterally Declared Palestinian State."

48. "Erekat: It's Time to Recognize a Palestinian State," Ma'an News. See also "Abbas: Only Solution Is to Declare Palestinian State," Ha'aretz, November 25, 2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1128786.html.

49. Hilary Leila Krieger, "Jerusalem Rejects 2-Year Peace Deadline," Jerusalem Post, January 8, 2010.

50. Maan News (Arabic), December 12, 2009, http://www.maannews.net/arb/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=245977.

51. http://www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&article=548758&issueno=11341.

52. For example, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyadh al-Malki signed a state-to-state agreement with Francewhich is an upgrade of the PA's political status on the declarative level, but the Palestinians had to backtrack from practical decisions expressing unilateral statehood, such as issuing a Palestinian currency or issuing Palestinian passports. The Lebanese daily al-Akhbar reported that one of the main purposes of Abbas' visit to Beirut was to deal with the rejection of issuing passports to the Palestinian refugees inLebanon, as they believed passports would cost them the right of return. Abbas, according to the report, accepted the claim and rescinded the issuing of passports.

53. http://www.maannews.net/arb/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=245885.

54. See the letter submitted by PLO Ambassador Nasser al-Kidwa to the General Assembly, http://www.jcpa.org/art/jid-apx.htm#plo181.

The Philadelphia Bulletin: Israel Wants to End Incitement as Part of the Peace Process

by David Bedein

Jerusalem - For the first time since the genesis of Middle East peace negotiations, more than 30 years ago, the government of Israel has placed the cessation of official Arab incitement to murder Jews as a condition for the continuation of Middle East peace negotiations.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared after last week’s government weekly cabinet meeting, “It is not only missiles and rockets that endanger security and push peace further off. Words can also be dangerous.”

Referring to recent ceremonies held by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in honor of Palestinian terrorists who had murdered Jews. Mr. Netanyahu observed that “Sadly, there has been a retreat in this area in recent months, both within the Palestinian Authority and by its leaders. Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah after a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the coastal road - encourages terrorism. Whoever declares those responsible for the murder of the late Rabbi Meir Hai, father to seven children, as holy martyrs - pushes peace further away.”

Mr. Netanyahu also made reference to the new Palestinian curriculum, which represents the first official curriculum since the Third Reich to inculcate war against the Jews.

In Mr. Netanyahu’s words, “incitement continues in the Palestinian media and education system; in its official media outlets and in the schools under its supervision. These serious actions represent a harsh violation of the Palestinians’ international obligation to prevent incitement. I say to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority: Stop the incitement. This is not how peace is made. Peace is made by educating towards reconciliation, by encouraging good neighborly relations and by developing mutual respect. Therefore, the cessation of Palestinian incitement is a necessary condition, not for entering into discussions, but so that we may complete them in a way that will bring about genuine peace between our two peoples.”

While Israeli concern over incitement is not new, the fact that Israel has conditioned the cessation of incitement as a condition for continuing Middle East negotiations is unprecedented.

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The Philadelphia Bulletin: Iranian General Threatens Revenge against America

by David Bedein

Iranian Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said Wednesday that Tehran will take revenge on the U.S. for its involvement in recent events, including the assassination of a renowned nuclear scientist and university professor, according to Iranian government news agencies.

“People are angry at those who staged the scene of recent events and terror attacks, but revenge should be taken from the U.S. itself for these crimes and, God willing, this will happen,” Mr. Naqdi said, addressing a gathering of commanders in Tehran.

Referring to the assassination of the Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, he said the attack proved that the West is opposed to the production and development of sciences and technology in Iran.

“The terror attack against martyr Ali Mohammadi showed that the Democrats ruling the White House have reached a dead-end and are staging a scenario which (Former U.S. President Jimmy) Carter performed 30 years ago,” Mr. Naqdi said.

Iran has been presenting what it refers to as “documents proving West’s interference in Tehran’s affairs and its role in stoking the unrests” which allege “Western powers had played a direct role in the unrests.”

On Aug. 1, Iran launched the trials of a large number of dissidents, who it has accused of being agents, with certain foreign countries, which “contributed a role in fomenting unrest,” according to an Iranian government press release.

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The Philadelphia Bulletin: Head of Israel's Islamic Movement Sentenced

by David Bedein

JERUSALEM - SHEIKH RAED SALAH, THE LEADER OF THE ISRAEL ISLAMIC MOVEMENT’S NORTHERN CHAPTER, DID NOT STOP SMILING YESTERDAY, EVEN WHEN HE HEARD THE SENTENCE SENDING HIM TO NINE MONTHS IMPRISONMENT.

MR. SALAH STOOD TRIAL IN THE JERUSALEM MAGISTRATES COURT AND WAS CONVICTED OF ASSAULTING A POLICE OFFICER AND TAKING PART IN A RIOT. IN THE INDICTMENT, IT WAS ARGUED THAT, IN FEBRUARY 2007, MR. SALAH LED A RIOT NEAR THE TEMPLE MOUNT TO PROTEST THE RENOVATION WORK ON THE MUGHRABI GATE BRIDGE - ONE OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE TEMPLE MOUNT. IN THE COURSE OF THE RIOT, MR. SALAH CAME UP TO ONE OF THE POLICE OFFICERS, SPAT IN HIS FACE AND SAID, “YOU ARE RACISTS AND MURDERERS, YOU HAVE NO HONOR.”

“THE DEFENDANT’S ACTIONS EXPRESS HATRED AND CONTEMPT FOR THE PEOPLE IN UNIFORM WHO REPRESENT THE RULE OF LAW,” STATED JUDGE YITZHAK SHIMONI IN THE RULING, WHILE SENTENCING MR. SALAH TO NINE MONTHS IN PRISON AND A SIX-MONTH SUSPENDED SENTENCE, AS WELL AS REQUIRING HIM TO COMPENSATE THE POLICEMAN IN THE SUM OF CLOSE TO (U.S.) $2,000.

“DURING THE POLICE OFFICER’S TESTIMONY, THE DEFENDANT LAUGHED, LEAVING A VERY NEGATIVE IMPRESSION ON ME,” HE ADDED, AND RULED THAT MR. SALAH WOULD BEGIN TO SERVE HIS SENTENCE ON FEB. 28. MR. SALAH’S DEFENSE ATTORNEY KHALED AZBARGA SAID THAT THEY INTENDED TO APPEAL.

WHILE MR. SALAH HEARD HIS SENTENCE, OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM WERE DOZENS OF HIS SUPPORTERS. WHEN HE CAME OUT, THEY GATHERED AROUND HIM AND SHOUTED: “WITH OUR SPIRIT AND BLOOD WE WILL REDEEM THE EL-AQSA MOSQUE.”

MR. SALAH ENCOURAGED HIS SUPPORTERS, SAYING: “THE COURT’S RULING DOESN’T FRIGHTEN US.”

ISRAEL MEMBER OF KNESSET MOHAMMED BARAKEH ALSO CAME TO SUPPORT THE LEADER OF THE NORTHERN CHAPTER: HE LAUGHED OUT LOUD AND SAID (CONGRATULATIONS) TO MR. SALAH.

“THE COURT’S RULING IS POLITICAL TERRORISM AND LEGAL TERRORISM AGAINST AN ARAB LEADER,” SOURCES IN THE ISRAELI ARAB SUPREME MONITORING COMMITTEE SAID YESTERDAY.

THE ISRAEL ISLAMIC MOVEMENT ALSO REACTED DISMISSIVELY TO THE RULING: “WE DIDN’T EXPECT JUSTICE FROM THE COURT,” WHEREAS THE BALAD POLITICAL PARTY ANNOUNCED THAT IT WAS SIDING WITH MR. SALAH “IN THE BATTLE AGAINST POLITICAL PERSECUTION AND AGAINST THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION MEASURES IN JERUSALEM.”

ISRAEL PUBLIC SECURITY MINISTER YITZHAK AHARONOVICH SAID YESTERDAY: “I ATTRIBUTE GREAT IMPORTANCE TO THE RULING. WE WILL NOT PERMIT ANYONE TO TERRORIZE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES.”

MR. SALAH HAS ALREADY SPENT TIME IN PRISON. THE COURT SENTENCED HIM TO THREE AND A HALF YEARS IMPRISONMENT AFTER HE WAS CONVICTED IN A PLEA BARGAIN AGREEMENT OF CONTACT WITH A FOREIGN AGENT AND PROVIDING SERVICE TO AN UNLAWFUL ORGANIZATION. JUST THREE MONTHS AGO, HE WAS INVOLVED IN AN ATTEMPT TO PROVOKE A NEW WAVE OF RIOTS ON THE TEMPLE MOUNT BUT FAILED DUE TO THE LOW RESPONSE OF THE PALESTINIAN PUBLIC.

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One Year After His Inauguration : Does President Obama Seek a Weak Israel?

by Allen Z Hertz

United States President Barack Obama’s June 4th Cairo speech to the Muslim World sought the appearance of even-handedness in discussing the long-standing dispute between Israel and its Arab neighbours. But, read with an eye to the moral context, the Cairo speech was arguably profoundly anti-Israel. This bias was camouflaged by a dramatic reference to the Holocaust and by other acknowledgements of Jewish suffering over the centuries. Obama was likely advised that such sentiments would resonate with USA Jews. However, Israelis were too canny to be fooled by the Cairo speech, after which public opinion polls there saw his approval rate drop like a stone.

White House speech writer Ben Rhodes has said that the Cairo speech showed “frankly, just how he [Obama] personally views the conflict.” Rhodes also said that Obama mulled over every line, every word of the speech. This is significant, because with respect to Israel, the Cairo speech was marked by dissimulation and implication that tended to morally condemn the Jewish State, while largely validating the narrative of Arabs and Muslims.


The meaning of “dissimulation” includes speech calculated to cause belief in something which the speaker has not literally said. Is dissimulation dishonest? An answer depends on the context, but honest or not, dissimulation has always been one of the main elements of statecraft. Obama established his credentials as dissimulator no later than the race for the Democratic nomination. Then, his campaign staff publically acknowledged the dissimulation in his earlier promise that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”


In Cairo, key dissimulation lay in the phrase: “America’s strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable.” These exact words were cynically chosen to elicit belief that Obama was expressing approval for current ties with Israel and promising future support. But, linguistically those two sentences neither said that he approved of those “strong bonds” nor offered a promise for the future. They were merely a bare statement of fact, presumably resting on Israel’s popularity with the USA public and in Congress. By contrast, there was both approval and a promise in the pledge that: “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.”


Dissimulation with respect to USA support for Israel was corroborated by a later Cairo passage, where Obama threatened change by saying: “America will align our policies with those who pursue peace.” And, who will be deemed to “pursue peace” must naturally be understood within the moral parameters of “just how he personally views the conflict.” The highly conditional nature of Obama’s support for Israel was again revealed in his September 23rd UN General Assembly speech, where he implied that the USA’s “unwavering commitment” to Israel would have to be paid for by concessions to fulfill “legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians.”


In Cairo, dissimulation was also salient with regard to Jerusalem, in relation to which Obama implied that Israel has failed to accommodate the needs of Muslims and Christians. The Cairo speech specifically spoke about working for the day when Jerusalem would be “a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra.” Here, Obama cynically calculated that non-Muslims would perceive this passage as an anodyne ecumenical reference, while Muslims would understand the Isra story as relating to the Prophet Muhammad’s alleged trip to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. There, the hadith says that Muhammad was validated as God’s final messenger by his prophetic predecessors, including Moses and Jesus. Thus, for Muslims, the Isra story points to their claim to Jerusalem and their belief that Islam is superior to Judaism and Christianity.


For two centuries, the political and legal doctrine of the self-determination of Peoples has been an engine of world history. The Cairo speech significantly referred to the Palestinian People at least five times without offering a hint that Arabs living around the Jordan River did not generally self-identify as a distinct Palestinian People until the mid 20th century. By contrast, the Cairo speech referred only once to the very ancient Jewish People not as proud bearer of rights but in its Diaspora persona as victim. Otherwise, Obama used “Israelis” or words that implied an “Israeli People.” Obama’s terminology thus favoured the Palestinian People and implicitly challenged Israel’s legitimacy by ignoring its key political and legal claim to embody the self-determination of the Jewish People, whose subjective-objective national identity reaches back more than three millennia. This glaring omission was implicitly acknowledged in the General Assembly speech, where Obama included one reference to Israel as “a Jewish state.”


In Cairo, Obama had nothing to say about close to 1400 years of Arab and Muslim discrimination against Jews including periodic maltreatment of Jews around the Jordan River. By contrast, he repeatedly implied that Israel is responsible for Palestinian suffering from 1948 to the present. Thus, he referred to Palestinian refugees, failures in economic and social development, “daily humiliations... that come with occupation” and a so-called “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza. Evidently, how Obama “personally views the conflict” is deeply flawed. For example, would the Middle East have had any Jewish (850,000) or Arab (726,000) refugees had Arabs locally and generally followed the Jews in embracing the 1947 UN General Assembly resolution calling for peaceful creation of two new States, the one Jewish and the other Arab?


Similarly, the Cairo speech falsely implied that Israel has been the obstacle to a two-States solution. Thus, Obama said nothing about Prime Minister Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. And, he was silent about Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas’s failure to accept far-reaching two-States offers by Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert, in 2000 and 2008 respectively. This goes to the crux of the long-standing dispute. Since the 1937 Peel Report, first Zionists and then Israel governments have repeatedly worked for partition. By contrast, Arabs locally and generally have largely rejected the principle of a Jewish State, i.e. the idea of having there an independent country to embody the self-determination of the Jewish People.


In Cairo, Obama deliberately chose to ground rights in mere suffering. This was curious, because as a lawyer Obama had to know volenti non fit injuria  the Common Law principle that the plaintiff cannot recover damages to the extent that he himself has caused the harm. Moreover, plaintiffs are required to take timely steps to mitigate their losses, no matter how caused. But, the Cairo speech never asked to what extent Palestinian suffering might be the result of their own bad choices, including their share of responsibility for starting the 1948 war, which was a self-proclaimed Arab attempt to exterminate Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.


The Cairo speech repeatedly drew from familiar arguments of Israel’s enemies. First, though there is now no independent State called “Palestine,” the question was begged by present-tense references to Palestine that also appeared in his General Assembly speech. Second, the Cairo speech slandered Israel by seeming to compare the suffering of Palestinians with that of Black people in the USA. Third, this invidious comparison was reinforced by a gratuitous reference to “segregation” which seemed to slyly point to the canard that Israel is an apartheid State. Fourth was an inappropriate nod to White South Africa and other instances where indigenous Peoples offered “resistance” to colonial rule. Fifth was the implication that Palestinian suffering can be equated with the Holocaust, which is a grotesque and wildly inaccurate comparison that is close kin to the calumny that Israel behaves like Nazi Germany. Finally, the Cairo speech misrepresented the murder of six million Jews as the ideological basis for Israel’s creation.

As a lawyer, Obama had to know that Israel validates itself, not by the Holocaust, but by virtue of the political and legal doctrines of aboriginal rights and the self-determination of Peoples. Aboriginal rights are normally minority rights. Thus, the Jewish People claimed its right to its homeland in the same way as do the Inuit and First Nations in Canada. And, the Jewish People invoked its self-determination right exactly as does the Arab People, whose self-determination is already expressed in the 21 countries that explicitly self-identify as Arab.


The Cairo speech pandered to Arab and Muslim prejudice by ignoring the presence since pre-Biblical times of large numbers of Jews in the Middle East, including some who in each and every century lived on their ancestral lands around the Jordan River. There, of all extant Peoples, the Jewish People has the strongest claim to be aboriginal. For this reason, two decades before the Holocaust, the aboriginal rights of the Jewish People were explicitly embedded in international law by declarations, treaties and enactments from 1917 to 1922, when the League of Nations created a “national home for the Jewish People” between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Within a larger global and Middle Eastern framework, justice was done  because simultaneously there was the creation or recognition of several new Arab States that were freed from Turkish rule and placed on the road to eventual independence, as was the “national home for the Jewish People.”


By ignoring the Jewish People’s aboriginal and self-determination rights, the Cairo speech could only point to an end to reciprocal suffering as a rationale for terminating Palestinian violence which was dignified as "resistance." By relying on this slender reed, Obama probably diminished prospects for peace. Thus, the Cairo speech alienated most Israelis and failed to provide Arabs and Muslims with an ideological foundation for a peaceful process to respectfully reconcile the prior rights of the Jewish People with the subsequent rights of the newly-emerged Palestinian People. The latter evidently now has rights to claim self-determination and territory, but these claims do not automatically cancel the Jewish People’s prior rights, which notably include the right of Jews not to be killed by their Arab neighbours.


Though repeated lip service was paid to Israel’s right to exist, the Cairo speech painted a moral picture that seemed to argue the contrary. Saying “threatening Israel with destruction is deeply wrong” was probably calculated to resonate with USA Jews who are grateful for Israel’s survival. By contrast, most Israelis have the commonsense to understand that their country deserves much more than mere survival. They know that Israel urgently needs the rights normally enjoyed by other countries, and that Israel must be judged according to the standards regularly applied to other States in the same or similar circumstances.


Obama’s existential focus was too starkly minimalist to accommodate Israel within the world of States, where each country is driven to advance its own economic and political interests. Given the USA’s touted “strong bonds” with Israel, Obama ought to have said less about a “right to exist” and more about USA help in advancing any number of Israeli aims. The real news here is that Obama perhaps intends to sell Israel short. This recalls national security adviser James Jones’s earlier quip that the new USA administration was not about to “throw Israel under a bus.”


The structure of the Cairo speech implausibly suggested that Iran’s race to develop nuclear weapons is today less “a major source of tension” than “the situation between Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab World.” In discussing this Iranian nuclear threat, Obama seemed to signal that he might be willing to break with a decades-old understanding that the USA would refrain from publically addressing whether or not Israel has nuclear weapons. The implication here was that Obama would perhaps be ready to make Israel’s denuclearization part of a broader deal, embracing Iran and other States in the region.


At Cairo and in the General Assembly, was Obama challenging Israel’s ideological foundations and security interests? An answer can perhaps be found in his special focus on Palestinian suffering. This disturbingly recalls the exaggerated concern for Czechoslovakia’s three million Sudeten Germans that was the moral trigger for the 1938 Munich crisis. Then, myopia on the part of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain rapidly led to the destruction of interwar Czechoslovakia, which was the only democracy in Eastern Europe.


With Europeans appearing as themselves and Palestinians as Sudeten Germans, does President Obama cast himself as Chamberlain? At Munich, the British Prime Minister earned obloquy by being eager to appease at the expense of “people of whom we know nothing.” While irresponsibly failing to face the question of Hitler’s ultimate aims, Chamberlain recklessly sought safety by catering to German demands. The General Assembly speech announced that Obama is searching for a general Middle East settlement. Is this a context in which he will betray Israel’s vital interests to the advantage of 21st century Hitlers played by Iran's leaders with the help of proxies like Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas?


A careful reading of Obama’s remarks in Cairo and at the General Assembly suggests that Obama may believe that a weaker Israel now suits the interests of the USA. If so, he should tell the American people why, instead of offering a fabric of dissimulation and implication. And, friends of the Jewish State should see Obama’s moral condemnation of Israel as a flashing red light that warns of the possibility of betrayal just as Czechoslovakia was pressured to accept an unsafe peace that was prelude to disaster.

Allen Z. Hertz was formerly senior advisor in the Privy Council Office serving Canada's Prime Minister and the federal cabinet. Earlier he worked in Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and taught history and law at universities in New York, Montreal, Toronto, and Hong Kong.

Israel and the illusion of international justice

By Gerald Steinberg and Anne Herzberg, NGOMonitor.com

As originally appearing in Haaretz

Speaking at a legal conference on January 4, former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak suggested that Israel would benefit from participation in bodies such as the International Criminal Court in order to fight for "its positions and justice." In endorsing Barak's recommendation, a Haaretz editorial ("Join the Court," January 6) contended that such participation would "place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations." Similarly, the argument goes, Israel erred in refusing to cooperate with the UN Human Rights Council's Goldstone Commission and the International Court of Justice proceedings on the security barrier.

While surely well-intentioned, in practice this line of thinking is pure folly. The dominance of nondemocratic and Islamic nations in international organs, and the increasing politicization of these bodies, virtually guarantees that no justice will be done when it comes to Israel or even NATO countries. In such morally corrupt frameworks, international law and human rights have become political weapons, disconnected from legitimate judicial processes and legal systems in democratic societies.

The ICJ's handling of the 2004 case regarding Israel's security barrier is a telling example. The suit was initiated by the UN General Assembly at the behest of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. European-funded advocacy groups such as B'Tselem, aided by NGO superpowers Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, were central to this effort.

Legal scholars sharply criticized the court for accepting a predetermined political mandate from the UN and for its breach of procedural protocols in deliberations on the matter. The ICJ's resulting advisory opinion negated Israel's right of self-defense and displayed an utter lack of sympathy for terror victims. Its simplistic and troubling legal analysis clearly reflected the influence of the Arab League and politicized NGOs. Hardly an independent judicial inquiry, this distorted proceeding encouraged subversion of the rule of law, rather than its enforcement, by allowing for political manipulation of the judicial process.

Similar problems plague the ICC. Calls for the creation of an ICC were first made in the late 1980s by Caribbean and Latin American countries seeking international support in trying drug traffickers, and were bolstered by the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the mid-1990s. Following a massive push by NGOs, the ICC statute was finalized in Rome in 1998, covering the crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and the court began operations in 2002.

Some complain that the ICC in practice has become an "African court" that lets Western democracies off the hook, but this claim is unjustified. Although NGOs pressed for the ICC to have wide-ranging jurisdiction, it was intended to be a court of last resort for the very worst crimes, adjudicating only those cases that could not be fairly tried in national courts due to the lack of a competent judiciary.

From the beginning, Israel strongly backed the idea of an international court based on the Nuremberg precedent. But, as happened with other international legal bodies, the ICC process was co-opted by nondemocratic forces. Arab and Islamic regimes succeeding in changing the court's statute at the last minute to define Israeli settlement activity as an international crime while omitting terrorism as an offense. This overt politicization of the court forced Israel to withdraw its support.

Following the Gaza war, the PLO pressured ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo to open a case against Israel, even though "Palestine" is not a state and doing so would be a gross violation of the court's treaty. Moreno-Ocampo has admitted to working closely with the Arab League in this process. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, funded primarily by European governments, is also deeply involved in this one-sided effort, as are Amnesty and HRW.

These same Arab League members have hypocritically and repeatedly offered shelter to indicted war criminal Omar Bashir of Sudan, refusing to hand him over to the court to stand trial. Thus the countries that dominate the UN system use their power to control and manipulate its institutions for their own interests - not in pursuit of universal justice.

The careful balance that Justice Barak developed in Israeli jurisprudence in weighing human rights claims against security needs receives no respect from the Arab League and its NGO allies, whose political demands international institutions are unable or unwilling to resist. Barak's wishful thinking to the contrary, it would have made no difference if Israel had participated in the ICJ case or even the Goldstone mission. The record clearly indicates that any information provided by Israel would have been twisted and discounted to fit predetermined conclusions. Claims that Israeli cooperation could have changed the outcome have no basis.

Refusing to be a party to this sort of legal travesty does not mean Israel is insensitive to international law or human rights, or that the Jewish state does not wish to be a member of the international community. Nor should this principled position be used to claim that Israel is trying to shield itself from critical inquiry - far from it. Israel's Supreme Court is a leading adherent and innovator of international law and is a major proponent of human rights.

To suggest that Israel could exert any influence on bodies where nondemocratic regimes wield excessive power, however, is a pipe dream that has no connection to today's unfortunate reality.

Gerald Steinberg is a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University and president of NGO Monitor; Anne Herzberg is NGO Monitor's legal advisor

Israel Wants End To Incitement As Part Of Peace Process

Israel Wants End To Incitement As Part Of Peace Process

by David Bedein

For the first time since the genesis of Middle East peace negotiations, more than 30 years ago, the government of Israel has placed the cessation of official Arab incitement to murder Jews as a condition for the continuation of Middle East peace negotiations.

As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared after last week’s government weekly cabinet meeting, “It is not only missiles and rockets that endanger security and push peace further off. Words can also be dangerous.”

Referring to recent ceremonies held by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in honor of Palestinian terrorists who had murdered Jews. Mr. Netanyahu observed that “Sadly, there has been a retreat in this area in recent months, both within the Palestinian Authority and by its leaders. Whoever sponsors and supports naming a square in Ramallah after a terrorist who murdered dozens of Israelis on the coastal road - encourages terrorism. Whoever declares those responsible for the murder of the late Rabbi Meir Hai, father to seven children, as holy martyrs - pushes peace further away.”

Mr. Netanyahu also made reference to the new Palestinian curriculum, which represents the first official curriculum since the Third Reich to inculcate war against the Jews.

In Mr. Netanyahu’s words,

“incitement continues in the Palestinian media and education system; in its official media outlets and in the schools under its supervision. These serious actions represent a harsh violation of the Palestinians’ international obligation to prevent incitement. I say to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority: Stop the incitement. This is not how peace is made. Peace is made by educating towards reconciliation, by encouraging good neighborly relations and by developing mutual respect. Therefore, the cessation of Palestinian incitement is a necessary condition, not for entering into discussions, but so that we may complete them in a way that will bring about genuine peace between our two peoples.”

While Israeli concern over incitement is not new, the fact that Israel has conditioned the cessation of incitement as a condition for continuing Middle East negotiations is unprecedented.

Al QAIDA TARGETS UNRWA REFUGEE CAMPS

As published in the Winnipeg Jewish Report

by David Bedein



Jerusalem, Israel; A report, issued by the Washington-based Jamestown Foundation, shows that Al Qaida and its allies are bolstering efforts to infiltrate Palestinian refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria run by The United Nations Relief and Works Agency,[UNRWA].

UNWRA operates 59 refugee camps for Palestinian Arab 1948 refugees and their descendents

UNRWA is supported by direct contributions from 38 nations around the world under the framework of the the Refugee Working Group, [RWG] chaired by Canada.

Canada provides 11% of the UNRWA budget. The United States provides 31% of the UNRWA budget.



What may cause some concern among donor nations is that Al Qaida appears to have been targeting UNRWA Palestinian refugee camps for indoctrination and recruitment.

That concern stems from strict laws in the US, Canada and other donor nations which forbid financial donations to refugee camps that have become terror bases.

The Jamestown Foundation report documents how the Al Qaida-aligned Fatah Al Islam was recruiting cells in such UNRWA Lebanese camps as Bidawi and Burj Al Shamali.

"If training and organization become available to these young people they have the potential to become a threat to not only the countries in which they reside, but to the region as a whole," the report said.



The report documents that increasing Al Qaida presence has threatened the Western and United Nations presence in Arab states. Jamestown said Palestinians were undergoing radicalization and adopting the Al Qaida doctrine of jihad, or holy war.



In 2009, Al Qaida chief Osama Bin Laden addressed the Palestinians at least three times and appealed for their participation in his Islamist war against the West. Bin Laden has urged Palestinians to fight the United States in Iraq before moving on to Israel.

"They should hasten to take their positions among the ranks of the holy warriors in Iraq, and through support and trust in Allah," Bin Laden said in a recent message.

"The third phase is the emergence of the Salafi-Jihadi ideology as the primary ideology for Palestinian youth in the camps," the report said. "This phase is occurring now, as individuals and small groups are increasingly turning to Salafist militancy."

The biggest target of Al Qaida has been the UNRWA Palestinian refugee camp of Ein Hilwe. Ein Hilwe, the largest of the UNRWA Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, was said to harbor several Al Qaida figures, including Ahmed Abdul Karim Al Saadi, Haitham Abdul Karim Al Saadi and Saleh Qiblawi. Haitham was identified as a deputy of the late Al Qaida network chief in Iraq, Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi.

In Syria, Palestinian followers of Al Qaida clashed with Syrian security forces in October 2008. The unrest was said to have taken place in Syria's largest UNRWA refugee camp, Yarmouk.



"When Syria became a transit point for Syrian and Arab fighters aiming to take up jihad against Americans between 2003 and 2007, there were several cases of young fighters passing through Yarmouk camp," the report said.

The Jamestown Foundation also reported an Al Qaida presence in Jordan's UNRWA Baqaa refugee camp. The UNRWA camp in Irbid, located near the Syrian border, was also deemed an Al Qaida stronghold.

"The ties between the Salafi-Jihadis across the Levant region show that some young men in the UNRWA refugee camps are inspired and influenced by the late Abu Mussib Al Zarqawi's ambition of creating a Levantine Salafi-Jihadi movement," the report said.

A Jewish and Democratic One-State Solution

This article originally appeared on the blog a Crazy Nation, and was reprinted in the Jerusalem Post

Jan. 12, 2010
by Joshua Reback, THE JERUSALEM POST

It's difficult to write this without being framed as some sort of fanatic. Either I should fall on the Left that advocates a binational state, or on the Right that can only see things through the lens of "Greater Israel." Both of these labels are presumptuous and have precluded debate about this issue. However, there is a way to reconcile these "extremes" and provide a reason to trend away from the two-state plan.

The Obama administration is trying to torpedo renewed discussion of this idea with a strained attempt to force two-state negotiations, while continuing the Bush administration's policy of building the PA's security apparatus. But an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank in any capacity would contract the country's defensive posture and invite encroachment from Syria, with no guarantees the already extant terrorist groups in the area would not grow and infiltrate a Palestinian state's security forces.

At this point, annexing the West Bank (without the Gaza Strip) would not hinder Jews' clear majority in a unified state. That does not imply that absorbing the territory immediately would resolve a plethora of security, social and religious issues. But to give the vote to everyone in the West Bank would create both a Jewish and democratic state from the Jordan to the Mediterranean, sans Gaza. The question then becomes how the Jewish population intends to preserve that majority.

BUT BEFORE that can be answered, we need to remember why we should be concerned about it in the first place. This is a question that is seldom addressed, and its answers are seldom clarified by commentators. It was cited ad nauseam in the lead-up to the disengagement five years ago, but I am not so sure observers really understood why this issue was so important to Israelis.

Jews would instinctively bring up domestic security concerns. Israelis are especially cognizant of the pogroms in Europe and especially the Arab riots in 1929, 1936-39 and the two intifadas. Annexation evokes fears of anti-Semitic sabotage and civil war or pogroms if the government ever fell into the hands of a hostile Arab majority. This is a concern that no one can simply alleviate. Jewish sovereignty and qualitative ability to defend the Jewish world from attack are among the dozens of conceptual underpinnings of the entire Zionist movement. It is what justified one of the first global, collective gestures of affirmative action in modern history - the creation of an ethnically based country, the Jewish State of Israel.

The moderate approach in Israeli politics regarding a one-state solution would be to both annex the West Bank and push off the idea of official "binationalism." Such a state would have to remain a Jewish state, with a Jewish symbol on its flag - like an Islamic crescent adorns the Turkish or Pakistani banners - and maintain a Jewish majority (not plurality) in its territory.

This brings the whole debate back to the "big blue elephant" in the room - the need to increase Jewish immigration and the natural birth rate of Israeli Jews. These are not policies that Western democracies are expected to implement. But Western states do not exist for the sake of ethnic preservation against global instances of oppression, whether it be in Europe or the Arab world.

These policies are not radical to Israelis, and they are not radical to certain other ethnic states. And given the willingness to discuss population exchange and mass eviction during peace negotiations, they are not all too awkward to the likes of the Western powers, either.

Few Israeli politicians suggest this, because it assumes too many developments. Recently, Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely alluded to it when she fielded the idea of giving citizenship to Palestinians. There seems to be no guarantee that a renewed push for aliya and reversal of yerida would bear fruit, or that Jewish families would decide to have more children.

BUT GLOBAL Jewish leadership has fought against such pessimism. Tens of millions of dollars are already spent every year on all forms of Jewish outreach - religious, cultural and political. Activists the world over urge the end of assimilation and absorption of mixed families into the greater Jewish community. The push is for far bigger and far more Jewish families by leaders and organizations everywhere. The State of Israel, the strongest Jewish organization in the world, should coordinate all of these efforts, stress the importance of the Land of Israel to all streams of Judaism and emphasize the centrality of the state to the modern Jewish world.

It is possible to enhance Israel's Jewish, democratic and defensive characteristics simultaneously. Israel's Jewish character and the preservation of minorities' rights and needs are reconcilable. It is a mixture of idealism and practicality, yet an objective approach, politically satiable and the optimal one to take.

The writer is a graduate of Rutgers University with a BA in Middle Eastern studies. He is currently a student at Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat.