This is from the NY Times – released in the last 20 minutes

“As the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to upgrade the Palestinians’ status Thursday night, Israel took steps toward building housing in a controversial area of East Jerusalem known as E1, where Jewish settlements have long been seen as the death knell for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said on Friday that the decision was made late Thursday night to move forward on “preliminary zoning and planning preparations” for housing units in E1, which would connect the large settlement of Maale Adumim to Jerusalem and therefore make it impossible to connect the Palestinian cities of Ramallah and Bethlehem to Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Israel also authorized the construction of 3,000 housing units in other parts of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the official said”

Horrible bunch of people.. what more can you say

Still the establishment will spout the rhetoric of wanting to support a peace process and a two state solution.
The problem as always lies in their actions.

Does this mean that they can build their own telecoms network. At present, they can only have old non-data GSM due to restrictions by Israel on bandwidth. If they have the freedom to improve their infrastructure without interference from Israel, would this not be the best path to peace?

I don’t think there is a case where the lives of people improved and they became more militant.

Weird post.

Lawfare? Are you talking about the ICC, and the prosecution of war criminals here? Because that attitude displays a certain contempt for the rule of law, in particular the Geneva Conventions.

If you’re referring to resolutions, then I don’t think Israel will be particularly worried – they’ve got a long and inglorious history of ignoring them. It will be interesting to see whether the Palestinians will be made subject to resolutions themselves in their new capacity, but that’s all to be seen yet.

I do agree that negotiation is the way forward, though, and I think that the fact of Palestine’s upgraded status may well be helpful in that it emphasises the impossibility of a wholesale annexation, which seems to have been the goal of certain elements in the Israeli looney right.

Do I recall correctly that the Taba deal collapsed due to Clinton being replaced by Bush the Younger, and (speaking of the Israeli looney right) Ariel Sharon taking power? Closely followed by cancelled Palestinian elections, Arafat being sidelined and put under effective house arrest, and his death.

Seems that there’s something in this “lawfare” line displaying a certain contempt for the rule of law, in particular the Geneva Conventions – John Bolton stays true to type in his use of the term:

“Where Palestinian propaganda campaigns do gain traction, however, is among the broader program – in both Europe and the United States – to delegitimize the state of Israel itself. By attacking Israel as racist, by accusing it of aggression and war crimes, and other means, this “law-fare” against Israel has increasingly erased the illusory demarcation between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and all its ugly implications.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/3/israels-increasing-vulnerability/#ixzz2DiUHln71

*sigh*

What, afraid the Courts might come knocking for Dick, George W., or one of your other mates there, Johnny boy?

Voodoo

Taking your last point first, you omit one hugely important piece of context for 2001. It’s true that both Clinton and Barak were leaving office when the Taba talks collapsed in January that year, but the biggest factor in the collapse was the 2nd Intifada being waged by both Arafat’s Fatah and Hamas which had been raging for four months, with scores already dead. Arafat had walked away from a peace deal with Barak at Clinton’s Camp David talks the previous July rather than sign up to a deal that would have to be accepted as marking the end of the conflict and not a temporary tactical truce (hudna). When he flattered Clinton as a great president, Clinton is said to have replied “No, I am a failure, and you have made me a failure”.

What you call the Israeli ‘looney right’ has never had majority support or governmental power in Israel. Every government including this one has called for bilateral negotiations to lead to a Palestinian state (see Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan University 2009). It would be very hard to get a majority for annexation. Ariel Sharon one of the looney-right? The man who had all Israeli troops and 9,000 Jewish settlers pulled out of Gaza in 2005 in another vain trial of land-for-peace?

The Geneva Conventions were designed for cases where one sovereign state had occupied the territory of another (e.g. Germany/Poland, Vietnam/Cambodia) and forcibly transferred either its own citizens into, or the other state’s citizens out of, that territory. In Israel’s case (i) the territory occupied had never been a sovereign state but Turkish imperial land and then British trustee land, and although the 1947 partition plan had earmarked it to be a sovereign Arab state, the rejection of the plan by the Arabs scuppered that, (ii) the territory occupied was acquired through conquest in the course of a war of self-defence against attack from that territory, (iii) Jewish people moving into that territory have done so voluntarily, and into a land in which their right to live was sanctioned by the League of Nations in the 1920 San Remo Treaty and has never since been revoked, (iv) in many cases, those people were re-occupying settlements that had been destroyed by Arab forces in the 1948-9 war with their occupants driven out or, in some cases, massacred as at Kfar Etzion.

None of this is to say that there shouldn’t be a Palestinian state — clearly there are now two sets of national rights to self-determination but, given the long history of violence consequent on refusals of any state by the Palestinian Arab side because it involved recognition of a Jewish state, only negotiations across a table can settle the whole range of issues between the two sides. The outcome can still be a win-win for both sides, but only if the Palestinians stop saying yes-no and start saying yes-yes.

One of these issues is security: the risk of life being made impossible in Israel if the West Bank were to be taken over by Hamas or Islamic Jihad and turned into a Gaza on much bigger scale, with every part of the country within rocket range. Another issue is the settlements– how many to be dismantled/ incorporated in Israel/ to stay within the Arab state. Barak’s first offer at Camp David was for Israel to withdraw from 63 settlements. Israel has a 20% minority of Arab citizens, and there shouldn’t be a difficulty in principle with Jewish people living as citizens of a Palestinian West Bank state (or are we saying there are parts of the world where Jewish people cannot be allowed to live?) but many will probably prefer to leave for safety reasons if their towns are slated to stay inside a Palestinian state.

But you risk contradicting yourself if, on the one hand, you support negotiations as the way forward, and, on the other, seek to pre-empt their outcome by branding Jewish people as ‘war criminals’ for building granny flats and creches in their towns and villages — for that is what this ‘settlement expansion’ is all about.

Depending on your point of view Ben.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

How does that work, Ben? Calling for a peaceful, negotiated solution to a festering conflict isn’t the same as sending in the 34th Airborne Wing. Who exactly is Gilmore supposed to be favouring here?

Neutrality is long burned.
We are deeply embedded in the Partnership for Pentagonian Peace. Eirebase 1 @Shannon.$$$

Ireland has never been neutral in any case. We take a stance of non-alignment on a case by case basis, under a triple-lock mechanism.

Once upon a time, fado fado, we displayed some semblance of anti-imperial ethical foreign policy. That was when the generation who had given us some shred of independence had yet to hand it on to their venal and mendacious dynastic heirs and reinstated a fresh ascendancy.
We took a leadership stance within the UN, before its coshing into insensibility by the Security Council.
We are now up to our tonsils in Nato and the resource wars of the 21st century. Triple arm-lock, perhaps.

We have no shortage of political time-servers. When did we last produce anything remotely akin to a statesman with a historical perspective and an ounce of vertebrate spine?
Answers on the back of an angelic pinhead, Doll Airin’, Teach Lyin’, D 2.