Secret UN Report Condemns US for Middle East Failures
The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has “pummelled into submission” the UN’s role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.
The 53-page “End of Mission Report” by Alvaro de Soto, the UN’s Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down. 
The revelations from inside the UN come after another day of escalating violence in Gaza, when at least 26 Palestinians were killed after Hamas fighters launched a major assault. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, head of the rival Fatah group, warned he was facing an attempted coup.
Mr de Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence. Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant, he says.
Mr de Soto is a Peruvian diplomat who worked for the UN for 25 years in El Salvador, Cyprus and Western Sahara. He says:
· The international boycott of the Palestinians, introduced after Hamas won elections last year, was “at best extremely short-sighted” and had “devastating consequences” for the Palestinian people
· Israel has adopted an “essentially rejectionist” stance towards the Palestinians
· The Quartet of Middle East negotiators - the US, the EU, Russia and the UN - has become a “side-show”
·The Palestinian record of stopping violence against Israel is “patchy at best, reprehensible at worst”
Mr de Soto acknowledges in the report that he is its sole author. It was meant only for senior UN officials, and its wording is far more critical than the public pronouncements of UN diplomats. Last night, Mr de Soto, who is in New York, told the Guardian: “It is a confidential document and not intended for publication.”
In January last year, the Quartet called on the newly elected Hamas government to commit to non-violence, recognise Israel and accept previous agreements. When Hamas refused to sign up to the principles, the international community halted direct funding to the Palestinian government and Israel started to freeze the monthly tax revenues that it had agreed to pass to the Palestinians. Several hundred million dollars remain frozen.
Mr de Soto, who had opposed the boycott, said this position “effectively transformed the Quartet from a negotiation-promoting foursome guided by a common document [the road map for peace] into a body that was all-but imposing sanctions on a freely elected government of a people under occupation as well as setting unattainable preconditions for dialogue”.
The EU said yesterday that there was an imminent risk of civil war if fighting went on, and UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon urged support for Mr Abbas’s efforts “to restore law and order”.
In the heaviest day of fighting in Gaza for months, Hamas appeared to make its first concerted effort to seize power in Gaza. There was a wave of co-ordinated attacks, which appeared to overwhelm the larger but less effective Fatah force. “Decisiveness will be in the field,” said Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for the Hamas military wing.
Fatah’s central committee called an emergency meeting in Ramallah, in the West Bank, and said it would suspend the activities of its ministers in the government. Fatah would pull out of the government if the fighting failed to stop, it said.
For the first time in several weeks, fighting spread to the West Bank when Fatah gunmen attacked a Hamas television studio in Ramallah and kidnapped a Hamas deputy cabinet minister from the city.
The day began with a rocket attack on the private house in Gaza of Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister and a Hamas leader. He was in the building but was not hurt. Fighting spread across Gaza City and within hours Hamas fighters issued warnings over loudspeakers calling on all Fatah security forces to pull out of their bases and return home. At about 2pm Hamas gunmen seized control of several small Fatah bases and one large base in northern Gaza, where there were heavy casualties when Hamas fighters fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades at the compound.
Several Fatah officers complained that they had received no orders during the day. Mr Abbas tried calling for a truce, and later Fatah ordered its officers to fight back.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
The conditions and antagonisms promoted by Israel have led to the present Palestinian situation which of course, they benefit from. Had Israel dealt in good faith with Fatah, Hamas would not even be an issue.
Shame on the USA for financing Israel’s military and for backing the illegal occupation of Palestine. To hell with all politicians who serve the super rich, while pissing on the people.
The USA is an empire of Shame & the #1 obstacle to world peace. Israel is a dirty dog that more or less belongs to the USA.
———————
In Case you missed it:
John Perkins on “The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption”
June 5, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/05/149254&mode=thread&tid=25
I don’t get it.
How is any of this a SECRET?
I believe historians will one day write about how the US orchestrated the destruction of the Middle East by fomenting internal divisions and violence (Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq), by labeling entire countries as “evil”
and demonizing their leaders (Iraq, Iran, Syria), by labeling resistance fighters “terrorists” and using that label to create internal dissension and external pressures(Hamas, Hezbollah), by supporting Israel no matter how wrong she often is, by preemptive war, torture and imprisonment, by promoting nuclear weaponry, by manipulating intelligence, by trashing the US constitution and international law. Etc Etc Etc.
The neocon dream is for what is happening (at least the first part):(1) destabilization of the entire Middle East to be following by (2) the birth of the New Middle East our dear Ms. Rice crowed over during Beirut’s destruction last summer.
Only the US Congress can stop Part 2 by telling Iraq NOT to sign the oil agreements, to kick us out of their country right now, and to offer us a guaranteed supply of oil at market rates for the next 20 years in exchange for never, ever setting foot in Iraq again.
Support if you will the legislation calling for the immediate impeachment of Dick Cheney, who is now busy with the runup to our invasion of Iran and should thus be FIRED.
You forget that Hamas, al Fatah and the PLO call for Israel’s destruction. Leave Israel alone.
Screw Israel! Israel is only good for taking my tax money to the tune of 59 billion dollars over the table. Mowst likely 3 times that under the table.
Everyone will leave Israel alone once they follow UN resolutions, allow Palestine to exist and stop committing war crimes against Lebanon. The Arab Peace Initiative says as much.
Ken, you forget that people here know a bit more about foreign affairs than the general US public, e.g., they know that Israel defines itself as a Jewish majority state, that the Jewish majority was attained historically by military conquest and ethnic cleansing (all those millions of refugees– where do you think they came from?), that Israel has been expanding its land base and colonizing outlying areas by stealing Arab lands, and that, for these reasons, rational people who value justice and human rights often conclude that the state of Israel is illegitimate, that its existence and its inherent policies trample on native rights, and that Zionism is– in practice though perhaps not in theory– a racist doctrine that means “taking land from Arabs and giving it to Jews”.
So, favoring a one-state solution and opposing the continued existence of Israel as a political entity is a rational position consistent with human rights and international law. There is no ethnically determined “right to exist” for a Jewish state, just like there is no right for a WASP homeland in Massachusetts (the right of self-determination applies collectively to the people of a political locale, not to an ethnicity– a principle that would lead to utter chaos).
You can call it wanting to “destroy the state of Israel”, which sounds like Armageddon (i.e., what fundamentalists Christians in the US want to happen when they support Israel), but its actually a question of justice and does not have to involve hurting anyone in the unlikely event that the perpetrators just step aside and let the victims reclaim what is rightfully theirs.
One writer said that Israel belongs to the U.S. I think it is the other way around. Israel uses about 10% of the money we send them to lobby and buy our own congress. They own us.
I strongly disagree with previous writer stairjo and all these other writers here on commondreams who have become so paranoid that they believe that the U.S. is actually ‘ruled’ by Israel. It is this sort of paranoia that eventually led to the Holocaust and where extreme left and extreme right meet each other.
I really prefer clarity over these issues, rather than confusion and paranoia: the U.S. is directing Israel to do what it does. The U.S. is immensely more powerful on a world stage than Israel is, whereas Israel’s power is solely based on the support it gets from the U.S. Israel is just comparable to any of the other ‘client states’ that were carrying out America’s crimes in many other regions to pursue its interests: Apartheid South Africa, Mobutu’s Congo, Suharto’s Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, the present government of Pakistan, El Salvador in the eighties. Whatever Israel does, it just suits U.S. (business) interests, so that is why Israel continues to get support from the U.S. Once the U.S. would withdraw its support, the state of Israel would quickly be willing to negotiate on the terms of surrounding Arab countries, or it would seize to exist. Because in the end, it just follows its own strategic interests, while the U.S., as an empire, has interests all over the world and defends them feverishly everywhere.
People who claim otherwise are just in denial about the reponsibilities that they have as citizens of the most powerful state in the world, and are in denial about the millions of crimes that their government carries out in their name.
Regime Change in Washington !!
So yes, I agree with writer Ken Mitchell.
Leave Israel alone !
Stop selling military equipment to that poor country !
The Jewish population of the United States is just under 3%. The Senate is at least 20% Jewish. That number is even higher in the Congress. AIPAC is the strongest lobbying group in Washington. So I disagree strongly with Ken Mitchell and Winnetou. SCREW ISRAEL!! Let them clean up their own messes. STOP TAKING MY TAX MONEY!
Actually I would agree with Ken Mitchell, leave Israel alone, let them fend for themselves. I’m tired of the Holocaust being stuck in my face as justification for the support of the state of Israel, the Jewish people seem to think they were the only victims in the world ever, absolute rubbish, there are plenty of peoples around the world who have suffered the evils of Human nature, China in WWII, slavery, the starving millions in Africa right now, and not forgeting the current situation in the Middle East being cheered on and encouraged by Israel.
Idavin, I don’t believe that Ken Mitchell agrees with you. Ken is worried that Israel will be undone by the fierce militias of the PLO(Fatah), and Hamas. Idavin you seem to be on the other side of the fence from Ken Mitchell. I do like the idea of Israel fending for itself.
We insist that the Palestinians renounce violence and recognize the right of their adversaries to live in peace. It would be nice if we insisted that Israel do the same.
It would be “nice” if Israel would just define its borders in accordance with any generally accepted international treaty or plan for peace, and quit showing weather maps and maps in schoolbooks that show much of what is left of Palestinian Territory as “Greater Israel” before asking the Palestinians to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist. Otherwise, it may be that what the Palestinians are actually being required to agree to is that they have no right, nor any place, to exist in Palestine themselves.
Bob, true enough I couldn’t believe anyone on here would defend Israel’s stance.