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The One-Sided US Veto
The US, arguing that unilateralism is misguided, hypocritically plans to veto Palestinian statehood at the UN.
US President Barack Obama's decision to use the US' veto prerogative if the United Nations votes to recognise a Palestinian state will constitute a blow to those seeking peace in the Middle East.
His administration's claim that peace can only be achieved through dialogue and consent rather than through unilateral moves ignores the complex power relations that constitute peace-making between Israelis and Palestinians. History teaches that peace is achieved only when the conflicting sides believe that they have too much to lose by sustaining the conflict. And, at this point in history, the price Israel is paying for continuing the occupation is extremely small.
But if, for the sake of argument, one were to accept the view expressed by President Obama - that unilateralism is a flawed political approach - then one should survey the history of unilateral moves within the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and examine the US response towards them.
A logical place to begin is 1991, when Israelis and Palestinians met for the first time in Madrid to negotiate a peace agreement. United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338, which call for Israel's withdrawal from the land it occupied during the 1967 War in exchange for peace, served as the basis for the Madrid Conference.
Ever since that conference, Israel has carried out numerous unilateral moves that have undermined efforts to reach a peace agreement based on land for peace. These include the confiscation of Palestinian land, the construction of settlements and the transfer of Jewish citizenry to occupied territories, actions that every US administration regarded as an obstruction to the peace process.
Settlement expansion
Consider, for example, the Jewish settler population. At the end of 1991, there were 132,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and 89,800 settlers in the West Bank. Two decades later, the numbers of settlers in East Jerusalem has increased by about 40 per cent, while the settlers in the West Bank, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, have increased by over 300 per cent. Currently, there are about half a million Jewish settlers.
If Israel had arrested its unilateral transfer of Jewish citizens to Palestinian land in 1991 once it had embarked upon a peace process based on the return of occupied territory, the number of Jewish settlers in the West Bank would have been less than 50 per cent of what it is today.
Indeed, estimations based on the natural growth rate of the West Bank settler population suggest that this population would have been less than 150,000 people in 2011, while today it is actually over 300,000.
An analysis of settler movement to the West Bank also reveals that settler population growth has not been substantially different when left-of-centre parties have been in power. During periods in which the Labour Party formed the governing coalition, the numbers have been just as high, if not higher, than periods during which Likud or Kadima have been in power. This, in turn, underscores the fact that all Israeli governments have unilaterally populated the contested West Bank with more Jewish settlers while simultaneously carrying out negotiations based on land for peace.
Seeing that the settlers are undermining any future two-state solution, the Palestinians have decided not to wait any longer and are asking the United Nations to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This, they intimate, is their last attempt to salvage the two-state route before abandoning it to the dustbin of history.
Their argument is straightforward: If the idea behind a two-state solution is dividing land among the two peoples, how can Israel unilaterally continue to settle the contested land while carrying out negotiations? Israeli unilateralism, in other words, has driven the Palestinians to choose the unilateral path. The only difference is that the latter's unilateralism is aimed at advancing a peace agreement, while the former's is aimed at destroying it.
One-sided US veto
The US has never considered using its veto power to stop Israel from carrying out unilateral moves aimed at undermining peace.
Instead, the US has frequently used its veto to prevent the condemnation of Israeli policies that breach international law. Now the Obama Administration wants to use the veto again, with the moral justification that unilateralism is misguided. But the real question is: Why is unilateralism bad when it attempts to advance a solution, yet warrants no response when unilateralism threatens to undermine a solution?
President Obama should keep in mind that the Palestinian appeal to the international community might very well be the last chance for salvaging the two-state solution.
If the Palestinian demand for recognition falls through due to a US veto, then the necessary conditions for a paradigm shift will be in place: The two-state solution will be even less feasible, and the one-state formula will emerge as the only alternative.
This first appeared at Al-Jazeera
- Posted in
20 Comments so far
Show AllIf the Nobel Peace Prize doesn't already share that same status as those medals we hand out to our children just for putting on a sports uniform, then Obama's current efforts should surely illuminate this reality.
I agree; Obama should give back his Nobel Peace Prize. He won it days after his election because he portrayed himself as someone who would support justice between the Israelis and the Palestinians. He has not fulfilled that promise.
Now, he will veto Palestinian statehood, with Palestinians regaining their pre-1967 borders, something sacred to anyone concerned with justice in the Middle-East. The preemption of pre-1967 borders should not be up for discussion with Israelis (and rich Americans who fund those "illegal settlements") who want to settle in those territories. Don't even think that their illegal settlements win them much money, either, because one can rent much more cheaply in one of these illegal settlements than one can in East Jerusalem.
It is a horrible decision by the Obama Administration, especially when one considers the "Arab Spring", Arabs seeking some sort of justice from their own governments in the Middle East. They are just going to take up the Palestinian "shield" if some sort of justice is not given the Palestinians at the U.N. The best thing that Obama can do is to "abstain" if he doesn't have the outright guts to support the initiative of the Palestinians. He is a one-term President, like Jimmy Carter, so he may as well go down in the annals of history as doing something more significant than supporting the big bankers in the U.S. and Europe.
"He won it days after his election because he portrayed himself as someone who would support justice between the Israelis and the Palestinians."
Actually that is not true. He won because of his work (?) on a world without nuclear weapons and multilaterialsim. There was no mention of Israel or Palestine.
And his multilateralism? To rescue Europe with our worthless dollars and enslave Americans forever to Europe?
We have supported Europeans more than we should have. When Germany invaded the Netherlands, the Dutch absconded after two days to the Germans. The French did not last much longer. We rescued the Dutch. We rescued the French. The French have hated us ever since. In 1966, the French decided that they could have NATO without them and they withdrew from NATO. They had the benefits of NATO without paying a dime for NATO! The French screwed us! But it is not much different from Holland which did not pay its share; not much different from all of the NATO members which did not pay their fair shares.
I want us out of these stupid alliances whereby we pay everything to liberate their butts!
We had nothing to lose in WWII. We became slaves to Europeans because we did not realize that we had nothing to LOSE!
"...When Germany invaded the Netherlands, the Dutch absconded after two days to the Germans. The French did not last much longer. We rescued the Dutch. We rescued the French. ..."
~scratching head~
I won't go into any of what you stated because I truly don't know where to start (the above clip is one example) except to say that, although I'm sure you did not mean to, you couldn't have described IMPERIALISM any better than you did.
Imperialism? So we sacrificed our babies for Europe in WWII and we are imperialists? Who has profited more after WWII than the U.S.? The Benelux countries have profited a lot with their contracts for shipments of arms to Europe through their ports. France benefited by not having to pay for NATO (after 1966), still having all of the guarantees of NATO. Germany (GOD!), one cannot go to Frankfort without thinking that Frankfort airport is not an American airport...Why are we still in Germany? Why are we still in England? Why are we still in Japan? Why are we still in South Korea?
We are losing all of our dollars to these developed nations who can provide for themselves!
This goes beyond just the Palestinians. Indigeneous people in Turkey (Greeks), Vietnam (Montegnards), Australia (Abirigianes) and the Western Hemisphere (Native peoples) should be watching this closely. Israel isn't the first nation to come about by displacing Indigeneous people, just the latest. Palestinians deserve justice, but so do the people I listed.
I agree, KeLeMi,
I would prefer that U.S. indigenous "Indians" regain their stolen properties. After 400 years of occupation by Europeans and then Americans, it ain't gonna happen. When anyone talks about reparations for slavery in the U.S., they never talk about the Dutch, the French, the British, etc., as sources for recuperating their reparations. They dump it all on us Americans, who only had slavery from 1789 until 1861 when President Lincoln abolished slavery. We inherited slavery from our colonial masters until we booted them out! Seventy-two years later, we came up with something else...not perfect, of course, but still something to consider after all of that colonialism, with their slaves.
"...When anyone talks about reparations for slavery in the U.S., they never talk about the Dutch, the French, the British, etc., as sources for recuperating their reparations. They dump it all on us Americans, who only had slavery from 1789 until 1861 when President Lincoln abolished slavery. ..."
~scratching head...again~
How exactly do you pretend to have the Dutch, the French and the British pay for slavery in America? Any ideas or plans?
"How exactly do you pretend to have the Dutch, the French and the British pay for slavery in America? Any ideas or plans?"
In dollars.
It's too late to respond here since Common Dreams goes so quickly, but I LOVE YOU, Hector!
Good for you, Moi.
Palestine's only hope is "statehood". They realize it and slowly the rest of us are also coming to that conclusion.
How many times do we have to hear Israel use their lack of "statehood" to justify more of it's apartheid goals, before we wake up?
Palestine...I went to Israel and Palestine with my copy of "Innocents Abroad". Mark Twain would be appalled at what we face there. Israel loves to acknowledge Mark Twain, but with limits. Mark Twain would never have adhered to the U.S./Israeli doctrine that we have today: everything for Israel, nothing for Palestine!
This map is the most powerful FACT, of the occupation. It shows Israel settling occupied territory from 1967 to 2000.
http://bit.ly/r9QayH
Here is a list of United States vetoes over the years. It's been used as a weapon against the Palestinians.
http://www.krysstal.com/democracy_whyusa03.html
Nojustice-nopeace.blogspot.com
You can find all of the U.S. vetoes there...150 (?) of them there.
Hmmm
The bottom line in this arguement is that by blocking Palestinian Statehood the US will lose whats left of its credibility in the World today. It is a shocking and sad commentary that a President that has literally leveled an entire country (Libya)killing thousands of its citizens and robbing their banks and stealing their oil all in the name of freeing its citizens can look himself in the mirror and say this is the right and just thing to do. Only a monster or a fool could face himself in the mirror after denying a group that has been systematically exterminated and by force of arms illegally forced out of their homes into open air prison camps for over 40 years, the protection and security that a UN recognized State will provide.
Shame on the President and Shame on the Congress.
Ha'aretz published an op-ed on the subject a couple of days ago that was excellent and hits the nail right on the head about the toxic US/Israel relationship.
"Dear U.S. Jews, please don't let Netanyahu deceive you"
Don't be more patriotic than we are. Don't do us any favors. It's our blood we're talking about.
By Yossi Sarid
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/dear-u-s-jews-please-don-t-let-netanyahu-deceive-you-1.385241
[Quoted from the article]
"You, Jews who are both warm and hot under the collar, are working against Israel's interests as well as against the interests of America, your homeland, which now seen in its full isolation and hypocrisy: All of the people in our region are accorded the democratic right to rise up against tyranny, everyone except the Palestinians, who have suffered not from a home-grown tyrant, but from a foreign occupier, and the end of the occupation is not in sight after 44 years."
Palistinians are told by BO and Ms. Clinton to negotiate themselves a state with Netanyahu....With a straight face. The real problem: Palistinians are squatting on land within Greater Israel, a cosmic quirk. But that land has no OIL. Unlike Libya, which BO fell over himself to RECOGNIZE TODAY at the UN. Who are the rebels, the new gov't of Libya? Don't know, doesn't matter--we just have to be in there first. Freedom and democracy uber alles.