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A Formal Funeral for the Two-State Solution
How the PA's Statehood Bid Sidelines Palestinians
The Palestinian Authority's bid to the United Nations for Palestinian statehood is, at least in theory, supposed to circumvent the failed peace process. But in two crucial respects, the ill-conceived gambit actually makes things worse, amplifying the flaws of the process it seeks to replace. First, it excludes the Palestinian people from the decision-making process. And second, it entirely disconnects the discourse about statehood from reality.
Most discussions of the UN bid pit Israel and the United States on one side, fiercely opposing it, and Palestinian officials and allied governments on the other. But this simplistic portrayal ignores the fact that among the Palestinian people themselves there is precious little support for the effort. The opposition, and there is a great deal of it, stems from three main sources: the vague bid could lead to unintended consequences; pursuing statehood above all else endangers equality and refugee rights; and there is no democratic mandate for the Palestinian Authority to act on behalf of Palestinians or to gamble with their rights and future.
Underscoring the lack of public support, numerous Palestinian civil society organizations and grassroots leaders, academics, and activists have been loudly criticizing the strategy. The Boycott National Committee (BNC) -- the steering group of the global Palestinian-led campaign for boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel that has been endorsed by almost 200 Palestinian organizations -- warned in August that the UN bid could end up sidelining the PLO as the official representative of all Palestinians and in turn disenfranchise Palestinians inside Israel and the refugees in the diaspora. A widely disseminated legal opinion by the Oxford scholar Guy Goodwin-Gill underscored the point, arguing that the PLO could be displaced from the UN by a toothless and illusory "State of Palestine" that would, at most, nominally represent only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Others, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement -- an international coalition of young Palestinians -- declared that it stood "steadfastly against" the UN bid because it could jeopardize "the rights and aspirations of over two-thirds of the Palestinian people who live as refugees in countries of refuge and in exile, to return to their original homes." Many, like the PYM, fear that unilaterally declaring a state along 1967 borders without any other guarantees of Palestinian rights would effectively cede the 78 percent of historic Palestine captured in 1948 to Israel and would keep refugees from returning to what would then be recognized de facto as an ethnically "Jewish state."
Of course, there may be no clearer evidence of the distance between the UN bid and the actual will of the Palestinians than the secrecy of the process. Today, just days before the application is filed with the UN, the Palestinian public remains in the dark about exactly what the PA is proposing. No draft text has been shared with the Palestinian people. Instead the text is being negotiated with the Palestinian Authority's donors as if they, not the Palestinian people, are its true constituency.
More fundamentally, though, the entire discussion of statehood ignores the facts on the ground. For starters, the PA fails the traditional criteria for statehood laid out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: it controls neither territory nor external borders (except for the tiny enclaves it polices under the supervision of Israeli occupation forces). It is prohibited under the 1993 Oslo Accords from freely entering into relations with other states. As for possessing a permanent population, the majority of the Palestinian people are prohibited by Israel from entering the area on which the PA purports to claim statehood solely because they are not Jews (under Israel's discriminatory Law of Return, Jews from anywhere in the world can settle virtually anywhere in Israel or the occupied territories, while native-born Palestinian refugees and their children are excluded). The PA cannot issue passports or identity documents; Israeli authorities control the population registry. No matter how the UN votes, Israel will continue to build settlements in the West Bank and maintain its siege of Gaza. As all this suggests, any discussion of real sovereignty is a fantasy.
Nor is the strategy likely to produce even formal UN membership or recognition. That would require approval by the Security Council, which the Obama administration has vowed to veto. The alternative is some sort of symbolic resolution in the UN General Assembly upgrading the status of the existing Palestinian UN observer mission -- a decision with little practical effect. Such an outcome will hardly be worth all the energy and fuss, especially when there are other measures that the UN could take that would have much greater impact. For example, Palestinians would be better off asking for strict enforcement of existing but long ignored Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 465, which was passed in 1980 and calls on Israel to "dismantle the existing settlements" in the occupied territories and determines that all Israel's measures "to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity" and are flagrant violations of international law.
Ultimately, any successful strategy should focus not on statehood but on rights. In its statement on the UN bid, the BNC emphasized that regardless of what happens in September, the global solidarity struggle must continue until Israel respects Palestinian rights and obeys international law in three specific ways: ending the occupation of Arab lands that began in 1967 and dismantling the West Bank wall that was ruled illegal in 2004 by the International Court of Justice; removing all forms of legal and social discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and guaranteeing full equal rights; and offering full respect for Palestinian refugee rights, including the right of return. Palestinians and Israelis are not in a situation of equals negotiating an end to a dispute but are, respectively, colonized and colonizer, much as blacks and whites were in South Africa. This truth must be recognized, and pushing for such recognition would resonate far more with the Palestinian public than empty statehood talk.
Indeed, such a strategy has worried Israel enough that it has enlisted the U.S. in the fight against what Israeli leaders term "delegitimization." "Delegitimizers" are supposedly not seeking justice and full human and political rights for Palestinians, but rather seeking the collapse of Israel -- much like East Germany or apartheid South Africa -- through political and legal assaults. According to Israel and groups supporting it in the United States, virtually all Palestine solidarity activism, especially BDS, is "delegitimization." Some Israelis, including even former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, have warned that fighting a movement calling for universal civil and political rights would only make Israel look more, not less, like an apartheid state, worsening its situation. But Israeli elites have come up with no plausible response to the reality that within a few short years -- because of Palestinian population growth and Israeli settlement construction -- a Jewish minority will be ruling over a disenfranchised and subordinated Palestinian majority in a country that cannot be partitioned.
The plans for truncated and circumscribed Palestinian statehood, which successive American and Israeli governments have been prepared to discuss, fall far short of minimal Palestinian demands and have no hope of being implemented (as the dramatic failure of the Obama administration's peace effort in its first two years underscores). Even President Obama, in his speech to the Israeli lobbying group AIPAC last May, called the status quo "unsustainable." But he offered no
new answers.
These, then, are the lines along which the battle for the future of Palestine are going to be fought, no matter how many U.S. envoys head to Ramallah and Jerusalem to try to revive negotiations in which no one believes. Meanwhile, the UN bid should be seen not as the means to give birth to the Palestinian state but as the formal funeral of the two-state solution and the peace process that was supposed to bring it about.
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21 Comments so far
Show AllZionists in the USA and Israel are destroying any hope of peace in this world.
And before the zio-nazis show up to scream anti-semitism at anyone who wants Palestinians to have a state, get a load of this:
A Jerusalem Post Poll taken last week (according to Thom Hartmann in today's show) shows that 69% of Israelis SUPPORT a UN resolution to authorize a state for the Palestinians!
http://www.youtube.com/thomhartmann
The fascists Zionist leadership in Israel is out of step with the people there just like the Zionist Fascists in the USA are out of step with us.
I hope the Israelis send Netanyahu packing soon. If only we could do the same to our Zionist owned Congress and White House.
If 69% of the Israeli's don't agree with Netanyahu, how is it that he won an election? I don't buy Tom Hartmann's numbers or peace with Palestine is simply not the top of the Israeli electorate's list of problems.
FYI: Bibi Netanyahu's Likud party did NOT get a majority vote or even the most votes, Tsippi Livni's Kadeemah party got more [28 parliament seats vs 27 - you need 60 seats to form a Gov't in Israel]. So the decision went to Shimon Peres [the current elected Pres of Israel as well as ex-PM = head of state, & Foreign & Defense Minister] to choose between Livni & Bibi as to who had the best chance to form a coalition Gov't [Livni's party is theoretically so-called 'centrist' - Bibi's Likud is so-called hard-'right']. Peres picked Bibi & gave him 60 days to form & head-up a coalition Gov't [= 60+ seats] which he managed to do.
That doesn't necessarily mean that most Israelis are peace-niks, but there is a bit of discontent w Bibi's internal policies at present.
IHMO The author is wrong that this move by the PA signals the death of the so-called 2-State Solution. The 2-State Solution effectively died when they killed Yitzkhak Rabin.
That is a non-sequitor. The majority of people are against many of Obama's policies. How is it he got elected? Toss your smoke grenades elsewhere. Thank you.
Amply represented among thosed 69% are Israeli Jews who think that Bibi doesn't go far enough. Remember that roughly half of the Israeli population wants the Israeli Arabs "transfered" (i.e., forcibly expelled) out of whatever lands they decide Israel comprises.
But your comment about Thom Hartmann is spot on: Almost nothing he says is worth listening to.
"Meanwhile, the UN bid should be seen not as the means to give birth to the Palestinian state but as the formal funeral of the two-state solution and the peace process that was supposed to bring it about."
I believe this gentleman is quite correct. Once again, thank you Mr. Obama.
The two-state solution never existed, and the "peace process" was a means of ensuring it never came about.
It may sound odd to argue against a bid for for Palestinian statehood, but if you read carefully, the author has some serious concerns about other critical issues such as the right of refugees to return "home" getting sidelined: . Where would "home" be, for these people?
The author is perhaps rightly concerned about a "symbolic resolution in the UN General Assembly upgrading the status of the existing Palestinian UN observer mission -- a decision with little practical effect." He is also right when he says that it would be much better to fight for **"strict enforcement of existing but long ignored Security Council resolutions, such as Resolution 465, which was passed in 1980 and calls on Israel to "dismantle the existing settlements" in the occupied territories...".**
One could argue that having the status of a state would make this other demand more effective. But getting international support for a specific demand is a long process, and the effort that went into this bid could have been better spent on the other demand, namely to enforce an **existing** resolution, and that too from the Security Council.
And finally, as things stand, a two-state solution is looking less and less attractive for the Palestinians unless Israel withdraws to pre-1967 borders, or preferably even to 1948 borders. This author is among those that thinks a one-state solution should be explored instead.
I totally agree with Lashe
The so-called Road-Map has always been more of a Road-block or Log-Jam, just like the checkpoints in the Occupied territories, designed to enable Israel to steal more and more Palestinian land and resources.
You break a log jam with a stick of dynamite and Abbas appeal to the UN is just that - a stick of dynamite. Obomba, Netenyahoo, et al are on the back foot at last
I agree with the author, but from a different perspective. Abbas is the leader of a corrupt and undemocratic party more interested in lining its pockets than promoting Palestinian independence. He's being forced into the independence bid by forces he can no longer control; otherwise he would've backed down by now, and in fact he's throwing out every hint that he wants the entire noisome matter postponed until the twelfth of never. Really, Abbas's only functions are to make the West Bank safe for Israeli settlers, and to pocket cash.
So while the Palestinians certainly deserve independence, and while I support the independence bid unreservedly, there's more than enough reason to be skeptical about the whole thing. Perhaps the only advantage of giving the Palestinians their state is that it would remove the IDF from the territories long enough for Palestinians to deal with Abbas and his clique in the usual manner outraged people deal with traitors.
All Israel has to do is to welcome all people living within its borders or having a legitimate claim to such residency, to provide all with equal rights, to address problems of economic inequality, and to end the odious elements of theocracy held for sixty years or more. It won't happen today or tomorrow, but as demographics and attitudes change, it will eventually happen.
Israel better be careful what it wishes for, it may get it. If they continue to oppose the peace process and Palestinian independence while grabbing their land as fast as they can, it won't belong before there's nothing left. At that point, they would have effectively absorbed the entire Palestinian population, several million strong and multiplying at an accelerated rate. In another decade, jews will be the minority and Palestinians the majority. Oops! At that point, I can only hope for their sake, that the Palestinians are kinder and more humane to them than they have been to the Palestinians.
As it stands now the Zionist Jews responsible for fascist policies in Israel are being challenged by non-zionist Jews that favor a UN resolution to recognize a Palestinian State (69%). Also about 23% of Israelis are not Jews; they are non-Jewish Arabs.
But your point is well taken. Fascist tyranny and racist policies breed revolution. Whether it will be a peaceful one or not remains to be seen but most Israelis are fed up with Netanyahu and his fellow murderers.
Yeah, right. Those 69% will support a Palestinian state -- as long as it consists of whatever little bits the Israelis decide they can do without, and as long as Israel gets all of the resources and water, and as long as the Palestinians don't have the arms to defend themselves against further Israeli predations. Some "state"!
The so-called 'two state solution' never mad much sense, yet many liberals and Leftists have supported such a thing. The fact that Israel and the US are now unwilling to grant even that shows how insincere these negotiations by them AGAINST the Palestinians have been for decades now. We truly are subjects, all of us, to The Evil Empire.
The best solution is for the United States to veto the resolution. Who wants the two state solution at this point. Who trust Abbas, anyway? Remember the Palestine Papers?
Obama's veto will make irrefutable his hypocrisy and his subserviance to Israel. Around the region, our actions will harden the resolve of the activists of the Arab Awakening to stand against American imperialist intentions. America is a crippled behemoth. The slings and arrows of the multitudes are having it's effects. Someday the behemoth will all of a sudden come crashing down. Look at the signs. We have 60 thousand troops plus an equal amount of expensive contractors in Afghanistan, all of them isolated by Pakistan. The embassy in Kabul was just bombed. Think of Saigon before the last helicopter left the Embassy. Admiral Mullen came out today against the Pakistan's ISI being involved in the Kabul bombings. Where is this going? Things could get out of control in a hurry. I remember growing up during the Cold War and hearing over and over again about the domino effect. I see a domino effect of a different type this time.
While I believe the author of this article makes some excellent points about the questionable legitimacy of Abbas and the Palestinian Authority representing the Palestinian cause, something that is probably true of all representative governments to an extent, I think he missed the point of the UN statehood gambit.
I don't think Mr. Abbas really believes that his statehood drive will succeed. He knows it will be vetoed by the U.S. and that Palestinian statehood will not materialize from this meeting. He probably also realizes that observer status will be quite meaningless in the greater scheme of things. What is gained however by the drive for statehood is pointing out to Israel and its leadership the changed geopolitical realities in the second decade of the twenty-first century as opposed to say the 1980s and 1990s. The UN vote will show that Israel and its allies are becoming increasingly isolated and that their geopolitical influence taken as a whole is waning as opposed to the supporters of the Palestinians whose geopolitical strength is rising.
The BRICS coalition supports Palestine as well as Israel's erstwhile regional allies Turkey and Egypt. Palestine also enjoys the support of much of the global South and the former Eastern Bloc nations. Even France appears to support Palestine. It's mainly the US, Canada and Western Europe that support Israel. US geopolitical influence has been in decline for some time. The same is true of Western Europe. The emerging powers are all in the Global South and Eastern Bloc and support the Palestinians. The recent rise of South-South cooperation will make it difficult for the US to bring economic threats to bear on smaller nations that would support Palestine as there are other options available in the form of China, India, and Brazil to trade with.
I think the general assembly vote will show that the smaller nations can no longer be beaten into submission by Washington. The Security Council with permanent and non-permanent members will vote in favor of statehood showing the diminished influence of Western nations in world affairs and it will be up to the US to veto that decision which will further damage its international standing and force it to reconsider its unequivocal support of Israel. This also diminishes the legitimacy of the United Nations as it continues to vest power in the victors of World War II despite changed realities in the present day. To the extent that veto wielding members no longer represent the prevailing world power structure, the legitimacy of the UN is reduced to the point where it will go the way of the League of Nations.
Abbas stands to gain from this result as he will gain some reputation as an ardent defender of the Palestinians, a reputation that was severely tarnished when Wikileaks revealed the extent to which Abbas was willing to grovel and concede to Israel when nothing was being given in return.
Abbas' actions, while perhaps not representing all of the Palestinians, are not likely an attempt to gain statehood but rather to demonstrate to Israel that its allies are on the decline and are declining and number and they had better offer something on the table now and make an honorable exit before they are one day driven into the sea.
Thread winner.
What is disturbing is the ignoring of the obvious strategy implied in the 20+ years of the so called ‘negotiation’: keep negotiating but avoid at all costs any conclusion! In the mean time, keep grabbing Palestinian land, build settlements, and change the ‘facts on the ground’ by creating what they hope is an ‘irreversible’ situation. Personally I am not in favor of two-state solution, because it is fundamentally undemocratic; I reject the idea of Jewish democracy jus as I reject Islamic democracy or Christian democracy. Democracy is the only viable (at least for the foreseeable future) solution for social formations of all human ensembles of dimension greater than one; it has evolved as an objectively necessary accommodation for our existence as heterogeneous entities, everywhere, at all times. There are many examples around the world of failed attempts at forcing people to act as if they are homogenous in nature, interest or intent. Nevertheless, the two-sate theory in my mind has been a temporary arrangement, as means of minimizing mutual violence and losses, and an opportunity for rationality to set in ultimately, however long that may be (another such place in my hope is the Indian Subcontinent). But in Israel/Palestine, machinations disguised as ‘negotiations’ made these efforts impotent, and the sufferings continue. Current Palestinian effort at the UN is recognition of the futility of endless negotiation. Whether one supports their efforts or not, at least an understanding of what has driven them to this stage is deserving of contemplation.
I like hearing Abunimah's perspective on this (as usual). I think this is a matter that concerns Palestinians, and any opinion non-Palestinians have on this issue is probably not worth thinking about, so I have no opinion on the matter, except that I wish only for the best for all Palestinians.