Sham Israeli peace negotiations were stillborn from inception. Writer Henry Siegman once called them "the most spectacular deception in modern diplomatic history."

Netanyahu once said they're "a waste of time." Previous Israeli officials called occupation and status quo conditions "permanent."

Republican presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich calls Palestinians an "invented" people. Decades ago, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (a transplanted Ukrainian American) said:

"There is no such thing as a Palestinian people. It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn't exist....How can we return the occupied territories? There is nobody to return them to."

No wonder Edward Said once called the occupation an "atrocity" and the peace process "a disheartening bloody impasse.....to reduce the Palestinian actuality to nil, to efface Palestinians as a people with legitimate rights, to render them alien in their own land."

Israeli repression reached new extremes under Netanyahu. His government is Israel's worst ever. He exceeds the worst of Ariel Sharon and previous hard-line leaders.

On December 25, Haaretz writer Barak Ravid headlined, "Netanyahu: Israel will not negotiate with Palestinians should Hamas join government," saying:

Netanyahu vowed no talks if Fatah and Hamas unite for all Palestinians. In a speech at a conference for Israeli ambassadors, he said:

"If Hamas joins the Palestinian government, we will not hold negotiations with the Palestinian Authority....The peace process can only advance while maintaining security arrangements, which is becoming more difficult in light of the current situation in the region."

In April, Hamas and Fatah announced reconciliation and plans for transitional government ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections within a year to produce unity. Currently, they're set for May 2012.

Netanyahu reacted angrily saying, "choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas." Reconciliation shows "weakness," he added. "There cannot be peace" if both sides unite. "What happened....in Cairo is a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism."

Despite reservations on both sides, signing ceremony comments signaled hope. Abbas suggested turning a page, saying:

"Four black years have affected the interests of Palestinians. Now we meet to assert a unified will. Israel is using the Palestinian reconciliation as an excuse to evade (peace. It) must choose between peace and settlement."

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal said:

"Hamas was ready to pay any price for internal Palestinian reconciliation. The only battle of the Palestinians is against Israel. Our aim is to establish a free and completely sovereign Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza strip, whose capital is Jerusalem, without any settlers and without giving up a single inch of land and without giving up on the right of return."

In mid-December, Abbas and Mashaal met again in Cairo after Hamas and Islamic Jihad announced Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) membership plans.

They'll form a committee ahead of next May's presidential, parliamentary and Palestinian National Council (PLC) elections. Once held, they'll join the PLO as sole legitimate Palestinian representative.

Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded supportively, saying "Moscow welcomes the serious talks between the Palestinian factions that aim to end Palestinian division."

According to the Turkish Anatolian news agency, so did Ankara. It also praised Egypt's sponsoring role.

On December 24, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero announced full support, saying:

"This is an important element for the unity of the future State of Palestine, and in that sense, this reconciliation is in Israel's future interests."

He added that reconciliation depends on Israel ending Gaza's siege, as well as both sides denouncing violence and respecting past agreements.

During Bethlehem's Christmas midnight mass, Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal called Palestinian self-determination the main thrust for achieving peace, adding:

"We ask for peace for the Palestinian people and for the Israeli people. We ask for peace, stability and security for the entire Middle East so that our children and their children may live their childhood in innocence, in a healthy environment where they may play together without fear or complex."

Israel and Washington, of course, remain significant obstacles very much unresolved.

Unity Discussions Scheduled to Continue

In late January, unity discussions will continue to select transitional government members until elections. In February, Palestine's parliament will resume operations.

At issue is Israel's response. Elections in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem depend on cooperation. In 2005, Israel manipulated the process for Abbas.

Leading opposition figure Marwan Barghouti was imprisoned on bogus murder charges. In addition, Mustafa Barghouti's candidacy was sabotaged for "demand(ing) total and complete reform, (ending all) form(s) of corruption, (and) mismanagement, and (working to) consolidate the rule of law."

As a result, Israel arrested him while campaigning, expelled him from East Jerusalem, excluded him from Nablus and Gaza, harassed and intimidated him repeatedly, and effectively rigged the process for Abbas.

In 2012, Israel may either prevent Palestinian elections with Hamas candidates or sabotage them to assure Israeli-friendly officials only gain power.

Another obstacle involves registering Palestinians worldwide to participate and letting them vote in PLO mission offices. Doing so depends on cooperation from countries where they live.

The PNC will have 350 delegates, 150 from the Territories and 200 diaspora ones. PNC Chairman Salim Zanoun has his hands full. He heads a committee charged with making this possible. Doing so's not easy. Nor is it for millions of occupied Palestinians or diaspora ones prevented from returning home.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), Palestinians worldwide number 11.22 million as of year end 2011. About 4.23 million live in Palestine (including 1.6 million in Gaza), another 1.37 million in Israel, 4.99 million in Arab countries, and around 636,000 in other countries.

PCBS also said 44% of those in Palestine are refugees - 42% in the West Bank and 58% in Gaza. Numerous others live in Arab countries, notably Lebanon, Jordan and Syria.

Ultra-nationalist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman's extremism is also troubling. Repeatedly he said Israel won't return to 1967 borders. Settlement expansions will continue, and doing so's no obstacle to peace. In fact, they violate international law and obstruct any possibility of resolution.

Targeting Hamas at Israel's Behest

Baseless accusations are Israel's stock in trade. In January 1995, at its behest, the State Department duplicitously declared Hamas a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

Its emergence began after 1967. In the late 1970s, Israel offered financial aid to counterbalance PLO influence. During the first Intifada (1987 - 1993), it gained prominence. Israel remained supportive.

At issue was manipulating both sides to prevent peace. Like America, Israel needs enemies to justify conflict and violence. Hamas was chosen strategically to advance Palestinian divisions.

In Arabic, Hamas means courage and bravery. Since established, it's resisted oppression and occupation. It prefers negotiation and international consensus, not violence.

However, its charter says it'll fight for its rights if Israel prevents peaceful reconciliation. It rejects Zionist intentions to destroy Palestinian society, its values and "wipe out Islam."

It calls itself "a humane movement, which cares for human rights and is committed to the tolerance inherent in Islam as regards attitudes towards other religions. It is only hostile to those who are hostile towards it....(Under Islam) it is possible for the members of the three religions: Islam, Christianity and Judaism to coexist in safety and security" as long as other religions "desist from struggling against Islam over sovereignty in this region."

It wants peace, equity and justice for all Palestinians. It prefers negotiating on the basis of "hudnah" or temporary truce. It's founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said Hamas would end its liberating struggle "if the Zionists ended their occupation of Palestinian territories and stopped killing Palestinian women, children and innocent civilians."

It current leaders are willing to recognize Israel in return for self-determination in peace inside pre-1967 borders - 22% of historic Palestine. Moreover, numerous times it agreed to unilateral ceasefires in spite of repeated Israeli violations.

Nonetheless, it responses defensively after continued provocations. Washington and Israel call it "terrorism." Under international law, it's legitimate self-defense.

Besides being Palestine's legitimate government, Hamas provides vital social services, including medical clinics, education, free meals for children, help for orphans, financial and technical assistance for homeless families, aid to refugees, special youth and sports clubs, and more as their resources allow.

It also maintains an elite military wing for self-defense, policing and security, the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades.

It wants equitable peace and reconciliation. So do Arabs and Jews. Israel and its Washington paymaster/partner choose violence. That Gordian Knot remains to be cut.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

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U.S. law could force America out of international agencies, and into isolation

By Gwynne Dyer*

The Palestinians have finally come up with a strategy that may produce some results. But only by accident, so to speak.

They were fed up with 19 years of “direct negotiations” with Israel that never made any progress toward a final peace settlement, and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas badly needed some small victory to prop up his failing popularity. So he decided to seek international recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state.

He knows very well that the Palestinians cannot get full membership in the United Nations, because the United States has promised to veto that. But membership in the various UN agencies like the World Bank and the World Health Organization is not subject to a veto, and each organization they join would move Palestine a tiny step closer to real statehood.

Their first target was the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). On Monday, they were granted full membership by a vote of 107 in favour, 14 against, and 52 abstaining.

The United States immediately cut off its huge contribution to UNESCO’s annual budget — 22 per cent of the total — as a punishment for voting the wrong way. The UNESCO vote, said State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, was “regrettable, premature, and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

Israel’s response was equally drastic. It announced that it was speeding up the construction of 2,000 new homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied territories. It has also cut off the transfer of tax revenues that it collects on behalf of the Palestinian Authority on goods passing through Israel: about $100 million a month, which provides half of the PA’s domestic revenue. Without it, the PA’s civil servants will go unpaid.

Painful measures for the Palestinians, but Israel is always building more homes for Jews in the West Bank, and it cuts off the flow of revenue to the Palestinians whenever it feels like it: this is the second time this year. Nothing new there. And Washington had no choice: it is obliged by a 1990 U.S. law to cut funding to any organization that recognizes the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But this law, which the Palestinians were barely aware of when they adopted their current strategy, presents them with an extraordinary opportunity. There are 14 other UN specialized agencies, from the Food and Agriculture Organization to the World Meteorological Organization, most of them with similar membership requirements to UNESCO: a two-thirds majority vote of the existing members, and no veto.

If the Palestinians apply for membership in each of these organizations over the next year or so, they will probably get the same 88 per cent majority when it comes to a vote on membership. None of the countries that defied the United States and voted Palestine into UNESCO is going to humiliate itself by changing its vote at other UN agencies. And each time, Washington will be forced by law to cease its contributions to that agency.

The United States would not actually lose its membership by stopping its financial support — at least not for a good long while — but it would lose all practical influence on these agencies, which do a great deal of the work of running the world. It would be a diplomatic disaster for Washington, and it would test America’s reflexive compliance with Israel’s agenda, perhaps to the breaking point.

This interesting possibility is only now getting the full attention of decision-makers in the U.S., Israel and Palestine. It gives the Palestinians unprecedented leverage over the U.S., but it is a tool that must be used with caution, for Washington cannot back down. The U.S. operates under the rule of law, and the Obama administration must enforce this archaic law unless and until Congress rescinds it.

Using this new lever that has fallen into his hands, Abbas could actually drive the United States out of most international agencies if he wanted, but that is not in his interest. What he actually needs is some major pressure on Israel from Washington to stop building settlements and start negotiating seriously.

That cannot happen in an election year, so perhaps Abbas will wait until the end of next year and the outcome of the American presidential election. The U.S. law will stay on the books, but if Barack Obama wins re-election in 2012, maybe then he will risk putting pressure on Israel rather than see the U.S. driven into what amounts to diplomatic isolation. Or maybe he won’t.

* Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

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In advance of the formal burial of the Palestinian Authority's bid for state recognition at the UN, BBC Radio 4's flagship Today programme was on the right track. In his introduction to a quite revealing report, presenter John Humphrys said reporter Kevin Connolly had gone to Israel to find out "what hopes there are, if any, for the establishment of a Palestinian state."

Among those Connolly interviewed were Akiva Eldar, the Ha'aretz columnist who has been a constant critic of Israel's settlement policy. He said. "The settlers have won and Israel has lost... Israel must now live with the consequences."

As I have written from time to time in the past, the possible consequences include Israel tearing itself apart in a Jewish civil war; Israel going down and taking the whole region with it; and/or a final Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

If I take it as a given (I do) that Israel's leaders are not remotely interested in peace on terms that would satisfy even minimum Palestinian demands and needs for justice, and that as things are the major powers will continue to allow Zionism to go on calling the policy shots, the question arising is this: What can the Palestinians do themselves to advance their cause?

It's not for the gentile me to tell the Palestinians what to do but if I was a Palestinian the following is what I would want to happen.

The first and immediate priority - the dissolution of the PA, effectively making Israel fully and completely responsible and accountable for its occupation. Having to take complete responsibility would be quite costly for Israel financially and in terms of the additional call on its security resources. And in theory it ought to be less difficult (at present it's impossible) for the Palestinians, with the assistance of concerned and caring agencies and governments, to hold Israel accountable to international law for its occupation policies and actions.

Why should the PA be dissolved? Apart from the fact that it's corrupt and useless (has become just another Arab regime, some might say), the short answer is in two parts.

One is that under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah cronies, the PA's main role has been to keep the Palestinians, Hamas supporters on the West Bank in particular, under control for Israel. In that context the PA has been more or less a quisling authority collaborating with Israel, and by so doing it has undermined the liberation struggle.

The other is that under Abbas's leadership the PA has subverted Palestinian democracy. He was elected as chairman in January 2005 for a term of four years which expired in January 2009. There should then have been new elections. In the absence of them Abbas and his PA are without legitimacy and thus any real mandate to represent the occupied and oppressed Palestinians.

Abbas's response to the statement by the Security Council's admissions committee that it had failed to reach agreement on the PA's bid for full membership and state recognition was to say that he would "keep on trying." He also ruled out the possibility of dissolving the PA.

I think it's not unreasonable to speculate that his prime concern is to preserve the good life and privileges he and his Fatah leadership colleagues enjoy. Arafat was never a member of the discredited Arab Leadership Club. Abbas is a fully paid up member. On reflection I also think his decision to seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state was entirely self-serving. He knew the bid could not succeed but he calculated, correctly, that it would focus global attention on the Palestinian cause in a way that would improve his low standing in the eyes on his people. It did but only briefly.

Obviously the dissolution of the PA will only happen if enough Palestinians demand it. But in my view it's not only the occupied and oppressed Palestinians who need to do the demanding. In my view it's time for Palestinians everywhere to become engaged by peaceful and democratic means in the struggle to end the Zionization of their homeland and secure their rights. Put another way, if the Zionist colonial project is to be contained and defeated, the incredible, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians must now be supplemented by practical, effective and co-ordinated Palestinian diaspora action. For what purpose?

Not only to bring about the dissolution of the PA but to have it replaced as soon as possible by a re-structured and re-invigorated PNC (Palestine National Council). Once upon a time this now side-lined, parliament-in-exile was the supreme decision-making body on the Palestinian side. Even Arafat was accountable to it. (It did, in fact, take him six long years to persuade a majority of PNC delegates representing Palestinians nearly everywhere to endorse his policy of politics and compromise with Israel. That happened towards the end of 1979. The PNC vote in favour of Arafat's policy - the two-state solution - was 296 for it and only four against. From then on the Palestinian door was open to peace on terms which any rational government in Israel would have accepted with relief).

For the PNC to be brought back to life re-structured and re-invigorated, there would have to be elections to it in communities/constituencies throughout the Palestinian diaspora. The following by country and numbers of Palestinians is the most recent available estimate of its composition that I am aware of.

The occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip - 4,200,000

Jordan - 2,900,000

Israel - 1,600,000

Syria - 800,000

Chile - 500,000

Lebanon - 490,000

Saudi Arabia - 280,245

Egypt - 270,245

United States - 270,000

Honduras - 250,000

Venezuela - 245,120

United Arab Emirates - 170,000

Germany -159,000

Mexico - 158,000

Qatar - 100,000

Kuwait - 70,000

El Salvador - 70,000

Brazil - 59,000

Iraq - 57,000

Yemen - 55,000

Canada - 50,975

Australia - 45,000

Libya - 44,000

Denmark - 32,152

United Kingdom - 30,000

Sweden - 25,500

Peru - 20,000

Columbia - 20,000

Spain - 12,000

Pakistan -10,500

Netherlands - 9,000

Greece - 7,500

Norway - 7,000

France - 5,000

Guatemala - 3,500

Austria - 3,000

Switzerland - 2,000

Turkey - 1,000

India - 300

That global spread of the original (1947/48) and subsequent (1967) Palestinian refugees and their descendants is an awesome tribute to the success of Zionist ethnic cleansing.

The prime task of a re-structured and re-invigorated PNC would be to debate and determine Palestinian policy and then represent it by speaking to power with one credible voice. That, I believe, would significantly improve the prospects for getting a real peace process going. By definition a real peace process is one that would require the major powers led by the U.S. to confront the Zionist monster.

The organizational effort required to bring the PNC back to life, re-structured and re-invigorated, is massive, but what might have taken years in the past could be done in months by making best and most effective use of the internet.

If diaspora Palestinians do not now make the effort and put their act together, I think it's possible, even probable, that future Palestinian historians will conclude that they betrayed their occupied and oppressed brothers and sisters as much as the regimes of an impotent, corrupt and repressive Arab Order did.

* Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East. Author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor

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By Stephen Lendman* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Rogue state lawlessness and contempt for humanity define both nations.

At home, America is plagued by police state laws, contempt for human and civil rights, out-of-control corruption, banker occupation, corporate control of Washington, record budget and national debt levels, as well as depression-sized unemployment, poverty, homelessness, hunger and despair.

Abroad, America wages permanent wars on humanity, killing millions for wealth, power, and unchallengeable global dominance at the expense of suffering billions.

The rancid stench of Washington's war on the world permeates everywhere, threatening human and environmental survival.

It's no better in Israel, a nation believing only Jews have rights, and increasingly less of them under neoliberalized harshness, favoring the few at the expense of most others.

Like America and other Western states, Israeli policies disproportionately favor the rich. Since at least the mid-1980s, they've caused extreme wealth disparities, unemployment, poverty, hunger, homelessness and gradual loss of social benefits, heading toward ending them entirely.

Israelis finally reacted, protesting for weeks about unaffordable housing, high food and energy prices, onerous taxes on working households, lack of free education and better healthcare benefits, weak labor rights, and a nation no longer fit to live in for Jews.

It never was for Arabs comprising one-fifth of the population. Yet they're treated more like fifth column threats than citizens with equal rights.

On September 3, Haaretz writer Ilan Lior headlined, "Hundreds of thousands of Israelis expected (Saturday night) at massive 'March of the Million' rallies," later saying in a follow-up article:

At 9:30PM, Tel Aviv's Kikar Hamedina plaza filled for the main event, preceded by a march from Habima Square via Marmorek, Ibn Gvirol and Jabotinsky streets.

Protest leaders and supporters addressed eager crowds. Featured entertainers heightened the popular spirit for change. Earlier, student union head Yuval Bdolah expected the rally's size to be unprecedented in Israeli history.

It didn't disappoint as around half a million Israelis massed in cities nationwide. Over 300,000 filled Kikar Hamedina. Protest leader Yonatan Levy said the atmosphere was like "a second Independence Day."

National Student Union Chairman Itzik Shmuli addressed the crowd, saying:

"Mr. Prime Minister, the new Israelis have a dream and it is simple: to weave the story of our lives into Israel. We expect you to let us live in this country. The new Israelis will not give up. They demand change. They demand change and will not stop until real solutions come."

Protest leader Daphni Leef added:

"My generation always felt as though we were alone in this world, but now we feel the solidarity. They try to dismiss us as stupid children, and as extreme leftists," but hundreds of thousands rallying for social justice prove otherwise.

Over 50,000 massed in Jerusalem's Paris Square, double the previous largest number. Actress Orna Banai addressed the crowd, saying:

"I am not amused that there are hungry children here, that we have a soldier rotting in captivity for five years, (and) that Israel is one of the poorest examples there (is for) human rights."

Others also spoke across the country for long denied social justice. Their common theme was keeping up enough pressure to succeed, and in Haifa to end discrimination against Arabs.

Shahin Nasser, Haifa's Arab Wadi Nisnas representative, addressed protesters, saying:

"Today we are changing the rules of the game. No more coexistence based on hummus and fava beans. What is happening here is true coexistence, when Arabs and Jews march together shoulder to shoulder calling for social justice and peace."

"We've had it. Bibi, go home. Steinitz (Israel's finance minister), go and don't come back. Atias (Israel's housing minister), goodbye and good riddance."

Rallying for social justice across Israel since mid-July so far shows no signs of ebbing. Succeeding, of course, depends on sustaining enough energy disruptively for change. Though never easy, it's the only way.

Approaching Zero Hour for Palestinian Statehood

Sovereign independence and full de jure UN membership is the only acceptable alternative for Palestine. However, dark Israeli and Washington forces aim to subvert it.

In February, Washington vetoed a Security Council resolution denouncing expanding Israeli settlements. In a White House statement, Obama "emphasized that a vote at the United Nations will never create an independent Palestinian state," even if the General Assembly grants it by a simple two-thirds majority.

Moreover, Congress near unanimously condemned Palestine's legitimate right to independence. In addition, it threatens to withhold support and perhaps impose sanctions if achieved.

In fact, political Washington contemptuously spurns universal rights, especially everywhere not under its control. As a result, whether democrat or despot, regime change threatens all independent leaders by one means or other, including naked aggression.

Ask Iraqis, Afghans, Haitians, and Libyans among others. They'll explain.

A previous article discussed The New York Times opposition to Palestinian statehood.

In fact, its longstanding policy staunchly supported Israel's occupation, belligerence, and right to reign terror on Palestinian civilians with impunity, in less than so many words.

On September 3, Steven Lee Myers and Mark Landler headlined, "US Appeals to Palestinians to Stall UN Vote on Statehood," saying:

"The Obama administration has initiated a last-ditch diplomatic campaign to avert a confrontation this month over" Palestinian statehood and full UN membership.

Once again it's playing the peace talks game even though past efforts for decades proved stillborn. Moreover, how can Palestinians negotiate without a willing partner, especially since its legitimate government is entirely shut out.

Both writers omitted these and other key facts, focusing instead on worrying whether "Obama would be put in the position of threatening (a) veto (or going along and) risk alienating Israel and its (US) political supporters...."

They also suggested support for Obama "trying to translate the broad principles (he) outlined in May into a concrete road map for talks that would succeed where past efforts have failed...."

In fact, as both writers know or should, equitable peace talks are impossible because Washington and Israel never tolerated them and don't now. Neither country negotiates. They demand. For Occupied Palestinians, it's stay that way, or else.

At the same time, past articles explained that Washington earlier provisionally recognized Palestine as an independent nation. According to UN Charter Article 80(1), it can't reverse its position by vetoing a Security Council (SC) resolution calling for Palestine's UN admission.

Doing so is illegal, subject to further SC action under the Charter's Chapter VI. Ultimately, the SC only recommends admissions. The General Assembly affirms them by a two-thirds majority. At this time, enough support exists to get it.

Moreover, if Washington does, in fact, play its veto card, the General Assembly can circumvent it under the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution.

Abbas Holds the Wild Card

Ultimately, long-time Israeli collaborationist Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas may prove the wild card. Ahead of petitioning the General Assembly, he's expected to explain his strategy, according to presidential aide Nabil Abu Rudaineh, saying:

"The president will define all the political moves which will be taken before submitting the UN bid, so as to make clear where the Palestinian cause is headed."

He'll "address the Palestinian people, telling them exactly why the (PA) will go to the UN, and what caused the current political situation after negotiations stopped, and after the international community failed to work out solutions to the question of Palestine, and to move the negotiation process forward based on clear foundations."

Abu Rudaineh added:

Palestinian leaders will petition the UN "as long as negotiations have not started, and Israel has not committed to clear references to start" them.

"We will go to the UN Security Council in coordination with all Arab countries. Going to the UN will be the only way to gain our rights and to maintain our gains."

Clearly, Abbas left himself wiggle room to avoid confronting Washington and Israel by backing down at the 11th hour, despite enough world support and international law on his side to succeed.

If so, millions of Palestinians will be betrayed by their own president, proving again his collaborationist ties to to Israel and Western interests for whatever personal benefits he's afforded.

Planned Settler West Bank/East Jerusalem Belligerence

According to International Middle East Media Center writer Saed Bannoura, Palestinians also face another threat.

On September 2, he headlined, "Settlers Plan Attacks Against Palestinians In September," saying:

Armed by Israel's military with tear gas, stun grenades and other weapons, "extremist right wing factions (are) preparing (to) respond to any popular Palestinian move" to petition the UN for statehood and full membership.

Already, settlers are heavily armed with automatic weapons and "unlimited amounts of ammunition." Using them and other weapons, they prepared a plan called "children against children, women and women" to attack unnamed West Bank and East Jerusalem populations.

Extremist MK Michael Ben-Ari heads the scheme along with militant settlers, apparently spoiling for a fight and using Palestinian statehood efforts as a pretext.

"The eight-page plan includes instructions regarding operations in Palestinian cities and villages in the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Its main slogan is 'let's transform September from a threat to a historic opportunity to change the rules of the game.' "

It adds:

"should the UN officially recognize a Palestinian independent state, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians will take off to the streets, to celebrate, and they might approach the settlements."

"Unarmed Palestinian women and children will lead the processions heading to the settlements. This will push the Israeli soldiers to open fire at them, and this issue will lead to a full collapse in the security situation, and the Palestinians will resume their attacks against the settlements."

The plan calls for Israeli children to confront their Palestinian counterparts, Israeli women and men doing the same thing.

Palestinian settlers have a long history of attacking Palestinians with impunity, including acts of vandalism, desecrating mosques, and murder.

Their most extremist elements now see a chance to escalate violence to the next level, aided and abetted by Israel's military, operating under Operation Summer Seeds provisions.

A previous article explained.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

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By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Britain and NATO were keen as mustard to establish a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians but too cowardly to do the same for the Palestinians, who are constantly on the receiving end of Israel's vicious air strikes and armed incursions. Muslims and Christians alike have been slaughtered or maimed in their thousands and had their homes, farms and water resources stolen while waiting 63 years for the international community to deliver them from Israel's brutal occupation.

And Israel now plans to steal Palestine's offshore gas.

Not surprisingly, after decades of fruitless peace talks with a gun to their heads the Palestinians are about to apply to the United Nations for recognition of their own state based on the 1949 armistice lines that are universally regarded as the border with Israel.

But I was taken by surprise on 24 August by an email from Avaaz, those energetic organizers of global petitions, saying that "in 48 hours, the UN Security Council will meet again to discuss Palestine's bid to become the 194th country". They want one million signatures to a petition to ramp up public pressure and get governments off the fence and supporting this long-overdue bid for freedom.

I thought the Palestinian application was going to be made on 20 September or soon afterwards, under Lebanon's UN presidency. Meanwhile, the US and Israel have been conducting a huge diplomatic campaign to sabotage the Palestinian move. Perhaps somebody behind the scenes has calculated that their ridiculous propaganda will have worn thin by the time 20 September arrives.

Most of the world already supports the Palestinian cause. The trouble is, the will of the people in the US, Britain and most of Europe is downright ignored by political leaders who have allowed themselves to be suckered into the Zionist cause. That's Western-style democracy for you. Freedom fighters, beware.

It remains to be seen whether Britain, whose prime minister is a self-proclaimed Zionist and has pledged "indestructible" support for the Israeli regime and whose foreign secretary has been an adoring Friend of Israel since he was in short trousers, will join in blocking the bid for freedom.

The other day David Cameron said of the successful Libyan uprising:

Our task now is to do all we can to support the will of the Libyan people which is for an effective transition to a free, democratic and inclusive Libya. This will be and must be and should be Libyan-led and a Libyan-owned process with broad international support coordinated by the United Nations.

He's keen as mustard – again – to do all this for the Libyans, but will he do the same for the Palestinians? When they held free and fair elections in 2006 democracy-preaching Britain didn't like the result and joined the US and Israel in trashing the Palestinians' fledgling democracy and strangling their economy.

It's not difficult to imagine Cameron and Hague snapping to attention when Tel Aviv speaks, the mantra-like instructions amplified as usual by Washington: "Let there be no doubt ... blah, blah ... symbolic action to isolate Israel will not create an independent Palestinian state ... blah, blah ... no shortcut to statehood ... blah, blah ... must return to the negotiating table..."

The famous trade-mark white dog "Nipper", listening intently to his master's voice from the gramophone trumpet, comes instantly to mind.

Of course, fluffy American bitches have had their coiffed heads wedged so firmly up Tel Aviv's trumpet for such a long time that it's worn like a permanent fashion statement over there.

The question is, can "Nipper" Cameron extract his head from that trumpet long enough to put his money where his mouth is with regard to democracy and freedom in the Middle East, and do the decent thing in tune with the British people's wishes?

Of course, getting international support is only half the battle. I read with alarm that Saeb Erekat, Mahmoud Abbas's sidekick, heads the team responsible for preparing the Palestinian submission to the UN. I thought Erekat resigned as chief negotiator following revelations published by AlJazeera that his team, during peace talks with the Israelis, was willing to make suicidal concessions and couldn't negotiate its way out of a paper bag. A few months ago he was reported to be in Washington talking with US officials about reviving that same pointless peace process. How counter-productive can he get?

And such is the legal and constitutional tangle surrounding the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), the Palestinian National Council (PNC) and the Palestinian Authority (PA), and their relationship to each other, that legal advisers now warn that a move towards statehood might adversely affect the rights of the refugees, who account for more than half of all Palestinians. If the PLO, the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, is replaced by a state the change in legal status could mean that core rights, such as the right of return, are lost forever unless the whole deal is very cleverly handled.

Are these really the right people to be in charge of Palestine's fate?

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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By Khalid Amayreh * in occupied Jerusalem | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

According to recent reports from Washington, the Obama administration is proposing a trade-off to reach a breakthrough in the stalled Palestinian-Israeli talks.

The new formula, which the U.S. tried (but failed) to sell to other members of the Quartet, proposes a Palestinian recognition of the "Jewishness" of Israel in exchange for an American endorsement of a Palestinian "state" on unspecific parts of the West Bank in addition to a few scattered neighborhoods of occupied East Jerusalem.

The United States has already approached some Arab states, asking them to endorse the American ideas and pressure the weak Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership to do likewise.

Unfortunately, the notoriously obsequious PA is yet to utter a clarion and unequivocal "NO" in response to increasingly daring Israeli and American efforts to force the Palestinian leadership to commit a historic adultery with Palestinian honor, legitimate rights and future, since recognizing the "Jewishness" of Israel would be a historic obscenity exceeding any other obscenity.

Some shallow-minded Palestinian officials seem unable to grasp the actual and potential gravity of the issue at hand. These people must be asked to shut up, or get lost, as they have no right whatsoever to sacrifice the rights of future Palestinian generations to freedom, dignity, and equality.

Russia has had the decency to reject the obscene American demand. This fact should at least silence and embarrass some of the defeatist elements within the PA who go by the adage "feed me today, kill me tomorrow."

In addition to that, a compromising attitude by the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and Yasser Abed Rabbo would really force our friends and allies into a very difficult position. Some of them would argue rather bitterly "we can't be more Catholic than the Pope, we can't be more Palestinian than the Palestinians themselves."

There are those whose tongues function much more swiftly than their brains do, who argue that the issue is merely symbolic and that Israel is already a Jewish state.

Well, things are not that simple and Israeli leaders such as the arch-racist prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu and his terrorist cohorts know exactly what they really have in mind when they speak of a Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu knows, but doesn't say so, that a Jewish state means institutionalized Jewish racism, sanctioned by the law of the land and recognized as legitimate and legal by no other than Israel's victims.

In other words, upon receiving a Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, Israel would not only legally decapitate the paramount right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees, but would also adopt all sorts of draconian and manifestly fascist measures against the sizeable Palestinian community in Israel.

Such measures would range from brazen religious and cultural discrimination to brash ethnic cleansing, and Israel would do all of this perfectly legally because Israel is recognized as an exclusively Jewish state. In other words, the right of Israel to maintain itself as a predominantly Jewish overrides Israel's non-Jewish citizens' right to equality, dignity and basic human rights and civil liberties.

In fact, Israel has already embarked on measures that could be viewed as ominous harbingers for a full-fledged fascism. For example, Israel has unearthed ancient Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem, ordered mosques to tone down the timeless call for prayers and imposed stringent restrictions on Muslim and Christian access to religious shrines in East Jerusalem.

Moreover, with the Israeli justice system slowly but definitely transformed into a legal body of Talmud-based anti-Gentile system that is reminiscent of history's darkest ages, and with the Israeli Jewish society moving decidedly toward Jewish religious fanaticism and national jingoism, one can only imagine the kind of treatment non-Jews, especially Palestinians, would receive in Israel several years from now.

A few months ago, I spoke with a liberal Jewish intellectual who told me that Israel wouldn't necessarily take dramatic measures to drive Arabs away from Israel.

"Israel would make their daily life unbearable through the promulgation of clearly discriminatory laws and other ostensibly "legal" measures." In a sort of defensive reflex, I reminded him that Israel claimed to be a democratic state. "You know this is for propaganda and for international public opinion consumption, it is not for real."

Israel has already started introducing racist laws in an effort to enforce "the Jewish identity" of the state, just as Nazi Germany started enforcing the German identity in the early and mid 1930s.!

For example, the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, has proposed a new law which would make it mandatory for all Israeli (Arab and Jewish) kindergartens to sing the Jewish national anthem at least once a week.

This means that the nearly two million Arabs living in Israel would be forced to glorify the symbol of their Nakba. It would be akin to the Third Reich forcing Jewish kids to sing the Nazi anthem.

In any case, forcing the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the tens of thousands of Palestinians, who were murdered, savaged, and violently ethnically cleansed by genocidal Zionist terrorists when Israel was created in 1948, to sing hatikva, would be a small detail once Arabs and other non-Jews were forced to pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state.

Finally, recognizing Israel as it is would be a huge betrayal for the Palestinian people, their legitimate rights, aspirations, struggle, suffering and grievances. But recognizing Israel as a Jewish state would be a real crime against humanity, since saying "yes" to the Jewishness of Israel means and implies consent to Jewish racism, fascism and even Nazism. It is nothing less than grand blaspheme and apostasy.

* Khalid Amayreh a journalist based in the Occupied Palestinian town of Dura. He obtained his MA in journalism from the University of Southern Illinois in 1983.

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By Mohamed Khodr* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

"On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable."
--Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel; May 14, 1948

"Believers are those to whom people said, "The people have gathered against you, so fear them." But that merely increased their faith and they said, "Allah is enough for us and how excellent a Guardian is He." (Qur'an: 3:173)

Mahmoud Abbas

However Abbas must first and foremost find the courage and will to sacrifice his status and future much like every Palestinian child living under the daily brutality of occupation who fearlessly faces an Israeli tank or bulldozer ready to kill him, his family, or demolish their home and farm.

Since 1967 all the Palestinians have ever asked is for a State, albeit divided between the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as their capitol, a mere 22% of their original homeland. Given the never ending "peace process" they now live on only 14% of their homeland, which is shrinking rapidly every day.

Time is of the essence for Abbas to quickly submit the resolution to the U.N. to recognize a Palestinian States regardless of the threatened Obama need Jewish re-election money Veto.

If Abbas succumbs to fear of failure and fear of American consequences than Abba Eban's (late former Israeli Foreign Minister), dictum that the "Palestinians never lose an opportunity to lose an opportunity", will once again prove right.

Unfortunately given Abbas' past history of buckling under American pressure the submission of the resolution to recognize a Palestinian State is not certain. For whatever personal, political, or financial considerations he may have, he has constantly surrendered to the decade's long Israeli/American lie that only direct negotiations between the two parties can lead to a peace settlement, i.e. the road map to nowhere but whose ultimate aim is to buy time to completely expel all Palestinians from Palestine.

Case in point: Abbas has previously dropped the endorsement of the Goldstone Report at the U.N. Human Rights Council that accused Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity shocking his people and the entire world. The leaked "Palestinian Papers" revealed that his government was willing to concede to all of Israel's demands including the surrender of East Jerusalem.

How can anyone in the entire world still believe that Israel with its dominance of the U.S. Government and foreign policy actually seeks or wants peace with the Palestinians? What it seeks is all of Palestine without any Palestinians.

While the majority of the world is eager, supportive, and sympathetic to the plight of the occupied Palestinians and is willing to support such a resolution, it is the Palestinians themselves who are as of yet squabbling internally on the issue while the clock ticks down to ground zero, a point of no return for the Palestinians.

For Abbas and Palestine's future submitting the Resolution to the General Assembly for a recognized state this September is the single most important moment of truth regarding the destiny of his people. There must be no choice, no hesitancy, and no fear of failure but to forcefully and resolutely proceed with the resolution to the U.N. to recognize a Palestinian State.

However if Abbas' lives up to his usual puppetry to U.S. and Israeli pressure and forgoes this historical opportunity at the U.N., then two things will and should happen.

World support for the Palestinians may seriously be diminished long term with the logic that if Palestinians don't care about their own plight and future, why should the world? Palestinian fatigue is already setting in many quarters of the western world.
A mass uprising of the Palestinian people must occur against their incompetent leaders in the West Bank and Gaza and hold them accountable for crimes against humanity against their own people.

What can Israel do to the Palestinians that it already hasn't and continues to do?

Palestine's destiny is up to its people and not for debate, discussion, and decision by foreign powers. In due time and God willing with a region wide Arab uprising overthrowing the rule of America's tyrants it will be Israel that will sue for peace with the Arab world; having missed the opportunity for more decades.

The American philosopher William Irwin Thompson said it best when he wrote:

"If you do not create your destiny, you will have your fate inflicted upon you"

Mr. Abbas and Mr. Meshaal of Hamas, when we all meet our maker on Judgment Day, how will you explain your failure to seize this historical moment and seek recognition of a State for your people and the eventual freedom of an Independent Palestine?

Will you say you feared an American veto or another illegal settlement?

Or will Palestine remain:
"A land without leadership, for a leadership without a land."

PLEASE Consider Signing the Petition Below to Urge President Obama to Recognize a Palestinian State at the United Nations. Thank you, and please distribute widely.

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?PalState

* Mohamed Khodr is a political activist who frequently writes on the plight of Palestinians living under the brutal occupation of Israel, U.S. Foreign Policy, Islam, and Arab politics.

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The West's lofty expectations for Salam Fayyad went far beyond what he was ever able to deliver.

By Nathan J. Brown* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Salam Fayyad, Palestinian Prime Minister. STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images

The prime minister's departure from the Palestinian political scene appears likely but not inevitable. With Fatah and Hamas striving to form a unity government, Fayyad may very well be sacrificed on the altar of Palestinian unity.

Neither the sunny nor the cynical view of Fayyad is fair. His optimistic smile obscured an impossible situation: Fayyad's main achievement has not been to build the structures of a Palestinian state, but to stave off the collapse of those structures that did exist. An equally important achievement was his ability to persuade Western observers that he was doing much more. In the process, however, he raised expectations far beyond his ability to deliver.

What Fayyad Did Not Do: In enumerating Fayyad's accomplishments, it is necessary -- if churlish -- to begin by explaining what Fayyad did not accomplish.

First, he did not build any institutions. The state-like political structures now in the West Bank and Gaza were either built during the heyday of the Oslo Process in the 1990s or in the more distant days of Jordanian and British rule.

Second, he did not bring Palestinians to the brink of statehood. The Palestinian Authority, for all its problems, was actually far more ready for statehood on the eve of the Second Intifada in 1999 than it is on the possible eve of the third in 2011. A dozen years ago, Palestine had full security control of its cities, a set of institutions that united the West Bank and Gaza, a flourishing civil society, and a set of legitimate structures for writing authoritative laws and implementing them. Those accomplishments were in retreat long before Fayyad took office, and he was hardly able to restore them.

Third, Fayyad did not strengthen the rule of law. He could not have done so, since the only legitimate law-making body the Palestinians have, the Legislative Council, has not met since he came to power.

Fourth, Fayyad did not prove to Palestinians that they should rely on themselves. Just the opposite. He showed Palestinians that if they relied on him, foreigners would show them the money. At the heady days at the beginning of Oslo, the United States pledged half a billion dollars for the entire five-year process during which the parties were supposed to negotiate a permanent agreement. They have given Fayyad more than that almost every year that he has been in office. The Europeans have opened the purse strings for him too. It is utterly baffling that a figure so completely dependent on Western diplomatic and financial support would be seen by outsiders as an icon of Palestinian self-help.

Finally, he did not bring economic development to the West Bank. What he made possible was a real but unsustainable recovery based on aid and relaxation of travel restrictions. Year-to-year economic indicators in both the West Bank and Gaza are dependent on foreign assistance, and even more on the political and security situation. Fayyad can thus take some credit for the upturn, but Hamas can make a similar claim for the mild improvements in Gaza since Israel relaxed some of the closure last year. Neither has laid the groundwork for real development or attraction of foreign investment. Nor could they in the stultifying and uncertain political environment.

None of these failings was personal. Fayyad could not have accomplished any of these goals even had he wanted to. He led half of a dysfunctional Palestinian Authority, governed scattered bits of territory in the West Bank, and was forced to rattle the cup constantly in order to pay the bills.

What Fayyad Did Do: However, if Fayyad could not walk on water, he did an almost miraculous job of not drowning. This is not to damn Fayyad with faint praise; the prime minister assumed control of a Palestinian Authority that was unable to pay all of its salaries, deeply mistrusted by Israel, and treated as irrelevant by many Palestinians.

His first and most impressive accomplishment was to gain the trust of Western governments. The unrealistic hopes placed in his premiership were partly a testimony to the esteem in which he was held in some international circles. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken of her pride in his efforts and informed Palestinian youth that Fayyad has given them hope. No diplomatic statement from Western governments is complete without a kind word for his accomplishments. Fayyad was even able to earn a grudging Israeli trust through renewed security cooperation and efforts to rebuild the Palestinian security services. These accomplishments allowed him to pay government salaries, redeploy police, and attract enormous amounts of aid.

And Fayyad was able to win some modest victories in Palestinian governance. The security services became less partisan, public finances became more transparent (even without any domestic oversight), corruption likely decreased, pockets of the civil service were rebuilt on a more professional basis, and basic order in Palestinian cities was improved. When it comes to progress in these areas -- sharply limited but still significant -- Fayyad can even claim to have gone beyond maintenance to improving the Palestinian situation beyond where it stood in 1999.

The Poverty of Politics: All along, however, this was a difficult juggling act. Enthusiastic international support would continue only so long as it was possible to pretend that Fayyad was making dramatic gains; domestic acceptance of Fayyad was dependent on his continuing to pay salaries and provide for basic order. Pulling aside the curtain and revealing that Palestinians were not building a state thus risked undermining Western support for him, which would in turn remove the raison d'être of his premiership in Palestinian eyes.

Thus Fayyadism was a political house of cards. There was no domestic foundation for Fayyad's efforts; for Palestinians, he was simply an unsolicited gift from the United States and Europe -- a welcome one for some, but not for others. And to his international backers, Fayyad was completely frank about his limitations: His efforts, he said, would only pay off in the context of a meaningful diplomatic process that reinforced the drive toward statehood. This was an ingredient that has been missing for many years, and Fayyad was powerless to procure it.

Earlier this year, there were signs that Fayyad himself had begun to look for ways to escape Fayyadism. It was Fayyad, rather than Fatah and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reached out to Hamas in February. The reconciliation file was quickly snatched out of his hands, however, and his hold on the premiership is now on the bargaining table.

What is remarkable, however, is how Fayyadism soldiered on in some Western eyes even after Fayyad himself had begun to distance himself from it. American pundits continued to trumpet his successes without missing a beat right up until the April reconciliation agreement. In March, Thomas Friedman was still writing about Fayyad's gaining momentum and even upped the ante by claiming that his program posed the "biggest threat to Iran's strategy." Meanwhile top policymakers continued to be mesmerized by Fayyad's poll numbers, which were less bad than those of most other leaders, and simply ignored the hollowness at the core of their own policies. Nor did the polls translate into any kind of political party or movement that could have run in, much less won, an election -- if one were ever held.

The Perils of Positive Thinking: For years, Fayyad's soft talk and cheery dedication enabled policymakers throughout the world to ignore the brewing crisis. And this may be where Fayyad, despite his impressive management skills, did Palestinians a disservice.

In 2009, the incoming Obama administration was quickly lured into a set of approaches (many inherited from the Bush years) that proved their complete bankruptcy this year -- ignoring Gaza and allowing its population to be squeezed hard, pretending that there was a meaningful Israeli-Palestinian negotiation process at hand, assuming that Hamas could be dealt with after the peace process and Fayyad had worked their magic, and making the paradoxical and erroneous assumption that the best way to build Palestinian institutions was to rely on a specific, virtuous individual.

Fayyad cannot be held primarily responsible for this collective self-delusion; at most, he facilitated it. And in the process he provided all actors with a breathing space that is now disappearing. Ultimately, the ones who convinced themselves he was capable of completely transforming Palestine are most responsible for squandering the brief respite his premiership offered.

* Nathan J. Brown is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and nonresident senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Source: Foreign Policy

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By Jeff Halper* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

No one knows the precise plans of the Palestinian Authority (PA) vis-a-vis September: will PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declare a Palestinian state within recognized borders and ask that it be admitted as a full member of the UN - or not? Perhaps Abbas himself does not know. Now political leaders often make decisions alone or in consultation with a small group of advisors. As in so many matters political, however, the Palestinian leadership finds itself in a unique situation. Its main allies are not governments, and certainly not the American government, whose support for some inexplicable reason has constituted the Palestinians' default position for the past 40 years. Rather, the Palestinians' most loyal and powerful ally is civil society. And yet, this most solid base of support remains unappreciated, unutilized and ignored.

Three circles of popular support radiate out into the wider world, able to mobilize millions of people to the Palestinian cause. First, of course, is the Palestinian people itself. Displaced, scattered, oppressed, occupied, struggling for its national rights and very cultural identity, this "little grain of sand", as it has been called, continues generation after generation to jam not only the vaunted Israeli military machine but that of its main supporter, the United States, which for decades has used Israel as its forward position in the Middle East.

To oppressed people everywhere, the Palestinians have become an inspiration, almost their surrogate. Their ability to remain steadfast (sumud) is proof that injustice, even when supported by the most advanced weaponry of the most powerful superpowers, can be resisted. But Israel, helped by time and geography, has succeeded in fragmenting the Palestinians. The refugees in the camps are almost completely excluded from political processes, but it is the exclusion of the diaspora that is especially problematic. Highly educated for the most part, fluent in all the European languages, they could play a major role in promoting the Palestinian cause abroad. Indeed, a few individuals have carved out influential positions despite being excluded, even resisted, by the West Bank leadership. Instead, the Palestinian Authority has fielded, with a couple notable exceptions, a most inept and inarticulate corps of diplomats. Rather than using their greatest asset, their own people abroad as well as the legions of articulate spokespeople at home, including younger people, the Palestinian Authority has tied its own hands diplomatically just when Israel is mounting a major international offensive against it. Just recall one astounding fact: during the entire year that saw the Obama administration taking office and the invasion of Gaza, there was no official Palestinian representative in Washington!

The second circle of civil society support for the Palestinian cause is, of course, the Arab and wider Muslim worlds. While each uprising of the "Arab Spring" has its own reasons and dynamics, the Palestinian struggle provided the inspiration. The Arab peoples came to realize that the same forces oppressing the Palestinians - militarism designed to thwart democracy and ensure neo-colonial control over their lands and resources - are at the source of their own oppression as well.

Indeed, the Palestinians possess one source of tremendous clout: they are the bone in the throat of the global powers that prevent them from completing their imperialist plans. The Palestinian struggle is not simply a local one between Palestinians and Israelis; it has become global on the order of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. It cannot be by-passed. Even though there are larger and bloodier conflicts in the Middle East, until the Palestinians signal to the rest of the Muslim world that they have arrived at a political settlement with Israel and the time has come to normalize relations, the conflict is not over. A solution cannot be imposed, and the Palestinians are the gatekeepers. Nothing can happen without them, and until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed resolved, the US and Europe will be unable to pursue their interests unencumbered in an empowered Middle East.

The third circle of civil society just waiting to be mobilized are the millions of ordinary people the world over whose have devoted enormous energy and resources towards the realization of Palestinian national rights. The Palestinian struggle has indeed assumed the proportions of that against apartheid. It is one of the two or three leading issues in the world. Churches, trade unions, university students, political and human rights organizations, prominent intellectuals, performers and even key politicians have all mobilized in support of the BDS movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel). They are evident in the repeated attempts to break the siege of Gaza by sending international flotillas.

But they, like Palestinian civil society and that of the Arab and Muslim worlds, wait to be mobilized by the Palestinian leadership. According to newspaper accounts - unfortunately, the PA leadership has never conducted an open discussion of the crucial September initiative and has never shared its deliberations - the two main objections to seeking membership in the UN are fear of upsetting the American administration and failure to obtain the required number of votes. The first is ridiculous. Does anyone still believe the Palestinians will gain anything by pursuing American-led "negotiations"?

The second objection, that not receiving the required votes for admission to the UN constitutes a "failure", exposes a key flaw in the strategic thinking of the Palestinian leadership. If Abbas approaches the UN in a docile and half-hearted way, appearing more to be pushed by an Israeli refusal to negotiate than by his people's own just cause and urgent need for independence, the Palestinian struggle will certainly suffer. Many other countries that would otherwise support the Palestinian initiative will indeed waiver, giving in to US and Israeli pressure because it seems the Palestinian themselves are not serious about it. But if he goes into the UN as the head of a national unity government with the support of the world's peoples, Mandela-like, he could decisively change the course of events forever.

To pull off his September initiative, Abbas must reject the go-it-alone approach that the Palestinian leadership has followed fruitlessly for so long. He must recognize that civil society the world over - and in the Muslim world and Europe in particular - is the Palestinians' most important ally. The issue is not whether the initiative "succeeds"; it is clear that the US will cast a veto. The true struggle is to pull out all the stops to show the world just how strong the Palestinian movement is. If mobilized, the collective power of the grassroots who have for years laboured on the Palestinian issue will generate a momentum that will be hard to stop.

Time is of the essence. Mobilization must begin immediately. The elected representatives of the Palestinian people in the occupied territory, joined for the first time by Palestinians of the refugee camps, inside Israel and the diaspora, should issue a joint "Call for Support". Immediately following the Palestinian call, grassroots activists would issue a Civil Society Call to support the Palestinian initiative, which would be signed by tens of thousands of people from all over the world and delivered to the UN in September. If a campaign for public support begins now, if the political leadership works intensively and closely with its own civil society to garner widespread support, more than 100,000 people can be gathered at the UN in New York in September in a mass rally for Palestinian independence. (And believe me, Israel will mobilize its own supporters!)

Inside the UN, Abbas would present Palestine's compelling case for independence and UN membership, as he did in his New York Times piece of 16 May. He would also reframe the conflict. It is not specious security issues that lay at the roots of the conflict, but Israel 's refusal to respect Palestinian national rights and to end the occupation. As he also did in the New York Times article, Abbas must also make it clear that recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders in no way compromises the right of refugees to return to their homes, a key point of future negotiations with Israel. He should also state up-front that the establishment of a Palestinian state does not end the Palestinian quest, through peaceful means, of an inclusive single-state solution.

If international mobilization is pursued vigorously and Abbas exudes a genuine determination to see a Palestinian state established and recognized, more than 130 countries, including many of the leading European ones, will vote to accept Palestine into the UN. Even if this does not overrule the US veto in the Security Council, it is far more than a merely symbolic achievement and certainly cannot be considered a failure. Such a massive expression of support would demonstrate the inevitability of Palestinian statehood. It would signal the beginning rather than the end of an international campaign for Palestinian rights, one now joined by governments as well as civil society.

We, the people who have pursued Palestinian rights over the decades, Palestinians and non-Palestinian alike, are an integral part of the struggle. We have earned the right, all of us, to have our voices heard in September. Indeed, I would argue that if September comes and goes without any breakthrough due to the acquiescence and weakness of the PA leadership, civil society support might well dissipate. The people can bring the struggle to a certain point; we cannot negotiate or pursue initiatives at the UN. If the leadership fails us then we truly have nowhere to go. All those Palestinians who have suffered, resisted and died over the past decades cannot be let down at this historic moment by a vacillating political leadership. We call on you to mobilize us. Together we shall succeed, and sooner rather than later.

* Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). He can be reached at jeff@icahd.org.

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By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

There are hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – of dedicated pro-Palestinian activists out there waiting, straining at the leash, hoping for a call from the Palestinian leadership to mobilize, get stuck in, set the mood and pave the way for the make-or-break bid for UN recognition and statehood in September.

They long to hear a coherent theme, a gutsy strategy and a strong, persuasive message that puts across the Palestinian case in terms that cannot be argued with. But the big day is only three months away and "the silly season", as the media call it, is nearly upon us. It'll need sharp thinking and superhuman effort to make enough noise to get the world's attention.

Mixed messages

And the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) – also known as the Palestinian Authority (PA) – is off to an unpromising start with the depressing news that "a statehood push at the United Nations will not advance the Palestinians' cause", according to President Mahmoud Abbas. The initiative, he is reported as saying, will be compromised by the fact that the Palestinians first have to seek support from the Security Council before going to the General Assembly.

The most that can be hoped for is "a non-binding affirmation of previous resolutions saying the Palestinians have the right to a state". The Palestinian leadership is only going ahead with its plan to approach the UN "in order to save face among the Palestinian people", said the report.

According to Ma'an News Agency, a member of the negotiating team denied the report, saying some of the world's most important international lawyers are backing the initiative and the Palestinians are hopeful they will succeed.

The Palestine Liberation Organization's (PLO) negotiators have made a career of bolloxing up negotiations for years. So who exactly are the "negotiating team"? It's time we knew their faces and background.

Unwanted baggage

And here's more silliness: The Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) – what's with all these names saying different things? Those of us in the world outside should only have to listen to one authority, otherwise we'll lose patience. Which one is it going to be?

Surely not the PLO. This organization has strong paramilitary overtones, being Yasser Arafat's old outfit. How clever is it to bring to the negotiating table or to the UN a name like that at a time like this? Yet it has a Negotiations Affairs Department, which in turn has a Public Relations Unit. A fat lot of good either of them are. Do they seriously intend heading up this statehood move?

Now is the time to dump all unwanted baggage. Like Abbas. He may be the Americans' and Israelis' pet dinosaur but it won't help in this situation and has never helped the Palestinian cause in any event. There is surely considerable talent among the "Palestinian Forum", which has been quietly pulling things together behind the scenes. It was left to Robert Fisk to bring us news of their work while Abbas's useless PLO and worthless public relations units kept us in the dark.

And I thought chief negotiator Saeb Erakat resigned following the scandal of the "Palestine Papers", which revealed the shameful behaviour of the Palestinian team in their pathetic peace talks with the Israelis. But no, he's still there issuing press releases. His seems to be the only voice and he continues to have a high profile role. Erakat is reported to be in Washington talking with US officials about reviving the peace process.

Adding to the confusion and showing the world that he can face two ways at once, Abbas was reported welcoming a scheme by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe to arrange a conference in Paris in July where the discredited "peace talks" could be resumed. Juppe says Abbas "responded favourably".

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad also welcomed the idea, we're told. Nothing is more likely to kick their application for UN recognition and statehood into the long grass than resumption of dragged-out, lopsided "negotiations" with an illegal occupier who's determined to make the occupation permanent

And why is Juppe doing this? If he is so concerned about Middle East peace why doesn't he concentrate on ensuring that in September the UN recognizes Palestine as an independent state on pre-1967 borders? A just and proper peace will flow from that.

The PA/PLO's "enlightened road map to peace"

On 7 June I received a press release from the Palestinian embassy in London which said:

The Palestinian leadership has ... concluded that endless negotiations with Israel have not led to a just solution to the conflict... The Palestinian leadership's decision to pursue a September United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state on the 1967 lines comes as a result of the deadlock in the peace process. This legitimate move has been welcomed by many countries that have recognized the Palestinian leadership's strenuous efforts to secure a negotiated settlement and that recognize the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and statehood.

The document quoted the Palestinian ambassador to the UK, Professor Manuel Hassassian, as saying:

The foundations upon which Palestinians seek the establishment of a homeland are based upon peace, prosperity, freedom and security, against which Israel justifies its brutal occupation. Home demolitions, family evictions, revoking ID cards, the illegal occupation over Palestinian land, the remapping of Jerusalem, stalling peace talks and defying international law are tactics employed by Israel to stall the establishment of a viable Palestinian state...

Professor Hassassian calls on the international community to "seize the moment" and support recognition of a Palestinian state in September. "This is the enlightened road map to peace," he says.

Is it the call to action? Who knows? It isn't enough to email a press release. You have to follow up and make sure key publications broadcast it. And I cannot find it on the embassy's website, so there's no link.

For activists it contains no action plan, no briefing material, no "killer" statistics for activists to arm themselves with, no "lines to take" against stooges of the US-Israel axis, no contact details of articulate and media-savvy spokespeople on hand at a moment's notice. Nothing to support a campaign.

Maybe information packs are on the way.

And why spoil it with words that grovel, like "Palestinians seek to establish a homeland"? That's the language used by Zionist bribers and manipulators after World War I when trying to wheedle their way into Palestine. Palestinians already have a homeland, for God's sake! They just want it back.

Professor Hassassian is the PA/PLO's mouthpiece here in the UK. Presumably, he is told to stick to Ramallah's script. According to Ramallah, then, the foundations for establishing a homeland are "peace, prosperity, freedom and security". But the real purpose of the application, surely, are to end the brutal occupation, secure the return of stolen lands and natural resources, restore refugees to their homes if they wish, and become an independent self-determining state. There can be no peace, prosperity, freedom and security until these things are achieved.

The Palestinians' demands are based squarely on international law and numerous UN resolutions, which are waiting to be implemented. Not least, they are enshrined in human rights legislation and the principles of the UN Charter.

The question is, will senior member-states respect these solemn principles when the crunch comes in September? Or will they show the world how lawless, grasping and corrupted they have become?

One of the strongest cards in the Palestinian hand is the realization that there never has been and never could be any meaningful negotiation with Israel in present circumstances. No-one can reasonably be expected to "negotiate" with a gun to their head. Furthermore, the Israeli prime minister has refused to talk with a Palestinian government that includes certain democratically elected elements. Clearly, the only way forward is an application to the UN.

So what are we to make of the mixed messages at this eleventh hour? Does the Palestinian left hand know what the right hand is doing? Is the PA/PLO going wholeheartedly for UN recognition or is it determined to scupper its people's hopes by entertaining more "peace talks"?

If I were a Palestinian I'd be tearing my hair out.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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By Stuart Littlewood * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

I hope the grey suits in the Palestinian Authority (PA) regularly receive ICAHD's monthly newsletter – ICAHD being Jeff Halper's excellent organization, the Israeli Campaign Against House Demolitions.

And I especially hope they pay close attention to the June edition just out, because it contains a must-read article by Jeff himself headed "Palestine/Israel: Where do we go from here?"

Halper looks ahead to the Palestinians' "September moment", when they intend to go for independence and apply for admission to the United Nations, and how the PA must move quickly to mobilize civil society support worldwide. "Mahmoud Abbas [the PA chairman] and the PA in general should see this as an integral part of the Palestinian strategy. International civil society is the Palestinians' most important ally, but as non-Palestinians we can only organize in response to a Palestinian call."

"Mobilization," Halper says:

should begin with a call for support issued by the elected representatives of the Palestinian people in the occupied territory (the national unity government), together with Palestinians of the refugee camps, those inside Israel and of the Diaspora. Immediately following this, grassroots activists throughout the world could issue a civil society call to support the Palestinian initiative at the UN, to be signed by thousands of supporters and delivered to the UN in September.

To accompany the application for membership Jeff Halper visualizes a climactic demonstration of support at UN Headquarters in New York attended by tens of thousands of people from all over the world. "This would generate coverage and anticipation that would make it hard for the US and Europe to defy. Time is extremely short, but the infrastructure exists to make this happen – if we move quickly."

The words move quickly are not, I think, in the PA's lexicon.

The September moment is less than four months away. So let me pause here to consult the PA's snazzy new London embassy website.

Nope, there is no focus whatsoever on the bid for independence and statehood and no press releases or official reports for the critical month of May and nothing in April on the subject.

Compare this with the slick, always-on-the-ball Israeli operation, which is busy undermining the Palestinian bid for freedom.

So far, not so good.

Does anyone trust the PA to do this right?

Halper wants action. "The PA should appoint an articulate senior official with credibility and organizational talent to coordinate the campaign and mobilize civil society. The lack of spokespeople capable of carrying the Palestinian case to the public – something Israel excels in – has hampered our ability to inform and persuade the public for decades. The official responsible for information should be given authority to establish a team of effective spokespeople, based both in Palestine and in key countries abroad, that will provide the framing and counter the campaign that Israel and its supporters have already mounted against the September initiative. The lack of articulate, pro-active people among the Palestinian diplomatic corps has also contributed to the PA's notoriously bad public relations.

Regardless of our view on September – and we have to ask ourselves if we can afford to miss political opportunities like this – if the PA is going to pursue admission to the UN, we must do everything we can to ensure that it succeeds.

I and others have banged on about the Palestinian Authority's failure to understand that the war of words, if conducted effectively, is more important than the war of bullets, rockets, air strikes and suicide bombings. Israeli spin doctor Mark Regev and his lie machine would be easy meat for a well-trained Palestinian media outfit. Abbas should have set up a professional communications unit and trained and funded Palestinian embassies around the world to educate and inform, and orchestrate an effective worldwide campaign.

"We are not trained like the Israelis," I heard one senior PA man say. Exactly. Five years ago the PA was offered training in media skills and declined. Its refusal to gear up to meet the challenge has been a costly blunder for the Palestinian cause. And Abbas still drags his feet. The PA, sadly, has "form". It was programmed to foul up and has endeared itself to no-one except the US-Israel axis. It needs watching carefully even now.

Fortunately, Tel Aviv's propaganda has been significantly blunted recently not by the Palestinian Authority but by increasingly savvy student groups and other pro-Palestinian activists around the world – by international civil society, in fact.

But the Israelis are pouring and redoubling their dirty-tricks effort in desperation.

Jeff Halper, meanwhile, is quite upbeat even at the prospect of the statehood bid failing because it nevertheless will have advanced the Palestinian cause in two ways.

First, it has gotten fruitless "negotiations" out of the way. International support for September, including that of major European countries, arises precisely out of a realization that negotiations have been rendered impossible by Israel and its American patron. The fog has lifted. No longer will so-called negotiations be a façade for continued Israeli occupation. Indeed, the very positions set out by Netanyahu – recognition of Israel as a Jewish state; Israel's retention of its settlement blocs; a "united" Jerusalem under Israeli control; a demilitarized Palestinian state that has no control over its borders, land, resources or the movement of its people; a solution to the refugee problem "outside Israel" and no negotiations with a government that includes Hamas – become manifestly unacceptable.

And second, rejecting Palestinian admission to the UN puts an end to the "two-state solution". As long as the possibility of two states could be held out, any other option, including one state or a regional confederation, was effectively eliminated. Moving beyond that after September clears the way for the only genuine and possible solution: one inclusive state.

The September moment if pursued seriously, he says, offers positive gains for Palestinians, whichever way it turns out.

So, there's everything to play for and nothing much to lose. But is the Palestinian Authority really going out there to win?

The PA's London embassy, instead of briefing on the September moment and UN membership, chooses to give space to two recent news stories about French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe trying to restart the discredited peace talks before September. What is the PA's real agenda?

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.

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By Jonathan Cook * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.

The widening rift was underscored on 4 May when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt's secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, called the deal "a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism".

Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.

More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the past four years as part of a Western-backed blockade of the enclave designed to weaken Hamas, the ruling Islamist group there.

Egypt is working out details to permanently open the border, an Egyptian foreign ministry official told the Reuters news agency on 1 May. The blockade would effectively come to an end as a result.

The same day Egypt's foreign minister, Nabil Elaraby, called on the United States to recognize a Palestinian state – in reference to a move expected in September by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to seek recognition of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

Israel and the US have insisted that the Palestinians can achieve statehood only through negotiations with Israel. Talks have been moribund since Israel refused last September to renew a partial freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

According to analysts, the interim Egyptian government, under popular pressure, is consciously distancing itself from some of the main policies towards Israel and the Palestinians pursued by Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president overthrown by a popular uprising in February.

Mubarak was largely supportive of Israel and Washington's blockade policy to contain Hamas's influence. Egypt receives more than 1.3 billion dollars annually in US aid, second only to Israel.

But the popular mood in Egypt appears to be turning against close diplomatic ties with Israel.

A poll published last week by the Pew Research Centre showed that 54 per cent of Egyptians backed the annulment of the 1979 peace treaty with Israel, with only 36 per cent wanting it maintained.

Israel's Yedioth Aharonoth daily reported this week that Egyptian social media sites had called for a mass demonstration outside the Israeli embassy, demanding the expulsion of the ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon.

In comments to several media outlets last weekend, unnamed senior Israeli officials criticized Egypt's new foreign policy line. One told the Wall Street Journal that Cairo's latest moves could "affect Israel's national security on a strategic level".

Another unnamed official told the Jerusalem Post that "the upgrading of the relationship between Egypt and Hamas" might allow the Islamic movement to develop into a "formidable terrorist military machine".

Silvan Shalom, Israel's deputy prime minister, told Israel Radio on 1 May that Israel should brace for significant changes in Egyptian policies that would allow Iran to increase its influence in Gaza.

Egypt's chief of staff, Sami Hafez Anan, responded dismissively on his Facebook page to such statements, saying, "Israel has no right to interfere. This is an Egyptian-Palestinian matter."

In a sign of Israeli panic, Netanyahu is reported to be considering sending his special adviser, Isaac Molho, to Cairo for talks with the interim government.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has repeatedly complained to visiting European ambassadors and US politicians about what he regards as a new, more hostile climate in Egypt.

Late last month Elaraby said Egypt was ready to "turn over a new leaf" in relations with Tehran, which were severed after the signing of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty more than three decades ago.

Egyptian officials have also warned that the supply of natural gas to Israel may be halted. The pipeline has been attacked twice on the Egyptian side, including last week, in acts presumed to be sabotage.

Even if Egypt continues the flow of gas, it is almost certain to insist on a sharp rise in the cost, following reports that Mubarak and other officials are being investigated on corruption charges relating to contracts that underpriced gas to Israel.

Yoram Meital, an expert on Israeli-Egyptian relations at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva, said Egypt's policy change towards Gaza threatened to "provoke a severe crisis in Egyptian-Israeli relations" by undermining Israel's policy of isolating Hamas.

With the toppling of Mubarak's authoritarian regime, Meital noted, the Egyptian government is under pressure to be more responsive to local opinion.

"We are at the beginning of this crisis but we are not there yet. However, there is room for a great deal more deterioration in relations over the coming months," he said.

Analysts said Cairo wanted to restore its traditional leadership role in the Arab world and believed it was hampered by its ties with Israel.

Menha Bahoum, a spokeswoman for the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, told the New York Times last week: "We are opening a new page. Egypt is resuming its role that was once abdicated."

That assessment is shared by Hamas and Fatah, both of which were looking to Egypt for help, said Menachem Klein, a politics lecturer at Bar Ilan University.

He noted that Abbas had lost his chief Arab sponsor in the form of Mubarak, and that the Hamas leadership's base in Syria was precarious given the current upheavals there.

With growing demands from the Palestinian public for reconciliation, neither faction could afford to ignore the tide of change sweeping the Arab world, he said.

Meital said: "We are entering a new chapter in the region's history and Israeli politicians and the public are not yet even close to understanding what is taking place".

* Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair".

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By Stephen M. Walt* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Illustration by Yaser Ahmad

Last Friday the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council Resolution condemning Israel's continued expansion of settlements in the occupied territory of the West Bank. The resolution didn't question Israel's legitimacy, didn't declare that "Zionism is racism," and didn't call for a boycott or sanctions. It just said that the settlements were illegal and that Israel should stop building them, and called for a peaceful, two-state solution with "secure and recognized borders. The measure was backed by over 120 countries, and 14 members of the security council voted in favor. True to form, only the United States voted no.

There was no strategic justification for this foolish step, because the resolution was in fact consistent with the official policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson. All of those presidents has understood that the settlements were illegal and an obstacle to peace, and each has tried (albeit with widely varying degrees of enthusiasm) to get Israel to stop building them.

Yet even now, with the peace process and the two-state solution flat-lining, the Obama administration couldn't bring itself to vote for a U.N. resolution that reflected the U.S. government's own position on settlements. The transparently lame explanation given by U.S. officials was that the security council isn't the right forum to address this issue. Instead, they claimed that the settlements issue ought to be dealt with in direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and that the security council should have nothing to say on the issue.

This position is absurd on at least two grounds. First, the expansion of settlements is clearly an appropriate issue for the security council to consider, given that it is authorized to address obvious threats to international peace and security. Second, confining this issue to "direct talks" doesn't make much sense when those talks are going nowhere. Surely the Obama administration recognizes that its prolonged and prodigious effort to get meaningful discussions going have been a complete bust? It is hard to believe that they didn't recognize that voting "yes" on the resolution might be a much-needed wake-up call for the Israeli government, and thus be a good way to get the peace process moving again? Thus far, all that Obama's Middle East team has managed to do in two years is to further undermine U.S. credibility as a potential mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, and to dash the early hopes that the United States was serious about "two states for two peoples." And while Obama, Mitchell, Clinton, Ross, and the rest of the team have floundered, the Netanyahu government has continued to evict Palestinian residents from their homes, its bulldozers and construction crews continuing to seize more and more of the land on which the Palestinians hoped to create a state.

Needless to say, the United States is all by its lonesome on this issue. Our fellow democracies -- France, Germany, Great Britain, Brazil, South Africa, India, and Colombia -- all voted in favor of the resolution, but not the government of the Land of the Free. And it's not as if Netanyahu deserved to be rewarded at this point, given how consistently he has stiffed Obama and his Middle East team.

For more on this latest sad chapter in the annals of American Middle East diplomacy, see M.J Rosenberg here and here, the Magnes Zionist here and here, and Gideon Levy here.

As these commentators recognize, the real reason for Obama's misguided decision was the profound influence of the Israel lobby. Indeed, few observers have missed this simple and obvious fact. One can only conclude that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton's repeated claims that they are "friends of Israel" and devoted to its security are nothing more than empty, politically expedient rhetoric. Whatever they may say, the policies they are pursuing -- including this latest veto -- are in fact harmful to Israel's long-term future. The man who declared in Cairo on June 4, 2009 that a two-state solution was "in the "Israel's interest, the Palestinians' interest, America's interest, and the world's interest" must have changed his mind, because his actions ever since have merely hastened the moment when creating two viable states will be impossible (if that is not already the case). Then remember what former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in 2007, "if the two-state solution fails, Israel will face a South African style struggle for political rights." And "once that happens," he warned, "the state of Israel is finished."

If Obama were a true friend of Israel, in short, he'd be doing whatever he could to keep it from expanding its ruinous occupation and making the Zionist vision unsustainable. And given that Congress remains hopeless on this issue, he could have shown he was a true friend by instructing his U.N. Ambassador, Susan Rice, to vote for the resolution, as a diverse array of foreign policy experts had suggested. He would also have devoted some portion of his first two years in office to explaining to the American people why some "tough love" was needed on both sides (i.e., not just the Palestinians), and he would have recruited America's democratic allies in a genuine effort to bring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a fair and stable end. Had he done these things, most Americans would have supported him. Instead, his lame actions are just enabling the occupation, and for the most cynical domestic political reasons (like safeguarding his re-election prospects in 2012). Even worse, he did it at a moment when the Arab world is in ferment, and when the voice of the Arab street is beginning to be heard. But instead of aligning itself with international law, basic principles of justice, and its own stated position, the Obama administration caved. Again.

If the United States hopes to be on the right side of history, it is time to start thinking about what its policy should be when everybody finally acknowledges that "two states for two peoples" is no longer a practical possibility. This is going to happen sooner or later, and anyone who is still advocating for a two-state solution at that point is going to sound like an ignorant fool. Not because of the flaws in that option, but simply because it will be impossible to implement. What alternative solution will the president and secretary of state support then? Ethnic cleansing? A binational, liberal democracy in which all inhabitants of Israel/Palestine have equal civil and political rights? Or permanent apartheid, in the form of disconnected Palestinian Bantustans under de facto Israeli control? That awkward reality may not be apparent while Obama is president (which is probably what he is hoping), but it will be a damning legacy to leave to his successor, as well as a tragedy for two peoples who have already known more than their share.

Postscript: Some readers may think I am being too defeatist here, and they might cite in evidence Bernard Avishai's New York Times Magazine essay detailing the alleged "near-miss" peace talks between Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Avishai's account portrays the two leaders as close to a deal and suggests that it would not be that hard to resurrect a similar deal today. It's an interesting article, but there are at least four problems with his optimistic account. First, Olmert was the lamest of lame ducks by 2008, because he was due to be indicted on corruption charges and everyone knew it, so the talks themselves were something of a side-show. Second, even had this not been the case, it is by no means clear that Olmert could have sold the Israeli public on the proposed deal. Third, it is not even clear that the two sides were that close to an agreement, given Olmert's insistence that Israel could not withdraw from Ariel and Maale Adumim (two settlement blocs that thrust deep inside the West Bank). Fourth, and probably most important, political trends in Israel are headed the other way (among other things, Avigdor Lieberman wasn't foreign minister back then), which makes the Olmert/Abbas talks even less relevant. For excellent critical responses to Avishai's piece, see Noam Sheizaf, Matthew Taylor, and Ilene Cohen.

* Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

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By Richard Falk* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Dishonest Broker

In view of this feverish Israeli effort to create still more facts on the ground, for the Israelis to contend that negotiations should resume without preconditions, is to hope that the Palestinian Authority will play the fool forever. After all for more than 43 years the Israelis have been whittling away at the substance of the two state consensus embodied in unanimous Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), contending at every phase of the faux peace process that an agreement must incorporate 'subsequent developments,' that is, unlawful settlements, ethnic cleansing. In the end, the Israelis may turn out to have been more clever by half, creating an irresistible momentum toward the establishment of a single secular democratic state of Palestine that upholds human rights for both peoples and brings to an end the Zionist project of an exclusive 'Jewish state.' With great historic irony, such an outcome would seem to complete the circle of fire ignited by Lord Balfour's secret 1917 promise to the Zionist movement of 'a Jewish homeland' in historic Palestine, a process that caused a Palestinian catastrophe along the way and brought war and bloodshed to the region.

The disingenuousness of the Israeli position was confirmed by the recent publication of the Palestine Papers that showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that even when the Palestinian Authorities caved in on such crucial issues as Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees, their Israeli counterparts, including the supposedly more moderate predecessors to the Netanyahu leadership, displayed no interest in reaching even an agreement so heavily weighted in Tel Aviv's favor. What seems inescapable from any careful reading of these negotiating positions behind closed doors during the prior decade is that the public negotiations are a sham designed to buy time for Israel to complete its illegal dirty work of de facto annexation in the West Bank, a position it has long adopted in the form of Israeli de jure annexation of the entire expanded city of Jerusalem in defiance of the will of the international community and the understanding of international law, objectively considered. To contend that stopping the unlawful encroachments of continuing settlement activity on occupied Palestinian territory, an assessment that even the United States does not question substantively, is an inappropriate Palestinian demand seems so excessive as to humiliate any Palestinian representatives that stooped so low as to accept it. Equally so, is the Israeli claim that this demand has not been made in the past, which to the extent accurate, is not an argument against freezing further settlement activity, but a disturbing comment on Palestinian complacency in relation to their failure to insist upon respect for their rights under international law.

In the context of this latest incident in the Security Council, the Palestinian Authority deserves praise for holding firm, and not folding under U.S. pressure, which was strongly applied, including reported warnings from President Obama by phone to President Mahmoud Abbas of adverse 'repercussions' if the text calling for an end to illegal settlement building was brought before the Security Council for a vote. Obviously, the United States Government realized its predicament. It did not want to be so isolated and embarrassed in this way, finding itself caught between its international exposure as willing to support even the most unreasonable Israeli defiance of the UN and its domestic vulnerability to a pro-Israeli backlash in the event that it failed to do Israel's bidding in this matter of largely symbolic importance.

We should not forget that had the Security Council resolution been adopted, there is not the slightest prospect that Israel would have curtailed, let alone frozen, its settlement plans. Israel has defied a near unanimous vote (with, hardly a surprise, the U.S. judge casting the lone negative vote among the 15 judges) of the World Court in 2004 on the unlawfulness of the settlement wall. Here, an American dissent could not bring Israel in from the cold of its refusal to abide by this ruling as thankfully there is no veto power in judicial settings. In that instance of the wall, Israel wasted no time denouncing the advisory opinion of the highest UN judicial body, declaring its refusal to obey this clear finding that the wall built on occupied Palestinian territory should be dismantled forthwith and Palestinians compensated for any harm done. Instead, despite brave nonviolent Palestinian resistance, work continues to this day on finishing the wall.

With respect to the settlements it is no wonder that American diplomacy wanted to avoid blocking an assertion of unlawfulness that it was on record as agreeing to, a fact awkwardly acknowledged by Ambassador Rice in the debate, knowing that the resolution would not have the slightest behavioral impact on Israel in any event. It should be noticed that as much as Israel defies the UN and international law, it still cashes in its most expensive diplomatic chips to avoid censure whenever possible. I believe that this is an important, although unacknowledged, Israeli recognition of the legitimizing role of international law and the UN. It is also connected with an increasing Palestinian reliance on soft power, especially its BDS campaign. This partial shift in Palestinian tactics worries Israel. In the last several months Israeli think tanks close to the government refer to as 'the delegitimation project' with growing anxiety. This approach of the Palestinian Global Solidarity Movement is what I have been calling a Legitimacy War. For the last several years it is being waged and won by the Palestinians, joining the struggles of those living under occupation and in exile.

On the PA side there was reported anxiety that withdrawing the resolution in this atmosphere would amount to what was derisively referred to as a possible 'Goldstone 2,' a reference to the inexcusable effort by the Palestinian Authority back in October 2009 to have consideration of the Goldstone Report deferred for several months by the Human Rights Council as a prelude to its institutional burial, which has now more or less taken place thanks to American pressures behind the scene. It has even been suggested that had the PA withdrawn the resolution Abbas would have been driven from power by an angry popular backlash among the Palestinian populace. In this sense, the PA was, like the United States, squeezed from both sides: by the Americans and by their own people.

Of course, in the background of this incident at the UN are the tumultuous developments taking place throughout the region, which are all adverse to Israel and all promising in relation to the Palestinian struggle even though many uncertainties exist. It is not only the anti-autocrat upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, the outcome of which is still not clear from the perspective of genuine regime change as distinct from recasting the role of dictatorial leader, but the wider regional developments. These include the political rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Turkish diplomacy that refuses to tow the Washington line, the failure of American interventionary diplomacy in Iraq, and the beleaguered authoritarian governments in the region some of whom are likely to give more active support on behalf of Palestinian goals to shore up their own faltering domestic legitimacy in relation to their own people.

In many ways, the failed Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity is a rather trivial event in the broader setting of the underlying conflict. At the same time it is a significant show of the play of forces that are operative in Washington and Ramallah, and above all, it is an unseemly display of the influence Israel wields with respect to the Obama Administration. Is it not time that the United States revisited its Declaration of Independence or began to treat the 4^th of July as a day of mourning?

* Prof. Richard Falk - is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer (the author or co-author of 20 books), speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories.

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By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Part I - The Security Council Resolution and Veto

The inspiring moments when President Obama appeared before the cameras, and thus the world, to declare that the dictator Hosni Mubarak must step down and the people of Egypt given the inalienable right to self-determination are now in the past. It was a moment when U.S. foreign policy actually appeared to correspond to the foreign reality it addressed. Ironically, it was this very correspondence that made the moment anomalous–something quite out of the ordinary. Therefore, soon after Mubarak went into involuntary retirement at Sharm el-Sheik, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was off to Israel and Jordan to confirm that foreign policy would immediately return to its normal pathway. What is the norm here? Well, it is one where U.S. foreign policy references domestic political reality, like the power of the Zionist lobbies, rather than anything that might serve objective national interests. For all intents and purposes that was Mullen's message, we are back on the normative track. And, on 18 February 2011, the administration backed up the admiral's words with deeds.

On that day the American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, vetoed a Lebanese/Palestinian sponsored resolution in the Security Council that simply stated the truth–that the settlements built and being built on Palestinian occupied territory are illegal and an obstacle to peace. Except for Israel itself, this is admitted by everyone, including the U.S. State Department. The resolution had over120 cosponsors (just about the entire non-Western world) and the support of every other member of the Security Council. The only thing wrong with it was that it singled out the Israelis as the culprits and was thus anathema to the politicians in Washington. For the Obama administration, it was a supremely embarrassing moment.

It was so embarrassing that the administration had invested a lot of energy in trying to make sure the moment never came. Someone in the White House, either Secretary of State Hilary Clinton or President Obama himself, called Mahmoud Abbas to tell him that the U.S. had a compromise in the works that would make the objectionable resolution unnecessary. And what sort of compromise did Washington have in mind? It turned out to be the same old "balanced" position that they U.S. has maintained for years. The compromise statement would express "strong opposition to any unilateral actions by any party which might prejudice the outcome of negotiations...and reaffirm that it does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity....and condemns all forms of violence, including rocket fire from Gaza and stresses the need for calm and security for both peoples." By surrounding the seminal issue of settlements with all the other references to what the Palestinians might be doing, such a statement would sustain the Israeli position that the Palestinians are also obstacles to peace. That in turn would make this pronouncement marginally acceptable to both those embedded in the domestic reality of Congress and to the men in Jerusalem. Indeed, the Americans had pre-cleared their proffered compromise with Israel prior to offering it to Abbas. The Palestinians, of course, said that such pablum missed the point and they would have none of it.

Part II - Multiple Realities

The concept of multiple realities is the key to understanding American behavior when it comes to Israel/Palestine. Thus, on 17 February 2011, it was reported that Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (a rabid anti-Castro Cuban American), that committee's ranking Democratic member Howard Berman, the Middle East subcommittee Chariman Republican Steve Cabot, the subcommittee's ranking Democratic member Gary Ackerman, and others as well, were insisting that Obama "pledge to...veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that criticizes Israel regarding final status issues." After all, as Cantor and Hoyer stated, the fault lies with the Palestinians. It is they who "reject the difficult but vital responsibility of making peace with Israel through direct negotiations and instead advocate for anti-Israel measures by the United Nations Security Council [that are] counterproductive and unacceptable."

American politicians can only say these things because their audience is first, the Zionist lobbies themselves (from whom they desire political support and fear political opposition) and second, an ignorant American public who can not judge the veracity of their comments. So, while their position does reference the rather shabby political reality in Congress, their characterization of the reality under which Abbas and his fellows operate is all wrong. That other reality has recently been revealed by the leaked Palestine Papers. These show very clearly that the men Cantor and Hoyer accuse of avoiding "direct negotiations" had been in just those sort of talks but a short time ago, and while negotiating had offered the Israelis everything short of their very souls. Whereupon the Israelis had turned up their noses, walked away and recommenced building on stolen land. That left the Palestinian "leadership" in their own domestic political bind. For while the American politicians have to answer to lobbyists, the Palestinians now had to answer to an increasingly angry citizenry. At this point one can ask if, according to the Congressmen, it so necessary for the Palestinian politicians to "take up the difficult but vital responsibility of making peace with Israel," why should it not be equally required that American politicians take on "the difficult but necessary responsibility" of shaking off their corrupt dependency on Zionist dictates so as to pressure the Israelis to make a just peace? The whole thing makes no sense unless one takes into consideration: multi realities and the politicians' propensity for hypocrisy and double standards.

The result of all this was that on February 18^th the UN representatives of three quarters of nations of the earth went about their business in muted disgust at the cowardice of the world's greatest power. They probably avoided making eye contact with Ambassador Rice who had played the role of the good and loyal soldier. Hanan Ashrawi, a respected and very smart member of the PLO Executive Committee, had said that an American veto would be "a direct affront to the international community and the requirements of peace." And so it was. But then, that is the rest of the world's reality, which has yet to penetrate the Washington DC beltway. Inside that beltway it is the requirements of domestic politics, and not that of peace, that holds sway.

In the meantime, in the far off land of Palestine, the Israelis announced the plans for 120 new settlement units to be built in occupied East Jerusalem. The politicians in Jerusalem play to yet another reality–one shaped by ideology and power. The ideology of Zionism they dreamt up all by themselves. The power, at least in part, is made the USA. It is strange how history sometimes repeats itself. If, in November 1947, the UN had voted against the partition of Palestine it would have made no difference to the Zionists who were then determined to make Israel a reality come what may. And, on February 18^th, if the Security Council had voted in favor of the resolution describing settlements as illegal, it would have made no difference to the Israelis who are determined to make greater Israel a reality come what may.

This is our present multiple realities mess. And, it is going to take more than UN resolutions to bring everyone concerned into the same world. The key group here is not the Palestinian politicos nor even the American politicians. The key group is the Israelis. It is their ideologically driven reality that has to reconstructed. When that happens the American politicians will meekly follow along. And how is this to be achieved? Through the slow but sure isolation of the Zionist state and its ideologues. Through a process of isolation that relentlessly raises the cost of Zionist reality until it is too great to bear. That process has already begun and will continue until racism is a dead issue in Israel whatever its ultimate borders. This struggle is now in the hands of a worldwide movement of civil society. And that movement will be the one to decide the ultimate reality in Israel/Palestine.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

Related posts:

• Obama, The Veto and Impeachment
• Abu Mazen: don’t mess with the right of return
• Obama on Palestinian Rights: “Nyet”