Tag: peace

Oblivious to Nutanyahoo’s murder of the two state solution (again) this week before the US Congress, Australian politician Melissa Parke keeps flogging a dead horse. Melissa’s speech is notable though for its recognition of the oppression of Israel’s occupation, a rare occurrence in the Australian Parliament. She meanders down the fallacious imperialist/zionist path of the formation of two states being central to the US national security interest and further drags Australia’s national security interest into the mix.

Israel’s Zionist left urges Europe to recognize a Palestinian state too – when will the Israeli ‘left’ call for equal rights for all, an end to apartheid and the Occupation regardless of one or two states? Along the zionist spectrum, there is the vicious zionist right wingers, who are conflating support for a Palestinian state by the EU as tantamount to anti-semitism.

Is Zionism set to implode at last, unable to resolve its racist contradictions? The just rights demanded by Palestinian people in their call to boycott, divest and sanction apartheid Israel bypass and supercede the Israeli and western imperialists’ obsession with protecting racist privilege through a mythological quest for a ‘peace process’ focused on two states for two ‘peoples’, ignoring the facts that 20% of Israel’s population are not jewish, and there are half a million jewish settlers illegally squatting in the Occupied Territories. It is not the West’s ‘national security interests’ which are at stake here – how racist is it to place Palestinians’ human and political rights in the context of ‘national security’? – but credibility as purveyor of the enlightened values of democracy and human rights the developed world claims to embrace.

As Rae Abileah says: ‘Before we go preaching democracy abroad, we should make our own democracy more responsive to the public good, not the wishes of wealthy lobbyists.’ And by reference to this quote, I don’t just mean the zionist lobby, but the entire capitalist corporate lobby behemoth whose imperialist interests coincide.

Related Links

When will time run out for a two-state solution?
Collaborator Abbas to form unelected technocrat ‘government’ to sell out Palestinians and please the Quartet in June
Fact-checking Netanyahu’s Speech
‘The smallest minds and cowardliest hearts’: Is Congress clapping for apartheid? Zionist Walt misses the point about US support for Israel’s policies as usual. Still, he recognises Nutanyahoo’s assassination of the two state solution regardless.
Livni: Palestinian statehood isn’t a favor to Obama, it’s vital for Israel – Livni is Nutanyahoo-light, attempting to pander to all sides.
UK calls for G8 financial aid for ‘Arab Spring’ – racist Cameron is happy to pay bribes to stop hordes of invading Muslims.
Rashid Khalidi : ‘While this was not a good week for Barack Obama, and was a very good one for Binyamin Netanyahu, it also can be a salutary occasion for Palestinians and Arabs. It should finally cure those still infected with the diseased notion that they have anything to gain by bending to the importuning of American diplomacy.’
Francis Boyle responds vigorously to Goodwin-Gill’s opinion on the institution of a Palestinian state by the PA.
Palestinian Americans “unequivocally reject” PA’s UN statehood bid

‘We call on all Palestinian and Arab community associations, societies and committees, student organizations, solidarity campaigns, to reject fully and unequivocally the Statehood initiative as a distraction that unjustifiably and irresponsibly endangers Palestinian rights and institution.’

‘Like the BNC, the USPCN statement emphasizes that fundamental Palestinian rights, not “statehood” remain the core of Palestinian efforts:

As has been recently revealed, this initiative in no way protects nor advances our inalienable, and internationally recognized, rights—fundamental of which are our right to return to the homes and properties from which we were forcibly expelled, our right to self-determination, and our right to resist the settler colonial regime that has occupied our land for more than 63 years.

The Palestinian people, wherever they are, hold these rights. They are non-negotiable. No one can barter them away for false promises of “peace” and “stability.” The cynical irony of turning a UN resolution enshrining our right to return under international law (UNGA Res. 194) into a rhetorical ploy should give anyone pause. That it is being advanced at a time when the PA does not even have the political mandate of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza through Palestinian Legislative Council elections must also give us pause.;

‘Goodwin-Gill’s memo and an interview he gave explaining its implications have heightened concern among Palestinians about the PA’s ill-thought out and desperate step which comes after the complete failure of the US-sponsored “peace process” on which the PA bet all its cards.’

Virginia Tilley: Bantustans and the unilateral declaration of statehood

‘But more importantly, the South African comparison helps illuminate why the ambitious projects of pacification, “institution building” and economic development that the Ramallah PA and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have whole-heartedly embarked upon are not actually exercises in “state-building.” Rather, they emulate with frightening closeness and consistency South Africa’s policies and stages in building the Bantustan/Homelands. Indeed, Fayyad’s project to achieve political stability through economic development is the same process that was openly formalized in the South African

Samir Abed-Rabbo’s piece contrasting the One and Two state outcomes.
Abbas: I don’t want to declare unilateral statehood

He insisted in the interview that Palestinians would not be able to force the right of return for Palestinian refugees on Israelis within the context of a peace agreement, but that he seeks a “just solution.”

Samah Sabawi:

There are three major conditions needed for a free viable Palestinian state. The first is national unity – the Palestinian state needs to represent all Palestinians as one people whether inside or outside of Occupied Palestine. A second component is economic viability – a Palestinian state needs be able to make its own decisions on sovereign matters and not be held hostage to foreign aid and the will of donor countries. A third and major component of a Palestinian state is security – it needs to have the strength to claim the land and protect is people either through an army or some form of international guarantees.’

Sonja Karkar notes the tired Israeli strategy for deferral of Palestinian rights : ‘Negotiations are, in fact, a ruse to keep the old discredited paradigm of a two-state solution going for as long as it takes Netanyahu to achieve his goal of a Greater Israel.’
UN envoy Prosor: Israel has no chance of stopping recognition of Palestinian state
Legal opinion challenges PLO statehood bid : Al Jazeera’s Nour Samaha interviews Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill about his legal opinion about the dangers of the PA bid for fake Palestinian statehood which he says will threaten the rights of the Palestinian refugees.
Ashrawi: UN statehood bid no threat to PLO

Palestine / Israel Links

Imagine, Think! And Then Act to Change Things!
Support the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
U.S. ‘confident’ Egypt can provide good security at Rafah borderThis does not augur well — after the border is open, will the zionists bomb every square inch of the rest of the border to deal to the tunnels?
New hasbara plea! Israel must stop overplaying the Holocaust card
Mendes attempts to delegitimise criticism of zionism and Israel in a bundle of mendacious furphies
Knesset Education Committee chairman Alex Miller (Israel Beiteinu) announced on Wednesday that he has called an emergency meeting to discuss possible sanctions against Tel Aviv University after Islamic Sheikh Raed Salah’s recent controversial speech on campus.
One of the remarkable youth groups newly initiated inside Gaza is the Palestine Youth Advocacy Network “PYAN”— which is also a word in Arabic that could mean exposition, representation, rhetoric or radiance, all of which have to do with the nature of work the team undertakes.
U.S. Announces Sanctions Against Israeli Company
A Palestinian Revolt in the Making?
Two Palestinian Children Injured from Dud Bomb in South Hebron Hills
Bigotry in the Israeli media :

Of course, in traditional Christianity and in Orthodox Judaism, hostility to gays exceeds the few vague references in the Qur’an. But Israeli writers, very much like classical anti-Semites, are so obsessed with their hatred of Islam and Muslims that they have to bring it in no matter what. Furthermore, openly or semi openly “gay” leaders (like Sultan Qaboos) have served as heads of state in Arab and Muslim lands but not in Israel.

Israeli police use new electrical stunning device on protesters
A queer confrontation with the Israel lobby
A Good Week for Bibi, a Bad Week for Barack, an Opportunity for Palestinians
1 December 1947: The partition of Palestine
Social media whore Palmor: “We have formulated some arguments that are relevant to what’s going to happen in September, even if we don’t know exactly what it will be. We began disseminating these arguments and statements, backed by links to documents and articles, among the relevant bloggers and social media members. From our perspective we’ve already begun the battle over publicity, though formally, nothing has begun. Our main argument is ‘Palestinian state yes, but only through direct negotiations.’ In events that we have to truncate the message to fewer characters, we say, ‘Let’s talk’.”
Michelle Chen:

‘the power of secular pro-democracy movements throughout the region now reverberate in Palestine as a validation of grassroots resistance.

If that feedback loop can be harnessed to reinvigorate the idea of Palestinian liberation, then we might finally see the ends and the means match up in the struggle to defeat imperialism, violence and dictatorship.’

Kirk boycott resolution scuppered by Israeli legal ‘intimidation’

Egypt Links

Egypt: #May27 Demands (in Arabic and English)
UK calls for G8 financial aid for ‘Arab Spring’
Relatonship between the Arab uprisings and literature.

Other Links

You know who else answered questions they were asked by the media…
Sarkozy’s government war on the internet