[News] A Formal Funeral for the Two-State Solution

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Two articles follow

A Formal Funeral for the Two-State Solution

How the PA's Statehood Bid Sidelines Palestinians
Ali Abunimah
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/68193?page=show


ALI ABUNIMAH is the author of One Country: A Bold 
Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. 
He co-founded the 
<http://electronicintifada.net>Electronic 
Intifada [1] and is a policy adviser to 
Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy Network.

The Palestinian Authority's bid to the United 
Nations for Palestinian statehood is, at least in 
theory, supposed to circumvent the failed peace 
process. But in two crucial respects, the 
ill-conceived gambit actually makes things worse, 
amplifying the flaws of the process it seeks to 
replace. First, it excludes the Palestinian 
people from the decision-making process. And 
second, it entirely disconnects the discourse about statehood from reality.

Most discussions of the UN bid pit Israel and the 
United States on one side, fiercely opposing it, 
and Palestinian officials and allied governments 
on the other. But this simplistic portrayal 
ignores the fact that among the Palestinian 
people themselves there is precious little 
support for the effort. The opposition, and there 
is a great deal of it, stems from three main 
sources: the vague bid could lead to unintended 
consequences; pursuing statehood above all else 
endangers equality and refugee rights; and there 
is no democratic mandate for the Palestinian 
Authority to act on behalf of Palestinians or to 
gamble with their rights and future.

Underscoring the lack of public support, numerous 
Palestinian civil society organizations and 
grassroots leaders, academics, and activists have 
been loudly criticizing the strategy. The 
<http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/bnc-reiterates-its-position-on-september-7794>Boycott 
National Committee (BNC) [2] -- the steering 
group of the global Palestinian-led campaign for 
boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel 
that has been endorsed by almost 200 Palestinian 
organizations -- warned in August that the UN bid 
could end up sidelining the PLO as the official 
representative of all Palestinians and in turn 
disenfranchise Palestinians inside Israel and the 
refugees in the diaspora. A widely disseminated 
legal opinion by the Oxford scholar Guy 
Goodwin-Gill underscored the point, arguing that 
the PLO could be displaced from the UN by a 
toothless and illusory "State of Palestine" that 
would, at most, 
<http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/2011825222044579764.html>nominally 
represent only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip [3].

Others, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement -- 
<http://pal-youth.org/>an international coalition 
of young Palestinians [4] -- declared that it 
stood "steadfastly against" the UN bid because it 
could jeopardize "the rights and aspirations of 
over two-thirds of the Palestinian people who 
live as refugees in countries of refuge and in 
exile, to return to their original homes." Many, 
like the PYM, fear that unilaterally declaring a 
state along 1967 borders without any other 
guarantees of Palestinian rights would 
effectively cede the 78 percent of historic 
Palestine captured in 1948 to Israel and would 
keep refugees from returning to what would then 
be recognized de facto as an ethnically "Jewish state."

Of course, there may be no clearer evidence of 
the distance between the UN bid and the actual 
will of the Palestinians than the secrecy of the 
process. Today, just days before the application 
is filed with the UN, the Palestinian public 
remains in the dark about exactly what the PA is 
proposing. No draft text has been shared with the 
Palestinian people. Instead the text is being 
negotiated with the Palestinian Authority's 
donors as if they, not the Palestinian people, are its true constituency.

More fundamentally, though, the entire discussion 
of statehood ignores the facts on the ground. For 
starters, the PA fails the traditional criteria 
for statehood laid out in the 1933 Montevideo 
Convention on the Rights and Duties of States: it 
controls neither territory nor external borders 
(except for the tiny enclaves it polices under 
the supervision of Israeli occupation forces). It 
is prohibited under the 1993 Oslo Accords from 
freely entering into relations with other states. 
As for possessing a permanent population, the 
majority of the Palestinian people are prohibited 
by Israel from entering the area on which the PA 
purports to claim statehood solely because they 
are not Jews (under Israel's discriminatory Law 
of Return, Jews from anywhere in the world can 
settle virtually anywhere in Israel or the 
occupied territories, while native-born 
Palestinian refugees and their children are 
excluded). The PA cannot issue passports or 
identity documents; Israeli authorities control 
the population registry. No matter how the UN 
votes, Israel will continue to build settlements 
in the West Bank and maintain its siege of Gaza. 
As all this suggests, any discussion of real sovereignty is a fantasy.

Nor is the strategy likely to produce even formal 
UN membership or recognition. That would require 
approval by the Security Council, which the Obama 
administration has vowed to veto. The alternative 
is some sort of symbolic resolution in the UN 
General Assembly upgrading the status of the 
existing Palestinian UN observer mission -- a 
decision with little practical effect. Such an 
outcome will hardly be worth all the energy and 
fuss, especially when there are other measures 
that the UN could take that would have much 
greater impact. For example, Palestinians would 
be better off asking for strict enforcement of 
existing but long ignored Security Council 
resolutions, such as 
<http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/5AA254A1C8F8B1CB852560E50075D7D5>Resolution 
465 [5], which was passed in 1980 and calls on 
Israel to "dismantle the existing settlements" in 
the occupied territories and determines that all 
Israel's measures "to change the physical 
character, demographic composition, institutional 
structure or status of the Palestinian and other 
Arab territories occupied since 1967, including 
Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal 
validity" and are flagrant violations of international law.

Ultimately, any successful strategy should focus 
not on statehood but on rights. In its statement 
on the UN bid, the BNC emphasized that regardless 
of what happens in September, the global 
solidarity struggle must continue until Israel 
respects Palestinian rights and obeys 
international law in three specific ways: ending 
the occupation of Arab lands that began in 1967 
and dismantling the West Bank wall that was ruled 
illegal in 2004 
<http://www3.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1677.pdf>by 
the International Court of Justice [6]; removing 
all forms of legal and social discrimination 
against Palestinian citizens of Israel and 
guaranteeing full equal rights; and offering full 
respect for Palestinian refugee rights, including 
the right of return. Palestinians and Israelis 
are not in a situation of equals negotiating an 
end to a dispute but are, respectively, colonized 
and colonizer, much as blacks and whites were in 
South Africa. This truth must be recognized, and 
pushing for such recognition would resonate far 
more with the Palestinian public than empty statehood talk.

Indeed, such a strategy has worried Israel enough 
that it has enlisted the U.S. in the fight 
against what Israeli leaders term 
"delegitimization." "Delegitimizers" are 
supposedly not seeking justice and full human and 
political rights for Palestinians, but rather 
seeking the collapse of Israel -- much like East 
Germany or apartheid South Africa -- through 
political and legal assaults. According to Israel 
and groups supporting it in the United States, 
virtually all Palestine solidarity activism, 
especially BDS, is "delegitimization." Some 
Israelis, including even former Prime Minister 
Ehud Olmert, have warned that fighting a movement 
calling for universal civil and political rights 
would only make Israel look more, not less, like 
an apartheid state, worsening its situation. But 
Israeli elites have come up with no plausible 
response to the reality that within a few short 
years -- because of Palestinian population growth 
and Israeli settlement construction -- a Jewish 
minority will be ruling over a disenfranchised 
and subordinated Palestinian majority in a country that cannot be partitioned.

The plans for truncated and circumscribed 
Palestinian statehood, which successive American 
and Israeli governments have been prepared to 
discuss, fall far short of minimal Palestinian 
demands and have no hope of being implemented (as 
the dramatic failure of the Obama 
administration's peace effort in its first two 
years underscores). Even President Obama, in his 
speech to the Israeli lobbying group AIPAC last 
May, called the status quo "unsustainable." But he offered no
new answers.

These, then, are the lines along which the battle 
for the future of Palestine are going to be 
fought, no matter how many U.S. envoys head to 
Ramallah and Jerusalem to try to revive 
negotiations in which no one believes. Meanwhile, 
the UN bid should be seen not as the means to 
give birth to the Palestinian state but as the 
formal funeral of the two-state solution and the 
peace process that was supposed to bring it about.


*****************************
Palestinian analysts continue to debate, oppose PA "statehood" bid

Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Mon, 09/19/2011 - 15:32
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/palestinian-analysts-continue-debate-oppose-pa-statehood-bid

The journal Foreign Affairs today published a 
piece I wrote titled 
“<http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68268/ali-abunimah/a-formal-funeral-for-the-two-state-solution>A 
Formal Funeral for the Two-State Solution,” 
explaining why the Palestinian Authority’s UN “statehood” bid is so flawed:

The Palestinian Authority’s bid to the United 
Nations for Palestinian statehood is, at least in 
theory, supposed to circumvent the failed peace 
process. But in two crucial respects, the 
ill-conceived gambit actually makes things worse, 
amplifying the flaws of the process it seeks to 
replace. First, it excludes the Palestinian 
people from the decision-making process. And 
second, it entirely disconnects the discourse about statehood from reality.

This is the latest of a continuing stream of 
articles by Palestinians assessing the pros and 
cons of the effort. Here are a few other recent 
ones that are well worth reading.



Israel wins either way

In 
“<http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/20119158427939481.html>States 
of recognition,” on Al Jazeera’s website, 
<http://electronicintifada.net/people/joseph-massad>Joseph 
Massad argues that no matter how the UN vote goes, Israel will be the winner:

It is important to stress at the outset that 
whether the UN grants the Palestinian Authority 
(PA) the government of a state under occupation 
and observer status as a state or refuses to do 
so, either outcome will be in the interest of 
Israel. For the only game in town has always been 
Israel’s interests, and it is clear that whatever 
strategy garners international support, with or 
without US and Israeli approval, must guarantee 
Israeli interests a priori. The UN vote is a case in point.



Endangering rights

<http://electronicintifada.net/people/omar-barghouti>Omar 
Barghouti, a founder of the Palestinian BDS 
campaign, also writing on Al Jazeera, points out 
the broad concerns across Palestinian civil 
society about the dangers posed by the UN bid to 
the representation of Palestinians and the right 
of return. Barghouti concludes that the 
Palestinian Authority has taken this step without 
the people behind it and without attention to fundamental rights:

Ignoring the will of the people and potentially 
sacrificing their basic rights in order to secure 
some illusory advantages at the “negotiations” 
table hurts Palestinian interests and endangers 
the great advances our popular and civil struggle 
has achieved to date, particularly as a result of 
the global BDS movement. It would in effect 
reduce the Arab Spring to a Palestinian autumn.
Going to the UN should be strongly supported by 
all Palestinians - and, consequently, by 
solidarity groups worldwide - if done by a 
trusted, democratically elected, accountable 
leadership and if it expressly represents the 
will of the Palestinian people and our collective right to self determination.
Alas, neither condition is met in the current 
“September Initiative,” which may end up 
replacing the “194” we’ve always struggled to 
implement with a “194” that is little more than 
another irresponsible leap away from 
accountability and from the inevitable 
repercussions of the sweeping Arab Spring.



Who speaks for Palestinians?

“ How is it that by virtue of being Palestinian I 
am told that my ‘sole legitimate representative’ 
is an organization I have never subscribed to, am 
not a member of, and have never voted for?”

This fundamental question, 
<http://al-shabaka.org/september-and-beyond-who-speaks-my-name>posed 
by Samah Sabawi writing for Al-Shabaka, about the 
PLO, sums up the concerns of millions of 
Palestinians not just over the UN bid, but those who are bringing it forward.

While Palestinians fear that the status of the 
PLO could be jeopardized by the UN bid, few are 
under the illusion that in its current form, the 
PLO is anything more than a hollow shell.

Sabawi takes on the difficult – but increasingly 
urgent – task of how to rebuild Palestinian legitimacy:

The tough question that needs to be addressed is 
the idea of how legitimacy is achieved. In much 
of the debate about the potential disaster of the 
UN bid, a great deal of attention has been paid 
to democratic elections as the alternative to the current state of affairs.
Though useful as a goal of democratic 
representation, are elections really the sole and 
only means to build a movement? The new 
directions we seek as a people must include ways 
to re-establish and sustain the legitimacy of our 
representation while pursuing the quest for 
self-determination and the fulfillment of our human rights.



Economic aspects

In Jadaliyya, 
<http://electronicintifada.net/tags/raja-khalidi>Raja 
Khalidi argues that the UN bid could cause severe 
economic damage to Palestinians as Israel and its 
allies impose financial sanctions in revenge – a 
typical tactic of colonialism. He notes:

a wide swath of Palestinian activists considers 
the statehood initiative problematic from legal 
and representational angles, because of its 
primary focus on statehood rather than the 
panoply of denied Palestinian rights. For them 
the bid for state-recognition is better abandoned 
or possibly reformulated, as it might lead to 
either an even more complex situation or hollow diplomatic victory.

But, Khalidi points out:

Little of the flood of political, legal and media 
analysis of this story has touched on what might 
happen – including economically – after the dust 
of the diplomatic battle has settled. What impact 
might the face-off of the coming months and its 
diplomatic fallout have on the livelihoods of 
Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in 
the West Bank and Gaza Strip? Will life just go 
on under the economic union between six million 
Israeli Jews and five million Palestinian Arabs, 
living under the same fiscal, monetary, trade and 
security regime (geared to the interests of the 
Israeli Jewish economy) since 1967? And how might 
this affect the fate of over one million 
Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel and millions of Palestine refugees?



Voices in favor

While much of the expressed opinion has been 
opposed to the UN bid, or at least highly 
skpetical, there have also been a few voices in 
favor. Khaled Elgindy, who worked for the 
Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit (officially 
part of the PLO but in actuality controlled by 
the Palestinian Authority) 
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khaled-elgindy/palestine-un_b_958743.html>argued 
in The Huffington Post that the bid was largely “symbolic” but:

Rather than viewing the Palestinians’ U.N. bid as 
a threat to a moribund peace process, the United 
States should see it as an opportunity to reset a 
failed and severely outdated approach to 
resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It 
should seek to preempt the U.N. vote by working 
with other key international actors to develop a 
bold, new initiative that spells out the 
requirements for a comprehensive resolution to 
the conflict (the outlines of which are already 
known) and then marshaling broad international support for it.


Competing Facebook pages

In the absence of wider surveys of Palestinian 
public opinion, Facebook provides a very rough 
guide to online reaction among Palestinians.

One <https://www.facebook.com/DEDAYLOL>Facebook 
Page in Arabic for Palestinians opposed to the 
“September Statehood” initiative has gathered over 3,000 fans.

Meanwhile the official Palestinian Authority-run 
Facebook page promoting the bid, called 
“<https://www.facebook.com/Support.Palestine.State>Palestine 
194 State” had gathered just over 1,100 fans.




Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20110919/0e0e76a8/attachment.htm>