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<h1><font size=4><b>UN must immediately adopt and act on Goldstone
report</b></font></h1><font size=3>October 05, 2009 By <b>Omar
Barghouti<br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22782" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22782</a></b> <br><br>
Palestinian civil society has strongly and almost unanimously condemned
the Palestinian Authority's latest decision to delay adoption by the UN
Human Rights Council of the report prepared by the UN Fact-Finding
Mission, headed by justice Richard Goldstone, into the recent Israeli war
of aggression against the Palestinian people in the occupied Gaza
Strip. A common demand in almost all Palestinian statements issued
in this respect was for the UN to adopt the report and act without undue
delay on its recommendations in order to bring an end to Israel's
criminal impunity and to hold it accountable before international law for
its war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza and, indeed,
all over the occupied Palestinian territory. <br><br>
Succumbing to US pressures and unabashed Israeli blackmail, the president
of the PA himself reportedly was himself responsible for the decision to
defer discussion at the Council of the Goldstone report, dashing the
hopes of Palestinians everywhere as well as of international human rights
organizations and solidarity movements that Israel will finally face a
long overdue process of legal accountability and that its victims will
have a measure of justice. This decision by the PA, which in effect
delays adoption of the report at least until March 2010, giving Israel a
golden opportunity to bury it with US, European, Arab and now Palestinian
complicity, constitutes the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of
Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates. <br><br>
This is not the first time, though, that the PA has acted under orders
from Washington and threats from Tel Aviv against the express interests
of the Palestinian people. The historic advisory opinion of the
International Court of Justice in July 2004 that found Israel's Wall and
colonies built on occupied Palestinian territory illegal had presented a
rare diplomatic, political and legal opportunity that could have been
used to isolate Israel as apartheid South Africa was after a similar ICJ
decision in 1971 against its occupation of Namibia. Alas, the PA
squandered it and systematically -- quite suspiciously, actually --
failed to even call on world governments to comply with their obligations
stated in the advisory opinion. <br><br>
The whole clause on Israel and Palestinian rights that was to be
discussed at the recent UN Durban Review Conference in Geneva was dropped
after the Palestinian representative gave his green light. Efforts
by non-aligned nations and the former UN General Assembly president,
Father Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, to push for a UN resolution condemning
Israel's war crimes in Gaza and establishing an international tribunal
were thwarted mainly by the Palestinian ambassador to the UN, causing
several prominent diplomats and international law experts to wonder which
side the official Palestinian representative was on. <br><br>
The Mercosur-Israel Free Trade Agreement was almost ratified by Brazil
this last September after the Palestinian ambassador there expressed
approval, only urging Brazil to exclude Israeli settlement products from
the Agreement. With prompt action by Palestinian and Brazilian
civil society organizations and eventually by the PLO's Executive
Committee, this ratification was averted and the Brazilian parliamentary
committee in charge of this file recommended that the government refrain
from approving the FTA until Israel complies with international
law. <br><br>
In all these cases and many similar ones, the instructions to the
Palestinian representatives came from Ramallah, where the PA government
has illegally appropriated the PLO powers to lead Palestinian diplomacy
and set foreign policy, conceding Palestinian rights and acting against
the Palestinian national interests, without worrying about accountability
to any elected representatives of the Palestinian people. <br><br>
This latest forthright collusion of the PA in Israel's campaign to
whitewash its crimes and undermine the application of international law
to punish these crimes came a few days after the far-right Israeli
government publicly blackmailed the PA, demanding that it withdraw its
support for adopting the Goldstone report in return for
"permitting" a second mobile communications provider to operate
in the occupied Palestinian territory. It therefore undermines the
great efforts by human rights organizations and many activists to bring
justice to the Palestinian victims of Israel's latest massacre in Gaza:
the more than 1400 killed (predominantly civilians); the thousands
injured; the 1.5 million who are still suffering from the wanton
destruction of infrastructure, educational and health institutions,
factories, farm lands, power plants, and other critical facilities, and
from the long criminal Israeli siege against them. <br><br>
It is nothing short of a betrayal of Palestinian civil society's
effective Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against
Israel, with all its recent, remarkable growth and achievements in
mainstream western societies and among leading unions. <br><br>
It is also betrayal of the global solidarity movement that has worked
tirelessly and creatively, mainly within the framework of the fast
spreading BDS campaign, to end Israel's impunity and to uphold universal
human rights.<br><br>
It is crucial to remember that the PA does not have any legal or
democratic mandate to speak on behalf of the people of Palestine or to
represent the Palestinians at the UN or any of its agencies and
institutions. The current PA government has never won the necessary
constitutional approval of the democratically elected Palestinian
Legislative Council. Even if it had such a mandate, at best it
would only represent the Palestinians living under Israel's military
occupation in the West Bank and Gaza, excluding the great majority of the
people of Palestine, particularly the refugees. <br><br>
Only the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO, can theoretically
<i>claim</i> to represent the entirety of the Palestinian people: inside
historic Palestine and in exile. For such a claim to be
substantiated and universally accepted by Palestinians everywhere,
though, the PLO would need to be revived from the grassroots upwards, in
a transparent, democratic and inclusive process that involves
Palestinians everywhere and encompasses all the political parties that
are outside the PLO structures today. In parallel with this
democratic reclamation or popular take-back of the PLO by the people and
their representative unions and institutions, the PA must be
<i>responsibly</i> and <i>gradually</i> dismantled, with its current
powers, particularly the representation seats at the UN and other
regional and international institutions, returned to where they belong,
to the real representative of all the people of Palestine, the revived
and democratized PLO. This dissolution of the PA, however, must at
all times avoid creating a legal and political vacuum, as history shows
that hegemonic powers are often the most likely to fill such a vacuum to
the detriment of the oppressed.<br><br>
The fact is the PA has been gradually and <i>irreversibly</i> transformed
since its establishment 15 years ago from a mere -- often powerless,
obsequious and coerced -- sub-contractor of the Israeli occupation
regime, relieving it of its most cumbersome civil duties, like the
provision of services and tax collection, and, most crucially, very
effectively helping it safeguard the security of its occupation army and
colonial settlers, into a <i>willing</i> collaborator that constitutes
Israel's most important <i>strategic</i> weapon in countering its growing
isolation and loss of legitimacy on the world stage as a colonial and
apartheid state. Israel's hundreds of nuclear weapons and its
fourth largest army in the world proved impotent or at least irrelevant
before the growing BDS movement, particularly after Israel's acts of
genocide in Gaza. The almost unlimited diplomatic, political,
economic and scientific support Israel receives from the US and European
governments and its unparalleled impunity have also failed to protect it
from the gloomy fate of apartheid South Africa. <br><br>
Even before Israel's war on Gaza, many unions around the world had joined
the BDS campaign, from Canada to South Africa, and from the UK and Norway
to Brazil. After Gaza, though, the four years of preparing the
ground and spreading BDS, the international shock at the sight of
Israel's white phosphorus showers of death visited upon the children of
Gaza cowered in UN shelters, and the universal feeling that the
international order has failed to hold Israel to account or to even end
its slaughter of civilians, not to mention its ongoing ethnic cleansing
campaign in the occupied West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem, BDS
leaped into a new, advanced phase. It finally reached the
mainstream. <br><br>
In February, weeks after the end of Israel's bloodbath in Gaza, the South
African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) made history when it
refused to offload an Israeli ship in Durban. In April, the
Scottish Trade Union Congress followed the lead of the South African
trade union federation, COSATU, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in
adopting BDS against Israel to bring about its compliance with
international law. In May, the University and College Union (UCU),
representing some 120,000 British academics, reiterated its annual
support for the logic of boycott against Israel, calling for organizing
an inter-union BDS conference later this year to discuss effective
strategies for implementing the boycott. <br><br>
Most recently, this last September, the Norwegian government's pension
fund, the third largest in the world, divested from an Israeli military
contractor supplying equipment to the illegal Wall in violation of the
ICJ ruling. Shortly after that, a Spanish ministry excluded an
Israeli academic team representing a college illegally built on occupied
Palestinian land from participating in an academic competition.
Also in September, the British Trades Union Congress, representing over
6.5 million workers, adopted the boycott, ushering in a new chapter in
the spread of BDS that reminds observers of the beginning of the end of
the apartheid regime in South Africa. According to concrete,
persistent and mounting indicators, Palestinians are witnessing the
arrival of their "South Africa moment."<br><br>
Amidst all this comes the Goldstone report, quite surprisingly -- given
the judge's strong connections with Israel and Zionism -- providing the
straw that may well break the camel's back: irrefutable evidence,
meticulously researched and documented, of Israel's deliberate commission
of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Despite its clear
shortcoming, this report presented Israel with the daunting and not
entirely improbable prospect of standing trial at an international
tribunal, a development that would effectively end Israel's impunity and
open the possibility of finally applying international justice to its
crimes and persistent violations of international law. In this dire
context for Israel, only one strategic weapon in its arsenal could be
used to fend off the foretold crushing legal and political defeat: the
PA. And it did use it indeed at the right time, in a fatal way,
almost killing the Goldstone report.<br><br>
Ultimately, the failure of the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the
Goldstone report is another proof, if any is needed, that Palestinians
cannot hope at the current historical moment to obtain justice from the
US-controlled so-called "international community." Only
through intensified, sustainable and context-sensitive civil society
campaigns of boycott and divestment can there be any hope that Israel
will one day be compelled to end its lawlessness and criminal disregard
of human rights and recognize the inalienable Palestinian right to self
determination. This right, as expressed by the great majority of
the Palestinian people, comprises ending the occupation, ending the
legalized and institutionalized system of racial discrimination, or
apartheid, and recognizing the fundamental, UN-sanctioned right of the
Palestine refugees to return to their homes of origin, like all other
refugees around the world, including Jewish refugees of World War
II. <br><br>
We simply cannot afford to give up on the UN, though. Human rights
organizations and international civil society must continue to help the
Palestinian struggle to pressure the UN, at least its General Assembly,
to adopt and act upon the recommendations of the Goldstone report at all
levels. If the UN fails to do so it will send an unambiguous
message to Israel that its impunity remains intact and that the
international community will stand by apathetically the next time it
commits even more egregious crimes against the indigenous people of
Palestine. This would gravely undermine the rule of law and promote
in its stead the law of the jungle, where no one will be protected from
total chaos and boundless carnage. <br><br>
Omar Barghouti is a founding member of the BDS movement
(<a href="http://www.bdsmovement.net/">www.BDSmovement.net</a>) <br><br>
<br><br>
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