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<h1><font size=6 color="#FF0000"><b>Two articles follow<br><br>
</i></font>A Formal Funeral for the Two-State
Solution</b></h1><font size=3>How the PA's Statehood Bid Sidelines
Palestinians <br>
Ali Abunimah<br>
<a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/68193?page=show" eudora="autourl">
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/68193?page=show<br><br>
<br>
</a><i>ALI ABUNIMAH is the author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End
the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He co-founded the
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net">Electronic Intifada</a> [1] and
is a policy adviser to Al-Shabaka, the Palestinian Policy
Network.<br><br>
</i>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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Underscoring the lack of public support, numerous Palestinian civil
society organizations and grassroots leaders, academics, and activists
have been loudly criticizing the strategy. The
<a href="http://www.bdsmovement.net/2011/bnc-reiterates-its-position-on-september-7794">
Boycott National Committee (BNC)</a> [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,
<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/2011825222044579764.html">
nominally represent only Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip</a>
[3].<br><br>
Others, such as the Palestinian Youth Movement --
<a href="http://pal-youth.org/">an international coalition of young
Palestinians</a> [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."<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/5AA254A1C8F8B1CB852560E50075D7D5">
Resolution 465</a> [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.<br><br>
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
<a href="http://www3.icj-cij.org/docket/files/131/1677.pdf">by the
International Court of Justice</a> [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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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<br>
new answers.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
</font><h1><font size=4><b>*****************************<br>
Palestinian analysts continue to debate, oppose PA "statehood"
bid </b></font></h1><font size=3>Submitted by Ali Abunimah on Mon,
09/19/2011 - 15:32 <br>
</font><font size=1>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/palestinian-analysts-continue-debate-oppose-pa-statehood-bid" eudora="autourl">
http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/palestinian-analysts-continue-debate-oppose-pa-statehood-bid<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>The journal <i>Foreign Affairs</i> today
published a piece I wrote titled
“<a href="http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68268/ali-abunimah/a-formal-funeral-for-the-two-state-solution">
A Formal Funeral for the Two-State Solution</a>,” explaining why the
Palestinian Authority’s UN “statehood” bid is so flawed:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br><br>
</dl>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.<br><br>
<br>
</font><h2><b>Israel wins either way</b></h2><font size=3>In
“<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/20119158427939481.html">
States of recognition</a>,” on Al Jazeera’s website,
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/joseph-massad">Joseph
Massad</a> argues that no matter how the UN vote goes, Israel will be the
winner:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br>
<br><br></font>
</dl><h2><b>Endangering
rights</b></h2><font size=3>
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/omar-barghouti">Omar
Barghouti</a>, 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:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br>
<dd>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.<br>
<dd>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.<br>
<br><br></font>
</dl><h2><b>Who speaks for Palestinians?</b></h2><font size=3>“ 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?”<br><br>
This fundamental question,
<a href="http://al-shabaka.org/september-and-beyond-who-speaks-my-name">
posed by Samah Sabawi</a> 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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Sabawi takes on the difficult – but increasingly urgent – task of how to
rebuild Palestinian legitimacy:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br>
<dd>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.<br>
<br><br></font>
</dl><h2><b>Economic aspects</b></h2><font size=3>In Jadaliyya,
<a href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/raja-khalidi">Raja
Khalidi</a> 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:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br><br>
</dl>But, Khalidi points out:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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?<br>
<br><br></font>
</dl><h2><b>Voices in favor</b></h2><font size=3>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)
<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/khaled-elgindy/palestine-un_b_958743.html">
argued in The Huffington Post</a> that the bid was largely “symbolic”
but:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>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.<br><br></font>
</dl><h2><b>Competing Facebook pages</b></h2><font size=3>In the absence
of wider surveys of Palestinian public opinion, Facebook provides a very
rough guide to online reaction among Palestinians.<br><br>
One <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DEDAYLOL">Facebook Page in Arabic
for Palestinians opposed to the “September Statehood”</a> initiative has
gathered over 3,000 fans.<br><br>
Meanwhile the official Palestinian Authority-run Facebook page promoting
the bid, called
“<a href="https://www.facebook.com/Support.Palestine.State">Palestine 194
State</a>” had gathered just over 1,100 fans.<br><br>
<br><br>
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