Emanuel Trumpets the Coming of the Drummer

Obama’s assertion that there must be a Palestinian State forces the issue front and center if only because both Netanyahu and Lieberman have declared it moribund. Despite years of implied recognition by Israel that negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli government would result in the creation of a Palestinian State, Israel has never stated in writing that it would accept the reality of such a state. Rather, for 60 years, Israel has slowly and methodically devoured virtually all of the land that would comprise such a state so that the Jewish people now control and occupy 93% of the area of former Palestine exclusive of the 14% left to the Palestinian people. That means there can be no contiguous Palestinian state large enough to accommodate the people of Palestine and its refugees without reverting to the original partitioning of Palestine as drawn up by the United Nations in 1947 as a just beginning. 

Obama’s announcement follows dictates by both Netanyahu and Lieberman that Israel is not concerned with peace with Palestine until the threat of Iran is dealt with. Indeed, Lieberman has asserted that Israel will not be bound to past agreements such as the Annapolis Peace project or “land for peace,” as prior administrations in Israel have deceptively accepted. He would go further. He prefers that Israel wants all of Palestine, a land free of the land’s indigenous people. His party’s declared aim “is to eject Israel’s Palestinian minority … and to annex the parts of the occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem with heavy Jewish settler populations.” (Saree Makdisi, The Electronic Intifada, Nov. 2006). Besides, Israel dictates what America will do, why listen to the President of the United States. Netanyahu dictated to the new American President that he resolve two necessary issues before any other, the economic crisis and the threat presented by an Iran in possession of an atomic bomb. Fortunately, Obama has rejected the racism of Lieberman’s demands and the forced limitations that Netanyahu’s dictates demand. It appears he marches to a different drummer.

If President Obama’s “peace in Palestine” rests on a foundation of Justice, it must address the defining reality of the principles that give substance to the need for a Palestinian State contiguous to and existing in peace adjacent to the State of Israel. To accomplish this end, it must recognize the legitimacy of the United Nations’ acceptance of the division of Palestine into two parts as delineated in Resolution 181 of 1947, a division that gave the Jewish people 55% of the land and the indigenous population 45%. Nothing in the ensuing actions of the United Nations has negated the recognition of two distinct peoples living on two defined areas within Palestine. That the Palestinian delegations at the time of the partitioning rejected the division of their lands does not negate the recognition by the United Nations of their right to reside in their land. Indeed, subsequent resolutions by the UN enforce the understanding of Palestinian rights within Palestine, including the Palestinians living within what is now Israel and occupied Palestine.

Recognition of the UN’s initial resolution implies that the United States should not be a unilateral actor serving as broker between two parties. It implies rather that the United States accepts the authority of the UN to arbitrate the differences between the two parties. With the UN serving as the Principal of note, two things are accomplished: the US is removed from the unfortunate position of being the judge and jury of the resolution that would provide for two states, a status that puts the US in jeopardy of damnation by either side if a mutually satisfactory outcome were not achieved, and the resolution would be the action of the world body, accepted by all, thus establishing after 60 years what was proposed and desired when first voted in 1947. Since the US is perceived by almost all nation members of the UN as being partial to Israel, indeed subservient to the interests of Israel and, therefore, not an objective participant in such deliberations, for the US to remove itself as the principle negotiator would serve to bolster the justice of the proposed resolution of the crisis and remove the President as a target for blame once the peace discussions get under way.

The logic of having the UN serve as the instrument of resolution blunts whatever condemnation might be raised by either side since it has no vested interests in that parcel of land other than resolving what it had determined 60 years ago and has continued to assert ever since. But because the parties would have to acquiesce to the process of implementation using the already defined boundaries as its foundation, a clear point of beginning is introduced avoiding the conundrums of “conditions on the ground” or disputes arising from the 1967 conflict.

Since Israel has defied every resolution authored by the UN, even those accepted by the United States, it would stand against the member nations as the sole defender of its present state, a position particularly difficult to uphold when Israel has joined with other nations in condemning member states who defied similar resolutions like Iran, Syria, and Iraq. Consider this reality: Iraq was the subject of 69 UNSC resolutions between 1967 and 2000 while Israel was the subject of 138. As a result of the United States’ President removing America from the process as the primary negotiator, Israel would have to stand before the UNSC with no predetermined veto of its actions possible and no legal or ethical base to stand on since it has found the virtue of UN resolutions to be positive when it has been to its advantage. Without the US protecting its interests by UNSC veto, or serving as the primary broker as it did at the Oslo accords or Camp David or with its partners in the Road Map, Israel would be called upon to accept the legitimacy of the UN resolutions. One might assume that Israel would want to propose numerous alternatives to 181 as a result of conditions that have transpired since its passage in 1947. Such discussions could result in modifications to the partition as initially conceived, and might result in a more creative division of land for the Palestinian state.

No doubt fierce objections would be raised in the US House and Senate should such an action be proposed by President Obama, but the validity of this approach negates those objections. These same legislators have accepted the logic of enforcing UN resolutions, witness the case against Iraq, and have agreed to the nation’s acceptance to be a member of that organization. The potential outcomes of such an approach warrant serious consideration. With a UN commission established having representatives from Arab, Asian, and African countries together with Israeli, Palestinian, American, European, Indonesian and Russian representatives, few could quibble with the inclusiveness of those working on a settlement, even our Congressmen. The outcome would provide an equitable solution that would ensure both Palestinians and Israelis a viable homeland.

By withdrawing as the sole arbiter of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the United States opens the door to a serious settlement. Consider the following: Resolution 242 of 1967 would force a “just and lasting peace” made possible by the “withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict”; “termination of all claims or states of belligerency, and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every state in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries”; and affirms the necessity for “guaranteeing freedom of navigation through international waterways in the area” and resolution of the refugee problem as well as “territorial inviolability and independence of every state including establishment of demilitarized zones.” These stipulations were reasserted in Resolution 338 of 1973 and Resolution 446 in 1979, and by implication in more than a 100 similar resolutions adopted by the UNGA up to the present day.

Resolution 446 is worthy of more consideration since it rests on the just premise that all peoples have a right to live in their own land and, hence, practices that thwart that principle must be expunged. “The Council determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle-East; Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature  and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories.” In short, acceptance of the authority of the UN to oversee the creation of two viable states would result in the Israelis confronting the actions that have made their efforts anathema to the world’s communities.