The failure of the September summit negotiations between President Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Barrack Obama of America has the potential to expose the true cause of the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Democratic President Obama has come into office hoping to make inroads into today’s Israeli-Palestinian stalemate that is the result of the abysmal failure of former US Republican President George Bush’s ‘Road Map.’ Thus, unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration initially opted to give a voice to a basic Palestinian concern: Israel must freeze settlement-building activity in the Occupied Territories.
A little backtracking, however, is necessary for any President of America when meeting face to face with the Prime Minister of Israel who is supported by powerful lobby groups in the US. In the immediate aftermath of the summit, where Netanyahu refused to concede, Obama modified his administration’s demands for Israel to ‘restrain’ rather than ‘freeze’ settlement activity while at the same time charging Palestinians with the ambiguous responsibility ‘to stop incitement.’
Since Israel ended its war on Gaza in January, there has been very little in the way of armed retaliation from Gaza. Palestinian methods of resistance at this juncture are increasingly diplomatic. Palestinians are hoping to get the UN Human Rights Council to endorse of a report attesting to the crimes committed by Israel during the war on Gaza. If they succeed through the popular vote at the Human Rights Council, this UN agency would be required to forward the report to the UN Security Council for action. Knowing the way that America and its allies have manipulated, misused and circumvented the Security Council in the past, it is unlikely that anything would have come of this. But even a debate in the Security Council on this issue would be damaging to Israel. It would bring to the fore the issue of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, which is something that Israel would be anxious to avoid.
It might yet happen. Although the Palestinian Authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas has controversially chosen to defer putting forward the motion to endorse the report, there is still a chance that when the Council reconvenes in March 2010, the Palestinians will receive the support they need to get the endorsement. Netanyahu must be worried. He knows that the Human Rights Council is a UN agency that is less prone to ignoring the plight of the Palestinians. Over a thousand Palestinians died during Israel’s war on Gaza, up to one-half of them civilians. Netanyahu knows that the longer the stalemate with the Palestinians lasts the more likely it is that ordinary people will begin to understand that it is really the state of Israel and not the Palestinians who are the impediment to peace.
This is important as most international news outlets today continue to depict a convoluted picture of what is happening in the Occupied Territories. Again, to refer to the 2008/2009 war on Gaza, many are oblivious to the fact that it was Israel who broke the Israel-Hamas ceasefire that in early November 2009 was only in its fourth month. In that month, by launching an attack that killed six Hamas fighters, Israel had effectively resumed hostilities. Hamas, which is operating in a strangulated Gaza, retaliated sometime later with rockets. This brought on the Israeli bombing of Gaza targets, some of which involved the use of white phosphorous.
Human Rights Watch, an American-based non-governmental organisation, has publicly accused Israel of using white phosphorous. This claim is backed up by munitions experts. Interestingly, Israeli spokespersons, who at first flatly denied its use, later modified their views, attesting that any weapon that Israel used in the Gaza bombing was in accordance with international law. It defies logic that white phosphorous, a weapon that may not even be used against enemy combatants (soldiers), could be lawfully used in Gaza. Gaza has a population density of well over 4000 persons per square kilometre.
Israel desperately needs a distraction. The second intifada (uprising), now in its ninth year, is being complemented by public campaigns and diplomatic efforts in major cities across the world. As Israeli spokespersons try to capitalise on the issue of Hamas terrorism, Palestinians continue to demand that the UN prosecute Israel for war-crimes. In Netanyahu’s recent address to the UN, he took the opportunity to vilify the Human Rights Council and chastise Iran for seeking nuclear weapons. President Obama had one day earlier begun the non-proliferation rhetoric by speaking of his dream of a world without nuclear weapons. Netanyahu was more than happy to pick up the theme with his charge of that Iran embodied the ‘greatest threat facing the world today’ because of the ‘the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.
As if on cue, the very next day Obama and the premiers of Britain and France announced that Iran had been hiding a secret nuclear facility. Iran admitted to possessing a near-operational facility but announced that it was willing to let the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspect it. The outlines of the political shenanigans that led to the war on Iraq in 2003 are now reappearing on the horizon. Next move? Tougher sanctions on Iran, then more intrusive inspections, and then perhaps a UN Security Council resolution authorising all necessary measures to deal with Iran if it refuses to comply fully and immediately with the IAEA. What is most ironic in this entire process is that neither Obama nor any other Western leader is willing to deal with the question of Israel’s nuclear weapons, which are variously estimated at between 100 to 200 warheads.
Back in the mid-1980s, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli technician who had worked for almost a decade at the Dimona plant in the Negev Desert in Israel, provided convincing evidence of Israel’s nuclear weapons production. He presented his testimony and the photographs he had secretly taken to top-notch American and British nuclear scientists contracted by a UK newspaper to verify Vanunu’s claims. As in the case of the use of white phosphorous in the recent war on Gaza, Israel is today neither admitting nor denying its possession of nuclear weapons. It has also steadfastly refused to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of which even Iran, which is supposed to harbour nuclear weapons ambitions, is a member. Netanyahu’s vilification of Iran is thus a high-stakes gamble that could backfire on Israel. But with the Palestinians agitating relentlessly for justice, Israel needs to produce a big distraction in the international arena that would sideline Palestinian efforts. It should come before March 2010.
Sanen Marshall is a member of JUST
12 Oct. 2009