Palestine in International Law

I was wrong to think the vote for Palestine would be a hollow victory. I have received the following from Clarity Press, publishers of Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law by Francis F. Boyle, Professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law: Professor Boyle said today: "This can be the start of a 'Legal Intifadah' by Palestine against Israel: 1. "Palestine can join the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court and file a Complaint with the ICC against the illegal settlements and settlers, who are committing war crimes; 2. "Palestine can join the Statute for the International Court of Justice, sue Israel at the World Court, and break the illegal siege of Gaza; 3. "Palestine can join the Law of the Sea Convention and get its fair share of the enormous gas fields lying off the coast of Gaza, thus becoming economically self-sufficient; 4. "Palestine can become a High Contracting Party to the Four Geneva Conventions [this deals with the laws of war]; 5. "Palestine can join the International Civil Aviation Organization and gain sovereign, legal control over its own airspace; 6. "Palestine can join the International Telecommunications Union and gain sovereign legal control over its own airwaves, phone lines, bandwidths."

Two states

The UN General Assembly is to vote on Thursday on a resolution to recognize Palestine as a member state. It will probably pass with a big majority, but it will be a hollow victory. In the first place the U.S. will prevent the Security Council from giving it any substance. Secondly, no Israeli government would be able to remove the half million Israelis from the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and their presence makes a 2-state solution impossible. The two populations are almost completely mixed up, more than 20% of Israeli citizens being non-Jewish, and at least 15% of people on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem Jewish. As for the unfortunates of Gaza, it is unthinkable that their present imprisonment should be permanent The only viable solution would be a single, highly decentralized, demilitarized, secular state with equal rights for all citizens irrespective of ethnicity, religion or language - everything that Zionists have refused for 65 years, and which Britain and the UN failed to impose in the 1940s. I don't think this is totally unrealistic. The reward for the Israelis would be general recognition for such a state, with its capital in a united Jerusalem, and the end of a permanent state of war. They would be able to return to the ideals that Jews did so much to promote down the centuries: peace, international harmony, human rights and respect for law. Their present devotion to a racially defined nationalism and the rule of force is hardly inspiring.

I can't get those Israeli submarines out of my mind. They must periodically need repair and maintenance and re-provisioning. It obviously can't be at an above-water harbour. Have they dug out a huge under-water facility on the Israeli coast? Or do they have an agreement with the US to use American facilities? That would be collusion in potential mass murder of the most terrible kind. Against such an enemy violent resistance is worse than useless; it gives Israel an excuse to claim that they are retaliating in self-defence. There is well organized passive resistance on a large scale on the West Bank and in Jerusalem, but it is the idiots who let off rockets from Gaza who get all the publicity. Until Western governments see sense, all that we outsiders can do for the Palestinians is to work with the non-violent resistance: publicize them, demonstrate for them, send them money, visit them...

Israel again!

I heard a fascinating talk by James Martin last night: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. He described Israel as possessing nuclear submarines armed with enough warheads to destroy every city in the Middle East. As it would take only four nukes to destroy Israel, they would have to launch a first strike if they felt sure they were about to be attacked. This puts the whole Middle Ease mess into perspective. Since Israelis believe their own propaganda, it would be too easy for them to think they must push the button. Just to complete the picture, Dr Martin said that "the Koran tells Muslims that Israel must be destroyed"; this is such a preposterous fabrication that it can only have come out of the mind of some crazed Zionist. The Koran says nothing of the sort. President Ahmadinejad is quoted as saying "Israel must be wiped off the map", but as I have explained before, what he said in Persian was "Israel [not Israelis] must vanish from the page of time" - something that could happen as peacefully as the demise of Czechoslovakia or the Soviet Union, if Israelis would agree to live peacefully in a multi-ethnic state (as Jews did for 13 centuries under Muslim rule). It is increasingly clear to everybody except Zionists and their puppets in the governments of America and its Western allies that the existence of Israel in its present form cannot be reconciled with peace.

Britain is reported to be making contingency plans to station troops on Syria's borders. When will they learn to keep out of the Middle East? They've been at it since the 1850s and little good has come of it. The disaster of Syria is that no outsiders can take sides without making things worse - worse for Syrians because it prolongs the agony, worse for the region because getting rid of Asad has been Israel's aim since at least the 1980s. Meanwhile Netanyahu, frustrated by the return of Obama, is ratcheting up tension with Gaza at the same time as approving yet more settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. Now we have a vote coming up in the UN on whether to recognize a Palestinian State. That would just mean prolonging the fiction of a 'two-state solution', which Israel's settlements has made impossible; there is now no way the frontier of a viable state can be drawn. There was a two-state situation from 1948 to 1967 and Israel destroyed it; how can they pretend now to want it after spending 45 years making its return impossible? The only viable solution is a single, decentralized and democratic state, with equality for all its citizens regardless of 'race', language or religion. Such a solution can only be achieved with help from the international community, and that means America must be included.