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by Peter A. Belmont / 2009-01-31
© 2009 Peter Belmont
This is a comment on ”To George Mitchell, Arriving on the Shores of Despair”.
The key idea is “You and your boss have little time to create a new dynamic.” First, time is short. Second, the job is to work a change (as one works iron to make wrought-iron).
The central impediment to creating a viable Palestinian state is the so-called “facts on the ground” which Israeli hard-liners present as non-negotiable. These are the wall, the settlers, and the taking of water.
If Sen. Mitchell can take steps to DEMONSTRATE that these “facts” are reversible — by reversing them — then life will be breathed into the search for the two states. And not otherwise.
How can Mr. Mitchell do this? By returning the US to a long-abandoned way of thinking, namely, that the Rule of Law is serviceable and can be (and here should be) made to work.
The wall and the settlers are present illegally and the taking of Palestinian water is arguably illegal as well. The US can, in principle, demand, today, that Israel remove the wall and the settlers and stop taking the water. He could find a large American support for such a change in US policy.
He would explain that international law does not permit an occupier to build this wall and move these settlers into occupied territory, nor to take the water of the people living under occupation, when neither the wall nor the settlers nor the water-taking are militarily necessary [the wall can be rebuilt behind the green-line].
He would explain that in building the wall and settling the settlers, Israel has (illegally) been taking what would legally be available ONLY after a peace was signed. Having taken what it wanted, Israel had no reason to negotiate for peace. And didn’t.
This would be costly to Israel but in no way unfair, since the international law has been well understood, especially as to settlers, since 1967. If the US has given Israel a “green light” on the settlements, then (and only then) it should, perhaps, help defray the costs of resettlement of the settlers behind the green-line.
Until today, the US has been unwilling to involve itself, to use its own muscle, to help resolve this long-standing conflict. “Let them beat themselves to death” is the US’s apparent guidance, under presidents of both parties.
If the US is willing to use its muscle for the very slightly interfering purpose of enforcing the law of belligerent occupation, it may then safely leave the business of negotiation to the parties.
If the US is not willing to involve itself, then war-without-end and oppression-without-end seem inevitable, for both Israel and Hamas (and perhaps even the PLO or Fateh) will find that Quaker-like or Gandhi-like pacifism will not avail against an opponent like Israel which has lusted for the land of Palestine without its people since before the Balfour declaration and has shown neither inclination nor the political power to adopt any other policy,
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