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by Peter A. Belmont / 2009-02-12
© 2009 Peter Belmont
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Peace is less likely today, after the February 2009 Israeli election, as hard-line parties seem poised to take power.
After the Gaza war, everyone knows that peace is more necessary than ever. After the election peace also seems less likely than ever to be achieved without significant external intervention.
What is needed is US intervention, and the first intervention should be a resolute decision to reverse US policy by enforcing international humanitarian law rather than sabotaging it.
If the US is to be the “policeman of the world”, it must decide whether to be a corrupt cop, who looks the other way as the law is broken, or an honest cop, who enforces the law as written. For 41 years, the US has been a corrupt cop as far as Israeli violations if international law go.
It’s time for a change, and this change would actually be helpful.
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After the Israeli elections of Feb 2009, political power in Israel seems likely to pass to a significantly harder-line (far-right-wing) coalition than has recently governed. And, recall that even the recent government was not seeking peace very dramatically, if at all.
What should the US do now?
Most Americans would agree that the US should not dictate the terms of a two-state peace treaty either to Israel or to the Palestinians.
Most experts would agree that peace is years (or decades) away in present circumstances if the Israelis and Palestinians must find that peace by themselves. Israel and the Palestinians are unlikely to make peace by themselves without some external influence.
Is the US is powerless? No.
Does the US have vital interests that call for peace? Yes.
I propose a new (indeed, a completely new) US policy. I propose that the US stand foursquare in support of international humanitarian law (a position the US has rejected over the 41 years of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands).
It will come hard for most Americans—who do not follow Mid-East events or know the applicable law—to hear that Israel has been violating the law for 41 years and the US has been facilitating this law-breaking, not merely “looking the other way” but actively preventing the UN Security Council from intervening. Here, president Obama could make a “great leap forward” by telling the American people what the law is and what Israel has been doing that violates the law—and why he intends to begin now, after 41 years of US inaction, to seek to enforce the law.
Without law enforcement, there is effective impunity and immunity, and these are circumstances which breed and encourage lawlessness.[1]
(If the US is to be the world’s policeman, it might start by enforcing the law in a case where, as here, enforcement does not require making war or other significant costs to the nation—all the US need do, here, is cease its $3B/year gifts to Israel and, very important, cease its automatic veto in the UN Security Council of resolutions critical of Israeli lawlessness.)
When a husband and wife are battering each other murderously, a policeman need not refrain from intervening merely because (s)he doesn’t feel like dictating the terms of a separation or divorce. Preventing the crimes of battery are worth doing and may pave the way for separation or divorce. It is the same with Israel and Palestine.
In other words, instead of seeking to protect Israel by allowing it to violate the law, the US should realize that the path toward peace (and, ultimately, also toward protecting Israel) is to require Israel to comply with the law.
This means the US should require Israel to withdraw ALL SETTLERS and REMOVE THE WALL from the West Bank, for the wall and the settlers have been inserted into the occupied territories illegally and are illegal—violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and other international humanitarian law. Indeed, the International Court of Justice said exactly this in its July 9, 2004, advisory opinion.
The law has not changed.
What must change is Israeli compliance with (and US enforcement of) the law.
One beneficial effect of US enforcement of law is that the world (and thus the Arab peoples) will see the US as a champion of law (instead of as a destroyer of law).
Another beneficial effect, here, will be that the setlers and wall will be removed in compliance with law and NOT BECAUSE OF PARTISAN POLITICAL ACTION either in Israel or in the US. And let no-one forget that removing the settlers is the hardest (if not insuperable) problem for any Israeli peace party. Just look at the electoral results and the number of seats won by hard-right anti-Arab pro-Settlements parties. With 10% of Israel’s citizens living as settlers, how can any Israeli government remove the settlers without pressure from the outside world?
Enforcement of the law should not be seen as as anti-Israeli (or anti-Semitic). It should be seen as a step toward a (another) “New World Order”, this time one based on international law.
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[1] We have seen lawlessness at home, and immunity and impunity (so far) for the Bush administration people responsible for illegal eavesdropping on Americans, illegal detention, torture, and the like. Immunity and impunity breed lawlessness here at home, too, and should be cut short by a vigorous exercise of law enforcement.
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