Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Might there be an international intifada to end Israeli settlements? |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2011-06-11
In 2008, I asked the USA to roll back Israel’s settlement project. I said that ending settlements had priority over peace-making. I say it still. Part I. General Provisions for it is evident that the nations have failed to “ensure respect” for the G4’s requirement, highlighted below: Art. 49. Individual or mass forcible transfers, * * * So, again, why have the nations failed to do their clear duty (see, for example, UNSC 465 (1980) to remove Israel’s settlers and their almost clear duty to dismantle the settlements [1]? The short answer must be that it is virtually cost-free to the nations to “leave well enough alone” and costly to make any attempt to force Israel to remove settlers and settlements (and WALL). So far, no countries have been “over-run” with Palestinian refugees, and only the Arab countries bordering Mandatory Palestine have received any refugees at all. And these Arab countries, like the Palestinians themselves, have been regarded as of little account in Europe and elsewhere, oil notwithstanding, perhaps because the USA’s imperial sticks and carrots have “kept these countries in line” as far as oil-production goes. So far, the Palestinians have resorted to violence (in the effort to end the occupation or for any other purpose) only against Israel (apart from some small skirmishes in Jordan and Lebanon). So that no EU nation, or Russia or China or India or any other major country has been subjected to “terrorism” as a result of their own failure to live up to their promises under G4. In our ever more materialistic age, no country has experienced any cost whatever because it allowed Israel to ride rough-shod over the Palestinian people in daily and massive (and, it might be added, well-known) violation of international law. With the USA backing up Israel’s every crime and using its veto repeatedly to prevent any enforcement actions by the UNSC against Israel, it is clear that the USA has already used or would be ready in future to use its enormous political, economic, military, and diplomatic power not merely to protect Israel from the appropriate punitive action by the UNSC (as a response to Israel’s 43-year program of lawless violation of international humanitarian law) but also to punish any country brazen enough to attempt to punish Israel by actions outside the UNSC. Might this situation change? Might nations begin to find the carrots and sticks which bear on their own behavior vis-a-vis Israel changing? Maybe. Slightly for now. The international civil society efforts to support the Palestine-inspired BDS movement against Israel is picking up steam, aided by international revulsion against Israel’s vicious military attacks upon Lebanon (2006), upon Gaza (2008-2009), upon the siege-breaking ship the Mavi Marmara (2010), and by revulsion to Israel horrible siege and blockade of Gaza. Moreover, the international BDS movement has been enormously encouraged by the “Arab Spring” and especially by Egypt’s apparent tilt into (or toward) democracy. And the EU nations have seen that the South American nations “got away” with opposing the USA[2] by recognizing Palestine as a state in the West Bank and Gaza (including the occupied parts of Jerusalem, the location of Israel’s densest settlement blocs). It is today widely expected that, in September, a UNGA resolution will be passed declaring Palestine a state (upon the territory of Gaza and West Bank), and seeking UNSC permission to admit Palestine into the UN as a member nation. It is also expected that the USA will veto Palestinian admission to the UN when the matter comes to a vote in the UNSC, thereby preventing admission of Palestine to the UN. However, the vote in the UNGA and UNSC may very well be unanimous or nearly so (excluding only Israel and the USA and a few of the USA’s powerless dependencies). And this will be a beginning, an opening, a wedge. It will be “cheap” for the states to vote for Palestinian statehood and admission to the UN, similar to many other pro-Palestine votes. And it will make Israel’s occupation even more illegal-looking, since a near-universal declaration that Palestine’s territory is the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and Gaza constitutes a clear declaration that no part of those spaces is part of Israeli territory. (And this will be so whether or not Palestine is admitted to the UN as a member state.) What happens next is less clear. For the nations to gather their strength together to oppose both the USA and Israel (demanding, presumably, the removal of all settlers, the dismantling of settlements and wall, and the ending of the siege of Gaza) would require the nations to take real action—something beyond mere talk—and this they have never done. The nations could act via the UNGA, using UNGA resolution to demand Israeli removal of settlers and dismantling of settlements, etc., and back up this demand by proposed sanctions. But as we all know by now, UNGA resolutions do not have the power of UNSC resolutions, adn universal or near-universal compliance with the sanctions aspect of such a resolution might be impossible to arrange. Nevertheless, if a few countries imposed their own sanctions—pending Israeli removal of settlers and dismantling of settlements, for instance—it might be enough to get the ball rolling. Nations could begin by withdrawing embassies, ending sports competitions with Israeli teams, and ending commercial air-flights with Israel—pending Israeli compliance. They could continue by expelling Israeli citizens and by ending trade in Israeli manufactures. And, of course, every one of these sanctions would be imposed with great fanfare and with abundant explanations that the purpose of the sanctions is to incline Israel to behave legally in the conduct of its occupations, and the sanctions will end when the occupation is conducted legally. The object of these sanctions would be to send Israel two “messages”. First, the illegalities must end. Forty-four years is long enough and too long for blatant lawbreaking to continue. Second, the sanctions are not efforts to “delegitimize” Israel as a state living lawfully within its own territory and conducting its belligerent occupation of Arab lands lawfully. Now Israel has been receiving “messages” ever since 1948 in the form of UNGA and UNSC resolutions which it has totally ignored. Israel is notorious for not caring what the nations “say”, but only caring what the nations “do”, and for 63 years the nations have “done” very little to interfere with Israel’s expansionist agenda. The point of sending Israel the message that it is not, itself, being delegitimized, is to persuade fence-sitters to join the boycott. The fence-sitters might refuse to join the UNGA-sponsored sanctions regime if they thought that its purpose were to delegitimize (or to destroy or render insecure) the State of Israel. But with a clearly stated goal of rolling back the illegal Israeli settlement regime in the West Bank (and Golan Heights), and with no goal whatever of ending the occupations or imposing a peace against Israeli wishes, the UNGA-sponsored law-enforcement effort (the sanctions regime I’ve proposed) might have a chance to get off the ground. And it is beginning to appear that even the civil-society’s small BDS interferences with Israeli trade “get the attention” of the powerful capitalist class within Israel which appears to be more interested in profit-making than in preserving the (to it) merely ideologically valuable settlements project. Which is to say that I see hope at the end of the long 44-year tunnel. And, as I have written elsewhere, my hope is that a sanctions-regime demanding Israeli compliance within a set and specified term (say one year) would give Israel the very same time period, one year, in which to try to negotiate a peace treaty which might allow Israel to retain some of the settlements (those closest to the old city of Jerusalem, most likely). Thus, a sanctions regime not explicitly aimed at peace-making might nevertheless have the effect of propelling the reluctant Israel to do what it has resisted doing for 44 years. But, even if peace were not a result of this sanctions regime, it would (especially if successful) have several important and worthwhile results. First, it would reestablish the rule of law as a matter of international concern. Second it would free the Palestinians living under occupation of the very great burdens which the settlers impose upon them. Third, it would show the international community that they have power to do great things when they gather together for peace and justice and law-enforcement. And if they have great power, and Israel and Palestine are not able to make peace between themselves (during the period of sanction-enforced Israeli removal of settlers, et al.) then the nations still have the option (which they of course have today) of attempting to impose peace on Israel and Palestine. So that no opportunities for international action would be lost by an initial international attempt to legalize the occupation. And much might be gained. ----------- [1] Notice that in the parallel case of the WALL, the International Court of Justice’s July 9, 2004, advisory opinion on the WALL did call upon Israel to dismantle the WALL and called on all nations to ensure that Israel did so). ----------- [2] See this interesting article. |
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