Chairman: I welcome you to this gathering discussing the issue of Palestinian statehood and the proposals for it pros and cons and various aspects of it. We have the pleasure of hearing two very distinguished speakers.
Daud Abdullah: Let me begin by thanking Dr Saeed and his team and the Gulf Cultural Club for this very warm welcome. I am going to set out the case against the Palestinian bid for statehood.
This has come after two decades of failed negotiations between the two parties. In a sense we are not surprised that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO has taken the case to the United Nations.
What concerns us is the manner and the substance of the submission. It appears from all indications that this was done as a tactical move informed by desperation as a result of the failed negotiations. The problem of this whole saga is that Israel demands recognition of its rights but has failed throughout the period to recognize and concede rights to the Palestinian people. As a result of this no progress made towards a resolution of the conflict.
One question remains. After the drama of September 2011 it was hyped for several months prior to September. And we ask what next for the PLO? As it happens the PLO is not in control of all the areas of the proposed state. If the bid is successful it will Israel in occupation of the territory of this nascent, embryonic state. In fact by seeking 20 percent of historic Palestinians state the PLO is in fact conceding to the partition and in another sense it is negating the very purpose of its existence. It was founded for the liberation of Palestine but now it is conceding to a state on 20% of the land.
So admission to the United Nations does not promise to change anything on the ground. The United Nations may condemn the occupation of a member state. We do not expect to see the mobilization of NATO forces to reverse this occupation as was done in the case of Kosovo or Kuwait. The PLO’s bid is not the contentious issue. Nobody disputes the fact that the Palestinian people are entitled to a state. What we are speaking about is the politics of how this is approached.
You would remember that in November 1988 in Algiers the PLO declared a state. And when it did so the general assembly in fact adopted a resolution recognizing or acknowledging the state of Palestine. So we are not entering into new territory. The resolution stated “effective from 15th December 1988 the designation Palestine should be used in place of the PLO in the United Nations system”.
So what is new? What has changed? Would another resolution change anything? This is the fundamental question. There are 120 countries which recognize Palestine. The Arab League and the Islamic Conference Organisation recognizes it but nothing has changed on the ground.
PLO officials said we are doing this because we want to be placed on an equal legal footing with the Israelis as a start for negotiations. Let us recall in 2004 when the International Court of Justice investigated the apartheid wall it actually called on Palestine to give evidence and indicted the state of Palestine to take part in the proceedings. This was in 2004. Now the international court ruled that this thing is illegal and should be dismantled.
So if they think this is going to help them the international court gave them a ruling which should have strengthened their hand but we saw the continued construction of settlements, the building of the wall, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem and the destruction of homes.
So whether they attain a state with observer status as is the case with the Vatican it is academic because there are over 70 resolutions in favour of this so-called historic leadership. They have not benefitted from them. Will another resolution benefit them? I don’t think so.
What we will see is another resolution that will add to the scores of other resolutions and the conflict will grind on. We only have to look at the record of Oslo 1993, the road map of 2002 and Napolis 2008. All these bear witness to the futility of the negotiating process and the way in which it has been constructed. Throughout this period it failed to address the core issues of the refugees of Jerusalem of the settlements, borders, water etc.Yet in every instance the Palestinians are called upon to make painful concessions.
Let us take some time to examine the area of the land that they are speaking about. I said that the West Bank and Gaza is 20 percent of Palestine. But Netanyahu and his group are claiming the Jordan Valley which is itself equivalent to 30 percent of the West Bank. So what will they be left with? They do not want to give up the Jordan Valley. Where will this state be? That is the practical question that one has to ask. Will it have control over its borders, its air space and its water resources?
A lot of research has been done on this. One of the fundamental reasons the Israelis do not want to leave the West Bank is because they benefit from the water resources. Most of the settlements in the West Bank are located on aquifers where there are large supplies of water. And this water is taken into Israel. It is not for the settlements only. That is the reason this question has to be raised when we talk about a future state.
Needless to say a Palestinian state would have no control over its borders. The Guardian and Al Jazeera revealed in January of this year that they were speaking about a land swap. Saeed Ereckat challenged Al Jazeera and took them to Afcom claiming that the Palestine papers were malicious and Afcom ruled in favour of Al Jazeera saying that this was well founded and that it is in the interests of the public to know what is happening in the negotiations. So this is an angle that sheds light on the type of proposal that was made to the UN or is intended when they get to the security council and what there ultimate aims really are.
One of the things I want to draw attention to is that the UN resolutions give the Palestinians what they themselves are not asking for. There are resolutions which call for a dismantlement of settlements. The PLO is calling for a freeze of settlements. There is a vast difference between the two. The UN said dismantle them. There are resolutions on the books, resolution 43 and 176. Abbas and his group are saying we want a freeze. This is totally different.
What about the question of refugees. When we look the Palestine papers in 2008 when they were negotiating with Olmert they said Israel would accept hurt for the condition of the Palestinian refugees but it would not accept responsibility. We can empathie with you but we are not responsible.
If you go back to the documents they said we recognize that they have a right to return in principle but practically it cannot be implemented. Bernard Kutschner he lauded Erechat for this and said I want you to take it to the refugees now.
The resolutions on the refugees are clear – 194 has been endorsed by the General Assembly since 1948 that they have a right to return Repatriation, restitution and compensation. They have accepted something else. In the Palestine papers Erechat says we would accept all the settlements except Jebal Al Rubamie. He said we are giving you the greatest Jerusalem you ever dreamed of. Arafat refused this when he went to Camp David. And this why the talks collapsed. Arafat said a Palestinian leader who would sign away Jerusalem has not been born. If I sign it prepare to come to my funeral. And ten years later they were prepared to do this.
So this is my argument. What they are asking for is much less than what the UN endorses and offers them. And they are doing this. In the Camp David accord Sadat said we would settle the refugee problem as agreed between the two parties. In 1978 the UN passed a resolution condemning the Camp David Accord and saying that any attempt to resolve the conflict in Palestine must be based on the charter of the United Nations within the context of UN resolutions which guarantee the alienable rights of the Palestinian people. They have accepted much less.
When we look at the record of this historic leadership we cannot expect anything good to come out of this proposal.
I conclude that if they win acceptance for this West Bank state without resolving the problem of Gaza it may further entrench the geographic division of Palestine. It will make it much more difficult in the long run to have some reconciliation. He had many opportunities to implement the Cairo agreement before going to the United Nations. There is a big question mark about why they have not implemented the Cairo Agreement before going to New York because they wanted to show they are flexible. If you look at the Palestine papers they speak more about Hamas then about Israel.
The second concern of course is whether this state will recognize the right of return of the refugees. When we say the right of return we do not mean return to a Palestinian entity but to the original homes from which they were expelled as demanded by UN resolutions. That is up in the air. A resolution may pass but the America and Israel are opposed to it and even the European Union said they are neither for or against. They can’t decide. So even if a resolution is passed we will still have to confront this question of negotiations in the long term giving Israel more time to create additional facts on the ground.
Therefore it is important that we have a new approach to this conflict – one that is divorced from, separate from the Oslo formula which endorsed the partition and signed away 78 percent of historic Palestine. We need to revisit this. 1967 is not the start of the conflict. We have to go beyond 1967 if we want to find a lasting solution to this. There is a notion that Israel can pursue hot pursuit because they want to have their cake and eat it too. They talk about a two-state solution but they want to go into Palestine whenever they like in hot pursuit. There must be no such agreement.
This authority which has been so involved in abuses and murder in prisons. We cannot expect much from them.
The approach to statehood must not be tactical. It must be based on an inclusive approach that preserves the constance of the Palestinian national struggle: the right of return, the right to a sovereign state, the right to a capital in Jerusalem. These constance if they are not on the table we are not going to make progress.
So far the PLO has not adopted this approach and for this reason my view that is that bid in September 2011 will not bear any fruit.
Victor Kattan :Thank you very much for inviting me to address you today. I would like to thank the organizers and Dr Daoud for his presentation. When I was invited to give this talk I was invited to make the case for statehood. I do not have any affiliation to the Palestinian authority. I am just going to try and bring some sense into what I think they are trying to accomplish by going to the United Nations. In presenting my argument I will respond to some of the issues raised by Daoud in his presentation.
I would like to open by saying that this bid for statehood and UN membership arose in the context of twenty years of failed negotiations and Daoud also described it as a tactical move. I have to agree with him – it was a tactical move and it is very much linked to the failure of the peace process and the failure of the negotiations with Israel.
I will provide some history to the context of this bid. As you know it has been an eventful year with revolutions in Egypt. Prior to the revolutions there were papers leaked which are called the Palestine papers which caused the Palestinian authority some severe embarrassment. It was clear that the PA was really going now here in negotiations with Israel as the PA was too weak and there was an inequality of power between the two sides. I think that this strategy which is very confrontational by going to the United Nations night be connected to that. I think the authority realizes that Abbas is getting old, there is change sweeping the region. I think they felt they had to do something different. They could not continue with the same old negotiation strategy.
Also it is worth mentioning that Obama said he wanted to see a Palestinian state emerge this time. The IMF and the World Bank have come out and said that Palestine is ready for statehood. In addition a number of countries in Latin America had recognized Palestine. So if you were following the news at the beginning of this year you would have see that Chile, Paraguay and Argentina were all recognizing the state of Palestine.
This is part of the strategy for achieving the goal of statehood and membership of the United Nations. They are going around the negotiations without having to concede everything which they would have had to do if they were to sit in front of Israel. They are bypassing the negotiations. So they are seeking the goal to be recognized as a state and to be a full UN member without having to write away the status of Jerusalem or the rights of refugees.
This whole issue is very confusing. It is tactical. It is highly technical. A lot of people do not understand the nuances of the strategy. So what Abbas did when he went to the United Nations about a month ago was that he asked to be a member of the UN. That was made on the understanding that Palestine was already a state. If you want to become a member of the UN you have to be a state. So the assumption by seeking membership is that Palestine is already a state although it is a state which is under military occupation.
What has happened so far is that this is now in a committee in the UN Security Council and it is being considered. For this to go ahead it needs authorization from the Security Council. It needs a minimum of nine votes in the Security Council and the votes of the permanent five. The US has already come out and said it will veto any resolution. There is also a fear that they may not be able to secure the nine votes because they are not sure about Bosnia or Columbia and a few other countries. So that might fail in the Security Council and the authority will then have to decide what to do next.
So they are really taking a high risk strategy by going to the United Nations. But I think it is smart because by taking it to the UN they have taken it out of the negotiating situation into a forum which Israel cannot control. Israel does not like that as it likes to have control of the situation.
So in the general assembly where there are 193 countries, Palestine has wide support. In the Security Council Israel can count on the support of the United States. So some other people have been discussing what other options there would be for the Palestinians. There are at least. One was mentioned by the Prime Minister when he spoke in Washington DC a few days ago. He said that if the US was to veto a Security Council bid for membership then they would dismantle the Palestinian Authority and demand elections in a single state. I don’t know if they are serious about it but it is an option and they have publically said this. If the US did veto this resolution it would be America which would be destroying the two-state solution not the Palestinians. So it is quite clever in that sense.
If they don’t want to go down that path they could still turn to the UN General Assembly which is made up of all member states. It is a more democratic body although it has less power but it has more legitimacy at least democratically. So there are 193 members of the General Assembly. Southern Sudan became the 193rd member this year and most of the resolutions that Daoud was mentioning are passed by this body. Unfortunately they cannot be enforced because the enforcement power comes from the Security Council which is made up of 15 members. In that body the permanent five have all power. They are the victors of WW2. So that is Russia, China, England, France and the US.
It is primarily because of the failure to get any of the resolutions enforced with the council that the Palestinians have suffered so much and their statehood bid hasn’t got very far. There have been some interesting changes in the past few decades in international relations and one of these issues which people may not be aware of is the emergence of the International Criminal Court which was established in Rome in 1998 and it came into force in 2002.
There is a legal battle that has been taking place behind the scenes that has not been widely reported in the main stream media because journalists think its too technical. What happened about two years during the war in 2008 – 2009 when Israel bombed Gaza and killed 1500 people including 400 women and children the Palestinian Minister of the Interior lodged a declaration in the Hague at the International Criminal Court in the name of the state and government of Palestine acknowledging that from 1st January 2009 Palestine recognized the jurisdiction of the ICC to cover the territory of Palestine which included the West Bank and Gaza.
The problem for the tribunal was that they did not know if Palestine was state of not. So was happened was that the prosecutor invited submissions from Israeli lawyers, from Palestinian lawyers and from other international lawyers to persuade him whether he had the jurisdiction to entertain the request. If he had that right he could then initiate proceedings against the Israelis, including the Israeli prime minister at the time. There is no immunity in that court. They can issue an arrest warrant and any country which has ratified that statute would be legally obliged to arrest the person mentioned in the arrest warrant. So it could be potentially very significant because if it happened it would be the first time that an Israeli can be brought before an international criminal tribunal for war crimes.
This is a criminal tribunal not like the International Court of Justice, the so-called world court which can only issue advisory opinions and decisions where the parties have agreed. It can send people to prison.
What the Palestinians are now trying to do is they are using it as leverage. If the United Nations comes out and says Palestine is a state he can longer ignore that declaration in the Hague. He will then have to present his case in the Hague to a pre-trial chamber. They will have to assess the evidence and if there is sufficient evidence which one must assume there is considering the horrific consequences of that conflict, then it is possible that these arrest warrants could be issued. The Israelis are aware of this and they have their lawyers working on it. That is one of the reasons among others why they are against the Palestinian statehood bid.
If it was true that is the biggest Bantustan the Israelis would be quite happy for it to be a state. But they realize there are other serious issues behind this bid. So there are some intricate issues behind this which need to be mentioned. That is probably the strongest argument.
Dr Pouya: I am interested in the cost of US support to Zionism. South Asia and Pakistan have paid a very heavy price. Subjectively speaking the cost of Palestine of fighting for Palestine, of looking at the cost of dismantling the Zionist regime is a very expensive exercise. It has cost us a lot. Outside of Palestine the price has been much more.
Europe has paid for it the whole world has paid for it and today America is counting its costs for supporting the Zionist regime occupying Palestine.
So what I would really like is to have another session on this. This pax zionica which was brought into force immediately after the creation of the United Nations is going to lead to the death of the United Nations. This pax zionica is only a peace for the USA, the Zionists and India and all of them believe in occupying other peoples lands. So unless this paz zionica is not destroyed and replaced by a more moral peace pact and that is a pax islamicia. It will make all these resolutions irrelevant. The change, the metamorphisis is coming in the whole region. Today you have more senior people within the Zionist regime demanding a single state solution. Now people are talking of a single state solution and that is what we are going to look for.
