Untold Facts

So When Are You Going To Make War On Israel, Mr. Brown?

There could not be a more graphic illustration of the double-standard that drives Western foreign policy and has prevented a resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict than Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s explanation to the Chilcot Inquiry on why he, when he was Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and wrote the cheques for it, backed the war on Iraq.

He said, “It was the right decision for the right reasons.”

What were they?

Not 9/11 or the WMD assertions.

In an effort to distance himself from America’s neo-cons and their soul-mate in London, Prime Minister (at the time) Tony Blair, Brown said: “I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-conservative proposition, that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight liberty or democracy could be conjured up. What I believed was that the case for intervention was that international law had to be observed.”

Putting some flesh on that bone, Brown said his view was that if the international community could not act together over Iraq, he feared that “the new world order we were trying to create would be put at risk.”

Meaning?

“Aggressor states that refuse to obey the laws of the international community” have to be confronted. Iraq was a “serial violator of the rules of the international community.”

There is, of course, some truth in that, but not nearly as much truth as in the statement that for 62 years the Zionist state of Israel has been, and continues to be, the biggest single violator of international law. No state on Planet Earth has been allowed to get away with defying UN resolutions for so long. And, I say, no state poses a bigger threat to the peace of the region and the world than Israel on its present course.

As I have previously written, the double-standard which allows Israel to behave as it likes with impunity was effectively put into place when the major powers, all of them, refused to condemn Israel as the aggressor in 1967 and demand that it withdraw from occupied territories without preconditions.

If Mr. Brown means what he says, and if by chance he remains prime minister after Britain’s imminent election, logic suggests that he will take the lead with President Obama in putting together a coalition to require Israel, by war if necessary, to comply with “the rules of the international community.”

Of course he won’t because logic, like truth and reality, has no place in politics, domestic or international.

Footnote:

A book by Karl Rove, once described as President “Dubya” Bush’s brains, is about to be published. The memoir is titled Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight. In it Rove says he doubts that Bush would have invaded Iraq and taken Britain into a disastrous war if he had known that intelligence on weapons of mass destruction was simply wrong. “The Bush administration itself would probably have sought other ways to constrain Saddam.”

If Rove is right (and is being something other than self-serving), what would Prime Minister Tony Blair’s position have been? He is firmly on the BBC’s record as saying that he probably would have moved ahead with removing Saddam Hussein from power even had he known that the narrative about weapons of mass destruction was fictional by finding different ways to justify it. As I have previously written, I never saw Blair as Bush’s puppet. I think he was and is a neo-con in spirit. And I think it’s more likely than not that he was firmly in the camp of those pressing Bush to go to war. So if Rove had done what he now seems to be saying he should have done – played a part of exposing the intelligence on WMD for the nonsense it was, Blair might not have got the war he and apparently Gordon Brown wanted.

Author: Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent.
Source: Web

Stop evicting Palestinians from Jerusalem

As on every Friday for months now, several hundred Israelis gather here in Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood in Arab East Jerusalem, to stand in vigil as a protest against the eviction of Palestinian families from homes they have lived in for decades.

In August, seven families-about 50 people, including 35 children-were forced out of their homes, and immediately replaced by eight families of Jewish Israelis, members of extremist setler groups. The Palestinians have been living in tents across the street from their house ever since. Six other nearby families have received eviction notices.

I spoke with one of the evicted fathers, Fouad Ghawi, who had lived in the house since 1954, when he was 8. He and his family were Palestinian refugees from Jaffa during the 1948 war, and his father traded in his UN refugee card, which guaranteed him basic support, for the right to move into the house the UN Relief and Works Agency and Jordan were building on vacant land. In return for finishing the house, the Ghwai family would get the legal deed. Three generations of the Ghawi family had lived there ever since-until last August, when an Israeli court ordered them out They had no deed because, he told me, “the Jordan government would not put it in our name until we had proper plumbing, and then the 1967 war broke out” Jordan’s authority ended.

One of the organisers of the protest vigil, Zvi Benninga, a 24-year-old Israeli medical student and Jerusalemite, told me, “It is so blatant because they were expelled for a second time by Israel-first in 1948, and now again.” The protest engages several critical issues. The government evictions depend on cloudy questions of pre-1948 ownership rights which, in most of Israel, have been simply deleted.

Equivalent enforcement of “absentee property” laws elsewhere in Israel would lead to evictions of tens of thousands of Jewish Israelis.

The evictions also raise the larger question of Israel’s “creeping annexation” of East Jerusalem, not only through the expansion of setlements, which Benjamin Netanyahu, defying President Obama, refuses to freeze, but also through legally dubious removal of Palestinians from other Jerusalem neighborhoods like Silwan, just down the slope from the old city.

That other key Arab neighbourhoods, like Abu Dis, have been cut off from Jerusalem by the so-called “security barrier” points to the even larger question - whether, as far as the current Israeli government is concerned, the hard-won consensus that the promised Palestinian state would have its capital in East Jerusalem no longer applies. “This will stop any peace agreement,” Benninga told me.

The weekly demonstrations are being led by younger Israelis, although veterans of the Israeli peace camp have shown up, too - including prominent figures like the novelist David Grossman, the philosopher Moshe Halbertal, and the literary critic Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi. “J Street,” the American Jewish lobbying group, has sent a petition of support signed by 10,000 Americans.

Today, Avrum Burg, the former speaker of the Israeli Knesset, is here to support the evicted families. When I asked him what the vigil meant, he said, “This is an iconic group.

Intellectuals, blue collar people, Jews, Arabs, old, young-representing thousands of people. This is a permanent reality.”

Untie this knot in the nearly hopeless Israeli-Palestinian tangle and many others could be untied as well. The demonstrators are not interested in being valourised as champions of a vibrant Israeli democracy. Instead, they look to be bolstered by the broader world against the once-marginal figures who have more and more power in Israel. (The foreign ministry is headed by the far-right Avigdor Lieberman. This week, his deputy snubbed five US congressmen, including William Delahunt of Massachusets, while Tzipi Livni, the opposition leader, warned “The Jewish state has been taken hostage by the ultra-orthodox parties.”)

A critical stage has been reached, with the government-encouraged status quo showing up as disaster in the making, as much for Israel as for Palestine.

Jamalat Ghawi, a mother of four, told me from her place in the ad hoc tent across the street from her house, “I feel frustration and anger, and worry for my children. They dream of their house at night They are terrified. They have no idea where they are going.” Today, they are not alone.

Author: James Carroll

Muffled screams of Gaza

The recent Egyptian government’s decision to seal the few “tunnels of life” that allowed people of Gaza to bypass the on-going inhumane economic strangulation, its harassment and cruel treatment of the participants of Gaza Freedom March and the Viva Palestina humanitarian convoy earned it a prominent position in history’s page of shame. A page crowded by wealthy Arab nations who failed the Palestinian people and abandoned them at their most vulnerable time.

However, by no means should that sideline drama veil or in any way divert attention away from the root cause of the problem- the over six decades long oppression imposed upon the Palestinian people.

Truth be told: in that period, the state of Israel has occupied Palestine with iron fist; denying Palestinians the right to self-determination and coercing part of their “elite” to surrender into what seems like a condition of eternal subjugation. However, the gravest of all the Palestinian sufferings is embodied in the suffering of the people of Gaza as they endure a vicious economic strangulation unilaterally imposed by Israel . And despite world wide condemnation of that egregious draconian policy, Israel continues to operate with impunity devoid of any conscience.

In their 575 pages report released last September, the fact-finding mission on Israel ’s disproportionate use of force in Gaza appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission has confirmed the ugly truth that most of the Western media were inoculated to under report, or outright ignore.

The mission was led by Judge Richard Goldstone- former member of the South African Constitutional Court and former Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda . And while the report also blamed Hamas, it highlights that “there was strong evidence to establish that numerous serious violations of international law, both humanitarian law and human rights law, were committed by Israel during the military operations in Gaza…actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force.”

According to article 39 of the report, the Israeli forces have intentionally targeted and attacked Al Quds Hospital in and the adjacent ambulance depot in Gaza with white phosphorous shells- an internationally banned chemical substance that, among other things, instantaneously burns the human being into skeleton.

However, despite the condemning findings in the report; sadly, it too, has proven yet another exercise in futility. And, though the key recommendation of Goldstone was for the UN Security Council to pass a resolution mandating a credible investigation into the war crimes allegations by the International Criminal Court, no such action has been taken.

In reaction to the report, the US Congress-while succumbing to the “Israel Lobby”-has passed a non-binding resolution condemning the Goldstone Report. The resolution was intended to express unequivocal blind loyalty to Israel , and to pressure the Obama administration to use its veto power (as a permanent member of the Security Council) against any resolution that might expose Israel . Apparently, the strategy worked; and the report is now piling dust in the oblivion.

For whatever it’s worth, it is this kind of culture of impunity that, according to Goldstone, “emboldens Israel and her conviction of being untouchable.” However, this concern was immediately dismissed as anti-Semitic by the vocal blind loyalists and the supporters of oppressive Zionism. Never mind that Judge Goldstone is Jewish, and he is a supporter of Israel ’s right to exist.

Make no mistake, anti-Semitism is a real racist phenomenon; however, the politically motivated excessive use of the term to character assassinate and silence legitimate critics and peace and justice advocates such as former President Jimmy Carter and Archbishop Desmond Tutu simply defeats the purpose.

Meanwhile, though the Obama administration is showing signs of discomfort with the current Israeli government, the U.S. foreign policy toward Middle East is still driven by blind loyalty.

As the Obama administration tries to reduce the post 9/11tension between US and the Islamic world and rein in on the rapid growth of extremism, the Palestine issue remains an open sore that is festering in America ’s foreign policy. And, while the current administration has attempted to demonstrate its intention of becoming an honest broker by appointing a credible diplomat-former Senator George Mitchell-as the Middle East Envoy, Israel continues its belligerent oppression and expansionist policy by defiantly building new settlements.

Led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Israel is adamant to continue the ever-expanding land grab driven by illegal home demolitions and confiscations, daily dreadful human rights abuses at check points, random imprisonment and assassinations, suppression of independent media, and systematic ethnic-cleansing of Palestinians. This, needless to say, has frustrated the Obama administration whose out of the ordinary reaction to Netanyahu’s visit to the US has caused Israel a big embarrassment.

Not since 1990 when then Secretary of State, James Baker, sent a blunt (public) message to then Israeli Prime Minister, Ytsakh Shamir, telling him “call us when you are serious about peacetthe telephone number is 1-202-546-1414” has US leadership sent Israel a stern message that its actions are unacceptable.

And though this was not a decision to stop or even suspend the roughly $3 billion unrestricted aid given to Israel every year, it still turned many heads and galvanized the usual suspects to come after Obama with all sorts of accusations.

In an article intended to rally the troops against Obama, Jerusalem Post’s hawkish columnist, Caroline Glick, wrote “It isn’t every day that a visiting leader from a strategically vital US ally is brought into the White House in an unmarked van in the middle of the night rather than greeted like a friend at the front door; is forbidden to have his picture taken with the president; is forced to leave the White House alone, through a side exit…”.

However, at the end of the day, convincing Israel to do the right thing and to stop establishing new facts on the ground to further complicate an already complex political issue will require more than symbolism. And nothing substantive is likely to happen till the US modifies its one-sided Middle East policy. Meanwhile, Israel will continue business as usual. It might invade Gaza again. Some opinion makers in Israel are already boasting about how “Operation Cast Lead 2″ would look like with the use of “advanced Israeli-made Marakava 4 Tanks”.

Nothing equates to oppression more than the choice that an apathetic witness makes to not, at least, hate the cruelty that he or she witnessed in the mind and heart. And oppression is what Pharaoh and Hitler have done to the Jews and indeed what Israel does to the Palestinian people on a daily bases.

Author: Abukar Arman

(Abukar Arman is a writer who lives in Ohio . His articles and analysis are widely published. Abukar Arman is a writer who lives in Ohio . His articles and analysis are widely published. Source: Just Commertary)

An odyssey for justice

The recent actions of people from around the world in support of the Palestinian people in Gaza have arguably represented the closest manifestation of international solidarity since the International Brigades against fascism during the Spanish Civil War. A bold assertion?

Admittedly, I may not be as in tune with reality as I should be. Born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp where most refugees felt that no one cared about their plight, it was easy to believe that nothing could possibly break away from the ever tenuous and redundant stances by Arab and other countries - whose acts of solidarity went no further than hollow words of condemnation.

The recent noble stances by activists from all over the world therefore seem like an unprecedented act of solidarity which, dare I believe, indicates the direct mass involvement of civil society as a real party in the ongoing Palestinian struggle for political and human rights.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), when various European powers were turning blind eye to the atrocities committed in Spain, almost 40,000 men and women, representing 52 countries, made the decision to fight fascism. The global consciousness culminating in such a direct, unprecedented action was absolutely baffling considering the lack of powerful communication technology available at the time.

“How pertinent these words are, as one reads with anxiousness, pride and exhilaration the notes and messages that have come in from Cairo, El Arish and Gaza “The 2,800 American volunteers included a black man - Canute Frankson - who was a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He wrote to a friend from Madrid in 1937: “Why am I, a Negro who have fought through these years for the rights of my people, here in Spain today?

Because we are no longer an isolated minority group fighting hopelessly against an immense giant. Because t we have joined with, and become an active part of, a great progressive force, on whose shoulders rest the responsibility of saving human civilization from the planned destruction of a small group of degenerates t Because if we crush fascism here we’ll save our people in America, and in other parts of the world from the vicious persecution, wholesale imprisonment, and slaughter which the Jewish people suffered and are suffering under Hitler’s fascist heels.”

How pertinent these words are, as one reads with anxiousness, pride and exhilaration the notes and messages that have come in from Cairo, El Arish and Gaza. They convey the support of countless people, who have demonstrated with blood and tears their commitment to humanity in Palestine, and indeed everywhere.

The Gaza Freedom March, a coalition of several groups, consisted of 1,362 activists from more than 40 countries who were on a mission to cross to Gaza and, along with Israeli, Palestinian and international peace activists, to march simultaneously to the Israeli Erez checkpoint. That border point, along with a few others, has completely cut off Palestinians in Gaza from the outside world, leaving 1.5 million people in a frightening state of siege. Gaza has been embroiled in the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe for years due to the Palestinian people’s exercise of their democratic rights.

The people of Gaza have endured one-sided wars, and have been left to exist in a state of near starvation.

The valiant peace warriors of Viva Palestina have truly set new standards for how far a peace and justice activist is willing to go to back up his/her words with actions.

Many millions around the world watched - despite the mainstream media’s shameless disregard of the unfolding drama - as nearly 500 activists and their 200 vehicles, laden with badly needed medical supplies for besieged Gaza, took off on a historic odyssey to break the siege. Just as they neared Gaza, they were forced by the Egyptian government to backtrack due to a technicality, and then began an arduous journey across the desert and sea and several countries.

And as they approached Gaza again, in the Egyptian port of El Arish, they were blocked and dozens were left injured.

The Gaza Freedom March was similarly met with intimidation, assaults and violence.

These are not Palestinians, but internationals. From Malaysia to South Africa, from the UK to the U.S., men, women, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, people of different cultural and political backgrounds showed themselves as unified in their belief in justice and human rights.

While Palestine has always enjoyed universal solidarity, with many fearless activists - who can forget Rachel Corrie? - a collective action of this magnitude and of this level of commitment is a new addition to a conflict that has been reduced over time to that of beleaguered Palestinians and a militarily powerful Israel.

The Gaza Freedom March, Viva Palestina, the Free Gaza Movement, and others are redefining the conventional discourse pertaining to the Middle East’s most intricate and protracted conflict.

Civil society is not a group of NGOs to be strategically funded and manipulated by Western governments, but encompasses powerful, self-assured and truly representative communities from all over the world; people can be united beyond religion and ideology, and collectively cross continents, seas and deserts to put their beliefs into action.

The activists’ ability to overcome the shameful silence of the mainstream media also highlights the importance of alternative media as the single most important tool in achieving camaraderie. “Throughout the Gaza Freedom March presence in Cairo, our brothers and sisters from the South African delegation dynamically articulated the connections between injuries that indigenous Africans suffered under the white supremacist regime in Pretoria and the inequalities that Palestinians now face at the hands of the Israeli government,” wrote Joshua Brollier, a co-coordinator for Voices For Creative Non-Violence, in the Palestine Chronicle.

Many heroes and heroines emerged from the activists’ action-packed journey to Gaza. Hedy Epstein, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor whose parents both perished in Auschwitz, deserves a special mention. She went on a hunger strike when she, along with many others were blocked from entering Gaza. Epstein didn’t stand in solidarity with the Palestinians despite the Holocaust, but because of the Holocaust. Similarly many activists drew their solidarity from their specific experiences and have fought for democracy and justice back at home.

Maybe I am in tune with reality after all. Maybe the words and actions of our African America hero Canute Frankson weren’t in vain. Maybe the quest for justice can in fact cross all physical and psychological boundaries. One thing is for sure, though. Gaza is not alone; in fact, it never was.

Author: Ramzy Baroud

Palestine: A turning point?

One day before the first anniversary of the barbaric Israeli assault on Gaza that massacred 1434 Palestinians, the Israeli armed forces killed six Palestinians in two separate incidents in Gaza and the West Bank.

The 1.5 million people of Gaza continue to be under one of the most inhuman, unjust sieges in recent times — a siege that began eighteen months before the assault on Gaza on 27 December 2008. From all accounts, everyday is a struggle to survive; the most basic necessities of life are not readily available to the vast majority of the populace.

This Israeli imposed blockade will now be tightened through the construction of a bombproof steel wall by the Egyptian authorities along the Gaza border. The wall, demanded by Israel, is being built with the assistance of US money and the US Army Corps of Engineers.

The situation in the West Bank is also grim. The multitude of checkpoints remains. For all intents and purposes, Israeli settlements are expanding and the Wall that attempts to separate Israeli settlements and West Bank aquifers from the Palestinians is as formidable as ever.

To make matters worse, Fatah, in charge of the West Bank, and Hamas, dominant over Gaza, are still at loggerheads.

If there is a silver lining, it comes in the form of the systematic expose of Israeli inhumanity and the injustices perpetrated against the Palestinians contained in two highly regarded reports presented to the UN in the course of the last nine months. In March 2009, Richard Falk, the UN’s Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories described Israel’s Gaza assault as ” a war crime of the greatest magnitude under international law,” in a report to the UN Human Rights Council. Richard Goldstone who headed a UN fact-finding mission to Gaza criticized Israel’s collective punishment of the people of Gaza during the 22-day assault in his September report.

Though the UN General Assembly endorsed the Goldstone Report, there has been no action against Israel at the international level. The reason is obvious. The United States government and its European allies are determined to ensure that the Israeli government will never be in the dock. Other powers with some clout, obsessed as they are with their own interests, are not prepared to stick their neck out for the Palestinian cause. Most Arab and Muslim governments — rhetoric and UN votes aside— are afraid to antagonize the US partly because they are so dependent upon the latter for their political survival or their economic well-being.

This is why at the end of the day we have to rely upon elements within global citizenry to carry the Palestinian cause forward. After Gaza, groups such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Oxfam and Amnesty International have become much more vocal in their condemnation of Israel’s ruthless behavior in occupied Palestine. Individual journalists have also adopted a principled position in articulating the rights of the Palestinians. Malaysia’s Shahanaaz Habib is one such journalist.

In Britain, the Sussex University Students’ Union has voted to boycott Israeli goods. This is part of the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign directed at forcing Israel to end the occupation of Palestine. It is the first time that a student body in Britain has made such a move.

Even in Israel, groups like Physicians for Human Rights and Breaking the Silence, comprising veteran Israeli soldiers, have accused their government of violating international law and transgressing the Geneva Conventions in the Gaza assault.

However, the most significant citizens’ initiatives since Gaza have come from the Gaza Freedom March (GFM) and the Viva Palestina convoy to Gaza. The first comprising 1400 individuals from more than 40 countries plans to march to the Erez border-crossing between Israel and Gaza to demand an end to the siege. The second made up of 220 vehicles hopes to deliver ambulances, food, medicines and other supplies to the people of Gaza. Two brave, young Malaysians, Juana Jaafar and Ram Kathigesu, are part of the convoy. In both instances, the Egyptian government is proving to be a hurdle.

Whether the two initiatives succeed or not, they may emerge as a critical turning point in the Palestinian struggle for liberation. They may set into motion an array of other moves aimed at mobilizing and galvanizing the people of the world behind one of the noblest causes of our time.

Author: Chandra Muzaffar

Palestine Federation? Why not?

I recall my last conversation with Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound a few weeks before his death. It was he who brought up the idea of a threefold federation - Israel, Palestine and Jordan. “And perhaps Lebanon, too. Why not?” Lately, the term “federation” has come into fashion again. Some people believe that it can serve as a kind of compromise between the “two-state solution”, now a worldwide consensus, and the “one-state solution” that is popular in some radical circles. “Federation” sounds like a miracle: There will be both “two states for two peoples” and a single entity. Two in one, one in two.

The word “federation” does not frighten me. On the contrary, I was already using it in this context 52 years ago. On June 2, 1957, my magazine, Haolam Hazeh, published the first detailed plan for an independent Palestinian state that would come into being next to Israel. The West Bank was then under Jordanian and the Gaza Strip under Egyptian occupation. I proposed helping the Palestinians to get rid of the occupiers. According to the plan, the two states, the Israeli and the Palestinian, would then establish a federation. I thought that its proper name should be “the Jordan Union”.

A year later, on Sept. 1, 1958, there appeared a document called “the Hebrew Manifesto”. I am proud of my part in its composition. It was a comprehensive plan for a fundamental change of the State of Israel in all its aspects - a kind of complete overhaul. Among its authors were Nathan Yellin-Mor, the ex-chief of the Stern Group, Boaz Evron, Amos Kenan and several others.

I was responsible for the chapter on Israeli-Arab peace. It proposed that a sovereign Palestinian state would be set up next to Israel, and that the two states would establish a federation, which would gradually assume more and more jurisdiction. On the morrow of the Six-Day War, after which the entire country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan was under the control of the Israeli Army, a new political movement called “Israel-Palestine Federation” called for the immediate creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. The founders were, more or less, the same people who had composed the “Hebrew Manifesto”.

When this historic opportunity was missed and with the occupation becoming gradually more and more oppressive, I abandoned the use of the term federation. I sensed that it frightened both parties.

It should be remembered that the original partition plan adopted by the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, did envision a kind of federation, without using the term. It provided for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state, and a separate entity of Jerusalem, administered by the UN. All these entities were to be parts of an economic union that would cover customs, the currency, railways, post, ports, airports and more. This would have, in practice, amounted to a federation.

Basically, a federation is a pact between different states, which decide to unite on agreed terms. The United States is, theoretically, a voluntary association of states. The states have many rights, but the federation is headed by a single president with immense powers. In practice, this is one state. Russia, too, is officially a federation, but its use of the term has a very different content. Moscow appoints the governors of the provinces, and Vladimir Putin rules the country as a personal fief. When Chechnya tried to secede from the “Russian Federation”, it was crushed even more brutally than the confederacy in the American Civil War.

Germany defines itself as a “federal republic (”Bundesrepublik”). It is composed of “L?nder” that enjoy a large measure of autonomy. Switzerland calls itself a confederation in French and Italian (”Eidgenossenschaft” or “Oath Association” in German) and its cantons enjoy their autonomy. But it is also a very unified country.

It is generally supposed that a “federation” is a tighter association, while a “confederacy” is a looser one. But in reality, these differences are very blurred. It seems that Americans and Russians, Germans and Swiss, identify themselves first of all with their united state, not with their own particular province. (Except for the Bavarians, of course.)

THE new Europe is for all practical purposes a confederacy, but its founders did not name it thus. They chose the less definite “European Union”. Why? Perhaps they thought that terms like “federation” and “confederacy” were outdated. Perhaps they considered such terms too binding.

It makes no sense, therefore, to discuss the idea of an Israeli-Palestinian “federation” in general terms, without defining right from the beginning what is meant by this. I recently saw a plan for a federation here in which every person would have the right to settle anywhere in either state while holding the citizenship of one of them. I can hardly imagine that many Israelis or Palestinians would embrace that. The Israelis would be afraid that the Arabs would soon constitute the majority within Israel, and the Palestinians would worry that Israeli settlers would take possession of every hilltop between the sea and the Jordan.

In any discussion of federation, the matter of immigration looms large as an ominous bone of contention. Would millions of Palestinian refugees be allowed to return to Israeli territory? Would millions of Jewish immigrants be allowed to submerge the State of Palestine? The same is true for the matter of residence. Could a citizen of Palestine settle in Haifa? Each one of us who considers the idea of federation must decide what he or she wants. In practice, a federation can come about only on the basis of a free agreement between the two parties. This means that it can be realized only if both - Israelis and Palestinians - consider it as advantageous to themselves and compatible with their national aspirations. In my opinion, a practical way to realize the idea could look like this:

Stage 1: A sovereign Palestinian state must come into being. The occupation must end and Israel must withdraw to the Green Line (with possible mutually agreed swaps of territory.) That goes for Jerusalem, too.

Stage 2: The two states establish a pattern of fair relations between them and get used to living side by side. There will be a need for real steps toward reconciliation and the healing of the wounds of the past.

Stage 3: The two states start negotiations for the establishment of joint institutions. For example: the opening of the border between them for the free movement of people and goods, an economic union, a joint currency, a customs envelope, the use of ports and airports, coordination of foreign relations, and so on. There will be no automatic right for citizens of one state to settle in the other. Each state will decide for itself on its immigration policy. The two parties can jointly decide whether to invite Jordan as a third partner to the proposed treaty. Such a negotiation can succeed only if the population in each of the partner states is convinced that the partnership will bring it positive benefits. Since Israel is the stronger economically and technologically, it must be ready to make generous proposals.

Stage 4: The more trust between the parties develops, the easier it will be to deepen the partnership and to widen the powers of the joint institutions.

Perhaps, at this stage, conditions may be ripe for the founding of a wider association of the entire region, on the lines of the European Union. Such an association may include the Arab states, Israel, Turkey and Iran. This is a vision for the future, and it can be realized. To paraphrase Barack Obama’s slogan, even if it has lost some of its luster: Yes, we can!

Author: Uri Avnery
(Source: Arab News. Uri Avnery can be contacted at avnery@actcom.co.il )