Juan Cole on Palestinian statelessness and Obama's possible initiative

i'm trying not to feel encouraged because, when i do, it's usually a set-up for massive disappointment...

however, i'll let juan cole tell it...

King Abdullah II of Jordan revealed to the Times of London that the Obama administration may attempt a comprehensive peace treaty between Israel and the entire Muslim world. The latter would recognize Israel and grant El Al overflight rights. Israel in return would have to freeze settlement activity and move smartly toward a two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state, with Israeli settlers removed from the West Bank. The status of Jerusalem would be left for later negotiations.

Abdullah warned that if rapid progress is not made, another war will probably break out in the region within 18 months to two years.

In my view, the central problems in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are the statelessness of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and in their diaspora, the continued military occupation or blockade by the Israelis, and the rapid expansion of Israeli colonies, which are usurping Palestinian land and rights.

Until the statelessness of the Palestinians is understood and seen as the central problem that it is, there can be no real progress on the issues. Statelessness was an attribute of slaves in premodern times. The Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s were the primary victims of the crime of stripping people of their citizenship in a state. It is monstrous that Palestinians should be stateless all these decades after 1948. Make no mistake; it is Israel that deprived them of statehood, which the 1939 British White Paper pledged to them, and which other League of Nations Mandates, such as French Syria and Lebanon and British Iraq, achieved.

A stateless person ultimately has no rights, since it is states that guarantee rights. A stateless person may be robbed, raped, and sometimes even killed with impunity. Stateless children are often deprived of schooling. Since the property of the stateless is ambiguous with regard to its legal status, the stateless are at risk for extreme poverty. The contemporary world is a world of states, and falling between the cracks because you lack citizenship in any state is a guarantee of marginality and oppression.

Apologists try to shift the blame for Palestinian statelessness from Israel to someone else. But it won't work. The original tort of derailing Palestinian independence was Israel's, and Israel has been the main force preventing the declaration of a Palestinian state, so it is Israel that must step up here. Other countries cannot be expected to solve a problem created by the Israelis, nor do most of the countries in the region have the economic efflorescence or governmental stability to do so.

It seems obvious what needs to be done to end Palestinian statelessness. If a Palestinian state isn't created in short order, the world is in for decades of Apartheid and political decay and consequent trouble, including terrorism and further wars. At the end of this process likely Israel will be forced to absorb the Palestinians as its own citizens, i.e. you end up with a one-state solution. The reason that there is more talk about the latter now is that it does at least resolve the central problem, of Palestinian statelessness, a problem that cannot be solved in any other way once a Palestinian state is forestalled by the massive Israeli colonization of the West Bank. (Actually I should say "Israeli and American," since a third of the Israeli squatters in the West Bank are Americans).

If Obama really is making this push for a comprehensive settlement, it is an enormous undertaking and its success is by no means assured (to say the least). He will have to be tough with Netanyahu and Lieberman, who will try to sabotage any such move. At least, the Obama administration is demonstrating some independence, and is no longer doing extensive advance briefings for Israeli officials on US diplomacy in the region.

looks like maybe even the pope, despicable individual that he is, may be getting in on the act...

Pope Benedict XVI called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland immediately after he arrived in Israel Monday, a stance that could put him at odds with his hosts on a trip aimed at easing strains between the Vatican and Jews.

guess we'll have to wait and see or, as they say here in argentina, nos vemos...

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Bush has divided the Palestinian people into two governments

george looks to re-start the middle east peace process... (seems to me iraq could benefit from having one in the first place...)

President Bush launched a diplomatic effort yesterday to revive the long-moribund Middle East peace process, announcing aid to the Palestinian government and calling for an international conference this fall aimed at paving the way for the creation of a Palestinian state side by side with Israel.

Five years after becoming the first president to fully embrace a "two-state solution," Bush acknowledged that it remains distant after violent clashes that have politically sundered the Palestinian territories. But Bush called this a "moment of choice" for the region and renewed his commitment heading into his final 18 months in office.

"Recent days have brought a chapter of upheaval and uncertainty in the Middle East," Bush said in a speech in the main foyer of the White House. "But the story does not have to end that way. . . . In the face of terror and cynicism and anger, we stand on the side of peace in the Holy Land."

now, for a slightly different take on bush's "revived" approach...

The President continued to base his policy on deepening the division among Palestinians, on pre-conditions to a two-state solution, and on an unwillingness to outline his own parameters for an Israeli-Palestinian endgame deal. Even the $190 million dollars of money pledged to the new PA government is mostly a repackaging of old commitments.

In most respects today was a rehash of his speech five years ago, albeit under less propitious circumstances. That speech encouraged a regime change that eventually (and one imagines inadvertently) brought Hamas to power -- the new speech may well drive Palestinian politics towards a period of even greater chaos that could create a space for al-Qaeda look-a-likes to gain a foothold.

The President continued to mistakenly conflate Hamas with al-Qaeda and the Taliban and, in so doing, almost guarantees the failure of his approach. In Iraq American policy is belatedly focusing on internal political reconciliation, but in Palestine it is still, sadly, all about deepening divisions.

and still ANOTHER take... (as a side note, i think it's highly debatable that internal political reconciliation has become a focus in iraq... that may be the official verbiage, but bush administration actions don't support it in any way...)

Israeli officials welcomed Bush's conference plan yesterday, but Hamas mocked the notion. "The promise to form a Palestinian state is old," said Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, according to the Associated Press. "It will not be implemented. The opposite, instead, has happened. Instead of two states, he has divided our people into two governments."

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