There is something I would like to say about this news, but at the moment I just express my anticipation that this step will be another starting points of confusion and turmoil in the Middle East in the immediate future. Israel is not isolated. The media and leftists in the Catholic communities might be somewhat isolated in observing the grassroots level of the world. (Lily)
AsiaNews.it （http://www.asianews.it）
(1) UN Palestinian seat and Western hypocrisy, 21 September 2011
by Bernardo Cervellera
The United States, Israel and Europe are trying frantically to stop Abbas from asking the United General Assembly to recognise a Palestinian state on 23 September. Instead, threats to cut aid to the Palestinians could cause demonstrations and clashes in the territories. Following the failure of peace talks because of the ever-increasing land grab by Israeli settlers, a UN seat for Palestine is the best guarantee for peace.
Rome (AsiaNews) – On 23 September, the chairman of the Organisation for the Liberation of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas, will present to the General Assembly of the United Nations a request that Palestine be recognised as a state and a member of the United Nations “within the borders of 1967”.
The idea was launched about a year ago and received the backing of almost 130 nations. For at least a year, Israeli ambassadors around the world have tried unsuccessfully to stop this attempt, which in their view threatens the peace of the region and Israeli-Palestinian talks, deadlocked since last year because of new and expanding Israeli settlement activity in the Occupied Territories.
After wavering and hesitating, even the United States has tried to stop by all means the Palestinian attempt. Washington has already said that it would veto Abbas’ request in the Security Council. In such case, the Palestinians are prepared to go directly to the General Assembly to ask at least for a seat as an “observer” with the right to be represented in the various UN organisations. In this case, victory is almost certain.
To head off this possibility, Barack Obama is meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and (perhaps) Mahmoud Abbas to get the latter to abandon his proposal in exchange for renewed bilateral talks. However, the odds are against it because the Netanyahu administration relies on the support of Avigdor Lieberman’s extremist party, which opposes stopping settlements and has promised instead to accelerate them.
The United States and Israel are prepared to use the economic tool as well. US congressmen have called on Obama to block aid to the Palestinians if Abbas puts forward his request. Israel has said that it would no longer transfer taxes owed to Palestinians.
Under the Oslo Accords (1993), Israel is required to transfer to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) taxes collected from goods that move through Israeli ports and airports. These funds, about US$ 1 billion, constitute nearly two thirds of the PNA annual budget.
Without these funds, the PNA could not pay the salaries of its officials and police and could not finance urban and road development in the Territories.
In Israel and the Arab world, most doubt the sanity of cutting funds. If Palestinians see their means of survival blocked by Israel, many might be pushed to launch mass demonstrations and protests along the lines of what occurred during the Arab spring.
It is truly impressive how, through their diplomatic initiative, the Palestinian leadership have managed to grab the headlines, and stay in the headlines for quite a long time, even on days overfilled with other urgent international and national news, such as, for example, the financial crisis in Greece, with its potential effects on the Euro and the European Union.
It is especially amusing to see the panic that has overcome so much of the West at the sight of the Palestinians, not taking up arms, but doing exactly what they have always been advised to do, seek their freedom by peaceful, diplomatic means!
It is almost impossible to understand the anxiety that has overtaken several Western governments in the face of the Palestinian initiative, and even more so the threats from Israel and the US to "punish" them for something as peaceful as approaching the United Nations and lodging a request there. Well, it is after all a request only. Governments that agree with it may vote in favour, while those that disagree can vote against. What is so terrible about making a request and putting it to a vote?
The only possible answer is that a Palestinian request for recognition of Statehood by the UN, with or without admission to full membership of the Organisation, puts the West to a test that key countries are desperately trying to avoid, i.e. whether there is any substance, any credibility to their assurances that they are in favour of "ending the occupation that began in 1967", in the words of then US President George W. Bush.
It is revealing that so much reporting of the frantic diplomatic activity of recent days speaks of a "search for a formula" that would persuade the Palestinian leadership to give up its announced request to the UN. What the Palestinians have been saying though, is that the time for "formulas" is over.
It is twenty years since they joined the Madrid Peace Conference, and eighteen years since, on 13 September 1993, they signed the Declaration of Principles, the "Oslo Agreement", of mutual recognition between the Palestinian and Israeli nations.
Yet all throughout this period, they have been seeing their lands, within the territory occupied by Israel in 1967, increasingly taken over by Israeli settlers, literally every day the available area—and water—is being "consumed", taken over, by the settlements, all under the cover of the "peace process".
US President Obama, near the beginning of his term in office, publicly demanded that Israel halt its settlement activities, only to back down later. How is it possible, the Palestinian leadership ask, to negotiate the future of a territory, while the other side, the occupying power, is settling more and more elements of its own population on that territory?
Being a recognised State, under the protection of the U.N. Charter, will give the Palestinians stronger protections against that gobbling up of their land and water and help to induce Israel to cease and desist.
It will also make it possible for the Palestinians to negotiate a peace treaty with Israel—the whole purpose of the exercise, as President Abbas emphasises, on a basis of equal dignity and equal rights with the State of Israel, which they have long ago recognised, on its own recognised territory.
(2) As some Israelis come out in favour of UN Palestine resolution, the Netanyahu govt threatens retaliation, 29 November 2012
by Joshua Lapide
The UN General Assembly is expected to vote at 6 pm (EDT). At least 60 Israeli peace groups plan to celebrate the event in Tel Aviv. For Netanyahu and Lieberman, the UN vote "lacks all significance." They threaten to cancel the Oslo Accords, stop transferring tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority and ban Palestinian workers from Israel. For Uri Avneri, an independent Palestinian state "would open to the State of Israel the gateway to a life of peace with its neighbors and to integration in the region".
Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) -The Israeli government is downplaying the UN vote on Palestine, expected tonight at 6 pm (EDT). However, many Israelis believe the process leading to peace between the two peoples has finally begun. More than 60 Israeli peace groups have organised a rally in Tel Aviv to coincide with the vote to celebrate the event.
The General Assembly of the United Nations is waiting to hear Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas speak at 3 pm (EDT). He is expected to ask the international community to raise Palestinian status from that of observer to non-state member within the pre-1967 (Israeli occupation) boundaries. His request is expected to sail through easily with the Palestinian Authority (PA) tallying 150 votes out of 193.
According to Abbas, official recognition would facilitate bilateral relations with Israel. Talks are expected to resume shortly after a two-year stalemate caused by Israel's unilateral settlement action in the Occupied Territories in violation of the Oslo Accords and international law.
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman appear isolated. In the past few weeks, they have tried a diplomatic counter-offensive to stop the Palestinian move, which, in their opinion, would hinder the peace process.
Some Israeli officials are now saying that the resolution "lacks all significance; only the Security Council can establish a real country."
Last year, the Palestinian president had tried to have Palestine recognised by the Security Council but was thwarted by a US veto.
Israeli government officials are now saying that the PA move at the United Nations is only an attempt to distract Palestinian public opinion from its own failures and high levels of corruption.
Moreover, they believe the Palestinian request violates the Oslo Accords, that the two-state solution can only be achieved through negotiations. "This is a completely unilateral move and it crosses a red line," one Israeli official said.
Another Israeli source, who preferred to remain anonymous, told AsiaNews that Israel could retaliate. "We could refuse to recognise the Oslo Accords. Tomorrow we could stop transferring tax revenues to the PA (which Israel currently collects). We could ban thousands of Palestinian workers from Israel. This way, with so many people out of work and without money to pay public servants and police, what would Abu Mazen do? Going to the UN is a step to destroy the Palestinian dream." Abu Mazen is Mahmud Abbas's teknonym.
Not everyone is so pessimistic in Israel. For Uri Avneri, a former Israeli lawmaker, founder and activist of Gush Shalom (The Bloc of Peace), today's vote is also an opportunity for Israelis to celebrate.
Tonight, he will speak at rally organised by Israeli and Israel-Arab peace groups in front of Tel Aviv's Independence Hall on Rothschild Blvd, where Israel's Declaration of Independence was first announced 65 years ago.
"Ending the occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state is not only in the interest of the Palestinians," Avneri said. "It is in Israel's most vital interest. The Occupation is a heavy weight around Israel's neck, dragging us into the depths of brutality, extremism and racism and utterly corrupting our society. The frightening list of extreme right parliamentary candidates, with which registered members of the ruling Likud Party came up this week, is but one among many and fast multiplying examples."
"Liberating the Palestinians from the yoke of occupation will liberate the State of Israel from being an occupying and oppressive state; a Darkness Unto the Nations of which Jews abroad - especially the younger ones - feel ashamed and from which they increasingly turn away. Liberating the Palestinians from occupation and facilitating the establishment of their independent state would open to the State of Israel the gateway to a life of peace with its neighbors and to integration in the region where it is located."
"No longer an isolated enclave surrounded by fences and walls, but a neighbor and economic and political partner of Palestine and Jordan, Egypt and Syria and Lebanon and the other Arab and Muslim countries. It is possible, and it is vital to our future. The vote of the UN member states is a small, but crucial step towards building this future."
(3) Palestine is a non-member observer state at the United Nations, 30 November 2012
Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN Assembly to vote for the "birth certificate" of the Palestinian state. The resolution was passed with 138 votes in favor, 9 against, 41 abstentions. Israel is increasingly isolated in the international community. The possible recourse to the International Court against the illegal settlements; the possible retaliation of the Israeli government. Celebration in Ramallah and Bethlehem.
New York City (AsiaNews) - With 138 votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions, the General Assembly of the United Nations has accepted Palestine as non-member observer state. Until now it was only recognized as an observer through the Palestinian Authority (PA), represented by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Recognition as a non-member implies the recognition of the state within the 1967 borders, before the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In his appeal to the Assembly, Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president, said that "sixty-five years ago on this day [November 29], the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 181, which partitioned the land in historic Palestine in two States and became the birth certificate for Israel ... Today the General Assembly is called upon to issue the birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine." Abbas also said that the Palestinians' request comes from the desire for peace. "Enough," he added, "of aggression, settlements and occupation."
Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UN, liquidated the Palestinian request as empty "symbolism", adding that "no UN decision can break 4,000 year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel." He then said that his country is determined to seek peace, but "we won't establish another Iranian terror base in the heart of our country."
The same thought was expressed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, adding that the UN vote "won't change anything on the ground."
In fact, the overwhelming vote in favor of Palestine reveals a certain isolation of the Israeli government in the international community. The votes against the measure come from some old friends of Israel, the United States, Canada and a number of small entities such as Nauru, Palau, Panama, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. The proposal was also opposed by the Czech Republic, the only European country to vote against it.
Many European countries voted in favor, including Italy, Spain and France; Britain and Germany abstained.
The U.N. session was welcomed by festivities, fireworks and dancing in Ramallah, the seat of the PA, and in other Palestinian cities. In Bethlehem, Abbas's speech was projected on the wall that divides the city from Jewish Jerusalem.
Israel's fear is that with the increase of its status, Palestine can enter the International Court of Justice at the Hague and begin a series of trials against the occupation of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers. Israel, for its part, has already threatened to no longer recognize the Oslo Accords, to block the payment of taxes to the PA [currently, in the Occupied Territories, they are collected by Israel], and to block the entry of thousands of Palestinians that every day go to work in Israel.
U.S. lawmakers have repeatedly threatened the cancellation of aid for Palestinian refugees to international agencies that recognize Palestine as a state.
In his speech to the UN, Abbas did not mention the International Court, but Riyad al-Maliki, Palestinian Foreign Minister, told the press that if Israel continues to build illegal settlements, the Palestinians could also choose to defend itself this way.
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