Israel's truths, and omissions, on Palestine state vote

"Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years,” Ayalon said. “Jerusalem is mentioned in our Judeo-Christian Bible 700 times, and not one single time in the Quran."

If the U.N. General Assembly votes for a resolution supporting the general concept of creating a Palestinian state, so that Palestinians can have their much-deserved homeland, it should be supported by everybody. But if it doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and includes the Palestinian demands for “the right of return” of refugees, it will amount to supporting the slow-motion destruction of the state of Israel, and should not be supported by any country.

Jewish religious mythologies and Zionist chauvinism (as well as Christianist Zionist theology for that matter) do not justify the discrimination against and oppression of the Palestinian people.

Israel has demonstrated it's opposition to a Palestine State by not honestly negotiating with the Palestine government.

Yet they insist that negotiation is the only method acceptable. That assures Israel will never agree to a Palestine state.

The other part of the Palestine government problem is that there are really two governments in Palestine. One desiring to negotiate with Israel and the other blocking every attempt. Both parties are guilty, but Israel is guilty of stealing Palistine land with their policies to rid "their land" of all Muslims.

Just as the White South Africans established Apartheid having racial separation, domination in domestic politics, and great restrictions. It's time the United States admits Israel's Apartheid intent. ---BBB

September 19, 2011
Commentary: Israel's truths, and omissions, on Palestine state vote
By Andres Oppenheimer | The Miami Herald

Now that most Latin American and Caribbean countries have announced that they will join Islamic nations in voting for the creation of a Palestine state along the 1967 borders at the United Nations General Assembly later this month, the proposed motion is almost certain to pass by a comfortable majority of at least 120 votes.

With the exception of Mexico, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala, whose votes have not yet been announced, Latin American countries — led by Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela — have come out strongly in support of the Palestinian motion.

So what’s wrong with the U.N. voting for creation of a Palestinian state, I asked Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in a recent interview.

Ayalon responded that creation of a Palestinian state should be the result of negotiations between Israel and Palestinians, and not imposed by the outside world. That’s the way South Sudan was created recently, and the way former Soviet states were created in the 1990’s: first reaching agreements with their neighbors, then going to the United Nations for recognition, he said.

“The only solution can come through negotiations between the two parties,” Ayalon said. “You cannot turn things on its head.”

Palestinian leaders say they have no alternative because Israel is not willing to negotiate, I noted. Furthermore, they argue that getting a U.N. resolution does preclude them negotiating later, I added.

“It’s an oxmymoron,” Ayalon responded. “It’s a resolution that they will dictate because they have an automatic majority at the U.N. It will set the terms (of the issues in dispute) according to their own capricious wills. It will lock the Palestinians into an intransigent position, and they will not negotiate.”

But what other option do they have, if Israel doesn’t make concessions? I asked.

“We have been doing a lot, and we are willing to do more,” he said, citing the fact that since negotiations started in 1992, Israel helped create the Palestinian Authority, supported it economically, and returned 42 percent of the West Bank, and 100 percent of the Gaza strip.“Everybody is asking what Israel is willing to do, but nobody is asking what the Palestinians are willing to do.”

What should they do? I asked.

“They should give up what they call ‘the right of return’ of Palestinian refugees to Israel. Refugees should go back to their own state. Why are we creating for the first time in history a Palestinian state? So they have a state for the Palestinians,” he responded.

Second, Palestinians should reach an agreement with Israel on borders so that Israel is not attacked anymore, he said. Third, the two sides should reach an agreement on Jerusalem, he said.

“Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years,” Ayalon said. “Jerusalem is mentioned in our Judeo-Christian Bible 700 times, and not one single time in the Quran.”

I suggested to Ayalon that a U.N. General Assembly resolution would be largely symbolic, because only U.N. Security Council resolutions are binding, and the Obama administration has already said it would veto it at the Council. So what’s the big deal? I asked.

“The big deal is that by bridging agreements — the Oslo agreements — that we will not go to the United Nations, but solve our problems through bilateral negotiations, they are choosing conflict and friction over cooperation and negotiation,” Ayalon said.

My Opinion: Ayalon conveniently plays down the fact that Israel’s hard-line government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making negotiations harder by continuing to expand settlements in Arab territories.

Quoting Israel Deputy Foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, Andres Oppenheimer wrote:

Quote:

"Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years,” Ayalon said. “Jerusalem is mentioned in our Judeo-Christian Bible 700 times, and not one single time in the Quran."

Jewish religious mythologies and Zionist chauvinism (as well as Christianist Zionist theology for that matter)

Israel has demonstrated it's opposition to a Palestine State by not honestly negotiating with the Palestine government. Yet they insist that negotiation is the only method acceptable. That assures Israel will never agree to a Palestine state. ...

Israel has demonstrated it's opposition to a Palestine State by not honestly negotiating with the Palestine government. ..

Los Angeles Times Commentary:
By Reza Aslan
September 15, 2011

Later this month, the Palestinian Authority intends to go before the United Nations to request recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Although there is strong backing for the bid, the United States, in the name of supporting Israel, has stated its willingness to use its Security Council veto power to keep the Palestinians from joining the U.N. as a full voting member. The U.S. has also refused to join in a more symbolic General Assembly vote that could change the Palestinians' status from a "nonvoting observer entity" to a "nonvoting observer state."

Here are five reasons why the U.S. should support the Palestinian bid and not exercise its veto at the U.N.

Negotiations have failed.

Two decades of negotiations have not brought the Palestinians a state of their own. Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the current impasse.

But the question of who is at fault is irrelevant.

What matters is that in 1993, when the Oslo accords set up a framework for a negotiated settlement for a two-state solution, there were a little more than 100,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. Now that number stands at more than 300,000. According to the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem, about half a million Israelis now live "over the Green Line" in what is designated as the future Palestinian state. Every day the Palestinians wait for a negotiated state, another sliver of that state is absorbed into Israel. A few more years and practically nothing will remain.

The current Likud-led Israeli government is unlikely to ever agree to a sovereign Palestinian state.

A decade ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, vying for Likud Party leadership, made his position clear in a speech to the group's central committee: "My friends," he said in 2002, " we must present the situation in the clearest possible way: We won't lend a hand to the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.... We must vote as one in favor of the draft resolution against a Palestinian state."

It is true that seven years later, under intense pressure from the Obama administration, Netanyahu, as Israeli prime minister, grudgingly accepted the notion of a Palestinian state in principle. But the unprecedented conditions he called for — that it have no military, no control over its borders, no capital in East Jerusalem, no right of return for Palestinian refugees and that it recognize Israel as a "Jewish state" — seemed deliberately designed to negate the possibility of true Palestinian sovereignty.

Even if Netanyahu were to begin pushing for a Palestinian state, it is highly unlikely that his ultra-right-wing coalition would allow him to succeed. Indeed, immediately after Netanyahu's 2009 speech, powerful members of his party demanded that he retract his statement entertaining the possibility of a Palestinian state. As one of Likud's most influential Knesset members, Danny Danon, vowed: "I will attempt to cause this sentence, which was said under American pressure, never to come into being."

President Obama has utterly failed to advance the Middle East peace process.

Obama came into office vowing a more active and evenhanded approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Yet beyond a few lofty speeches about Palestinian suffering, he has offered no substantive policy shifts or specific proposals for moving negotiations forward. Obama's attempt to temporarily stop Israel from building settlements in the occupied territories backfired when he caved in to Israeli intransigence.

The administration then had the nerve to veto a nonbinding U.N. resolution condemning the very settlements Obama himself had condemned. The president's barely newsworthy suggestion that negotiations for a two-state solution be based on the 1967 borders with land swaps (which, as the basis for the Oslo accords, has been the principle advanced, if not publicly announced, by every U.S. president since Jimmy Carter) was ridiculed by the Israeli prime minister, and in the Capitol building, no less. The president's kowtowing to Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing has made the U.S. look weak on the global stage. If for no other reason than to prove to the world that the U.S. is not Israel's lap dog, the president should refrain from vetoing a Palestinian state.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not political suicide to defy the will of Israel.

There is no doubt that American public opinion remains overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But polls show that the majority of Americans believe the U.S. should not favor one side over the other in the conflict. Among thoughtful leaders in the media, military and foreign affairs, there has been a consensus that our policy toward Israel is severely damaging America's interests and image around the world. According to a 2008 J Street poll, 78% of American Jews said they supported a two-state solution and 81% wanted the U.S. to pressure both sides to end the conflict.

Of course, the Republicans will try to paint Obama and the Democrats as "anti-Israel" if the president fails to veto the U.N. vote. But this has been a consistent strategy on the part of the GOP for years, and it has always failed. In any case, the same J Street poll found that only 8% of Jews cite Israel as an issue in deciding whom to vote for for president.

Palestinians are doing almost exactly what Israelis did 60 years ago.

Israel maintains that the Palestinians cannot declare statehood and seal it through the U.N. Yet the Palestinians are merely following the trail blazed by Israel six decades ago. In 1948, after the U.N. voted for the partition of Palestine, debate among the world powers about how to divide the land dragged on and violence between Jews and Arabs grew worse. The Jewish Agency simply preempted negotiations and unilaterally declared the state of Israel; the United States immediately recognized it, and the U.N. accepted Israeli sovereignty the following year.

The Palestinian Authority has come to the same conclusion that the Jews apparently came to in 1948: Negotiations will not lead to an independent state; the only way forward is unilateral action. By rejecting that strategy outright, Israel is not only being hypocritical; it is invalidating its own existence as a state.

There is one more reason to support the Palestinians' bid at the United Nations. It is the moral thing to do. During his first presidential campaign, Obama said, "Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people." Now, he has the opportunity to live up to his own beliefs and promises, and to provide the Palestinian people with the same sense of dignity that Harry Truman gave Israel 60 years ago.

Reza Aslan is the founder of AslanMedia.com and the author of "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam."

But, one can't sneeze at 60 million Christian Zionist votes.

Israel is at it again, yet they insist they are trying to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians. Shame on Netanyahu's lies. ---BBB