Politically savvy ICC chief prosecutor Moreno Ocampo made Palestinian’s bid for the U.N. membership more difficult

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1061595

Palestinians could pursue war crimes charges without full statehood: ICC prosecutor

By Olivia Ward, Sep 28 2011

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says if Palestine becomese a non-member observer state at the UN, it could be eligible to pursue claims against Israel even without full statehood.

It’s that of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court — the body Israel has long feared would take up Palestinian allegations of war crimes if its statehood bid is successful.

A few blocks away from the UN this week, the man at the centre of the controversy said if Palestine becomes a member state, or a lower-ranked non-member observer state, it could be eligible to pursue claims against Israel.

Moreno-Ocampo has scrutinized the issue of the Palestinians’ claims for two years, since they filed a declaration giving jurisdiction to the court for acts committed on their territory.

Sources inside the 15-member (UNSC) council say it’s likely to be bogged down there, as the U.S. and other members of the Quartet mediating Middle East peace pressure the Palestinians to go back to the bargaining table with Israel.

Nor is it clear whether a newly admitted state could press claims on actions that happened before it gained its new status — such as the 2008-09 Gaza war in which more than 1,200 Palestinians and 13 Israelis died. (retrospective under art.11.(2) ?)

Dapper, determined and never at a loss for words, Argentine Moreno-Ocampo has fielded brickbats from all sides of the political spectrum, with accusations that he has impeded peace in Sudan by issuing an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Bashir, and that warrants for more than 20 other suspects have brought few results. He has been criticized for raising unrealistic expectations.

With just nine months to wind up his work, Moreno-Ocampo believes his legacy is in building the fledgling court.

http://opiniojuris.org/2011/09/29/the-tone-deaf-icc-prosecutor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opiniojurisfeed+%28Opinio+Juris%29

The Tone-Deaf ICC Prosecutor, by Kevin Jon Heller , Sep 29th, 2011

Moreno-Ocampo has always had the reputation of being more politically savvy than legally savvy.  Frankly, he seems completely politically tone-deaf to me.  Witness his recent comments on the implications of a possible UN General Assembly decision to give Palestine “observer state” status:

I am completely in favor of the General Assembly granting the Palestinians observer-state status, and there is no question that such a decision would strengthen the legal case for the OTP recognizing the Palestinians’ declaration accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction. 

But I cannot imagine why Moreno-Ocampo chose to offer his opinion on that issue now — just as debate over the Palestinian’s request for full membership in the UN is getting underway. 

After all, Israel and the U.S. have made clear that fear of an ICC investigation of the situation in Gaza is one of the primary reasons they oppose observer-state status, much less full membership, for the Palestinians.  Neither Israel nor the U.S. has the ability to block a General Assembly decision to that effect.  But they can certainly make that decision more difficult and costly for various states.  So wouldn’t it have made more sense for Moreno-Ocampo to say nothing until after the General Assembly resolved the Palestinian issue?  By tipping his hand so overtly, all he’s done is make the Palestinians’ road to self-determination that much more difficult.

June 2012 cannot come soon enough.

Egypt and Israel : Feeling the heat of isolation

Egypt and Israel : Feeling the heat of isolation

The Economist ,                     Sep 17th, 2011

ISRAEL has diplomatic relations with only three nearby countries. In the space of ten days its ambassadors have been humiliatingly forced out of two of them: Turkey and Egypt. The king of the third, Jordan’s Abdullah, commented without apparent displeasure that Israel was “scared”.

A week after the Turkish démarche, and linked to it in the eyes of many Israeli commentators, a Cairo mob attacked the Israeli embassy, housed on three floors of a high-rise building in the suburb of Giza. Policemen did little as demonstrators with hammers battered down a wall of concrete slabs put in place to protect the building. The embassy had recently been menaced by protesters in the wake of an incident along Egypt’s border with Israel in Sinai, when several Egyptian soldiers were killed, apparently by Israeli troops engaged in a battle with Palestinian fighters.

Even more troubling for Israel, Field-Marshal Muhammad Tantawi, Egypt’s top man for the time being, and others in Egypt’s interim military government were unavailable to take calls from Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, until Barack Obama intervened directly with them. Six Israeli security men stuck in the embassy were eventually rescued by Egyptian commandos who scattered the crowd with gunfire. Some 80 Israeli diplomats and their families were driven to the airport under military escort and ferried home by an Israeli air-force plane.

Mr Netanyahu says his ambassador will soon be back. Egyptian officials have voiced embarrassed regret. But even if Israel can find and fortify an alternative less vulnerable location, it sees the episode, with its display of deep antipathy towards Israel on the Egyptian street and the perhaps deliberately slow reaction of the Egyptian authorities, as ominous. And it looked on grimly as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, flying into Cairo on September 12th, was feted as a champion of the Palestinian and Muslim cause.

Mr Netanyahu speaks almost fatalistically of the ferment in the region. His aides bemoan Mr Erdogan’s ambitions of regional leadership. They seem to have concluded, however, that they should be as reluctant as ever to give any ground to the Palestinians. In particular, Mr Netanyahu and his friends in the pro-Israel lobby in the United States are inveighing vehemently, albeit with an undertone of panic, against the campaign by the Palestinians to win a vote in the UN later this month to grant them statehood, at least on paper. Most wretched, from Israel’s point of view, is the possibility of an emerging consensus among Europeans on the Palestine vote at the UN; they may offer the Palestinians some kind of statehood (“the Vatican option” is a widely touted compromise), albeit without full membership at this stage.

At street level, many Egyptians were delighted by the assault on the embassy. Last month a young man called Ahmed al-Shahat, dubbed “the flagman”, was hailed as a national hero for scaling the Israeli building and replacing the Star of David with a Palestinian banner. But reaction to the burning of the building on September 9th was more nuanced. Most prominent political groups, from the left-liberal April 6th Movement to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood and even the more extreme Salafists, condemned the violence, though the Islamists were evasive about the entry into the building. And the interim military government took advantage of the assault to threaten a crackdown against street protesters continuing to call for faster reform.

Yet Egyptian attitudes to Israel are rarely simple. A bit of anti-Israeli theatre goes down well. But when incidents such as the embassy break-in become an international affair and foreign governments question Egypt’s ability to protect diplomats, whoever they may be, people become edgier. Opinion polls suggest Egyptians want peace with Israel but not necessarily under the terms of the 1979 treaty.

All the same, anti-Israeli feeling is growing. Some political parties want to close the Suez Canal to the Israeli navy and to block the sale of natural gas to Israel. The new Freedom and Justice Party, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, says the 1979 treaty should be “revised”.

But most groups dread the prospect of actual war. One of the few good things that many Egyptians have to say of Hosni Mubarak, their deposed and generally reviled president, is that he kept Egypt out of war with Israel. The military government says that policy towards Israel should be left to an elected government. Still, the embassy incident serves as a warning to Israel that a democratically elected Egyptian government may be a lot less friendly.

KILLING OSAMA: WAS IT LEGAL? - The New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/killing-osama-was-it-legal.html

KILLING OSAMA: WAS IT LEGAL?

Posted by Jeffrey Toobin , May 2, 2011

Osama bin Laden was killed, not captured. If he had been taken into custody, what followed would have been the most complex and wrenching legal proceeding in American history. The difficulties would have been endless: military tribunal or criminal trial? Abroad—at Guantánamo?—or inside the United States? Would bin Laden have been granted access to the evidence against him? Who would represent him? What if he represented himself, and tried to use the trial as a propaganda platform? All those questions faded into irrelevance with bin Laden’s death on Sunday.

Still, it’s worth noting that the apparently universal acclaim for the killing represents a major shift in American perceptions of such actions. Following the revelations of C.I.A. assassination plots by the Church Committee, in the nineteen-seventies, President Ford issued Executive Order 11905 (later 12333), which stated,

No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination.

The term “assassination” was not defined, nor was it in subsequent orders signed by Presidents Carter and Reagan.

After the September 11th attacks, President Bush more or less acknowledged that the ban on assassination did not apply to bin Laden or other perpetrators of terrorism. Presidents Clinton and Bush issued secret findings that made apparently clear that such assassinations were not permissible.

In March, Harold Koh, the legal adviser in the State Department, said in a speech,

[S]ome have argued that our targeting practices violate domestic law, in particular, the long-standing domestic ban on assassinations. But under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute “assassination.”

No one today is shedding any tears about bin Laden’s death. (He apparently resisted capture, which offered an additional justification for killing him.) But it’s worth remembering what gave rise to the ban on assassinations. It is, to put it mildly, an easy power to abuse. Bin Laden didn’t get a trial and didn’t deserve one. But the number of people for whom that is true is small. At least it should be.

N. Korean leader's grandson, Kim Han-sol to study in Bosnia

http://www.koreaherald.com/national/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20110928001049

N. Korean leader's grandson to study in Bosnia

2011-09-28 23:29

A grandson of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has enrolled in an international college in Bosnia, local papers reported on Wednesday.

The 16-year-old Kim Han-sol, son of the North Korean leader's oldest son Kim Jong-nam, is on a list of 72 sixth-year students of the United World Colleges' (UWC)'s local branch located in the southern town of Mostar, according to the Vecernji List.
The UWC is a network of colleges throughout the world promoting international and intercultural understanding. It is attended notably by pupils from war-affected areas.
The information was revealed by other students' parents who were surprised by the choice of the grandson of the leader of one of the most isolated countries in the world, the daily said.
Officials from the prestigious Mostar school refused to confirm or deny the media reports.
The Dnevni Avaz daily reported that Kim Han-sol had applied for a student visa at Bosnia's embassy in Beijing and had not yet arrived in the Balkan country.
"We cannot say in advance whether a visa will be granted to this North Korean national," an anonymous Bosnian official was quoted as saying. (From news reports)

Anti-Government Protests In Yemen Turn Bloody

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/20/140621430/anti-government-protests-in-yemen-turn-bloody

Anti-Government Protests In Yemen Turn Bloody

September 20, 2011

Dozens of anti-government protesters died in Yemen over the last two days after loyalist security forces opened fire on the main square in the capital Sanaa. Les Campbell, who runs the Middle East and North Africa programs at the National Democratic Institute, talks to Steve Inskeep about the political wrangling over the future of the country.

DAVID GREENE, host: It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm David Greene.

STEVE INSKEEP, host: And I'm Steve Inskeep.

Let's try to get some perspective on the excruciating events in Yemen this week. According to witnesses, security forces have killed protestors and even killed children. Dozens of people have been killed since Sunday. Les Campbell is tracking those events from the National Democratic Institute, a non-profit group that supports democracy abroad. He's a regular visitor to Yemen. He's in our studios.

Good morning.

LES CAMPBELL: Good morning.

INSKEEP: How have Yemenis ended up with another round of violence? I thought the president was on his way out.

CAMPBELL: Well, it's an amazing situation where the president was badly injured. Most members of his government were injured at the same time in a bombing on their mosque. The head of the Shura Council, who was standing beside the president at the time, died of his injuries later. He's in Saudi Arabia. He has been since June. And yet there's no transition in Yemen.

Since that moment, two opposing forces basically, defected soldiers from the First Armored Brigade, and the president's son, Ahmed Ali, have been in a standoff, opposing trenches. And this week, the fighting started between those two forces - tanks, mortars, heavy machine guns. And we've seen the casualties.

INSKEEP: Even though the president himself, from Saudi Arabia, has appointed his vice president to negotiate a transition of power, which is the latest of I don't know how many discussions of transition, that's just not happening?

CAMPBELL: Well, the president did issue a decree saying that the vice president could talk, although from the opposition's point of view - and when I say opposition that's a broad word. That could include the southern movement, the protesters in the squares, the political opposition. From the opposition's point of view, this is not really a negotiation. This is just another stalling tactic.

And it's hard to say who fired the first shot. The protesters appear to have been shelled at random. That's where you have the casualties of children of other bystanders. But in the end, there are two military forces and there is really no negotiation, although there is a representative of the U.N. and a representative of the Gulf Cooperation countries in Sanaa right now negotiating.

I mean, the other, I suppose, sad irony of this is just when two negotiators, international negotiators arrived, this fighting started. So it seems that no one's that serious about moving forward.

INSKEEP: And it's two armed groups at this point that are going after each other?

CAMPBELL: Well, it's at least two in the capital. You have two very well-armed groups. The president's son Ahmed Ali, his nephew, who also controls large numbers of forces, what I think we'll call security forces for short, and then Ali Mohsen, a commander, a general who commands a large military camp and many thousands of soldiers. They have trenches right in the middle of the city. And they have positions in the middle of the city.

INSKEEP: Does the second guy, Ali Mohsen, count as a protest leader then or is a defector from the ranks? What do you call him?

CAMPBELL: The president calls him a defector. He has said that he's neutral and he's sworn to protect the protesters. You know, the approximate cause of this week's problems were that the protesters picked up from their square. They in a sense were allowed to stay in a certain place in Sanaa, near the university. They picked up and started to march toward the president's son's sort of holdout.

This is what the, I think, what the government would say. And so they opened fire in a defensive fashion. What Ali Mohsen, the rebel commander, would say is that the security forces opened fire on the protesters and he's protecting them.

In the end, there's no - there aren't two sides in Yemen. There're probably five sides, and it's almost impossible to tell who's who.

INSKEEP: Five sides and does that reflect divisions in the society? There are a lot of different interest groups that could come down in different places and who fear that their interests could be affected here.

CAMPBELL: It's always been a difficult country to govern. Almost impossible. And you have a secessionist movement. You have a political opposition. You have Arab Spring protesters who simply want to move on and have a new government and a new future. And it's - they're not fighting each other. But the president, who's been there for a long time, is refusing to step down. But more importantly, he's refusing to allow a transition to something new. And what Yemen desperately needs is something new.

INSKEEP: Refusing to allow a transition, even as he says to talk, says to work out a transition?

CAMPBELL: Refusing to allow anyone to even really discuss a transfer of power, even though he's not even in the country, and even though the country so desperately needs to move on.

INSKEEP: Les Campbell of the National Democratic Institute is a regular visitor to Yemen, where there have been dozens of deaths in continuing violence this week

At the U.N. Palestinian bid for membership ; Israeli hypocrisy ; its patron, the US should be awakened to the New Middle East

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/21/140658250/u-n-membership-could-give-palestinians-a-diplomatic-tool

U.N. Bid Could Give Palestinians A Diplomatic Tool

by MICHELE KELEMEN              September 21, 2011

Palestinians say they are undeterred and plan to seek full U.N. membership as a state on territories Israel occupied in the 1967 war. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to present his application when he speaks to the U.N. on Friday. The issue is dominating high level meetings as countries scramble to try to revive a peace process that has failed for decades.

Palestinians say they aren't interested in the same old peace process. They see their U.N. membership bid as giving them a new diplomatic tool. If they gain membership - or even an upgrade to their status in the U.N. General Assembly, where the U.S. can't block them, they would gain access to U.N. bodies and international courts to challenge Israeli actions in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.  Zomlot calls it a deterrent policy, and he says the arm-twisting by Western diplomats and threats by U.S. congressmen to cut off aid to Palestinians won't change their minds about this.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1061595

Palestinians could pursue war crimes charges without full statehood: ICC prosecutor

Sep 28 2011

ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo says if Palestine becomese a non-member observer state at the UN, it could be eligible to pursue claims against Israel even without full statehood

http://opiniojuris.org/2011/09/29/the-tone-deaf-icc-prosecutor/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+opiniojurisfeed+%28Opinio+Juris%29

The Tone-Deaf ICC Prosecutor, by Kevin Jon Heller , Sep 29th, 2011

I cannot imagine why Moreno-Ocampo chose to offer his opinion on that issue now — just as debate over the Palestinian’s request for full membership in the UN is getting underway.  

http://intlawgrrls.blogspot.com/2011/09/defining-palestinian-statehood.html

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2011

Defining Palestinian Statehood

(My thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post)

As the director of Gisha, an Israeli human rights organization that promotes the right to freedom of movement in the occupied Palestinian territory, I sat riveted to this weekend's television coverage of the submission of the Palestinian request for UN membership. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts availablehere.)
On my mind was a seemingly trivial question:

Do we need to stop saying and writing the "occupied Palestinian territory" and start saying "occupied Palestine"?

I'll say more about the substance of that decision at the end of this post, but the fact that I – and much more importantly, world leaders – are raising this question highlights a benefit of the statehood bid: pressing the Israeli government (and the rest of the world) to decide what Gaza and the West Bank are and, therefore, who is responsible for safeguarding the rights of the residents of those places.

Here I'll confess to a frustrating aspect of litigating human rights and humanitarian obligations within the Israeli legal system: the pick-and-choose attitude toward international law displayed by the Israeli government.

In the West Bank, Israel claims the authorities of an occupying power, including arrest, detention, confiscation and military courts.   But it also settles hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens there, proclaiming that "in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish people are not foreign occupiers."

Just this month, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a petition brought by Palestinian landowners who challenged confiscation of their land for construction of an express rail between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, citing the provisions of the Hague Regulations that permit confiscation of private property in occupied territory for the good of its residents. The court noted but was not overly troubled by the fact that the planned rail-line will be off-limits to the residents of the occupied territory, as it is to be a commuter rail for Israelis only.

A similar situation exists in Gaza: Israel claims a right to control who and what enters Gaza's borders, yet claims that it is no longer occupying Gaza and therefore owes only minimal obligations to its residents in exercising power over their lives.

Perhaps one outcome of the statehood bid will be to press the Israeli government to make up its mind: There's a claim that the West Bank and Gaza are a state. If you disagree, please explain what you think they are.

Of course, the very act of calling the West Bank and Gaza a state will not make them any less or any more occupied, nor will it change Israel's powers and responsibilities as an occupier. But the recent flurry of statements proclaiming the West Bank as belonging to the Jewish people (check out this Israeli Foreign Ministry animated clip) suggests a renewed interest in legal definitions, perhaps because they are starting to matter more.

If the West Bank is part of Israel, then its 2-million-plus Palestinian residents must be granted Israeli citizenship, including full political, civil and social rights. If it is occupied territory, then its residents must be granted the full range of protections offered by international humanitarian law, including the protection against citizens of the occupying country being transferred into their land. If Gaza is not a state (under blockade) and not occupied territory, then under what legal authority is Israel controlling its borders?

I still believe that international law can play a role in protecting civilians subject to control by a foreign power. I think that renewed international attention to defining Israel's relationship to the territory where 4 million Palestinians are living under its control could lead to increased protections for those residents. After all, international law is enforced primarily through diplomacy.

By the way, it is not only Israel who adopts a pick-and-choose attitude toward international law – Gisha has repeatedly tried to remind those who claim that Israel, as an occupying power in Gaza, has no right to stop ships from reaching its shores of a basic principle of the law of occupation: it allows the occupying power to determine travel arrangements for the occupied territory, including a ban on maritime travel.  International law also requires the occupying power to allow people and goods to enter and leave by other means.  Israel is not meeting this obligation, but failure to do so does not negate the authority to stop ships.

Now back to my own struggle to define Gaza and the West Bank, where we offer legal services to residents seeking to overcome Israeli-imposed travel restrictions in order to access schools, jobs, and family members.

I have scheduled consultations with colleagues, read some interesting background material, and talked to other international lawyers about whether Gaza and the West Bank constitute a state.
I have questions about the Montevideo Convention criterion requiring a state to have an effective government. Even if we can get beyond the Gaza-West Bank split, there is the reality that the Palestinian Authority was created by agreement with the occupying power, and its competences are delegated to it by Israel and exercised under Israeli supervision and approval.

I am also sympathetic to arguments that whether Palestine should be viewed as a state is a political question whose resolution depends largely on the ramifications of the UN bid, still in its infancy.
I'll let you know what I discover, but one thing is sure – whatever the Palestinian territory is or isn't, its people have rights that must be protected. I hope the renewed debate over their status will lead to greater protection of those rights.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/19/140601804/op-ed-time-for-us-to-recognize-a-new-middle-east

Time For U.S. To Recognize A New Middle East   , September 19, 2011

(Read Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi's New York Times Op-Ed, "The Middle East Has Changed.")

NEAL CONAN, host: And now the opinion page. On Friday, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said he would take the issue of Palestinian statehood to the United Nations Security Council this week. The Obama administration says the U.S. will veto the application but will have little support, even among its European allies. Last week, as part of The New York Times Room for Debate, Rashid Khalidi wrote: As long as the United States supports Israel in standing in the way of an immediate rollback of illegal settlements and end its illegal occupation,  a Palestinian state will not see the light of day, and any discussion of it is futile.

What will change after a vote in the Security Council on Palestine?

Rashid Khalidi is the professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, and he joins us now on the phone from his office there in New York. Nice to have you with us again.

CONAN: When you say futile, do you think nothing will change as a result of this vote?

things are not going to change in terms of Palestinian statehood as long as the U.S. does not take a firm stand on illegal settlement and illegal occupation, and monopolizes negotiation

KHALIDI: No. Things will change, but I don't think things are going to change in the direction of a sovereign, independent, contiguous Palestinian state. They'll change in the sense that the United States and Israel are likely - at least the U.S. Congress and Israel - are likely to impose sanctions on the Palestinian people and on the Palestinian Authority. They'll change in the sense that the status of Palestine and of the Palestinian representation at the United Nations might be different at the end of this. But in terms of the Palestinians achieving statehood, self-determination, freedom from occupation, unfortunately, I don't think this will change as a consequence of what happens in New York.

KHALIDI: Some (of Palestinians) will be thrilled. I think many Palestinians are more cynical than that and understand that realities on the ground are not going to change. ..  as long as the United States will (i) not take a firm stand in terms of occupation and settlement .. (ii) insists on monopolizing negotiations, won't allow a different framework or venue for negotiations, and given (iii)  the current Israeli government, which is, by far, the most pro-settler, the most extreme in Israel's history - I'm not sure why there should be any grounds for optimism about actual changes on the ground.

CONAN: And some fear that there could be, indeed, grave disappointment when, as you suggest, things don't really change for the Palestinian people.

easy to be biased toward Palestinians

KHALIDI: Well, I think the people stirring up those fears are perhaps secretly hoping there will be violence because some of those people feel much more comfortable when the Palestinians are not following nonviolent or diplomatic means. They - it's very easy to put the Palestinians in a box if they can be portrayed as violent or terrorists or whatever. And, frankly, you have to assume a great deal of naivete on the part of the Palestinians to assume there's going to be a huge disappointment. I think most Palestinians are fully aware of the realities, and that those are not going to change as the result of what happens in New York in the next few weeks or month or two.

both factions in Palestinians—Fatah and Hamas—stuck in a narrow political consideration

CONAN: We speak of Palestinians as a - well, there are many strains of thought. It's interesting, Hamas has not embraced this idea.

KHALIDI: Not at all, and probably on narrow party political lines. Anything that reinforces their rival, they're afraid, is not good. And so, unfortunately, like - both factions, I think, of Palestinian politics, Fatah and Hamas, are thinking of narrow political considerations rather than the Palestinian national interests all too often, and this is, I think, a case of that.

failed “peace process”

KHALIDI: Well, I mean, they are committed to negotiations. Negotiations have failed. We've been - since the process I myself was involved in back in '91 to '93, we've been engaged in 20 years of negotiation. The situation has gotten measurably worse for the Palestinians in those 20 years.

We've gone from 200,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied territories to 600,000 by Prime Minister Netanyahu's count.

We've gone from a situation where Palestinians could move completely freely in 1991 - anywhere inside Israel to Gaza, from Gaza to the West Bank to Jerusalem - to a situation where all of those areas are closed to most Palestinians.

So the situation has gotten measurably worse for the Palestinians in 20 years of what is, in my view, laughably labeled a peace process, whatever it was. It was a process. It made some great careers in the American diplomatic service, but it certainly was not a process that brought about peace. It made things, in my view, much worse and took us very far away from real, just, lasting, sustainable peace.

the US should be awakened to the changes in the New Middle East

CONAN: Some - given the events that we've seen these last seven, eight months or so in Egypt and Tunisia and, well, now in Syria, of course, and again in Yemen and, of course, in Libya, some people wondered how that was going to affect the situation in Israel, between Israel and the Palestinians. And you say it really should be the United States who needs to be awakened to the changes in the Arab world.

KHALIDI: I think the United States and Israel and the Europeans and everybody else has to be awakened to the fact that  this is not your grandfather's Middle East. This is not a Middle East where colonial powers or external powers could push people around and pliable, pliant governments would do as they were told, whether by Moscow or Washington or, in an earlier era, by London or Paris. This is an era of growing demand for popular sovereignty. Even if there are not successful or fully successful democratic transitions, people will have a bigger voice.

And the people's voice has been kept out of this. Most people in the Arab world are deeply sympathetic to the Palestinians. Most governments have done what Washington wanted for the past several decades. That's the reality. Israel was very comfortable with that, because its patron, the United States, made sure that the Arabs were essentially kept out of the equation, except those people who are wheeled in to fund with the Americans had decided they wanted to have happen and Israel was willing to have happen. So, we're in a different Middle East. I'm not sure that it's entirely changed.

KHALIDI: Well, I mean, those (Turkey and Egypt) were the two motors of change in the Middle East in the 19th century. There's no reason.  There's no reason why that by far biggest and in some ways most important countries in the region shouldn't play that kind of role in the 21st century. It would require the Egyptians solving some very deep, profound, internal problems for them to be anything like the economic dynamo that Turkey now is. Turkey is an enormously vibrant and successful economy, and that's the basis of its current power.

Turkey and Egypt

Much of that power is soft power. It's not Turkish fleets or Turkish generals or whatever that are the extension of Turkish power. It's Turkish exports, Turkish investment, Turkish know-how, Turkish television series, Turkish retail products that are just everywhere in the Arab world, and in many other areas. I mean, the Arab world isn't even their major trading partner. Europe is. And they're in the Balkans and many other places, too. That - Egypt would have to really solve some very grave, internal socioeconomic problems to be anything like the economic power that Turkey is.

CONAN: Is Turkey seeing some of the limits of its soft power in Syria?

KHALIDI: Well, and its dealings with Israel and its dealing with the United States, unfortunately. Yeah. I think perhaps, it could be argued that Turkish foreign policy may be a little bit over-ambitious. But there is no question that if you compare the reach that Turkish diplomacy has today with where it was 10 or 15 years ago, Turkey has - much more attention is paid to Turkey today.

SERGE: Yeah, hi. Thanks for being able to have me comment. I guess that the real issue is the ability - the U.S.'s ability to be both able and willing to influence a Palestinian state. And while they have a lot of leverage with Israel with $3 billion a year of support, given the hard-line government in Israel, it's questionable to what extent they're really able to affect change. But I think what's more important with the vote coming up this week is exposing the U.S.'s willingness to affect change.

the U.S. in dilemma

KHALIDI: Well, United States is between a rock and a hard place. The rock is the domestic realities where Israel is concerned, where, basically, the Israeli position is the bottom line. Whatever position an Israeli government takes is the bottom line for whatever administration is in office. And the hard place is that the Middle East is a much less-forgiving zone of American hypocrisy - you know, rhetoric in favor of self-determination, but voting against a Palestinian state at the United Nations.

EU and the Middle East – energy and emigration

It's not an enviable place that this administration is in, and it's the political realities, and this kind of - the domestic the political realities in this country and our inability to understand that this is really a foreign policy problem, that this is not - and that there are very important interests to the United States. The Europeans understand it better, I think, because their energy dependence on them, at least, is much greater. And they're much more concerned about emigration from the Middle East to Europe, though the Europeans have not yet gotten their act together and put together a coherent unified European policy.

the far too right Israeli incumbent government

And here's an email from Blake in San Antonio: The only thing that will truly change things regarding the relationship between the Palestinians and the Israelis is an overhaul of the structure of the government in Israel. Because of proportional representation the far-right, ultra-religious parties have way too much power in relationship to their numbers. That's informing every coalition, even the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, as to attract much smaller parties who then are further to the right than they are.

Palestinians without a strategic vision for where they would go

KHALIDI: Well, I would add to that that there's a problem on the Palestinian side, which is you haven't had elections recently. You have two factions, both of which - Fatah and Hamas, both of which, I think, have pretty much failed to put forward any kind of strategic vision for where the Palestinians would go,  any kind of idea of how they achieve and end the occupation and other Palestinian national goals, and where you need to have a Palestinian leadership that can appeal to the rest of the world, including to Israelis, and at the same time can put pressure on the United States, on Israel, on - to change the status quo.

I don't think Hamas and I don't think Fatah has the slightest notion of how to go about it, very frankly. This U.N. initiative has moved things off - out of a situation of stagnation. But at the end of the day, as I said, and as I think many people would agree, this is not going to lead to an end of occupation. This is not going to lead to Palestinian statehood. It's not going to lead to the rollback of settlements. And Palestinians have to think about how to achieve that, and that requires some very hard thinking.

It does - I agree with the questioner. It will require Israelis understanding that the situation they're in, which they seem to think it can be maintained indefinitely, vis-a-vis the occupation of four million people and controlling their lives. We're now going on 45 years. We're in the 45th year of an occupation. And most Israelis don't seem to think that this is a critical problem. That has to change. And I agree. The system in Israel, like many good systems in democratic countries, unfortunately, doesn't enable dissatisfaction with that to break through.

’67 borders

KHALIDI: .. he asked multiple interesting questions. The one that I would focus on is if the '67 borders aren't a basis, then what should be the basis?  (anybody who puts it that way is going to have to answer that question, as well. And why should the Palestinians accept that?)  

if we're going to throw out the U.N. charter and everything that has emerged since World War II in the way of international law and say that conquest is a basis to throw out U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, the acquisition of territory by force is perfectly okay.

.. but where are the borders of this Israel state, and what precisely are the Palestinians supposed to accept? What scraps are, in fact, supposedly sufficient for them? And anybody who puts it that way is going to have to answer that question, as well. And why should the Palestinians accept that?

Hamas designated by the US as terrorist

CONAN:  Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the State Department.

KHALIDI: That is absolutely correct. And, of course, we have a very skewed definition of what's terrorist. We had a war between - war in which Israel waged on Gaza in 2008, 2009. There were 1,400 people killed in Gaza. There were 13 Israelis killed, and we castigate Hamas as a terrorist organization. I think that that's an American political determination of what is terrorist, unfortunately.

I agree any attacks on unarmed civilians should be correctly be defined as terrorist. But, in that case, everybody who attacks unarmed civilians - and that includes, in this case, the death of most those civilian - most of those people were civilians, in my view.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140573234/israel-braces-for-palestinian-statehood-bid

Israel Braces For Palestinian Statehood Bid ,

September 18, 2011

Host Audie Cornish talks about the possible repercussions of the Palestinians' statehood bid with Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States

AUDIE CORNISH, host: Israel's ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, says .. Palestinians .. statehood bid at the U.N., .. will jeopardize the existing agreements between the Palestinian Authority, Israel and the United States.

Ambassador MICHAEL OREN: The United States and Israel have numerous agreements with the Palestinian Authority, established under the 1993 Oslo Accords. The United States is a co-signatory to those accords between Israel and the Palestinians. Great number of agreements that cover a wide range of issues; trade issues, water rights, security. We have all these agreements with the Palestinian Authority.

We have no agreements with a government of Palestine, and neither does the United States. So the emergence of a government of Palestine in place of the Palestinian Authority would place all of these pre-existing agreements in jeopardy.

CORNISH: What are the other repercussions that Israel is considering? I know, in the United States, Congress is talking about what to do with the aid to the Palestinian Authority, which is about five hundred million dollars annually.

OREN: Well, Congress is indeed talking about that. They're talking about cutting off that aid because the Palestinians have violated their agreements, also by going to the U.N. And also by making a reconciliation pact with Hamas, which is listed by the United States as a terrorist organization.

Beyond that we are preparing a number of possible reactions - a toolbox, if you will. We fear that there will be large-scale demonstrations in the West Bank orchestrated by the Palestinian Authority, and we don't want these to be confused with the Arab Spring. This is not about jobs or opportunity. This is about attacking Israel, and we're preparing our security forces and some of our citizens to deal with those demonstrations through nonlethal means.

And that's a fear.

CORNISH: Are you saying this is about attacking Israel. But, of course, the argument from the Palestinian Authority is that this is a move for recognition that would bring some kind of parity or equitable role for them within peace talks.

OREN: Well, they haven't been at peace talks. We've been waiting for them to come to the negotiating table for about two and a half years now, and they haven't come to the negotiating table.

Our position was and remains: We are ready to negotiate with the Palestinians at any time, any place - whether in Ramallah or in Jerusalem - without preconditions on all the core issues to reach a two-state solution, a Palestinian state, an Israeli-Jewish state, living side by side in mutual recognition, security and peace, if only the Palestinians will come back to the negotiating table.

CORNISH: But negotiations have essentially been stalled for various reasons. And in effect, isn't what they're doing actually in some ways succeeding in goosing this conversation forward?

OREN: Well, I think it's actually stopping the conversation dead, Audie. You know, when you go to negotiations you have to be able to give up a few things. Palestinian leaders are going to come to their people and say, we're going to have to give up a lot, but we're going to be getting something from it. We're going to be getting a Palestinian state. The Palestinian people will come back to leaders and say, but wait a minute, we already have a Palestinian state. Why are you making all these sacrifices?

So essentially, by getting a Palestinian state unilaterally recognized without paying any price for it in the U.N., the Palestinians will hamstring their ability to make negotiations and make concessions, maybe for generations to come. It'll be very tragic.

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/18/140558127/jimmy-carter-no-downside-to-palestine-statehood

Jimmy Carter: 'No Downside' to Palestine Statehood

September 18, 2011

Former President Jimmy Carter urges the United States to not veto the Security Council vote for Palestinian statehood anticipated to take place next week.

Carter admits that for President Obama, failure to veto "would have some adverse effects perhaps on his political future."

But he thinks it's a price worth paying. His predecessor Harry Truman backed the creation of Israel for moral reasons, against the advice of his inner circle.

Harry Truman backed the creation of Israel for moral reasons, against the advice of his inner circle. Carter says that today, Palestinian statehood is "a basic moral commitment" for the U.S.

In 1977, Carter became the first American president to call for the creation of a Palestinian "homeland." He signed the Camp David Accords, which established diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel, and called for self-governance of the Palestinian people.

The statehood vote is largely symbolic, making Palestine akin to the Vatican. Its greatest value, according to Carter, is to break the impasse in negotiations for a two-state solution. Without a vote, Carter says, "the only alternative is a maintenance of the status quo."

American Presidents On Palestine

by AARTI SHAHANI

September 18, 2011

In 1948, President Truman endorsed the creation of an Israeli state. Nearly three decades later, before finalizing the Camp David accords, Jimmy Carter became the first U.S. president to call for the creation of a Palestinian "homeland." Presidents have put their own spins on that effort ever since. Here's a sampling:

March 16, 1977 — Carter, at a town hall meeting in Massachusetts, said that after Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist, "There has to be a homeland provided for the Palestinian refugees who have suffered for many, many years."

Sept. 1, 1982 — Ronald Reagan: "The United States will not support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and we will not support annexation or permanent control by Israel. ... Self-government by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza in association with Jordan offers the best chance for a durable, just, and lasting peace."

Oct. 30, 1991 — George H.W. Bush: "Throughout the Middle East, we seek a stable and enduring settlement. We've not defined what this means; indeed, I make these points with no map showing where the final borders are to be drawn. Nevertheless, we believe territorial compromise is essential for peace."

Jan. 7, 2001 — Bill Clinton: "There can be no genuine resolution to the conflict without a sovereign, viable Palestinian state that accommodates Israelis' security requirements and the demographic realities."

June 24, 2002 — George W. Bush, outlining a new Middle East peace plan: "It is untenable for Israeli citizens to live in terror. It is untenable for Palestinians to live in squalor and occupation. ... My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security."

June 4, 2009 — Barack Obama, in Cairo: "The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security. ... Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's. The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

May 19, 2011 — Obama: "The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states. The Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves, and reach their potential, in a sovereign and contiguous state."