Deep rifts? Between the US administration and Netanyahu?
The White House issued a passionate call for eventual Palestinian statehood on Monday as it stepped up criticism of the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for appearing to question a two-state solution to Middle East peace.
“An occupation that has lasted for almost 50 years must end,” Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, told a conference of liberal activists in Washington. “Israel cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely,” he added.
…
“A ‘one-state solution’ would effectively end Israel’s nature as a Jewish and democratic state,” he added. “Unilateral annexation of the West Bank territories would be both wrong and illegal. The United States would never support it, and it’s unlikely Israel’s other friends would either. It would only contribute to Israel’s isolation.”
The United States will not take the floor at the United Nations Human Rights Council on Monday as it debates human rights violations committed in the Palestinian territories, a US spokesman told Reuters.
The step is unprecedented at the 47-member state forum, where Washington has unfailingly defended Israel since US President Barack Obama became president in 2009.
The decision not to appear follows signals that the Obama administration is undertaking a “reassessment” of relations with the Jewish state.
Not before time.
So, are the 47 R’s going to run over to the UN and claim that, Once Obama is gone, they will set thing back to normal regarding Israel? (I know D.C. isn’t ‘down the block’ from NYC).
I Boehner going to try and represent the US instead of our Ambassador?
It’s interesting. Now that the US has finally caught up to the idea of implementing a two-state solution, some of the Israeli left itself, eg 972mag.com, says it’s time to reassess how realistic it is and to start pushing for one state.
Good points, it seems to me. If it takes the US fifty years to catch up to this new reality, then the reality will (I’m sure) have moved on some more, and then the US will take another fifty years, and then Washington DC will be flooded by sea level rise and they’ll have other worries. (Am I feeling depressed? Yes, I’m feeling depressed.)
And also: what’s this BS about needing a “Jewish state”? Religion and state desperately need to be separate. That was obvious in 1750 and it’s even more obvious now. Israel’s problems come in large part from imagining that it is a “Jewish state.” A religious democracy is an oxymoron, like military intelligence.
Yes, that jumped out at me too.
What does that mean? Isn’t being either officially religious or officially ethnic a barrier to a state being properly democratic? Or are these meant to be separate things, and the problem is that Palestinians as Israeli citizens would be oppressed as ostensibly-democratic states are all too capable of doing with their minorities and marginalized?
My understanding was that a two-state solution is practically impossible by now. While the US stood around and twiddled its thumbs, the Israeli far right got thousands and thousands of Jewish citizens to settle in lands that would unequivocally have to be part of any Palestinian state, cynically using the families as poker chips and gambling that it would be politically impossible to force them to move.
It’s a bit too late to get on board that ship — it has already sailed.
“Israel cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely,”
Of course not, however that’s probably not the long term plan, the Zionist project will continue with the relentless advance of the ‘settler’ carpetbaggers until the Palestinians ‘disappear’. The Obama administration is just an aberration in America’s unfailing and unconditional support for the West’s last colonial enterprise, the situation will return to grotesque ‘normality’ sooner or later.
Zionism is a morally repugnant ideology, essentially the Palestinians have been made to pay the bill for Western anti-Semitism.
@5 brucegee 1962,
“It’s a bit too late to get on board that ship — it has already sailed.”
Yes, indeed.
The US has always known that the 2 state solution is a sham; they’re just pissed as hell that Netanyahu let that particular cat out of the bag. The US is still going to play slap and tickle with Israel. If the US ever really seriously reassesses its stance on Israel it would engage in some adult conversation regarding sanctioning Israel for its existing nuclear arsenal and getting it under IAEA controls to stand down its weapons-building. This is all just a bratspat over whether Israel can use (via the US) nuclear blackmail on Iran or whether it has to (gasp) negotiate. It would do Israel well to learn, but I don’t have much hope for that.
Netanyahu is hardly the first Israeli prime minister to talk about peace while annexing and settling Palestine. It has been pretty blatant all along, Netanyahu is like a white southern racist who finally, in a moment of pique, spills what he’s thought all along and the only people who are pretending to be surprised are his fellow racist buddies. They’re just surprised that he could be so gauche; they always knew what he thought.
Zionism is a morally repugnant ideology, essentially the Palestinians have been made to pay the bill for Western anti-Semitism.
Yep. Europe basically lived the dream of redneck American racists who used to say they wanted to send all the dark-skinned people back to Africa. What they did was, rather than confront the fact that they have a horrible problem of thousands of years of anti-semitism, they shipped it off to where someone else had to deal with the fallout. Way to go, Europe. Pat yourselves on the back. Problem solved.
Or maybe think about stopping sending them vast quantities of munitions and military equipment? If you’re bothered that your friend keeps shooting people, you stop handing him more ammo.
Palestinians are a non-entity. The term has about as much legitimacy and weight as the neologism “islamophobia” Palestinians are the same people as the Jordanians, with Jordan, in fact, being majority Palestinian. A question: Why won’t those Arab states that have housed ‘Palestinian’ refugees in crowded substandard camps never given them citizenship? Why have Palestinian refugees who’ve lived for four generations now in Lebanon never been given Lebanese citizenship? Egypt doesn’t want them. Saudi Arabia spits on them, and the entire Arab world keeps holding them up and picking away at their (largely) self-inflicted plight as though it were a scab.
And for those here who think the hostilities shown Jews and Israelis by Arabs stems from the occupation should bear in mind the pogroms against that took place in the region decades before Israel was even founded.
What they did was, rather than confront the fact that they have a horrible problem of thousands of years of anti-semitism, they shipped it off to where someone else had to deal with the fallout. Way to go, Europe. Pat yourselves on the back. Problem solved.
Before you descend into a rant about evil White rednecks, you should acquaint yourself with two important documents: The Rambam’s letter to the Jews of Yemen about the curse of “Ishmael” and then another little known document called “The Statute of Kalisz”, particularly article 30. There’s a damned good reason 80% of the world’s Jews lived in Poland during the Middle Ages and Renaissance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Kalisz
@ !0 Decker,
“Palestinians are a non-entity.”
Yeah sure, they don’t exist, no one was living in Palestine before the Zionist invasion, just some “natives” who really didn’t matter, the usual colonialist ‘rationale’ for land theft and annihilation. Strange isn’t it, although the Palestinians don’t exist, their land does.
What relevance does the treatment of the Palestinians in neigbouring states or Islamic anti-Semitism have to their human rights, or their rightful claims? Zionism is a racist ideology.