Archive for the ‘Zionist Israel’ Category

Should Palestine Declare Itself a State?

November 17, 2009

By Max Fisher, The Atlantic Wire, November 16, 2009

The long and troubled history of start-and-stall diplomacy between Israel and Palestine hasn’t shown much sign of improving. Some Americans even believe that, after decades of mediating, we should disengage from the peace process entirely. Negotiations between Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas have failed to halt the Israeli settlements still growing in Palestinian territories, a major point of contention. But what if Palestine simply declared itself to be an independent state? Palestinian representatives are feeling out the UN for recognition of statehood should they choose to proceed. They would declare Palestine’s borders to be that of 1967. But could it work?
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U.S. “would veto” Palestinian state move: Senators

November 17, 2009

Reuters, Nov. 16, 2009

By Douglas Hamilton

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The United States would veto a Palestinian declaration of statehood in the United Nations Security Council, U.S. senators visiting Israel said Monday.

They said the threat by Palestinian officials to take the issue to a United Nations resolution was a waste of time and would go nowhere. They urged Arab states to stop it. “It would be D.O.A. – dead on arrival,” Democratic Party Senator Ted Kaufman (DE) told a news conference in Jerusalem. “It’s a waste of time.”

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Palestinians call for EU to back independence

November 16, 2009

• Frustration at impasse on ‘two-state project’
• Israel warns of retaliation over any unilateral move

Ian Black, Middle East editor,  The Guardian/UK, Nov. 16, 2009

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb ErekatChief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Photograph: Sebastian Scheiner/AP

Palestinians have formally asked the European Union to urge the UN security council to recognise a fully independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in response to the current impasse in peace negotiations with Israel.

Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, confirmed that the request to the EU was made on Monday as Israeli ministers repeated warnings that any unilateral moves would trigger counter-measures that could include the annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.

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Goldstone to Haaretz: U.S. does not have to protect Israel blindly

November 14, 2009

Tomer Zarchin, Haaretz Correspondent, Haaretz/Israel, Nov 13, 2009

Judge Richard Goldstone told Haaretz Thursday that President Shimon Peres’ remarks criticizing him were “specious and ill-befitting the head of State of Israel.”

Peres was quoted Wednesday as calling Goldstone “a small man, devoid of any sense of justice, a technocrat with no real understanding of jurisprudence,” who was “on a one-sided mission to hurt Israel.”

In Thursday’s interview by e-mail with Haaretz, Goldstone said: “I am content to be judged by my actions over the course of my career both in terms of my professional judicial career and my voluntary service.”

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Palestinian vote put off, Abbas remains in office

November 14, 2009

(AP)

Khaleej Times Online, 13 November 2009

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who last week said he didn’t want to run for re-election, may get to stay in office without a single ballot being cast.

The Palestinian Election Commission ruled Thursday that January’s scheduled vote should be put off because of opposition from the Islamic militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and is a rival of Abbas’ Fatah faction.

Abbas raised international concern last week when he declined to run for another term, suggesting he was frustrated over a 10-month stalemate in Israel-Palestinian peacemaking. His departure would have thrown peace efforts into turmoil.

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America, Israel’s Lackey

November 12, 2009
by Paul Craig Roberts, Antiwar.com,  November 12, 2009

It did not take the Israel Lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration’s “no new settlements” position.  Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel’s latest victory over the US government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

In May President Obama read the Israelis the riot act, telling the Israeli government that he was serious about ending the Israeli conflict with the Palestinians and that a lasting peace agreement required the Israeli government to abandon all construction of new settlements in the occupied West Bank.

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Nasrallah slams Obama Israel ‘bias’

November 12, 2009
Al Jazeera, Nov. 12, 2009
Nasrallah accused Obama of disregarding the feelings and dignity of Arabs and Muslims [AFP]

The leader of the Lebanese group Hezbollah has accused Barack Obama, the US president, of “absolute bias” in favour of  Israel and of disregard for the dignity of Arabs and Muslims.

In a televised speech on Wednesday, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said Obama has gone further than his predecessor, George Bush, in supporting the Jewish state adding that the high expectations that followed Obama’s election had been “shattered”.

He said Obama’s initial statements calling on Israel to freeze settlement building and then backtracking was a “tactic” agreed on by both Israel and the US, and that the initial settlement demand had been exposed as “an American ploy to pass the time and gain Arab sympathy”.

Wednesday’s remarks are the Hezbollah leader’s strongest criticism yet of Obama since he took office almost a year ago.

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‘Declare Independence of Palestine Now’

November 11, 2009

 

Nasir Khan’s  Note:  The betrayal and isolation of the Palestinian people has run its full course. The imbecile Arab regimes  (in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,  etc.,)  more in the nature of prehistoric shapeless oddities, have failed to support meaningfully the cause of the  occupied, oppressed and brutalized fellow Arabs of  Palestine. Instead,  they have furthered the U.S. imperialism’s  geopolitical interests in the Middle East so that the United States  controls the Middle East and it  remains the prime  guarantor of the continued support to their corrupt and decadent dynastic rule and their antidemocratic system.

The present leadership of the Palestinian people is divided; the myopic PA President Abbas has been dancing to the tunes of Tel Aviv and Washington for long. A growing number of the  suffering people of Palestine regard him a traitor and puppet of the U.S. and the Israeli Zionists.

The talk of peace and peace negotiations under  various U.S. administrations served only Zionist expansion and further colonization of the occupied Palestine. If President  Obama had any intention to stop Israel’s ever-increasing expropriation of the Palestinian land then he has failed miserably. Obviously,  Secretary of State  Clinton, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli lobby struck at his intentions and nullified him. It leaves no doubt about who control American  foreign policy.

Where can the Palestinians go from here? The question of establishing a viable independent state is in the doldrums. The occupied land has been eaten up by Israel. That leaves the possibility of one-state solution the only alternative for the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But if Israel turns its back on its previous history of colonization and expropriation, accepts the UN resolutions and reverts to the pre-1967 borders by vacating all its illegal settlements then the two-state solution has a chance to materialize. But this is more of a long shot in the  dark.

Mr Yesh Prabhu’s advocacy of declaring an independent state by Palestinians can be instrumental in breaking the present impasse. At least, the Palestinians will not lose anything. On the contrary, it can take the matters out of the hands of Washington and Tel Aviv and this  may create a new momentum. But one major  hurdle remains: the divided Palestinian leadership of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. If Abbas disappears then even worse traitors like Mohammad Dahlan  may be waiting for a complete sell-out to Washington and Tel Aviv.

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Declare Independence of Palestine Now

Yesh Prabhu, A Sane Voice For Peace Blog, Nov. 10, 2009

It is now abundantly clear that the stalled negotiation for peace in the Middle East is now dead.

During Secretary of State Clinton’s recent short sojourn through the region, in her joint press conference with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem, she effusively praised Netanyahu’s intransigence regarding Israel’s illegal settlements in the West Bank. The peace process died when she bizarrely described as “unprecedented” Mr. Netanyahu’s paltry concession to slow down the feverish tempo of building illegal housing units in the occupied territories. Even though she hastily tried to back-track, the damage to the peace process had been done. It was as if she had given the peace process a death blow. The Palestinian negotiators were deeply shocked. Did not President Obama, and even Mrs. Clinton herself, say only a month ago that the Israeli settlements in the occupied land were illegitimate? It dawned on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that the peace process was dead, and so he announced that he will be resigning from his position soon. He had threatened to resign a couple of times on previous occasions, of course, but this time it seems that he means to carry out his threat.

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Israeli Jews and the one-state solution

November 11, 2009

By Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, November 11, 2009

“Anyone who rejects the two-state solution, won’t bring a one-state solution. They will instead bring one war, not one state. A bloody war with no end.” — Israeli President Shimon Peres, 7 November 2009.

One of the most commonly voiced objections to a one-state solution for Palestine/Israel stems from the accurate observation that the vast majority of Israeli Jews reject it, and fear being “swamped” by a Palestinian majority. Across the political spectrum, Israeli Jews insist on maintaining a separate Jewish-majority state.

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No peace progress as Obama, Netanyahu meet

November 10, 2009

Middle East Online, November 10, 2009



‘Shame on you’, the hardline premier was told


Hardline Netanyahu leaves White House without Obama appearance amid Israeli defiance.

WASHINGTON – Hardline Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left the White House Monday after spending an hour and forty minutes inside, emerging without US President Barack Obama.

It is not immediately clear whether Netanyahu spent the entire time in closed-door talks with Obama.

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