Palestine's Rosa Parks moment

On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Louise McCauley Parks, age 42,an African American civil rights activist who would later be referred as "the mother of the freedom movement",refused to obey bus driver James Blake's order that she give up her seat to make room for a white passenger.Parks' act of defiance became an important symbol of the modern Civil Rights Movement and she became an international icon of resistance to racial segregation.
Today September 23rd, 2011 at the United Nations, NY, NY, Mahmoud Abbas , the President of the Palestinian  Authority will submit Palestine's application for full membership to this world body.
The Americans despite their magnificent rhetoric in the past have openly stated they will oppose and if necessary veto this application. Domestic political considerations aside the Americans have finally showed what everyone knew that they can not be the honest broker they claim. With a fine disregard to the rules he set out Obama once again will bow down to Israeli pressure and AIPAC donations.
It is a pity that the morally right thing to do is yet again being bypassed for political pragmatism and the freedoms enjoyed by the United States are consistently being denied to the Palestinians.
This is our Rosa Parks moment, an important symbolic and peaceful gesture to let the world know we will no longer sit at the back of the bus.
God bless Palestine. 

Palestine and the miracle of statehood.

Two recent articles sum up what recently is on my mind one in the observer and an article by Henry Siegman. I have posted both below.

Henry Siegman writes:

"Is there anyone familiar with the history of the Israel-Palestine peace process who still believes that this Israeli government would defy the over half-a-million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — by far the most influential political force in Israel — and their networks of supporters within Israel, and present Palestinians with a reasonable peace plan for a two-state solution that would be acceptable to even the most moderate and accommodating of Palestinian leaders?

Shelly Yachimovich, an Israeli Knesset Member who is a leading candidate for the Labor Party’s leadership, recently declared that Israel’s settlement project is “not a sin or a crime” since it was initiated by a Labor government, and therefore “a completely consensual move.” Leaving aside the bizarre notion that the consensus of thieves legitimizes their theft, if these are the views of candidates for Labor Party leadership in today’s Israel, what prospect can there possibly be for an acceptable peace accord to emerge from the peace process?

And is there anyone who witnessed the frenzied applause that greeted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s most recent speech before the U.S. Congress in which he left no doubt about his government’s intentions for East Jerusalem and for the West Bank, or heard President Obama’s assurances to AIPAC’s conventioneers that the ties that bind the U.S. to Israel are forever “unbreakable,” who still believes that the U.S. will ever exert the kind of pressure on Israel that will finally change its cost/benefit calculations with regard to its colonial project?

These incontestable realities give the lie to America’s absurd insistence — expressed most recently by President Obama on September 12 — that a Palestinian state can be achieved only as a result of an agreement between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. Surely President Obama must know that left to their own devices, Netanyahu and Abbas will never reach a two state agreement, and that the only purpose a resumed “peace process” would serve is to continue to provide a cover for further Israeli land grabs in the West Bank."

For the Zionist movement seeking an independent state of Israel, desire became reality in November 1947, when the General Assembly of the United Nations passed Resolution 181 supporting the establishment of a Jewish state in a partitioned Palestine.

That state was declared on 14 May 1948 by David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish people's council in a Tel Aviv museum. The state of Israel was recognised that evening by President Truman of United States and by the Soviet Union a few days later.

More than six decades later, Palestinians, who at first refused to accept the partition plan of the newly minted UN, are seeking similar recognition, firstly in front of the Security Council, asking for their own state based on the 1967 borders free from occupation and settlement by half-a-million Israelis, able to determine their own affairs.

The idea of a Palestinian state should be uncontroversial. The United States supports the notion, as does the UK. Indeed, in his 2009 Cairo speech, President Barack Obama insisted: "Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither can Palestine's."

Yet Obama appears determined to veto the move towards Palestinian statehood, while Britain has hinted it is likely to abstain in a Security Council vote.

Should the Palestinian request fail at the Security Council, it will then go to the General Assembly, where it seems likely that close to 130 states will vote to support a Palestinian resolution which will be able only to grant an enhanced status to become the equivalent of the Vatican – an "observer state". It will, however, be a deeply symbolic moment providing a political, moral and diplomatic victory for the Palestinian cause that the world will find difficult to ignore.

It will, significantly, also allow Palestine to become a signatory to the International Criminal Court, permitting it to pursue claims against Israel.

While it seems certain that European countries such as France and Spain will support recognition, what is less clear is how the UK will vote in the General Assembly, amid increasing speculation that it might support an enhanced Palestinian status of "observer state" with the right to complain to the International Criminal Court, but only if cases cannot be raised retrospectively.

The objections to a Palestinian state – driven by Israel with the support of the US – are dangerous and transparently self-serving ones, not least in the midst of an Arab Spring where the US and Europe have tried to present themselves as being supporters of democracy, freedom and justice.

The only valid mechanism for the creation of a Palestinian state, this argument goes, is the ongoing peace process, but in fact it is a moribund peace process, which Israel has done its best to smother under the obstructionist leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Equally contentious is the claim by some supporters of Israel that in seeking their own state through the declaration of the international community rather than direct talks, Palestinians are seeking to "delegitimise" Israel.

The reality is that what those opposing the moves at the UN are demanding is that Palestinians adhere to a non-existent peace process in the good faith that at some time it might be revived in the future under American guidance.

They also require Palestinians to refrain from moves that would expose the double standards of the White House and Congress which, while supporting a two-state solution in words, has not only failed to deliver one but now threatens actively to block that outcome.

Palestinians are right to be wary of the vague promise that things might be better in a revived peace process at some unspecified time in the future. Despite Oslo and 20 years of peace negotiations, as comparison of maps makes only too clear, the space available for a Palestinian state has only shrunk with each passing decade as Israel has continued to appropriate more land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The actions of the Israeli army in the occupied territories, as the recent book of a decade's worth of soldiers' testimonies by the servicemen's group Breaking the Silence has recently demonstrated, have not changed in the desire to control and disrupt ordinary Palestinian life on a daily basis.

The truth is that the occupation has become self-sustaining, both for the Israeli army which is implementing the policy, and for a partly militarised society and its politicians, who cannot persuade themselves to bring the occupation to an end.

There are risks, inevitably, in taking the issue of statehood to the UN, even in the end if it is only for the upgrading of its observer status. Moves on statehood threaten the long-fractious relationship between Fatah and Hamas, the latter of which opposes the statehood moves, particularly in its stronghold, Gaza, raising the risk of more political violence between the rival factions.

There is the danger, too, that the tactic will feel like a damp squib on the day after when Palestinians wake up to see nothing in their lives has changed.

But already the strategy has shed important light on a Middle East peace process in which a United States that has long cast itself as an impartial broker (while vetoing every crticism of Israel raised at the UN) is a far from neutral referee, even as its influence in the region has appeared diminished.

That new reality was dramatised last week with the explicit threat by Saudi Arabia that its important relationship with the US will be downgraded should America choose to use its veto. As in November 1947, we stand at a crossroads of history.

As British ministers deliberate how they will vote in the Security Council, they are confronted with the choice between what is morally right – supporting a Palestinian state – and hypocrisy justified in the name of pragmatism.

The state of Israel was founded amid risk and uncertainty, which those who supported it fully recognised. They did not argue that a Jewish homeland was possible only in the most ideal and secure conditions. That argument should not be used to further delay Palestinian statehood."

Maybe Mahmoud Abbas has finally found his backbone by his unilateral move and the Americans can finally shake off the AIPAC yoke that has been hindering their role as an honest broker. We not only have to believe in miracles but to rely on them. 

It aint over till the fat lady sings.

It looked like the battle for Libya may finally be over as the resistance fighters of the Transitional National Council made momentous gains as they advanced into Tripoli.
With scenes of euphoric jubilation in cities across the country and dubious confirmation that Psycho Saif and his brother Saadi  had been captured it looked like game over for Mad Mo.
Ah but this is Libya and every thing may not be as it seems.  To borrow a quote from former U.S Defence secretary Rumsfeld "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know."
The Gadaffi grip on power seems to be crumbling as a televised recording of the Colonel's voice ranting to the tribes to come to his rescue was the only semblance of resistance in the defense of the Capital.
His whereabouts are still unknown  as he called the rebels "traitors" and likened the situation in Libya to Baghdad .
It has become obvious that the T.N.C fighters have had considerable help in the last few months in order to break the stalemate. NATO played the role of the  air force and perhaps the navy. If there were not " boots " on the ground there definitely were sandals present to coordinate such a massive push with a hint of a mercenary if not a professional soldier core.
Have the tribes that supported Mad Mo up until last week just vanished? Have the core fighting forces given up or have they retreated to the South in order to regroup, securing the oil fields there before they fight back or as Saddam did in Kuwait set fire to the fields as a scorched  earth  policy?
Losing Tripoli may not be the end for Mad Mo who has a history for bizarre tactics and coming back from the brink and this is why the T.N.C has to act decisively in consolidating their victory.
So far their rhetoric sounds balanced and fair but after forty two years of totalitarian rule revenge is one of the human frailties that they have to reign in. Building up a pluralistic society , with laws that work will be a challenge .
The west have to learn from the mistakes of Iraq and advise them of the possibility  a long drawn out conflict as guerrilla warfare becomes a norm in the absence of clear leadership and rapid improvement in the life of the average Libyan.
It ain't over till the fat lady sings.  Next stop Damascus.

Facebook rioters

David Cameron has defended the court's decision to jail  two young men for posting on Facebook a page inciting disorder. 
There are two things which must surely cause consternation in the nation's collective conscience . Firstly the interference or perceived interference of the Government in the judiciary. Independence of this branch is needed to guarantee our liberties, and once the politicians start imposing guidelines and  give active encouragement or directives then we are on a slippery road.
Secondly  while the West was enthusiastic about supporting freedom of speech in the Middle East which incited the demonstrations that followed, here the Government was acting in the same manner as the dictatorships they claimed had to reform. No doubt these harsh sentences will be reversed once the "wild panic" in which these were imposed dissipates and rationality and consistency in the fundamental principles of the legal system are maintained.
There are many published authors whose work incite violence , here the postings did not lead to any violence but still the two young men were sentenced to four years. This short sighted reaction could ultimately lead to erosions of our civil liberties and undermine the independence of the criminal justice system.
It is time to take a look at the underlying symptoms that caused this temporary madness instead of knee jerk sentencing on failed recreational Facebook rioters. 

China 's role

As London is gripped in a spate of recreational rioting coming quickly on the heels of the US debt crises and Euro fiasco, Dave Cameron is forced to cut short his summer holiday. The fact that most of the rioters can't afford to go on holiday seems lost on Cameron and his government.
Meanwhile the former Syrian Defence Minister is found dead from multiple shot wounds hours after his removal, in an apparent suicide technique  that is peculiar to the Levant.
Saudi Arabia , Kuwait and Qatar finally make a small gesture to humanity as they recall their ambassadors from Damascus as the butchering of civilians continue. Even Turkish efforts to convince the Syrians to send their soldiers back to barracks fell on deaf ears.
Emboldened by Iran and taking note of the fate of Mubarak and Saddam , the Good Doctor will continue to cause carnage until he can negotiate himself out of crimes against humanity trial in the Hague or secure safe passage for him and his cronies and his money.
With Moscow being hesitant on this one Bashar has a little more leeway unlike Mad Mo in Libya who is now moving dead bodies around to areas that NATO bombed in an effort to embarrass the now largely leaderless organization.
Rumors of a split future Syria being staging point for attacks on a nuclear Iran are wishful and fanciful thinking despite Moscow's envoy to NATOs statement.
As stock markets crumble quantitative easing will not be found in funding further unnecessary conflicts however mass murdering dictatorships have no role in the modern world. These dictators need to be brought to justice and there has to be a more efficient formula for their exit from power.
The Chinese who have remained astutely quiet should stand up to the plate and assume the leadership role they have so craved.

Syria and the Devil.

 So the Holy month has arrived and the ophthalmologist come mass murderer continues the slaughter of his own people in attempt to subdue attempts at dissent. The international community still looks on impotently with  even the normally vocal Turks conspicuously silent as the tanks shell Hama for the second day. It is said that the gates of hell are closed on the first night of Ramadan and all the devils chained. Not so in Syria!
This regime is in its dying throes but one senses that humanity at large should be active in preventing this human cull.
With barely an attempt at outrage the Americans, who have been locked in a partisan fight about increasing the debt ceiling and already feeling war fatigued from years of fighting in the wrong wars, have acknowledged their Middle East failures and limit their interaction to a few soundbites. The Europeans are just as bad letting crass commercialism determine their political morality .
I can only pray that there is a spiritual awakening within the corrupt regime that will internally put a stop to these massacres, and for the sake of closure this despot and his cronies are brought to justice.

Boy racers And friends of Zoro

As the Holy Month of Ramadan approaches, London, my favourite Arab city begins to brace itself for an August without them as the boy racers and Black Moving Objects , hey any friend of Zoro is a friend of mine, begin to migrate to their respective motherlands .
No doubt the shops will miss them as will the cafes and shisha bars that have become commonplace in the Capital.
Even the noisy boy racers in their Viagra upped super cars will hang their keys till next year after this weekend.
The out maneuvered Moroccan and eastern European young ladies who play an important role in the sex lives of these visitors must be sighing with relief as their gulf counterparts took no prisoners in the lucrative summer sex market.

With a heat wave expected it will truly be a hot summer and us locals may finally get some peace.