Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

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    Global Solidarity Brings Hope to Palestinians After Decades of Oppression

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    If there is one thing Palestinians are known for, it is that we are extremely patriotic. We decorate our homes with Palestinian merchandise and paintings, we continue to dress in traditional patterns, and even though many of us have never even seen Palestine, we continue to identify ourselves as Palestinians. There is even a well-known joke about how Palestinians always have to bring up the fact that they are Palestinian in any setting or conversation. But the underlying reason behind that is our need to prove to the world that we exist.

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    Palestinians all over the world have been struggling and calling for the same things for over 70 years while not only being ignored, but invalidated. However, for the first time ever, there is a trace of hope. Palestinians — and their supporters — have used many terms to describe the conditions they have been living in under the Israeli occupation, including apartheid, genocide and ethnic cleansing, among others. While those inside Palestine have been trying to show the world the truth and sub-par living conditions, those of us outside are trying to shed light on our family history and lack of right to return to our own land.

    Nevertheless, for once, we are seeing notable progress. Now, with the latest developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories with the evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and Gaza and the assaults on peaceful protesters, one cannot look at all the footage on social media and the news and continue to believe that the Zionist state of Israel is not ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

    Shifting Narrative

    For years, Palestinians all over the globe felt like they were alone in this fight to shed light on their plight with no success or extremely slow progress. We have been fighting more battles than anyone knows. Above all, we have been tackling those who spin the narrative to make it look like the oppressors are the victims, which is emotionally and mentally draining. Twitter user Jehad Abusalim says, “One of the worst things about experiencing this pain is that Palestinians need to mourn but also are expected to educate the world from scratch, every time, and make the case for why they must be treated like humans.”

    One of the most dominant arguments against Palestinians and their supporters is the anti-Semitism argument. For years, celebrities, leaders and individuals have avoided discussing the crisis in Palestine for fear of being labeled as an anti-Semite. Yet another battle that we have been fighting is the burden of having to explain to the world how criticism of Israel does not make someone anti-Semitic.

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    But now, with the help of social media, the narrative is shifting. People are differentiating between Zionism and Judaism. It is no longer a taboo to call out the injustices happening to Palestinians. We no longer feel alone in this fight because Palestine is seen as less of a political cause and more of a humanitarian one. Showing support and standing in solidarity with the Palestinians is becoming normalized because the truth is being exposed. For once, Palestinians are hopeful. We feel change coming.

    Several changes have already taken place. Besides the worldwide protests with hundreds of thousands taking to the streets to spread awareness on the many issues in the occupied territories, a few examples of such change is the number of celebrities with millions of followers who are speaking out against the Zionist state. Political leaders, especially in the US, Israel’s strongest ally, are calling for change and sanctions. Senator Bernie Sanders submitted a resolution to limit the sale of American weapons to Israel. Dockworkers in Italy have refused to load arms for Israel, some governments have stood firm in their response to Israel, and many people are boycotting Israeli products and companies that financially support the Israeli military.

    The biggest and most prominent proof that Palestinian voices are being heard is different social media platforms attempting to censor and silence supporters of the Palestinian cause so that Israel remains in control of the narrative. But this time, it is not working. Israel has lost control.

    Despite the major progress in raising awareness of the Palestinian plight, there continues to be excessive pressure on influential people to change the narrative, “tone down the rhetoric” and even apologize for standing with the Palestinians. Some, such as actor Mark Ruffalo, have caved but other influential people, such as writer Shaun King and model Bella Hadid, continue to stand strong.

    Keep the Momentum

    Now that Palestinians are hopeful, this is our time to turn our hope into reality. We are calling on everyone who wants to support our cause to boycott companies that support the Israeli apartheid regime and put pressure on their representatives and leaders for political change. But most importantly, we want everyone to continue making noise and keep the momentum going. Although Israel has agreed to a ceasefire in Gaza, as Palestinians have experienced in the past, this is only a cover-up for other crimes against Palestinians in an attempt to kill the buzz.

    Our biggest concern is that the conversation will die down and Palestinians will go back to living under the status quo, which remains unjust. After all, if one were really on the right side of history, they would not try to cover up their crimes.

    There is a beautiful quote being shared on social media that reads: “The only thing Israel failed to consider when they expelled 750,000 Palestinians 73 years ago was their grandchildren — now from all over the world — coming back to defend their rights.” So, why are Palestinians more patriotic than any other group of people? We believe that our existence is resistance, so we are doing everything in our power to highlight our existence and resist crimes committed against us. Palestinians have always been courageous fighters, saying: “It’s free Palestine until Palestine is free.” And we will never give up on that fight.

    *[This article is submitted on behalf of the authors by the Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Communications Directorate. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the university’s official stance.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Understanding Racism in All Its Forms

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      Twenty years ago, Amnesty International’s “Racism and the Administration of Justice” report warned that “unchecked racism can lead to tragedy on a massive scale.” Last week, as we remembered George Floyd and pondered over the meaning of his death a year ago, another aspect of unchecked racism resurfaced. On May 21, just as a cautious ceasefire was beginning thousands of miles away between Israel and Hamas, Joseph Borgen, a Jewish man reportedly on his way to a pro-Israel rally in Manhattan, was attacked by demonstrators attending a pro-Palestine rally, one of whom has since been charged with a hate crime.

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      The day after the attack, Borgen was interviewed by CNN anchor Don Lemon, where he said that he wanted to understand what made those who attacked him “act the way they did.” Prejudice, of course, comes in all shapes and sizes, all colors and cultures — as does violence. But the linchpin to unpacking the absurdity of this attack, of Muslim-on-Jew hate or Jew-on-Muslim hate, is understanding anti-Semitism and, through the drivers of that phenomenon, Islamophobia.

      Familiarity Breeds Contempt

      This attack, despicable as it was, should not surprise us given our understanding — or lack of it — of anti-Semitism, described as that “very light sleeper,” so easy to awaken. Such attacks are privileged acts of hate because the attackers consider their own particular cause to be exceptional and thus far from racist. Whether you are Jewish or Muslim, Arab or Israeli, the internet is a particularly convenient place to find vindication for what you think is the “truth.” 

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      What we encounter online is a cacophony of privileged hatreds. Jeremy Rosen wrote in his blog recently that, “In the age of social media and mass communication, so many people only believe one propagandist side of the argument and make no effort to hear another point of view.” He writes of how this saddens him in the same way that jihadism has given Islam a bad name “when it is only the most primitive, insecure, and misled who think that way.” But as he rightly states, “these are the tools of the prejudiced.”

      When otherwise peaceful demonstrations manifest themselves in brutal attacks by individuals, verbal or physical, on a perceived “other,” it is racism, pure and simple. But when the perpetrators of such acts are themselves from minority communities, it kowtows to only one agenda — that of white supremacy — which has no sympathy with any of them. The murder of George Floyd and the ensuing public awakening among so many diverse communities — of color, of faith, of culture, of economic disparity, of difference — should be a cue for communities everywhere to reexamine their own attitudes and get their priorities right.

      In relation to Jews and Muslims, a navel-gazing complacency has largely ignored the bigger picture, which is the fight against systemic, institutional or structural racism. The murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests have reminded the world that all people of good conscience should be focused on this type of discrimination. However, the Middle East question continues to revolve around, perhaps fatalistically, over the relationship between Arabs and Israelis, Muslims and Jews, to the detriment of those communities themselves as well as that greater struggle for minorities — combating discrimination and all forms of racism within the societies they actually inhabit.

      Common Ground

      Can Jews and Muslims find common ground from the example of what the killing of George Floyd has taught us? It isn’t as though they have not had opportunities to focus on a more nuanced understanding of each “other.” Attempts in the past to do so have covered art, music, academic enquiry and dialogue. The British composer Roxanna Panufnik’s work, “Abraham,” for instance, is a beautiful musical example of bridge-building between religions that share the essential belief in one God.

      In 2008, “The Call for Peace, Dialogue and Understanding between Muslims and Jews,” an open letter with 40 Muslim signatories, highlighted how, “although many … only know of Muslim-Jewish relations through the prism of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there needs to be an awareness of other positive encounters at different stages of our history.”

      In 2004, I co-convened a remarkable initiative called Alif-Aleph with Dr. Richard Stone, a former chair of the UK-based Runnymede Commission on Islamophobia. The manifesto of that initiative remains relevant and ought to be revived in the context of George Floyd’s wider legacy. The initiative ambitiously aimed to create a new golden age in which Muslims and Jews in the diaspora would spread the example of working together to other communities, building on their mutually positive contributions to society. Living side by side in the West is a new situation that provides new opportunities.

      In practice, the initiative explored a unified purpose in addressing racism. Underlining it was “a common experience of having to address hostilities that derive from mistaken stereotypes of our religions and our cultures, leading to Islamophobia and Antisemitism.” It declared that those who wish to promote negative stereotypes of Muslims and Jews as people who hate each other will be recognized as extremists, because “What the world needs are Harmonisers, not Polarisers.”

      Violently attacking and verbally abusing an innocent person because of how you perceive a particular truth makes you anathema to that truth, makes you a hypocrite, a hater and a racist. It makes you as unjust as those you are trying to expose.

      So what made the attackers “act the way they did”? Don Lemon probably answered that question on his show when he earlier told fellow CNN host Chris Cuomo that “the issue is for people to understand their own implicit bias and racism. … There are different cultures in different places but that doesn’t change … what racism is.” That is the lesson the jury heard when convicting the racist killer of George Floyd. That is the lesson Jews and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis must hear in their own search for a meaningful resolution of what divides them.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Biggest Threat to Democracy in Israel Comes From Within

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      Dear Mr. Netanyahu, 

      What’s the end goal? 

      Many in the Jewish diaspora feel we should never publicly criticize Israeli state actions regarding the country’s defense. I disagree. I’m writing this to call for a change of heart before it’s too late. My fear is that anti-Semitic attacks in the diaspora will continue to rise while one of the biggest long-term threats to the democratic state of Israel grows from within.  

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      I grew up in London, in an Ashkenazi Jewish family where the horrors of persecution lived on through the generations. My bubbeh (grandma), like your zayde (grandad), was born in Poland. She ran from the pogroms and was agoraphobic until the day she died. Mum didn’t know what happened to our family living in Berlin in the 1930s. From a young age, I was taught the horrors of anti-Semitism, including the Holocaust. For many years, it was drummed into me that you stay in your group because, when push comes to shove, no one but Jews helps Jews.  

      Defensive Violence

      As a child in the 1970s, I joined Habonim-Dror, a Zionist youth organization that encouraged Jewish kids in 20 countries to live on a kibbutz in adulthood. I was taught to love the idea of the socialist community where the means of production and property were shared equally among members. I was sold a colonial dream of the muscular sun-tanned Sabra working the land to turn desert into lush agricultural land.   

      My group leaders framed Israeli violence as purely defensive. War training games in the dark, at camp, were exciting. We were woken in the middle of the night to “attack” the other group in a thrilling game of chase in which no one got hurt. The endgame as kids was hot chocolate by the campfire. It was fun as an idealistic teenager to design utopian communities on a Sunday afternoon, to learn about the children’s houses on kibbutzim, depicted like an Enid Blyton novel with midnight feasts and limited interference from parents. We spent hours creating songs and improvising skits that a couple of my youth leaders turned into the successful television show, “Whose Line Is It Anyway?”  

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      I spent a year in Israel at 18, following the path that my Zionist youth movement had encouraged me to take since I was nine years old. Though I loved meeting loads of people from around the world, the parochial realities of living on a kibbutz didn’t match the hype.  

      It was 1982. Israel invaded Lebanon in the misguided belief that it would enhance the security of Israeli’ citizens. My boyfriend on the kibbutz was called up to fight. We stood amidst a million Israeli citizens in Tel Aviv, protesting. I can still picture standing in a huge demonstration among Israelis’ placards with Hitler on one side and Sharon on the other. At 6 a.m. the following morning, my boyfriend left to participate in a war he didn’t believe in. This unedifying war killed thousands of innocent civilians. It seeded the birth of Hezbollah.  

      Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Netanyahu, I also fear Hamas and Hezbollah firing rockets on my family across Israel. They’ve made their anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic goals clear. The following excerpt from Hamas’s charter is worth repeating: “The Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realization of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said: ‘The day of judgment will not come until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say ‘O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

      While this stance may make negotiation feel like a futile tool today, political compromise between Palestinian and Israeli leaders is the only route to peace. What’s your strategy to prevent the ongoing substantive conflict over land from continuing to escalate as an intractable holy war? Israel’s actions fuel recruitment to this ideology. Support for Hamas is increasing, even from those who are usually adamantly against what they stand for. 

      Screaming at Each Other

      I watch in horror as Palestinian gangs attack Jews as Jewish gangs attack Arabs, both marching in the streets with placards screaming death to the other. The Zionist dream sold to me didn’t mention endless evictions of Palestinian families from their homes or police trampling over prayer mats during Ramadan. I was taught that Israel’s control of Jerusalem was in the interests of religious tolerance. But you know that’s not what many hard-line Jewish settlers want. One of the biggest threats to human rights and democratic, Western values of Israel might come from within.

      Successive Israeli prime ministers have tolerated the extremes of Jewish fundamentalism. You, Mr. Netanyahu, were even prepared to go into coalition with an openly racist Jewish party to hold on to political power. In essence, Jewish racism is no different from anti-Semitism. As the chair of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance stated recently, “We strongly condemn the antisemitic violence and hate speech that has taken place in response to the recent escalation of violence in the Middle East. While freedoms of speech and protest are essential pillars of all democracies, nothing can justify hate speech.” That’s right: Nothing justifies hate speech in Israel either.  

      Mr. Netanyahu, you were quick to urge French Jews to come to Israel after the deadly anti-Semitic attack on a kosher supermarket in Paris. Do you bear any responsibility for the rise of violent antisemitic attacks in the diaspora now?   

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      In Israel’s version of proportional representation, a political party only needs to secure 3.25% of the vote to achieve representation in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The consequence of this in a highly fractured society is a politic where the tail too often wags the dog in political decision-making. Disinterested in the state of Israel in its inception, Jewish religious fundamentalists have grown and organized politically.

      Only 13% of Israel’s Haredi ultra-orthodox boys take school exams that guide university entrance, rendering their belief systems devoid of secular education. Their political representatives are guiding government policy that drives settlements on occupied land, thereby preventing a two-state solution that many of them don’t want. Israel’s Haredi community grows at three times the rate of the rest of the Israeli Jewish population and twice the rate of the entire population. Forming a stable government has been impossible, with four elections in two years, and a fifth looming. Could the incoming Israeli prime minister use his political capital to take an honest look at Israel’s political system toward further electoral reform? 

      I hope that the next Israeli government will hear the Arab and Jewish voices in the Knesset seeking peace. Approximately 21% of the Israeli population are Arab or Druze, the majority of whom identify as Sunni Muslims. Perhaps there’s something to learn from New Zealand. Indigenous Māori comprise about 17% of the population; seats in Parliament are reserved exclusively for Māori in proportion to the percentage of the population. 

      Dehumanizing the Other

      For now, we have a ceasefire. It worries me that you may have ramped up the violence in your own political and personal interests. There was a range of political and military response options to Hamas firing rockets into Israel, given the effectiveness of the Iron Dome as a protective shield. One could forgive the cynic for wondering whether part of your strategy is images of blown-up buildings underpinning the next election campaign to harness the fear and anger of Israeli citizens.  

      Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas appears to have little influence or control in the West Bank, and Hamas has successfully exploited the horror in Gaza to win the hearts and minds of the world. They are willing to sacrifice the lives of civilians in Gaza because they think that the ends justify the means. From where I sit, the Israeli state did a great job of helping them by the extreme nature of your retaliation, not to mention your settlement policies and conditions in Gaza.

      The world watched the Israeli army destroy the building that housed the Associated Press and other media organizations. Even if some of the current Hamas leadership were killed and the infrastructure for attack on Israel destroyed, the Israeli state also demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice other people’s children as collateral damage. Surely our history has taught us the importance of not dehumanizing the “other.” Increasing the numbers of traumatized extremists eager to take the place of the leaders killed today looks like a disastrous strategy long term. When will we learn that violence won’t end this war?

      In Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s words, “Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.” You know that Rabin, a warrior turned peacemaker, was assassinated by an individual Jewish extremist in Tel Aviv in 1995 in opposition to the Oslo Peace Accords. The extremist ultranationalist views of the perpetrator are far more visible under your watch than Rabin’s legacy and search for peace.  

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      Emboldened by President Donald Trump, your government has tried to remove resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the domestic political agenda. Palestinian leadership remains divided and weak. Jewish fundamentalism has flourished in its bubble of righteousness. You have ignored peaceful protests while Palestinians are evicted from their homes. You have condoned expansion of illegal settlements on occupied land, and you’ve invested much more in Jewish communities than Arab ones, within the legal bounds of the state. What options do Palestinians have? Yitzhak Rabin’s words again resonate today: “No Arab ruler will consider the peace process seriously so long as he is able to toy with the idea of achieving more by the way of violence.”  

      The vacuum of visible wise leadership on all sides is dispiriting. The China-Iran Strategic Partnership is likely to secure Tehran’s funding of Hezbollah for years to come. The challenge is for moderate Israeli and Palestinian leaders to build the political capital to compromise over legitimate needs and conflicting rights to land and resources. Perhaps some young Mizrahi Jews (descended from North Africa, Central and West Asia) and Israeli Arabs and Druze serving in the Knesset will help to bridge the gaps.

      Perhaps Israelis and Palestinians will reinvigorate the peace movement as they circle the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem in the peace chain. Perhaps more peacemakers will also emerge in the Palestinian and Jewish diasporas. They’ll need wisdom and charisma, skilled international facilitation and ongoing economic development.  

      Options to establish a Palestinian state are already on the table. Both sides have tried to compromise before. But as you well know, ramped-up fear and anger are powerful. Cynicism and hopelessness among moderate Israelis and Palestinians, alongside the determination and political power of Jewish and Islamist fundamentalists, is alarming.  

      We’re all relieved to see a ceasefire. Nevertheless, your decisions have not only killed innocent civilians, but also traumatized the next generation so that they are more likely to find refuge in ultra-nationalism and religious fundamentalism. Neither will solve this conflict. Thoughtful people, religious and secular together, hopefully will.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Can the US Really Rally Other Nations?

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      On May 25, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an effusive demonstration of love and mutual admiration. The show the two men put on in the aftermath of a shaky ceasefire looked like a private celebration of a threefold victory for Israel thanks to its aggressive show of force. The rockets from Gaza have stopped; Israel is still in control; the US will stand by Netanyahu, thick or thin.

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      What has emerged from Blinken’s visit for Americans is a “mission accomplished” feeling. The US will now be able to write the entire event off as insignificant and return to their normal activities. These include arguing about how much not to spend on infrastructure, discovering the truth about UFOs or getting vaccinated so that people can start partying again as summer approaches. Hamas has been disarmed. The disaster in the Holy Land has been avoided.

      The problem for any serious observer is that their comforting discourse is in total dissonance with the historical context. The media across the globe have noticed that for the Biden administration, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a low priority, an unwanted distraction from the real business of the hour: creating a positive image for the recently elected president, young in the office (a mere 125 days) but old in years and inevitably stale in his thinking.

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      What does all this tell us about President Joe Biden’s policy with regard to Israeli-Palestinian relations? Some have hinted that, under pressure from progressives and some centrist Democrats, the Biden administration might consider modifying its ever-forgiving relationship with Israel by, for the first time, imposing conditions on the generous military aid the US provides year after year. No trace of that pressure appeared in Blinken’s discourse. Instead, the policy he hints at sounds like an anemic version of the Trump-Kushner peace plan. Biden talks about achieving stability by encouraging trade and investment. This essentially means the US will release enough cash for the rebuilding required for the Palestinians to function minimally within the Israeli economy.

      In his meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Blinken evoked a gift of $360 million, not quite half of the appropriation of $735 million in supplementary military aid to Israel the Biden administration requested earlier this month and which some Democrats in Congress are currently contesting. Despite meetings with leaders in Egypt and Jordan, there is no indication that Washington may seek to address the historical causes of a never-ending series of conflicts. That will be left to others. Blinken summed up his intention in these words: “The United States will work to rally international support.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Rally:

      Incite a group of people and, in extreme cases, a mob to back or participate in a project that may or may not be in their interest but which reflects the goals and interests of the one who incites

      Contextual Note

      The style section of The New York Times features an article about a high school student named Adrian in California who, on May 17, produced a flyer to invite kids from his school to an open beach party for his 17th birthday. A friend spread the invitation to Snapchat and TikTok, whose “For You” algorithm turned it into a national event. Thousands of people responded and arranged to travel to Huntington Beach to be part of the event. The response ballooned uncontrollably, leading the two young friends to seek a willing commercial partner and turn it into an organized, paying event in Los Angeles, simply to avoid being accused of provoking a riot. It ended with a fracas on the beach, clashes with the police and hundreds of unhappy customers when no party materialized in Los Angeles. It did, however, instantly turn Adrian into an internet influencer.

      Adrian now understands what it means to rally his contemporaries and indeed how easy it is to do it with the right plan. The Biden-Blinken plan to rally international support not only seems more modest and vague than Adrian’s, but it is far less likely to succeed. Blinken’s promise contains the principal themes of the discredited Trump-Kushner plan, without the ambition. The countries he appears to be rallying are either part of last year’s Abraham Accords initiated by Donald Trump or sympathetic to its goals. They essentially consist of Israel’s neighbors to the south: the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Egypt.

      The Trump-Kushner plans rallied these nations around the idea of collaborating with Israel to create a prosperous business zone in the Middle East. It promised to turn the Occupied Palestinian Territories into a prosperous tourist attraction, allowing it to participate in the kind of glitzy commercial culture that has triumphed in Dubai and provided a model for Neom, Saudi Arabia’s futuristic city in the desert. Jared Kushner and friends imagined that Gaza could become one giant beach resort like Waikiki, Acapulco or Cancun.

      Historical Note

      This may be what was at the back of Antony Blinken’s mind when he proposed to “promote economic stability and progress in the West Bank and Gaza, more opportunity, to strengthen the private sector, expand trade and investment, all of which are essential to growing opportunity across the board.” The underlying logic is the same as the Trump-Kushner peace plan, once touted as the “deal of the century,” a game-changer destined to transform the economy of the Middle East, consolidate an objective alliance between Israel and Saudi Arabia and isolate Iran. For historical and cultural reasons that should have been obvious to anyone familiar with the region, no one apart from the ruling class of those Middle Eastern countries took the plan seriously. Even they did so mainly out of diplomatic politeness toward Donald Trump and deference to the always redoubtable economic and military might of the US.

      The difference between the Trump-Kushner plan and Blinken’s vague proposal is that in the first case, the cash would be counted in billions. Most of it would have been provided by the Saudis, allowing them to gain cultural control over the Palestinians. The Palestinians would inevitably be beholden to the Israeli-Saudi alliance’s money and technology on the simple condition that they humbly accept their supporting role in an economy designed to further the interests of the ruling class in the US, Israel and the Arabian Peninsula. The Palestinians, with or without an identifiable state, would have their role in the neo-liberal economy assured, ensuring peace on earth forever after.

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      Blinken appears to have accepted the collaborative vision that Jared Kushner imagined, but in stating it, he unwittingly reveals its fundamental flaw. “Asking the international community, asking all of us to help rebuild Gaza only makes sense if there is confidence that what is rebuilt is not lost again because Hamas decides to launch more rocket attacks in the future,” Blinken said. The US has never reconciled the contradiction that comes from the fact that Hamas, which it classifies as a terrorist organization, came to power in a legitimate democratic election in 2006. Some might judge that the US, with a history of sending its mighty military into different regions of the world on false pretexts and prolonging its assaults on other populations for decades, could also be classified as a terrorist organization despite its democratically elected government.

      There is something chilling when Blinken evokes the idea “that what is rebuilt is not lost again because Hamas decides to launch more rocket attacks in the future.” He is telling the Palestinians that if they choose to react to any perceived injustice and repression with the limited weapons at their disposal, they should expect everything that is built or “rebuilt” to come toppling down on their heads once again. This is a threat, not a peace proposal. It is a cynical affirmation of might over right. It is also an explicit denial of democracy and respect for the outcome of democratic elections.

      The test of Biden’s ability to influence events in the Middle East will come very soon with the result of the Vienna talks concerning the United States’ eventual return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal with Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu is using the occasion to put pressure on the US to abandon the talks. Joe Biden promised during the 2020 election campaign to return to the JCPOA. If the US fails to do so, some will see it as a sign of Israel’s continued power to dictate US foreign policy.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Biden Invests His Capital in Israel

      by

      Though the stale expression “political capital” has become a handy item in every pundit’s vocabulary, there was a time when the financial metaphor would have seemed jarring and paradoxical in the context of democracy. Its popularity today reflects a disturbing trend in the reasoning that governs democratic decision-making. The traditional focus on ensuring the general welfare and responding to the will of the people has been replaced by a process of cold calculation we associate with the world of finance and investment. Politics is no longer about governing. It is exclusively about winning elections, accumulating capital and living off the spoils of victory.

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      Living metaphors play on comparison between two disparate orders of reality. Dead metaphors fester in their own world as meaningless rhetorical artifacts. Attempting to analyze US President Joe Biden’s strategy of refusing to comment on Israel’s disproportionately violent campaign of “self-defense,” New York Times journalists Annie Karni and David E. Sanger propose this explanation: “Mr. Biden’s tactic was to avoid public condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza — or even a public call for a cease-fire — in order to build up capital with Mr. Netanyahu and then exert pressure in private when the time came.” In this case, the metaphor is so definitively dead the authors don’t bother with the epithet “political” and simply call it “capital.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Political capital:

      According to the New York Times, the advantage one hopes to obtain from offering a gift to someone known to be selfish, greedy and disrespectful

      Contextual Note

      US media have made a major effort in recent days to make sense of the strategic logic behind Biden’s behavior at the height of the crisis that some now believe has been resolved by a ceasefire. Of course, nothing at all has been resolved, even if the fireworks have come to a provisional halt. The media, as usual, focus on identifying winners and losers. They present a scorecard and retrospectively imagine the strategy that governed the play of the actors. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Western media continue to view what is clearly a deep, complex and enduring historical crisis not for what it is, but as a game being played by leaders on both sides seeking to reinforce their image and consolidate political capital with their base. In this reading, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim was to cling to power after losing an election. The adversary, Hamas, reacted with the sole motivation of reaffirming its position as the most resolute defender of the Palestinian cause, all for the sake of obtaining electoral advantage both in Gaza and the West Bank. The analysis contains a grain of truth but appeared more as a random factor in a much bigger geopolitical drama than as the basis of a serious account of the events.

      What journalists call political capital today was once expressed by the notion of “goodwill,” a term borrowed from business vocabulary that includes the idea of customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Like so much else in the English language, goodwill itself has been transformed by the trend to financialize our thinking about everything under the sun.

      The authoritative Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOD) gives this primary definition of goodwill: “Virtuous, pious, upright position or intention.” Investopedia begins with this definition: “Goodwill is an intangible asset that is associated with the purchase of one company by another.” The SOD does include another definition of goodwill in use as early as 1571: “the possession of a ready-formed connexion of customers” used to evaluate “the saleable value of a business.” Investopedia sees goodwill as an asset before citing its virtuous status in the eyes of customers. The SOD puts virtue first, customers second and “saleable value” (= asset) last. Goodwill began its history as a virtue and ended up as a proprietary asset.

      Historical Note

      Political capital has definitely replaced political goodwill as an operational concept in modern political thinking. Kenya may be the last English-speaking country to continue to use the metaphor of political goodwill in preference to capital. In an editorial dated May 15, 2020, the Times of San Diego referred to goodwill as something real but now associated with the historical past. “It was not so long ago that we experienced a time of goodwill in our national political life, with Jimmy Carter promising never to lie… Now all that has changed,” adding, “we have lost what had been an open window to the fresh air that characterized the late 1970s.”

      There are two related semantic principles underlying this historical shift that reveal a lot about how society itself has changed, precisely in the decade that followed Carter’s presidency. The first concerns the shift in social culture itself from an ability to focus on collective interest that has been replaced by a narcissistic obsession with individual competitive advantage. The second concerns the trend toward the financialization of all human activities and attributes.

      The 1980s witnessed the triumph of the transformative Thatcher-Reagan ideological coalition. The ideas associated with government “of the people, by the people and for the people” found themselves suddenly radically subordinated to theoretical principles purportedly derived from the logic of free market capitalism. The idea of goodwill has always had a collective connotation. It was never about an asset or property, but a state of mind shared by the public. In 2007, Robert Kuttner in The New York Times complained that George W. Bush’s warmongering “squandered the global goodwill that has long been the necessary complement to America’s military might.” Goodwill was an asset shared by the nation and its people.

      Kuttner correctly noted that Bush’s Middle East adventures both broke the solidarity of goodwill and squandered its value as a collective asset. In 2004, Chris Sullentrop, writing for Slate, noticed how, at the same time goodwill was disappearing from the media’s vocabulary, Bush himself relentlessly insisted on the idea of political capital. “Now the most common usage of ‘political capital,’” according to Sullentrop, “means the power that popularity confers on a politician, or something like that. ‘Political capital’ is shaping up to be the first buzzword of the second Bush administration.”

      Sullentrop cites multiple examples in Bush’s discourse. In 2001, the president, newly elected (by the Supreme Court), explained: “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.” Really? Is spending one’s public reputation — to say nothing of blood and treasure in the Middle East — a feature of presidential style? When Time magazine asked Bush, “What did you learn about being president from watching your father?” he answered, “I learned how to earn political capital and how to spend it.” There are many other examples. If for Americans “time is money,” for post-Reagan Americans, goodwill (earned or unearned) is also money.

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      In 2008, Barack Obama insisted that he was on a mission to restore America’s goodwill. But after eight years of Bush, the very idea of goodwill had lost all its ancient connotations of being “virtuous” and “upright.” It was now reduced to the simplistic idea of marketing the nation’s image to the rest of the world. By continuing most of Bush’s policies, from maintaining his tax breaks for the rich to prosecuting Bush’s wars and even expanding them to new regions, Obama’s efforts at creating goodwill could only remain superficial and cosmetic. That bothered no one in Washington, since the reigning ideology, formerly focused on seeking politically coherent solutions to complex problems, had converted to an ideology based on the newly adored laws of branding and marketing.

      Some saw Donald Trump’s triumph in 2016, built around his guiding principle, “America First,” as a shift away from even the need to spread goodwill. In reality, his hyper-narcissistic ideology was an extension of the same trend that had replaced the notion of virtuous action by that of accumulated assets.

      And what about Joe Biden’s plan to order to “build up capital with Mr. Netanyahu and then exert pressure in private when the time came”? It sounds like a joke. Playing the accomplice to someone else’s criminal actions cannot produce political capital. Al Jazeera quotes Nader Hashemi, a Middle East expert at the University of Denver: “[T]he more Israel is coddled, supported, sustained, the more belligerent and intransigent Israel becomes to making any concessions.” Bibi Netanyahu is not done with managing America’s foreign policy.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      White America’s Burden in the Holy Land

      by

      Earlier this week, an Israeli military official evoked “a worst-case scenario” conducted by three Israeli infantry brigades that would amount to crushing Gaza on the ground rather than just bombarding it. Some observers have noticed that the current worse-than-ever-before-but-not-as-bad-as-what’s-to-come scenario has miraculously permitted Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to hang on to power after the March 23 election deprived him of the hope of heading a new coalition.

      The Future of Jerusalem Matters to Us All

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      Washington Post reporter Steve Hendrix notes that “the escalation of fighting brought a last-minute reprieve from what could have been the end of [Netanyahu’s] record run at the top of Israeli politics.” Hendrix quotes Gayil Talshir, a professor at Hebrew University: “The riot came just in time to prevent the change of government in Israel.” Despite this “coincidence,” Hendrix avoids suggesting what some suspect: that Netanyahu’s policies and recent actions may have been designed to provoke the current crisis.

      Rather than delve into history, reflect on the meaning or explore possible hidden motives, Hendrix prefers the approach that Western media have long preferred: presenting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a combined violent chess game and political popularity contest between two obdurate parties whose leaders are unwilling to compromise. Hendrix reduces an enduring historical drama of vast geopolitical dimensions to a petty game of leaders seeking electoral advantage by appealing to their base, à la Donald Trump. He calls the new wave of violence “a boon to the leaders of both camps — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas militants — who have been struggling and scraping to salvage their political standing.” That’s the kind of narrative that appeals to The Post’s readers living in their bubble within the Beltway. History be damned; this is electoral politics.

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      The New York Times came closer to signaling Netanyahu’s implication in the current troubles. Isabel Kershner cites centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, who “blamed the prime minister for the spiraling sense of chaos.” Kershner focuses on the likelihood that Israel will at some point in the near future have a coalition government including Mansour Abbas’ Islamic Raam party, which would mark a monumental change in Israeli politics. In the end, however, Kershner appears to believe that it’s still Netanyahu who will emerge from the rubble as the leader of whatever unstable political coalition he can cobble together.

      As the violence escalates, the world wonders what US President Joe Biden intends to do. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was the first to express the administration’s take, which for the moment sounds like an endorsement of the status quo: “There is, first, a very clear and absolute distinction between a terrorist organization, Hamas, that is indiscriminately raining down rockets, in fact, targeting civilians, and Israel’s response, defending itself.” The idea that Biden’s administration might try, for once, to play the role of honest broker would seem dead in the coastal waters of Gaza.

      Blinken’s recognition of Palestinian suffering only appeared when he claimed that Israel has “an extra burden.” This, of course, implies that its main burden consists of “targeting terrorists” in response to indiscriminately launched rockets. The “extra burden” consists of trying “to prevent civilian deaths, noting that Palestinian children have been killed in Israeli strikes.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Extra burden:

      A responsibility supplementing the one Rudyard Kipling famously identified as “the white man’s burden,” which consisted of dominating “sullen peoples, Half devil and half child,” the kind of people who for their amusement launch rockets indiscriminately at white people.

      Contextual Note

      Thanks to the growing realization that Israel is firmly set on maintaining an apartheid state, for the first time in decades, US politicians have begun to wonder whether it makes any sense to continue the nation’s unconditional support of every Israeli government. Israel has continued expanding its illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in direct violation of UN resolutions and the Geneva Convention. The current troubles began with Israel’s brazen attempt to evict Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem and replace them with Jewish settlers, followed by the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

      For Blinken, the social and historical context of these events simply doesn’t exist. He wants people to believe it all started with the launching of rockets by the Palestinians. Nor do context and historical reality interest Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III, who insisted that details are irrelevant when the US has vowed “‘ironclad support’ for Israel’s right to defend itself.” This is totally consistent with Biden’s promise, in a phone call this week to Netanyahu, of “unwavering support” for Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

      Blinken showed less concern for the possible war crimes now taking place than for the bad PR they might generate. “[W]henever we see civilian casualties, and particularly when we see children caught in the crossfire losing their lives, that has a powerful impact,” he said. Blinken worries about what “we see” and its  “impact” in the media. This implies that if we didn’t see it and if the impact was reduced, all would be well. Ignorance is bliss.

      Biden reinforced everyone’s expectation that there would be nothing new under the shining sun of US diplomacy when he offered this comment: “My hope is that we will see this coming to a conclusion sooner than later.” What conclusion is he thinking of? And why is an American president just hoping that something good will happen? Why isn’t he intervening to facilitate not a “conclusion” but a resolution? Some will point out that every US president’s hands are tied by a status quo that holds as its first commandment, thou shalt never criticize Israel, its leaders or its policies.

      Historical Note

      Following World War II, Western nations assumed the entire civilization’s shame at the crimes of Nazi Germany. The British used the newly created United Nations as the instrument by which the West could atone for Germany’s racist sins through the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. 

      Once that was done, the die was cast. The West, led by the British — who had assumed “responsibility” for the region of the former Ottoman Empire — decided how and at whose expense (not their own) the surviving European Jews might be rewarded. Giving them Palestine seemed like the easy way out for the Western world as a whole. The British wanted out anyway. It also had the advantage of establishing a state in the Middle East whose culture would be basically Western and European.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Neither the British, the Americans nor the French — all in various ways implicated in the new order to be established in the Middle East — imagined that Israel would evolve to become an aggressive nation increasingly focused on bullying its neighbors and claiming its own particular version of exceptionalism. French President Charles de Gaulle was the first to notice it, on the occasion of the Six-Day War in 1967. Western leaders may have naively believed that the same Arabs who allowed themselves to be bullied by the Turks for centuries would accept with docility the rule of their new masters, who claimed to be building a modern nation on socialist and egalitarian principles.

      In the first decade of Israel’s existence, the US refused to identify with the new nation’s interests, notably during the Suez Crisis in 1956 in which the Eisenhower administration countered the Franco-British alliance. It also viewed with hostility the presumed socialist ideology of Israel. At the time, the WASP (white Anglo-Saxon Protestant) elite maintained a lingering anti-Semitic bias. But as the Cold War evolved and the importance of the oil economy grew, leading to increasing tensions between the West and the Muslim world, by the 1980s, the US was on track formulating its current “unconditional,” “iron-clad” alliance with Israel.

      This gradual evolution toward a position of increasingly blind support of Israel has had a profound influence on Western media in its reporting on the enduring, increasingly unresolvable conflict between the Jewish state and its Arab inhabitants. Western news media have largely accepted the role of encouraging their audience to sympathize with white, essentially European and American Israelis who feel threatened in an alien, hostile Orient.

      Greg Philo in The Guardian shows that an analysis of Western media in its reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has, for decades, reflected “a strong emphasis on Israeli perspectives.” What better illustration than yesterday’s Washington Post: “Israeli jets strike Gaza; Hamas launches rockets as Israeli ground troops stand by”?

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The Future of Jerusalem Matters to Us All

      by

      No city in the world has seized the imagination or captivated the soul in the way that Jerusalem has. Revered by more than half the world’s population, Jerusalem is the beating heart of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is a city widely held to have been inhabited by the Jebusites, long before the coming of Abraham to whose descendants the land of Canaan is believed by some to have been divinely promised. However, such a claim, irrespective of its authenticity, does not and cannot be used to justify occupation, injustice and the undermining of the fundamental rights of peoples to live in their homelands in both peace and security.

      The suffering of Arab Jerusalemites — Christian and Muslim — has gone on for far too long. In 1967, the Arab residents of the Moroccan Quarter were forcefully evicted from their homes before Israeli forces razed the neighborhood entirely, and the same story seems to have repeated itself ever since, with the recent events at Bab al-Amoud, Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah being its latest iterations.

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      When on the June, 27, 1967, Israel extended the remit of its laws and administration to include the Old City and other areas, it acted in direct contravention of Article 43 of the Hague Regulations that requires an occupying power to “respect, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.” Any impartial examination of Israeli measures, both administrative and other, taken in relation to Jerusalem, would make patently clear that Article 43 has been violated, and so have Articles 56 and 46.

      Ample Evidence

      There is ample evidence of the demolition of privately-owned Arab property in Jerusalem to make way for the construction of large apartment complexes in the environs of a city now enlarged. There is ample evidence too of the expropriation of private land and property, which is not, in point of fact, necessarily justifiable on national security grounds. Dispossession, the purpose of which can only be to reconfigure the demographic balance and to prevent the Palestinians from exercising their right to self-determination, does, however, meet Israel’s demand for housing.

      Embed from Getty Images

      When expropriation amounts to confiscation, it is likely to be in breach of Article 46, which states that “private property must be respected” and “cannot be confiscated.” Demolitions clearly violate Article 53, which prohibits the destruction of property situated in occupied territory. In addition, when enacted as punitive measures, demolition and/or confiscation clearly amount to collective punishment, a crime under international law and a violation of the provisions of international humanitarian law and the principles of customary international law.

      Turning a blind eye to flagrant violations of human rights law and international law does have grave repercussions. In our rules-based international order, world peace and security depend ultimately on UN member states upholding Security Council resolutions that in relation to the question of Palestine criminalize the acquisition of territory by force, the building of settlements in occupied territory and the misrepresentation and falsification of facts on the ground. Not only are confiscation, demolition and annexation serious breaches of the UN Charter and the Geneva Conventions, but they also violate Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that hold “inadmissible” the taking of land or territory by war or by force.

      Equally inadmissible is annexation. Among the disastrous consequences of further annexation would be the resulting demographic imbalance in the occupied West Bank. Many Palestinians will neither leave their land or their home voluntarily nor relinquish them without resistance. Annexation is a clear breach of international law, which precludes, indeed considers a crime, any form of discrimination against or oppression of one people or racial group over another. This, as regards the situation in the West Bank, has been described by the United Nations, B’Tselem and others as constituting apartheid.

      Unless creeping annexation is halted, the viability of a Palestinian state will be further jeopardized, with any such state effectively reduced to a number of Bantustans: disconnected, walled-off islands of land, isolated, incoherent and with no territorial connection to the outside world. Such a result would render the two-state solution inviable, with obvious consequences for international efforts to resolve the conflict.

      Near-Perpetual Injustice

      Mediated by anger, frustration and hopelessness, decades of systematic humiliation and discrimination can lead to acts of violence, but violence cannot and must never be the response to the violence of others even when that violence is enacted with glaring impunity. Palestine is a woeful tale of an increasingly lonely people beset by near-perpetual injustice, whose moments of hope are oft-shattered by belligerent and reckless politicking. The toll of recent days — the lives indiscriminately taken, the trauma-mangled psyches, the futures broken — does drown out non-violent opportunities for change.

      International pressure is vital if violence on both sides is to be halted; a halt in hostilities in and of itself cannot win the peace. There is both the urgent need for new channels of communication and the desperate need for a vision that offers on-the-ground evidence, powerful and immediate, of what the dividends of peace would look like. The security-for-peace formula should be embraced and its goals achieved. Historical obscurantism is not a solution, and despite the legal and ethical obligation to respect human rights, it is crystal clear that neither law nor ethics can ensure either respect or compliance.

      Mutual respect and peaceful co-existence are requisites for a just, lasting and, comprehensive peace, which we can wage through the development of a greater receptivity: “I become myself by what I am given by the other.”

      We must remember why we care so much about Jerusalem so that once again it can be celebrated as the City of Peace. Jerusalem is a shared gift, not the exclusive property of one government or one people. Because the future of the Holy City matters to us all, we need to ensure the equal treatment of and prosperity for all its residents. Whatever happens in Jerusalem is testament to the strength or weakness of the relationship between the Abrahamic faiths and the relationship between our societies and cultures.

      The deadlock must be broken. The status quo is untenable.

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest. HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal will appear on its podcast on Friday, May 14.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      Israel Must Accept ICC Jurisdiction Over Palestine

      by

      On February 5, the International Criminal Court (ICC) ruled that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. Seven years after the 2014 Gaza conflict, in which war crimes were committed by both Israel and armed Palestinian groups according to the United Nations, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda confirmed a formal investigation into the situation in Palestine, which Human Rights Watch (HRW) has been calling for since 2016. On April 27, HRW released a 213-page report detailing Israel’s “crimes of apartheid and persecution.” An ICC investigation is a crucial step toward regional peace, which cannot be achieved without accountability and transitional justice.

      However, amidst the process of diplomatic normalization with Arab states, Israel is compromising the prospects of peace by refusing to take responsibility for the injustices committed against Palestinian civilians, including children. To achieve peace in the Middle East, and particularly with the Palestinians, Israel must recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and be held accountable for any war crimes committed.

      The ICC Has Stepped on a Political Minefield in Palestine

      READ MORE

      Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu labeled the ICC ruling as “pure anti-Semitism” and claimed that the court is a “political” body rather than a judicial one. He said that the ICC should be investigating Syria and Iran instead. This is but one example of the pattern of deflection displayed by the Israeli state when confronted with the reality of the war crimes committed during its occupation of Palestinian territories.

      Netanyahu’s claims that the ICC decision is politicized or anti-Semitic are an unfounded effort at deflection and denial. First, though Syria and Iran have not been prosecuted by the ICC, these regimes are subject to a wide range of US and UN-sponsored sanctions, as well as political isolation, to which Israel is unlikely to be subjected. In a sense, these countries are already being “punished.” Second, holding Syria and Iran accountable for their own crimes and investigating possible Israeli war crimes are not mutually exclusive processes. Finally, the ICC ruling did not exclusively target Israel or its defense force, the IDF; Palestinian Hamas was also named as a potential perpetrator of war crimes and will be investigated as such.

      This deflection strategy is not an unusual response to ICC investigations. It parallels the US attempt to thwart ICC investigations of American military misconduct in Afghanistan, which is similarly delaying the Afghan peace process.

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      Accountability matters, not only for Palestinians who have been denied their human rights during the conflict but also for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and for cooperation in the region more broadly. The climate of impunity enjoyed by Israel only fuels the frustration of Palestinians and, worse, makes the rhetoric of groups such as Hamas more compelling. Peacebuilding experts have also long argued that accountability is central to a successful peace process. For example, the indictments of Charles Taylor of Liberia and Radovan Karadzic of Bosnia strongly contributed to peaceful outcomes in both countries.

      Before Israel can be held accountable, it must first recognize ICC jurisdiction. However, given the Israeli government’s continued push for annexation and the US sanctions against the ICC, this scenario is unlikely. Nonetheless, any form of accountability would be a positive start and an important step toward peace. Accountability can take many forms, ranging from state recognition of injustice to judicial punishment of individual perpetrators.

      Any accountability process should also include Palestinians at the table. It is time for the Israeli leadership to spearhead the peace process — not through other Arab states, but through an honest accountability process with Palestinians. The best starting point would be for Israel to recognize ICC jurisdiction.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      The ICC Has Stepped on a Political Minefield in Palestine

      by

      The rapidly-evolving geopolitical equation in the Middle East just got another layer of complexity added to it. Earlier this month, Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), announced the launch of an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian Territories since 2014. The prosecutor’s decision, important no less from an international accountability perspective, may end up putting the ICC in the crosshairs of regional politics.

      The ICC, which tries individuals rather than countries, is the world’s first-ever permanent court with jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression. The court’s decision has come in the wake of important developments in the Middle East. These include the US potentially rejoining the Iran nuclear deal; the much-vaunted Abraham Accords signed by Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in 2020; the Saudi-led war in Yemen that continues with no end in sight; and Iran’s engagement in proxy warfare in the region. The ICC’s intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one of the most complex international disputes — has added a new ingredient to an already simmering stew. 

      Palestine and Israel: A Bloody Saga

      READ MORE

      During its early years, the ICC — created through the Rome Statute in 1998 — largely focused on atrocity crimes in Africa. The court was criticized for what was perceived as a bias toward that continent. Recently, the ICC has greenlighted investigations into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan, Myanmar and Bangladesh.

      But with no military force to enforce its decisions, the ICC has, over the years, meandered through terrain beset with political uncertainty. It has faced off against belligerent administrations and received relentless pushback from world leaders caught in the crosshairs of its legal processes. With 123 countries accepting jurisdiction to date, but with major powers like the US, Russia and China not a party to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the court has been called out as lacking wider international legitimacy.

      Yet, the ICC is trying to fix a broken international criminal justice system, albeit in a manner that does not necessarily bode well for its own future. With pronouncements such as the one in respect of the situation in Palestine, the ICC could end up stirring a hornet’s nest or, at best, catapult some fleeting global attention to the neglected Palestinian crisis.

      The US Response

      The Biden administration’s response to the ICC investigation came as a surprise to internationalists, who were hoping for some pivoting of the rules-based international order vociferously eroded by the US under former President Donald Trump. These hopes were dashed when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken unequivocally opposed the ICC’s decision to investigate the Palestinian situation. He based the US decision on two overarching principles: First, Israel is a non-party to the ICC and second, Palestine (which has accepted the ICC’s jurisdiction) is not a sovereign state and is therefore “not qualified to obtain membership as a state.”

      This line of reasoning is deeply problematic. It strikes at the very heart of the ICC’s jurisdiction, which extends to the territory and nationals of state parties to the court. By virtue of Palestine accepting the ICC’s jurisdiction in 2015, all alleged crimes committed in the Palestinian Territories by the Israel Defense Forces and Hamas — the militant Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip — theoretically fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction. Bringing Israel within its jurisdiction was the main reason behind the Palestinian Authority’s decision to make Palestine a state party to the ICC.

      Secretary Blinken’s statement calls the decision to investigate Israel unfair. It also confirms the US commitment to stand for Israel’s security. This is a veiled warning to the ICC that it will not get far with its inquiry. After all, an ICC investigation will require Israel’s cooperation and US neutrality. With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outrageously calling the ICC move “pure anti-Semitism,” the fate of the investigation has been effectively sealed before it even started.  

      International Criminal Justice

      In other words, the ICC inquiry — notwithstanding all the braggadocio of international accountability — will be undermined by the deep-rooted security embrace between the US and Israel. The ICC prosecutor said the investigation in the occupied Palestinian Territories will be conducted “independently, impartially and objectively, without fear or favor.” Yet, by wantonly brandishing the ICC as a political instrument — something that it is not — the US and Israel will surely launch an all-out effort to delegitimize the international criminal justice enterprise. 

      Blinken also warned that unilateral judicial actions by the ICC can “exacerbate tensions and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution.” The portrayal of the ICC as an impediment to a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be a gnawing concern for the international community. 

      Will Israel now weaponize the ICC investigation to deny Palestinian statehood while claiming that the court is impeding efforts toward that end? With the edifice of international justice having been eviscerated by the Trump administration, coupled with the US and Israel now renewing their vow against the ICC, the future of criminal justice in the occupied Palestinian Territories appears bleak. The slowly churning wheel of international criminal justice, manifested by the ICC, just got another spoke thrown in it that may well end up permanently jamming it.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More