Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

For the purpose of linking to the letter, the statement has been posted on the website of the European Council on Foreign Relations and can be accessed via the following link: http://www.ecfr.eu/blog/entry/time_is_running_out_for_a_two_state_solution

Sir Jeremy Greenstock can be reached for further comment at the following address: jqg@gatehouseadvisorypartners.com

Dear High Representative

We, the under-signed members of the European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process, are writing to you to express our strong concern about the dying chances of a settlement based on two separate, sovereign and peaceful states of Israel and Palestine.

The Eminent Persons Group is composed of a number of former Presidents, Prime Ministers, Ministers and senior officials of EU Member States who have decided to concert their efforts to encourage a lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute.

We have watched with increasing disappointment over the past five years the failure of the parties to start any kind of productive discussion, and of the international community under American and/or European leadership to promote such discussion. We have also noted with frustration and deep concern the deteriorating standards of humanitarian and human rights care of the population in the Occupied Territories. The security and long-term stability of Israel, an essential objective in any process, cannot be assured in such conditions, any more than the legitimate rights and interests of the Palestinian people.

President Obama made some of these points during his March 2013 visit to the region, particularly in his address to the people of Israel, but he gave no indication of action to break the deep stagnation, nor any sign that he sought something other than the re-start of talks between West Bank and Israeli leaders under the Oslo Process, which lost its momentum long ago.

We are therefore appealing to you, and through you to the members of the Council of Ministers, to recognise that the Peace Process as conceived in the Oslo Agreements has nothing more to offer. Yet the present political stalemate, while the situation deteriorates on the ground, is unsustainable, given the disturbed politics of the region and the bitterness generated by the harsh conditions of life under the Occupation.

The concern of the European Union at this deterioration, clearly expressed in a series of statements, not least the European Council Conclusions of 14 May 2012, has not been matched by any action likely to improve the situation. The aspirations of Palestinians and Israelis and the interests of the European Union, prominently referred to in those Conclusions and in other relevant EU documents, cannot be met by the current stagnation.

It is time to give a stark warning that the Occupation is actually being entrenched by the present Western policy. The Palestinian Authority cannot survive without leaning on Israeli security assistance and Western funding and, since the PA offers little hope of progress towards self-determination for the Palestinian people, it is fast losing respect and support from its domestic constituency. The steady increase in the extent and population of Israeli settlements, including in East Jerusalem, and the entrenchment of Israeli control over the OT in defiance of international law, indicate a permanent trend towards a complete dislocation of Palestinian territorial rights.

We have reached the conclusion that there must be a new approach. Letting the situation lie unaddressed is highly dangerous when such an explosive issue sits in such a turbulent environment.

A realistic but active policy, set in the context of current regional events, needs to be composed of the following elements:

- a sharper focus on the essential need for a two-state solution, as the most likely outcome to offer lasting peace and security for the parties and their neighbourhood and the only one recognised by UN resolutions as just and equitable;

- an explicit recognition that the current status of the Palestinian Territories is one of occupation, with responsibility for their condition falling under international law on the occupying state;

- an insistence that Israeli settlements beyond the 1967 lines are illegal, must cease being expanded and will not be recognised as one of the starting points in any new negotiations;

- a stipulation that any representative political organisation with a valid claim to participate in negotiations must renounce the use of violence outside established UN norms;

- the renewal of efforts to establish a unified Palestinian representation of both the West Bank and Gaza, without which a comprehensive peace cannot be successfully negotiated and the absence of which serves as an excuse for inaction;

- the encouragement of reform of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, including representation of all the main Palestinian parties committed to non-violence and reflecting the expressed wishes of the resident

Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza;

- a vigorous international drive for the implementation of much improved humanitarian and human rights conditions in both the West Bank and Gaza, monitored by the United Nations, whatever the state of peace negotiations might be at any time;

- a reconsideration of the funding arrangements for Palestine, in order to avoid the Palestinian Authority’s present dependence on sources of funding which serve to freeze rather than promote the peace process;

- a clear and concerted effort to counter the erasing of the 1967 lines as the basis for a two-state outline. This should include a clear distinction in EU dealings with Israel between what is legitimate – within the 1967 lines – and what violates international law in the Occupied Territories;

- a clearer willingness within the EU to play a political and not just a funding role and to resume a more strategic dialogue with the Palestinians.

For all the good sense of EU statements on this issue over the years, the EU’s inactivity in the face of an increasingly dangerous stagnation is both unprincipled and unwise. European leaders cannot wait for ever for action from the United States when the evidence accumulates of American failure to recognise and promote the equal status of Israelis and Palestinians in the search for a settlement, as accepted in United Nations resolutions.

Later generations will see it as unforgivable that we Europeans not only allowed the situation to develop to this point of acute tension, but took no action now to remedy the continuing destruction of the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination. We regard it as essential for EU interests that the Council of Ministers and you take rapid action to correct this unacceptable state of affairs.

We are sending copies of this letter to Members of the Council of Ministers and to the US Secretary of State.

Members of the EEPG send you their respectful greetings.

Signed

Guiliano Amato, Former Prime Minister of Italy

Frans Andriessen, Former Vice-President of the European Commission

Laurens Jan Brinkhorst, Former Vice-Prime Minister of the Netherlands

John Bruton, Former Prime Minister of Ireland

Benita Ferrero-Waldner, Former European Commissioner and Former Foreign Minister of Austria

Teresa Patricio Gouveia, Former Foreign Minister of Portugal

Jeremy Greenstock, Former UK Ambassador to the UN and Co-Chair of the EEPG

Lena Hjelm-Wallén, Former Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden

Wolfgang Ischinger, Former State Secretary of the German Foreign Ministry and Co-Chair of the EEPG

Lionel Jospin, Former Prime Minister of France

Miguel Moratinos, Former Foreign Minister of Spain

Ruprecht Polenz, Former Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the German Bundestag

Pierre Schori, Former Deputy Foreign Minister of Sweden

Javier Solana, Former High Representative and Former NATO Secretary-General

Peter Sutherland, Former EU Commissioner and Director General of the WTO

Andreas van Agt, Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands

Hans van den Broek, Former Netherlands Foreign Minister and Former EU Commissioner for External Relations

Hubert Védrine, Former Foreign Minister of France and Co-Chair of the EEPG

Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Former President of Latvia

share using:

Netanyahu’s new government, which will pour its resources into settlement expansion, is likely to force Israel into growing international isolation.

U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro probably sat down Wednesday to write a long cable to the White House ahead of U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to report on the new government in Israel. Aside from noting the obvious fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is even weaker and has become the political hostage of all of his coalition partners, Shapiro probably emphasized the dramatic rise in the power of the settlers in Netanyahu’s third government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors, February 18th 2013.
Photo by Reuters

Netanyahu in his weakness, and Yesh Atid’s Yair Lapid in his ignorance and callousness, have let the cat guard the cream. The money and the resources that Lapid has fought to take from the yeshivas will go directly or indirectly to build more and more settlements. Lapid’s middle-class voters who live within the 1967 borders will continue to ask where the money has gone.

The government has not yet been finally constituted, but it seems that most of the key positions will be filled by settlers and their supporters. We may assume that as housing minister, Uri Ariel will devote a good deal of his time to expanding the settlements in the West Bank and advancing tenders and building in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. He will certainly say that construction in the settlements will contribute to supply and to lower housing prices.

The probable new defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon, is considered among the settlers’ favorite figures in Likud. The defense minister is key to construction in the settlements, opening and closing the faucet as he pleases. Ya’alon, who attacked his predecessor Ehud Barak for dragging his feet in approving construction in the settlements, and for thwarting the legalizing of illegal outposts, intends to change the policy.

As opposed to the last four years, settler leaders will have an open door to the defense minister’s office. They will find one of their own in the next office, too, that of the deputy defense minister. MK Ze’ev Elkin, a settler himself, is slated for that job, and will be in charge of the whole matter of settlements.

The list goes on – as industry, trade and labor minister, Naftali Bennett can redraw the map of national priorities and give government benefits to more settlements. Wearing the hat of public diplomacy minister, Bennett will try to persuade the world that there is no Palestinian people and the settlements are actually legal.

His party colleagues Nissan Slomiansky and Ayelet Shaked on the Knesset Finance Committee will see to the cash-flow; Uzi Landau in the tourism minister will open bed-and-breakfasts in Yitzhar and will launch an international campaign to bring evangelical tourists to Tapuah and Bat-Ayin. The Jerusalem affairs minister, Uri Orbach, will get an empty portfolio, but he will certainly think of a way to help the Elad association.

There are practically no checks and balances on the other side. Lapid does not consider the settlements a problem; in his election campaign he opposed a construction freeze. He will not be the one who stops the increase in funding to the settlements secretly started by his predecessor, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz. Hatnuah chairwoman MK Tzipi Livni will not stand in the breach alone. Livni, who has been put in charge of negotiating with the Palestinians, will have plenty of free time to deal with the over-burdened and slow-moving courts, as future justice minister.

Netanyahu, who cooked up this broth, will now have to eat it. Netanyahu, who is also holding the Foreign Ministry portfolio, is aware of Israel’s difficult international situation. His close advisers have warned him of the damage the settlements are causing Israel and support freezing them, even if only partially. If he does not show leadership and responsibility, the settlement government that was forced on Netanyahu will become the government of isolation.

Barak Ravid, Haaretz 14 March 2013

share using:

Dear Members,

Why are settlements like water? Because they expand when frozen:  Danny Seidemann’s joke, retired IDF major, lawyer, and Director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, who gave a briefing last week on why this is absolutely the last year that a 2 state solution is even conceivable, see below:

http://t-j.org.il/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=QRDH_lnqzyM%3d&tabid=1508

Seidemann gave two strong messages:

By next year, unless progress is made,  the 2 – state solution will be a physical impossibility.  The maps are proof of this and no-one he had met  in Washington had disagreed with him.

He also criticised the ”no accountability/ zero consequences” which followed Israel’s actions. Europe, he said, had leverage and should use it.

Obama’s forthcoming visit, he believes  will be ”inconsequential”. He thinks Obama is receiving ‘good advice’ as to why he should walk away,  ”Nothing in it for you here. You’ll get nothing out of Netanyahu. Worry about the fiscal cliff.”

And Obama’s visit is risky, coming at troubled times.

With widespread protests in the West Bank  over the hunger strikers, and   some 20,000  Palestinians attending the funeral of Arafat Jaradat who was believed to have died under torture, ”Third intifada” is the buzz word. More on Jaradat on the Mondoweiss website.

http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/palestinian-accountability-detainees.html

For the Haaretz analysis of events:

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/israeli-palestinian-tensions-could-ultimately-spark-a-major-confrontation.premium-1.506592

and Uri Avnery’s take, veteran peace activist and journalist:

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1362138215?ver=Fri%2C+01+Mar+2013+13%3A43%3A45+%2B0530&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_ca

………………..

Meanwhile, All Quiet in Gaza?  If you want a response to:  ”the rockets rain down” study this chart. For the full story read Ben White’s blog, published by Al Jazeera below:

[Illustration and design: Rachele Richards]

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/2013220152044327694.html

Note the 30 attacks against fishermen: this particular cruelty is little known about, hence Baroness Warsi, a Conservative peer can blithely say ”We welcome Israel’s extending the fishing zone to 6 miles. ” (only 6?)

One, two three, six miles it makes little difference, fishermen are shot at, injured, and occasionally killed.  One of the best ”fish suppers’ i have ever eaten was in Jabaliya refugee camp. Last year, in January waters, Ahmad, the provider, and his brother, were forced to strip, swim to the Israeli gunboat, taken to Ashdod,  interrogated and their boat and fishing equipment (both valuable) were destroyed. End of livelihood. Which is the point. If you want to keep an eye on fishing activity go to:

http://fishingunderfire.blogspot.co.uk

Finally:

One of our members, Miranda Pinch is travelling to the West Bank. In her words:

…. from Monday 4th March and from 6th March I will be part of a Christian Peacemaker Team ( http://www.cpt.org/ ) delegation, which will be spending some time in Hebron, the South Hebron Hills and Bethlehem as well as East Jerusalem.

I have created a blog and have already posted information about my trip and more on it, and will add to it while I am away.

http://mirandagsp.blogspot.co.uk/

Sally FitzHarris

Secretary, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine

share using:

The real test of any new peace talks

One of Israel’s most respected political scientists recently dismissed the idea “that simply engaging in negotiations will automatically foster a peace agreement” between Israel and the Palestinians. Writing in Haaretz, Shlomo Avineri, a former director-general of Israel’s foreign ministry, called it “a fantasy proven baseless by the experience of the past 20 years.”

In this he is unquestionably correct. He is off base, however, when he maintains that previous peace initiatives have failed because they tried to resolve questions about the terms of a “permanent status” deal. He argues that even the two sides’ most moderate positions on these core issues are too far apart, making agreement impossible. He therefore proposes that the peace process shift from discussions of the endgame and Palestinian statehood to incremental improvements—“interim agreements, trust-building exercises, unilateral steps and other mechanisms,” that would serve as building blocks for broader future agreements. But this is the most deceptive illusion of all. For what the 20 years of failure to which Avineri refers prove above all is the bankruptcy of incrementalism and confidence-building measures. They were the hallmark of the stewardship of Dennis Ross, special Middle East coordinator for President Bill Clinton, and discredited the peace process.

That illusion should be resisted particularly by those now considering a new attempt at peace talks. European Union countries, led by Britain, France and Germany, are reportedly preparing to present Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his new government with a new initiative for negotiations with the Palestinians. The initiative is prompted by the anger of European governments at his announcement in November of plans for new construction (see map, left) in East Jerusalem’s E-1 corridor and other sites around Jerusalem that would effectively exclude the prospective Palestinian state’s capital from East Jerusalem and would also destroy the territorial contiguity of such a state.

The closing off of East Jerusalem to the Palestinians is a deal breaker that forecloses a two-state solution: the creation of a separate Palestinian state alongside Israel. It would also pre-empt any new initiatives President Barack Obama may be considering in his second term with a new team that is likely to be more resolute in its determination to preserve the two-state option.

It is untrue that negotiations that focused on the endgame drove the parties further apart. There were only three such negotiations: the Camp David Summit between prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 2000, the Taba talks that followed, and the negotiations between prime minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas at the time of the Annapolis Conference in 2007. Despite their failure, each one advanced the process beyond where it had been.

At Camp David, Palestinians accepted the annexation of the settlement blocs—new towns that Israel has built in the West Bank—and Ehud Barak agreed to the sharing of Jerusalem. The Taba talks that followed narrowed the differences even more. The Olmert-Abbas negotiations of 2007/8 brought the parties even closer together, and according to the principals would have led to an accord had their negotiations not been interrupted by Operation Cast Lead in December, Israel’s military offensive against Gaza, and by Olmert’s resignation.

The peace process was brought to a complete halt only by Netanyahu’s government. Not only did he refuse to address the endgame, but he would not even agree to recognise the pre-1967 border (before the Six-Day War when Israel captured land from Syria, Jordan and Egypt) as the starting point for territorial negotiations. He reacted hysterically when President Obama was about to propose in his address to the State Department on May 19, 2011 that negotiations must begin from that point. Netanyahu called the president and demanded that he remove that proposal from his address. The president did not comply, but he also did not follow up and translate his speech into policy.

The requirement that Israeli-Palestinian talks begin from the 1967 line was so upsetting to Netanyahu and his government because they are unalterably opposed to Palestinian statehood anywhere in Palestine. Obliterating the memory of such a border (going so far as to remove that border from Israeli governmental maps) is therefore seen by Netanyahu as an essential step towards that goal.

To be sure, Netanyahu committed himself to a two-state solution in his landmark speech at Bar-Ilan university in June 2009. Some naively invoke that commitment as evidence that a resumption of the peace process is justified. Tzipi Hotovely, a leading member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, recently explained to these naïfs that the Bar-Ilan speech notwithstanding, Netanyahu has no intention of ever carrying out the evacuation of West Bank settlements. His commitment to the two-state solution was “tactical,” she said, “intended for the world,” but “the Likud will not evacuate settlements.”

The Palestinian people have known all along how utterly disingenuous was Netanyahu’s Bar-Ilan speech. Not only was this self-evident from the facts Netanyahu and his government were creating on the ground, in the form of the West Bank settlements and building in largely Arab East Jerusalem. Senior Likud officials were also the founders and leaders of the “Land of Israel” Knesset Caucus that was established for only one purpose: preventing a Palestinian state in any part of Palestine. At no point did that caucus provoke a murmur of protest from the US or from the Quartet (the joint attempt by the US, UN, EU and Russia to mediate the Israel-Palestinian peace process). Imagine their reaction—or the reaction of the US Congress, for that matter—if President Abbas’s cabinet members had established a “Land of Palestine” Caucus within the Palestinian Authority.

Indeed, even when Netanyahu announced plans to build extensively in the E-1 corridor, the best that the US and the EU were able to say is that such a plan would be an obstacle to peace and to a two-state solution. There were no intimations that such a plan, if implemented, might trigger sanctions against Israel or end the American and European insistence that Palestinians can achieve statehood only in negotiations with the man who has been systematically dismantling what chances for such an accord might still exist.

What Middle Eastern experts, not to speak of the US and European governments that are calling for a return to negotiations, cannot get themselves to acknowledge is that Netanyahu does not accept Palestinian statehood anywhere in Palestine, and will do everything in his power to prevent it because he and his government want the West Bank for themselves. It is that simple. They are convinced that with their vast military superiority over the Palestinians, they can have it all. That is an obstacle to the achievement of a two-state solution that neither incrementalism nor reconfiguration of parameters for resumed negotiations (a subject to which leading US Middle East experts last year devoted an entire book) can overcome. Anyone who still does not understand this simple reality, or who refuses to address it, has little to contribute to a discussion of this subject.

To be sure, Israelis remain concerned about retaining the financial, military and diplomatic support of the US, but Netanyahu is convinced this is not a problem. He believes he exercises greater control over the US Congress than does President Barack Obama.

As ridiculous as this may sound, there are good reasons for that belief. The main TV commercial in Netanyahu’s campaign for reelection in January to his third premiership of the country featured his last address to the combined US Senate and House of Representatives, whose members jumped up from their seats to applaud wildly every second sentence in his speech. The speech included the suggestion that the West Bank is “disputed” territory, not occupied territory, to which Israel has as much a claim as do the Palestinians, a claim rejected by the whole world, the only exceptions being residents of the Capitol building in Washington.

But it is not only the behaviour of the US Congress that gives Netanyahu and his supporters the confidence that the US will always have their back. It is a notion reinforced by President Obama as well. In his speech to the UN General Assembly in September of 2011, he admonished Palestinians, saying that they could achieve statehood only through negotiations with Israel. He thus removed the issue from the realm of international legality and turned it over to the man he knew, from the experience of his first two years in office, will never allow that to happen.

Both formally and politically, what the president said is untrue. Formally, the right to self-determination by a majority population in previously mandated territories is a “peremptory norm” in international law. The implementation of that right was one of the primary purposes of the UN’s establishment, and international courts have confirmed it is a right that even overrides conflicting treaties or agreements. The only reason the Security Council has failed in its clear responsibility to implement the Palestinians’ right to self-determination is Obama’s threatened veto.

Practically, it is true that given its overwhelming military power, and the virtually uncritical support it receives from the US in the exercise of that power, Israel’s government can and will continue to block Palestinian statehood. But that is a reason not to subject the Palestinians’ peremptory right to self-determination to an Israeli veto. Instead it is a reason to demand that the UN exercise the role assigned to it by its charter. Israel’s engagement with the Palestinians will cease to be the historic fraud it has been only when its government comes to believe that its continued stonewalling will lead to America’s support for intervention by the Security Council. That is yet to happen.

The problem is that too often the policy proposals of experts and diplomats are shaped in response to the claims made by the protagonists, but not by realities on the ground. Israel’s government insists it has no choice but to continue its occupation because it has made many painful concessions, and promised more, only to run up against Palestinian refusals to consider reciprocal concessions. It will put to you that in return for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s magnanimous unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, President George W. Bush agreed to allow Israel to take in the main settlement blocs.

However, Israel has not offered a single concession on any of the issues in dispute. On every one, whether borders, territory, Jerusalem, refugees, water or security, it wants the concessions to be made by Palestinians. Not a single concession has been offered by Netanyahu on Israel’s side of the 1967 border.

As to the alleged “gift” of the settlement blocs to Sharon, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this at a joint press conference with Israel’s then-foreign minister Tzipi Livni in February 2006:

“The United States position on [unilateral changes in the border] is very clear and remains the same. No one should try and unilaterally predetermine the outcome of a final status agreement. That’s to be done at final status. The President did say that at the time of final status, it will be necessary to take into account new realities on the ground that have changed since 1967, but under no circumstances should… anyone try and do that in a preemptive or predetermined way, because these are issues for negotiation at final status.”

Netanyahu has famously accused Palestinians of demanding that Israel “give and give, while they only take and take.” This comes from the head of a government that has already helped itself to more than 60 per cent of the West Bank. Here is what Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, had to say on the subject. When challenged to defend his claims for the importance of the 1993 Oslo Accords (and for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize), Peres said, “Before Oslo, the Palestinian state’s size should have been according to the 1947… UN map. In Oslo, Arafat moved from the 1947 map to the 1967 one. He gave up on 22 per cent of the West Bank. I don’t know any Arab leader who would give up 2 or 3 per cent. He gave up 22 per cent.” (But instead of acknowledging that this concession was a gut-wrenching one-sided Palestinian contribution to peace, Peres described it as “our greatest achievement.”)

* * *

If Netanyahu and his new government are not to continue on their certain road to apartheid, President Obama would have to leave no doubt in their minds that the “special relationship” between the US and Israel has its roots in shared values, and an Israeli government that acts in egregious violation of those values undermines that special relationship. International law grants native populations of former colonies the right to national self-determination. An Israel that denies Palestinians that right—in this case, in the territories beyond the pre-1967 border—while at the same time denying them full and equal Israeli citizenship is not a democracy but an apartheid state.

Is President Obama up to that challenge? Nothing in his performance during his first term in office would indicate that he is. However, two recent developments hold out some hope. The first, as indicated above, is his nomination of Senator John Kerry as Secretary of State and Senator Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defence—two men who have few illusions about the reason for the failure of the peace process and the courage to speak the truth.

The second are intimations of a new European initiative to present to Israel’s new government a set of clear parameters that establish the pre-1967 border (with provision for equal land swaps to compensate Palestinians for Israel’s retention of the large settlement blocs) as the starting point for resumed peace talks. It is a parameter that by definition precludes Israel’s unilateral annexation of all of East Jerusalem. Another parameter would preclude a large scale return of Palestinian refugees to their previous homes in Israel.

Because the UK, France and Germany are reportedly all on board, it is likely this initiative will also receive the backing of most—perhaps all—EU countries. More important, its sponsors are likely to have received assurances that even if Washington will not lead the effort, it will not block it. If so, that would indeed be a significant change of direction. Ironically, the chances of this initiative’s success will only be strengthened if the new Israeli government proves even more rigidly opposed to Palestinian statehood.

But no one should be deceived about the chances of such an initiative if it does not contain the one condition that is the litmus test of its seriousness. That is that if the parties do not accept the parameters or are not able to reach an accord by a certain date, the terms for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank will be determined by the UN Security Council, acting under Chapter VII of the Charter. If it lacks that provision, or the provision faces the threat of an American veto, the initiative will be as phony as Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution in his Bar-Ilan speech.

For nothing short of the threat of being turned into a pariah by the entire international community because of its apartheid regime will persuade Israel’s electorate to bring back a government that will safeguard the country’s democratic character and accept a viable and sovereign Palestinian state along its border.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/israel-palestine-conflict-settlements-henry-siegman/

share using:

BRITAIN’S BETRAYAL OF THE SACRED TRUST IN PALESTINE
by
John Dugard

To see the full speech please click the following link: John Dugard Sacred Trust

share using:

There may be no happy ending to the Israeli-Palestinian clash, says Britain’s former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Israel.

“Song for Peace” is written on the bloodstained paper that was in the jacket pocket of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin when he was assassinated on 4th November, 1995 by Yigal Amir, a member of an extremist Israeli nationalist group

For the last six years I have served as a British ambassador in the Middle East, first to Israel and then to Saudi Arabia. I leave the region with particular sadness that in this period the chances of a solution to the long-running conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians—on which, ultimately, turns the issue of Israel’s acceptance in the region—have grown bleaker. These are my ten rules for why this is the case.

Rule 1: “The worst thing will always happen at the worst possible time”

Examples are legion. A few follow.
The assassination in 1995 of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, was the one fatal act which could have—and did—effectively end any hope that the Oslo peace process would get anywhere, even if the formal last rites were delayed until 2000 in Camp David. Hezbollah’s capture of two Israeli soldiers in July 2006 destroyed any chance that Ehud Olmert, then prime minister, would be able to make a large unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank, as he had promised during his election campaign, in the wake of the withdrawal from Gaza by Ariel Sharon, his predecessor. The Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead [a United Nations fact-finding mission, led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, on the Gaza conflict of 2008-2009], published in September 2009, appeared at just the moment to make it even harder for Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, to descend from the tree into which he had been encouraged to climb by faulty American tactics in the starter phase of the Obama administration. Obama settled in at the White House—an American president at last fully understanding why solving the Palestinian issue is vital for American, and western, interests—just as Israel voted for a right-wing government which would thoroughly complicate his efforts.

One sub-rule of this main rule is the complexity of overlapping political timetables. Peace making is all too often on hold because there are Israeli, or American, or even Palestinian, elections. The rhythm of peace-making efforts is constrained above all by the short horizons of the American system, and the intense preoccupation of Israelis with their own political system (see Rule 8).

Rule 2: “Everyone is afraid of being a sucker”

Fears of being a sucker (a “fryer” in Yiddish and now Hebrew) are an explicit part of Israeli political discourse, but are just as evident in the Palestinian approach to peace making. Both sides feel that concessions they have made in the past have not been reciprocated, and are therefore determined not to take the first step this time around. Such worries prevent the Israelis in particular from coming to terms with the reality that since they hold the majority of the cards, they will inevitably have to make the greater concessions. And the West Bank barrier—now as much psychological as physical—means that most Israelis can ignore the morally questionable realities of occupation.

The corollary of this rule is that each party, to avoid being a sucker, acts in a manner destined to prevent progress, thus ensuring an outcome which is actually a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The rule applies more widely in the region. There is no Arab inclination publicly to suggest the possibility of a less than fully prescriptive, or even a graduated, approach to the Arab Peace Initiative (which offers Israel the prospect of normalisation in the region) because those governments assess that Israel would simply take advantage of any first move on their part and leave them suckered. Besides, they’ve got enough on their plate at the moment (see Rule 9).

Rule 3: “Only the Americans can, and the Americans can’t”

There is no prospect of the Israelis and Palestinians doing their own deal—the key issues are simply too hard (see Rules 6 and 7). No one but the Americans has the leverage and the historical record to persuade the Israelis to make the necessary concessions and to underpin any deal with the necessary security guarantees. The maxim “we can’t want it more than the parties” is fundamentally fake: neither side has yet reached the level of exhaustion where it is ready to offer the necessary compromises, and both would prefer to avoid the most testing questions. Indeed, both sides need to be able to tell their constituencies that while in an ideal world they would not have gone so far, Uncle Sam has made it clear there is no alternative. But the United States has only fitfully been willing to play such an imperial role, and the Americans can never be a genuinely impartial broker—the whole weight of their system and their perceptions tilt them towards the Israelis. The problems this can cause were brutally apparent at the Middle East peace summit at Camp David in 2000, when Yasser Arafat, then Palestinian Authority chairman, rightly suspected every American initiative of being pre-cooked with the Israelis. Obama has yet to prove he will be the president who proves there can be exceptions to this rule, although there are now hopes that he might press harder on this issue in Obama Term 2. Assuming, of course, the next four years are not Romney Term 1…

Rule 4: “It’s easier for a right-wing Israeli government to make peace than a left-wing one” (a rule sometimes called “only Likud can”)

This rule is, I suspect, both true and untrue. Proponents point back to 1979 and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin’s deal with Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat for the return of the Sinai; or Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir’s acceptance of the invitation to go to the Madrid peace talks in 1991; or Sharon’s uprooting of settlements and withdrawal from Gaza in 2004. They perhaps omit, for example, that it was Rabin who made peace with Jordan in 1994. Yes, any deal struck by a right-wing Israeli government will be an easier sell to a sceptical Israeli public than one struck by a government of the left. But I think the rule severely underestimates the equal and opposite reality that any government of the right will find it far more difficult to make the necessary compromises on what is not only seen as a critical security buffer, but is also the “Biblical homeland”—Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and East Jerusalem. That’s why the settlers have been so successful in exploiting an Israeli system in which many share their longing to “return,” and have been able to establish so many facts on the ground which severely complicate (and may already have blocked entirely) the path to peace. Begin could give away the Sinai since only a few Israeli extremists would have claimed that this area too formed part of God’s original promise.

Rule 5: “Incrementalism doesn’t work”

Partly because of Rule 2—everyone is afraid of being a sucker. Most models of Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking are designed to leave the really hard issues, Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees, to last. But the Palestinians in particular worry that this means that those issues will never be on the table: hence their understandable insistence on the “nothing agreed until everything agreed” mantra. The fact that the Israelis have never been prepared to agree that there should be no change to the status quo in relation to issues to be left to the final stages of negotiations (such as no further building in East Jerusalem) compounds Palestinian worries about the risks of incrementalism, as do their bitter memories of the way settlement construction continued apace during the Oslo process.

Rule 6: “It’s all about Jerusalem and the Right of Return”

Analysts dispute whether this is a conflict about land or religion.  I believe it is essentially a dispute about identity, with land and religion as principal expressions of the identity issues involved. The two issues which are key to the identities which are in conflict are Jerusalem and the Right of Return—the Palestinian refugee issue. Any Israeli or Palestinian leader who cannot say that each morning is ducking how hard it will be to make progress. Of the two, the refugee issue is the easier, although any internal Palestinian leader will be wary of signing up to any deal which means that his brethren in camps in Lebanon and elsewhere cannot come back to Jaffa or Haifa—unless perhaps such a deal comes with the firm backing, and resources, of the international community including the Arab world. Bear in mind also that the Israelis will baulk even at acknowledging that there is any such thing as a Right of Return (even if it is not to be implemented), rejecting the implication that there was such an original sin at the heart of the creation of the Israeli state. They would argue that responsibility for the problem should be shared with the Arab armies who invaded in 1948 and even with those Palestinian leaders who advised their communities to get on the road. And that it is wrong for Israel to take a hit for this particular refugee problem when Arab states have never come under critical scrutiny over the manner of the departure of their Jewish citizens in the early years of the Israeli state.

Rule 7: “There cannot be a deal on sovereignty of the Old City”

The core of the Jerusalem identity issue is the Old City, and a main lesson of 2000/2001 (from Camp David through to the parameters proposed by President Bill Clinton) is that it is not possible to do a deal dividing sovereignty there between the Israelis and the Palestinians, particularly when it comes to the Temple Mount/Haram-al-Sharif. The 1947 UN partition plan got it right—there will have to be some kind of special arrangement, at least for the Old City. There are models, and sovereignty could be given to God (leaving Israeli and Palestinian mortals to agree only to administrative arrangements), or kicked into touch (as when Olmert, in his potentially taboo-breaking 2008 offer to Abbas, suggested an interim arrangement for the Old City). Without such a deal, there will be no wider Israeli-Palestinian deal. And without an Israeli-Palestinian deal including a satisfactory resolution of the Jerusalem issue, Israel will never be accepted by the Islamic world.

Rule 8: “The difficulty of reaching a deal is compounded by the dysfunctional political systems on both sides”

This rule is easily illustrated on the Palestinian side. The gap between Fatah, dominant on the West Bank, and Hamas, controlling Gaza, raises the question of whether the Palestinian Authority will ever feel able to make compromises to do a deal with the Israelis. Fatah is also still struggling to make the transition to a credible political party, and too many Fatah knives are aimed at Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s back. On the Israeli side, a political system of proportional representation with a low threshold for parties to win seats in the Knesset is all too often a recipe for short-lived governments held hostage by the smaller and harder-line members of any coalition. Intriguingly, Benjamin Netanyahu’s deal with Shaul Mofaz, now vice prime minister, raises the possibility of a government with sufficient political bandwidth to go all the way, if it wanted to. But does it?

Rule 9: “The international community has never wanted it enough”

The Palestinian issue has been left unresolved too long. It was not until the 1937 Peel Commission that some British officials had the courage to understand that the full meaning of the 1917 Balfour declaration, and that the only way to meet the national aspirations of the two sides, was a two-state solution. Since 1948, and above all since 1967, international will to push for such an outcome has all too often been lacking, with the Americans in particular only slowly coming to the same realisation of what peace will take, having rejected the European Union’s 1981 Venice declaration, which in many ways started the process of scales falling from international eyes.

If—at least for the foreseeable future—the only alternative to a two-state solution is continuing conflict (see Rule 10), and if such conflict represents, as it does, a threat to wider US and western interests in the region and more widely, then a sustained international drive to achieve a two-state deal should be a no-brainer. But as the experience of the Quartet (the US, UN, EU and Russia) confirms, the Americans are genetically indisposed to move into a genuinely multilateralist mode on this issue; and the EU has failed over the years to translate declaratory clarity into operational strategy and tactics, or to use its potential weight as Israel’s most important export market and economic partner. And both have failed to put their efforts together and link them to a wider regional drive to bolster moderation and contain or constrain the extremists. We should focus on transatlantic agreement on the big carrots which could be deployed to encourage the parties to move in the right direction, and the big sticks which might be necessary if they are reluctant to do so.

The other side of the “we’ve never wanted it enough” coin is that an argument can be made that the international donor community has in effect propped up the Israeli occupation by pumping in aid money which has taken the edge off Palestinian frustration. There are good humanitarian reasons for much of the assistance which has been given, and indeed (more recently) good state-building ones. But I fear the staggering level of international assistance has fostered a widespread dependency culture in Palestinian political life (for all Fayyad’s valiant efforts to reverse it) which has contributed to their leadership problems. Has the time come dramatically to scale down the funds we give the Palestinians, in order to put the full weight of the occupation on Israel, a burden I do not think they would be able to endure given, inter alia, the heavier weight it would mean to a society which needs to think of itself in morally positive terms?

A further question: why isn’t the moderate Arab world more active in pressing its western partners to get its act together and sort this one out? There are many reasons, and just at the moment the pressures of the Arab Spring, the deepening Sunni-Shia divide in the region, and the linked perception of a need to counter an Iranian push for greater regional hegemony, have inevitably pushed the Palestinian issue down on the Arab agenda. But one reason—of which Israel should beware—is the Arab reading that Israel needs a two-state solution more than the Palestinians, and, like the Crusader kingdom, will face eventual extinction if it does not make its peace with the locals rather than continue to rely on its overseas backers (for the US now read Christian Europe then). So the Arabs can wait.

Rule 10: “Failure in the most likely outcome”

This is the most complex conflict I know. And it may already be too late to achieve a two-state solution, even if that would have been the right solution, and the only possible solution. I cannot imagine any American government able to do what is necessary to press the Israelis to take the steps which are ultimately in Israel’s interest. I cannot imagine any Israeli government able to take the steps necessary to rein in the settler movement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for a sustainable two-state solution to be achieved. I find it hard to imagine any internal Palestinian leadership with the authority to make the compromises on the Right of Return without which no Israeli would support a peace deal. And it’s difficult to envisage any Arab leader ready to translate the Arab Peace Initiative into actionable, supportive activity.

Nor can I imagine any viable alternative to a two-state solution. I don’t think it’s realistic to think of going back to ideas such as a UN Trusteeship for the Occupied Palestinian Territories. I don’t believe either side is ready seriously to contemplate an Israel-Palestine federal model, although I am intrigued at the thought of how that might offer a way into the Jerusalem issue—the seat of a federal government serving both parts of the federation. I am intrigued too—but not convinced—by the concept of separate Israeli and Palestinian governments within an overall single state—the “parallel state” model. Nor do I believe it would be feasible, or indeed right, to try to live with the new realities on the ground and offer to pay Egypt and Jordan to soak up Gaza and a rump West Bank, hoping to push the Arab world to accept a version of Greater Israel.

This might be a Jewish and Arab problem, but it is a Greek tragedy. When you put all the above rules together, they mean there cannot be a happy ending. I hope I’m wrong.

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/there-may-never-be-peace/

share using:

Archaeological parks aren’t known for causing a stir, but ancient history collides with the new ‘facts on the ground’ in East Jerusalem. El’ad, one of Israel’s largest and richest settlement organisations, has been working in alliance with the Jerusalem municipality and the Israeli Antiquities authority to gain control of large areas of land in Silwan, which lies just outside the Old City walls. At least 29 Palestinian homes have been issued with demolition orders and a deadline of September 2012 has been set to clear the area. In place of the bustling Palestinian neighbourhood, a new national park called the King’s Garden will be built. Palestinian homes and shops will make way for shaded walkways, tourist cafés, and gift shops.

Demolitions have already begun. In February 2012, the Jerusalem municipality sent a demolition crew, heavily protected by the Israeli army, into Silwan. Their target was the playground of the Madaa creative centre, a children’s community centre in central Silwan. Residents awoke at 6am to the sight of bulldozers destroying Madaa’s much-loved football field and cultural café. Now, new evidence uncovered by War on Want points to a shocking fact. The bulldozer used in the Madaa playground demolition was made by the iconic British firm JCB.

JCB is known as a symbol of British manufacturing strength, and Chairman Anthony Bamford represents the UK as an International Trade Ambassador with UKTI. But JCB machines have been documented in use during illegal home demolitions and land clearances across the West Bank and East Jerusalem. And as War on Want’s new Stop the Bulldozers report documents, armoured bulldozers developed by JCB in the UK have now been sold to the Israeli military.

Originally developed in the UK for the American military, the bulldozers are as tall as a double-decker bus and can travel up to 60mph. The sale of the bulldozers, from JCB’s American arm to Israel via the USA’s Foreign Military Sales Program, was announced by the Israeli military in September 2011 at the same time as a UN report which documented a 40% rise in illegal demolitions of Palestinian homes and property.

Back in East Jerusalem, Silwan is under threat from all sides. While British equipment is used to devastating effect above ground, in the earth below Silwan El’ad is working closely with the Israeli Antiquities Authority to carry out underground excavations. Palestinian homes and properties, including the local mosque and the UNRWA girls’ school, have suffered dangerous collapses as underground archaeological excavations undermine their buildings. The EU heads of mission report on Jerusalem from 2011 noted the close collaboration between El’ad and the Israeli Antiquities authority: “the Israeli Antiquities Authority…is paid directly by El’ad to carry out the excavations without Palestinian involvement or international oversight”. The report raises concerns over the outsourcing of archaeological management and presentation to El’ad, an organisation “whose stated aim [is] to transform Wadi Hilweh/Silwan into an extension of the Old City’s Jewish quarter”.

Yet despite the international outcry, demolitions in Silwan are now just weeks away and Israel and the organisations involved in its illegal settlement activities continue to benefit from preferential treatment. The Israeli Antiquities Authority is rewarded for their participation in archaeological apartheid by participation in EU-funded projects. And UK businesses such as JCB continue to provide the equipment needed for the Israeli occupation, and so profit from Israel’s human rights abuses. Words must be translated into action. Strong action must be taken to stop British equipment being used in human rights violations, and to hold companies to account. Organisations like the Israeli Antiquities Authority, which support settlement activity, must be excluded from participation in EU funded projects.

Only by dismantling international support for the Israeli occupation- whether it comes from business, governments, or civil society- can we begin to put pressure on Israel to change its behaviour. The need for action becomes more urgent every day- not least for the families in Silwan who are waiting for the bulldozers which threaten to wipe their homes off the map.

For more information, visit www.waronwant.org/stopthebulldozers or get in touch via savesilwan@waronwant.org. The Stop the Bulldozers report is available for download from the War on Want site.

Image: Wadi Hilweh Centre

share using:

Rhetoric is a beautiful thing. Does William Hague, like Cicero, practice declamation on the sea shore, his mouth filled with pebbles: ‘’it is not in our character as a nation to have a foreign policy without a conscience?’’

In the 2011 Foreign and Commonwealth Report on Human Rights and Democracy we are assured, not once but many times, that human rights, democracy and the rule of law are at the heart of our British foreign policy.

Coincidentally the Israeli government has just closed the file on the Samouni family.

The report of the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict, a minutely documented and balanced account of ‘‘Operation Cast Lead’’ set in the context of the Israeli Occupation and Gaza blockade, co-authored by Justice Richard Goldstone, a practising Jew who led the mission, is possibly too long at close on 600 pages for any Minister or FCO employee, actually to consider reading. (Though the quite appalling treatment meted out to Goldstone and his family on publication, suggests of course that the Israeli lobby at least did find the time to read it)

But fast forward to Part 2, Chapter XI, ‘‘Deliberate attacks upon the Civilian Population’’ and you can read about the Samouni family in some detail: 21 members killed, 19 injured, medical access denied for three days. Four year old Ahmad bled to death from being shot in the family’s front room (the ambulance was turned away) after his father had been shot with his hands, containing ID and Israeli driving licence high in the air. The remaining fatalities occurred some hours later from a missile strike on another Samouni house – after the Israeli Defence Force had given orders for the whole of the Samouni extended family to gather there. (Of the one hundred people under Wa’el al Samouni’s roof some fifty were women and children)

Well of course, as Donald Rumsfeld famously said: ‘‘stuff happens’’. One must expect the souls at the Foreign Office to be ‘‘waterproof’’ as was the soul of Mr Bumble against the tears of the Victorian workhouse.

On the other hand, the diplomatic and governmental ‘conscience’ as Hague would have it, while undisturbed by a mere 1,400 mostly civilian deaths in three weeks, should not be proof against knowledge of international human rights law: nor should it be selective in its application.

So why can Israel indulge, with as much impunity as the medieval church on a heretics’ hunt, in ethnic cleansing, house demolition, missile attacks in civilian areas, collective punishment and other inventive ways of dealing with a race of people that, clinging to its remaining tiny bits of land, obstinately refuses to pack its bags and go?

Turn to page 111 of the impressive Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report and you will find out:

There are many countries around the world whose record in terms of human rights is less than perfect.

Really?

But it is in our national interest and in the interests of the people of these countries that we continue to engage with them at all levels.

Mr Alistair Burt, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, speaking in a recent debate on bilateral trade with Israel, spelt it out:

Over the past 10 years, the value of bilateral trade between Israel and the UK ……has increased by 60% …… Currently, Israel is the UK’s largest individual trading partner in the near east and north Africa region. It ended 2011 as the UK’s third biggest export market in the middle east…. ‘’

In other words, we’ll turn a blind eye to the war crimes, so long as you benefit the UK economy.

There is no evidence that Israel has any intention of granting the Palestinians the viable, independent and contiguous state they so long for, nor that our government will take any action to make them do so.

That is why it is unlikely the Samouni family will find justice, it is also why children and pregnant mothers in Gaza, after five years of a barbaric siege, are being slowly poisoned by water contaminated with nitrate, and why the FCO has had to write some 400 pages assuring us of its devotion to Human Rights.

share using:

The Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine regret the resignation of the party whip by Baroness Tonge and offer her their full support. Her resignation follows condemnation of her by the party leadership for remarks she made in a meeting at Middlesex University last week. The condemnation was made before the leadership had heard her side of the story or even spoken to her. That action in itself worries us. She is entitled to an apology.

Her actual words which caused the controversy were “Israel is not going to be there forever on its present performance”. She has confirmed to us that her intention was to imply that Israel’s wilful failure to uphold and respect the human rights of Palestinian Muslims and Christians is behaviour which is likely to lead to its self-destruction. This failure by Israel applies both with regard to its own Arab citizens (whom it discriminates against) and to the people of the Occupied Palestinian Territory (who have endured Israeli occupation for nearly 45 years). We consider that her words, when interpreted in this context, were entirely reasonable.

It is worth noting that her remarks were made at the end of a long and acrimonious meeting in which she was repeatedly barracked by pro-Israeli government hecklers. The video clip which recorded her remarks is incomplete and does not give a full or accurate impression of the debate. What disturbs us most, however, is the selective reporting of her remarks on the blogs by Richard Millet and Guido Fawkes. The three minute clip of her remarks on Guido Fawkes is entitled “LibDem Peer says ‘Israel won’t be there forever’.” This partial quotation would seem very possibly to be deliberate, and has had the effect of fostering a misinterpretation of her views.

John McHugo, chair of Lib Dem Friends of Palestine, says, “This is a witchhunt based on trial by blog. Jenny’s motivation in speaking up for the rights of the oppressed is anger at injustice when others, who have the duty to speak out, pass by silently on the other side of the street. It is also an attempt to make Jenny the story, and to detract attention from the evils of Israel’s occupation.”

Note (from the LDFP website): “The Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine exist to fight for the rights of the Palestinian People through the medium of the Liberal Democrat Party. We currently support the “two state solution” for an independent and viable Palestinian state, and security for both parties. We therefore call on Israel to renounce all claims to occupied land and to halt all illegal settlement building. If Israel is unwilling to do this, there will come a point at which “the one state solution”, under which Israel will need to offer all Palestinians citizenship in a single, secular State, will become the only way forward. This may be very soon.”

share using:

Rt. Hon. Nick Clegg Esq., M.P.
Deputy Prime Minister
By email

18 January 2012

Dear Nick,

Your Press Conference with President Abbas

On behalf of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, we would like to thank you for the statesmanlike comments you made about Israeli settlements in your joint press conference with President Abbas.

By calling the continuing illegal settlement building “an act of deliberate vandalism to the basic premise on which negotiations have taken place for years and years and years”, you hit two very important nails on the head. The first is that the continual announcements of settlement expansion can only be a deliberate Israeli government tactic to scupper negotiations. The Israeli government knows full well that the PLO cannot negotiate while Israeli actions continue to call into question the Palestinian right to those territories Israel occupied in 1967, and which once formed part of the Mandate of Palestine. This is rightly the Palestinian red line on territorial issues and is fully supported by international law..

Secondly, there is far too often an unwillingness among Western policy makers to draw attention to the ethical dimension in all of this. There has to be an end to the moral equivocation which has enabled Israeli government spin doctors to construct a narrative that the settlements are on land that is “disputed”, and which seeks to imply that the settlers have a “right” to build their homes there which is morally equal to the rights of the indigenous people of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The latter, of course, are entitled in international law to exercise their right of self-determination by establishing their own state on the entirety of their land.

We were also immensely encouraged by another statement you made in the press conference, namely that “the continued existence of illegal settlements risks making facts on the ground such that a two-state solution becomes unviable”. Far too often, politicians have confined themselves to calling for a halt to settlement construction, rather than drawing attention to the key point that they should never have been built in the first place and are an obstacle to peace. Of course, in negotiations, the Palestinians may agree to cede some of the land on which settlements have been built in exchange for an appropriate quid pro quo, but such negotiations have to be conducted on an arms’ length basis by parties which recognise the rights of the other in international law, something which Israel still refuses to do. Israel must not be allowed to bludgeon the Palestinians into making concessions as a result of the duress inherent in its brutal occupation. Any peace treaty achieved in that way will not last.

We very much hope that Britain, through the Coalition Government, will shortly see fit to recognise the sovereign state of Palestine on the entirety of the Occupied Palestinian Territory and support UN membership for Palestine. It is only by such recognition of Palestine by the international community that negotiations to a full peace settlement can be facilitated.

Yours sincerely,

John McHugo, Chair, Lib Dem Friends of Palestine,
Sally FitzHarris, Secretary, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine,
David Steel, House of Lords
Jenny Tonge, House of Lords
Chris Davies, MEP
Arthur Goodman, Parliamentary and Diplomatic Liaison Officer, Jews for Justice for Palestinians
Jonathan Fryer, Chairman, London Liberal Democrats
Cllr Simon Lytton
Saghaer Ahmad Mallick, Treasurer, Lib Dem Friends of Palestine
Roger Higginson
George Roussopoulos
Kerry Hutchinson
Cllr John Hall
Janice Gupta Gwilliam
Patrick and Deborah Darnes
Cllr Louise Bloom, Eastleigh Borough Council
Cllr Maureen Jalili
John Humphrey
Fiona Hornby
Penny Rivers IMRI
Patricia Irvine
Julian Heather, Vice Chair, Streatham Liberal Democrats
Christina Shaw
Dr Chris Burns-Cox
Chris Caswill, Liberal Democrat member Wiltshire Council
Linda Jack
Mrs Malinda McLean
Mrs Janet Forst
Miranda Pinch EAPP (Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel)
Daniel Mark Furr
Stuart McCready, City Councillor, Summertown, Oxford
Janet Baker
Dr Marion J Lamb
Colin Irvine
Deborah Warland
David E Chappell
Carl Freeman, Worcester Palestine Friendship Group
John Barsby
Lorna Low
Peter Downey
Peter Dulieu, Membership Secretary, Lib Dem Friends of Palestine
Thomas Bolt
Deborah Newton-Cook, Member of Brussels and Europe Liberal Democrats

share using: