War Handwavium

On 1 October 2009, I posted that the Palestinian Authority, under heavy pressure from the United States, had withdrawn its support for a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution on alleged war crimes in Gaza that suggested Israel had committed war crimes in its three-week war against Gaza. The report wouldn’t get much traction if the Palestinians didn’t support it. The Palestinian government withdrew support after the US pressured them to drop support. And the US likely pressued the Palestinians to drop support because the US is such a unilateral supporter of Israel that the US would turn its back on war crimes committed by Israel.

On 8 October 2009, I posted that the UN Security Council had declined to discuss the Goldstone report in an emergency session.

Well, today, 9 October 2009, I can post that the Palestinian representative to the United Nations in Geneva is again pushing to discuss the report, reversing the Palestinian Authority’s decision from 1 October to allow the report to sink into obscurity. Apparently, the Palestinian president, Abbas, realized that he represented the Palestinians rather than being a mere puppet of American interests. And given that the Security Council wouldn’t take it up, a lot of outraged Palestinians probably let their government know that they weren’t too happy about it.

Maybe if the report gets back on the table, then Israel will be held accountable for its deeds.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/2009108222821260976.html

The UN Security Council turned down the idea of having an emergency meeting to look at the Goldstone report about war crimes by Israel and Hamas militants in December 2008.

Palestinian leader Abbas, who went along with the idea of burying the report, has made the US happy in keeping it’s ally Israel safe from war crime charges, but has lost the support of his own Palestinian people back home.

The US pressured Abbas to drop the report. Abbas went along. But if the US doesn’t give Abbas something to show his people he got in exchange for dropping that report, then Abbas will be out of office very soon now. If Abbas ends up dropping the report and has nothing to show for it by the next election, the US will have guaranteed Abbas loses the palestinian leadership and will push many Palestinians towards embracing Hamas even more than they are now.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/200910854824709578.html

The UN recently published a report on Israeli war crimes in its war against Gaza in late 2008. The report recommended that if Israel did not launch a real independent investigation of Israel’s military, then the report recommended that Israel be brought before the international court to be prosecuted for war crimes.

This could have been leverage on Israel to come around to a peace deal with the Palestinians. This could have been used as a stick to get Israel to stop it’s defiant continuation expanding illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. This could ahve been used as leverage to get the Israelis to play ball with a real peace deal.

Now this just hit the news:

The Palestinian Authority, under heavy pressure from the United States, has withdrawn its support for a U.N. Human Rights Council resolution on alleged war crimes in Gaza,

Thank you, United States diplomats, for putting pressure on the Palestinians to play ball when the Israelis have zero intention of agreeing to any peace deal. It’s not the Palestinians who are slowly invading Israel’s land. It’s Israel slowly invading Palestinian land.

All I can say is I hope to hell that these diplomats got some kind of concession from the Israelis for this bit of back-room dealing. If not, then the US is really not interested in peace in the middle east, the US is acting as a blind supporter of Israel and throwing its weight around internationally to protect Israel.

If anyone knows which US diplomat put pressure on the Palestinians, or what the US got in exchange for this, I’d sure like to know.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/un_un_gaza_probe

Obama is living in a fantasy world regarding the Mideast peace process.

Netanyahu knows that nothing Israel does will ever threaten the billions of dollars that the US sends Israel every year. Nothing. Therefore Netanyahu continues to build illegal israeli settlements on palestinian land, knowing that there are no real repurcussions to his actions.

Netanyahu is like the schoolyard bully who has to go to the principal’s office once in a while to listen to some pointless lecture about being nice, and then he goes back out into the schoolyard and bullies other students again. A stern lecture from Obama is of no significance to Israel so long as the money keeps coming in.

It looks more and more like the only way to break this chain is for the rest of the world to bring Israel up on war crime charges from it’s 2008 bombardment and invasion of Gaza, and force the US to face it’s inaction (and monetary support) around Israel being a bully.

So long as the US continues sending billions of dollars to Israel every year, so long as the US uses its veto power on the Security Council to prevent the UN from condemning Israel’s actions, there will be no peace in the middle east.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/09/20099248482648228.html

On 16 Septemer 2009, a special UN committee issued a 575 page report regarding Israel’s three-week invasion and bombardment of Gaza at the end of 2008. The report states that both Israel’s military and Palestinian militants violated international laws on warfare, however, the bulk of the report was a laundry list of Israeli violations, including Israeli troops using Palestinian civilians as human sheilds, killing civilians waving white flags, targeting civilians, needlessly demoslishing civilian homes, and recklessly using white phosphorous in populated areas.

Israel replied by calling the UN, it’s report, and the committee that created it “anti-semitic”.

Hamas killed 17 Israelis for all of 2008. In response, Israel bombed and invaded Gaza, killing 1400 palestinians, of which about 900 were civilians.

Israel kills hundreds of palestinian civilians to show the palestinians just how wrong it is to kill Israeli civilians. And Israel sees no moral problem with this. No violation of international laws regarding the conduct of war.

And when the UN issues a mammoth, 575 page report, that documents numerous examples of war crimes, Israel completely ignores the facts and plays the “anti-semite!” card to halt all criticism of Israel.

The report suggests that if Israel does not conduct a serious and independent investigation into war crimes, then UN should pursue a war crimes tria in the International Criminal Court.

I’m trying to imagine how the US, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong defender of Israel, would ever allow such a case to proceed, but maybe the UN could pursue it in a manner that does not allow the US to veto it.

At the moment, it seems that Israel has absolutely no intention of going ahead with any kind of peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel continues to slowly invade Palestinian land with settlement expansions. Israel continues to list all manner of demands that the Palestinians must meet before Israel will do anything to move towards peace.

It might be that a war crimes trial and a conviction might be the tipping point to cast light on the extremists and militants in Israel and show them for what they are: militant fascists who view Palestinians as sub-human. Maybe that would swing the pendulum in Israel enough to actually support a real, long-term peace deal with the palestinians, maybe even get a palestinian state going.

Obama might want to consider using this as the stick to get Israel moving in the direction of peace.

But I won’t hold my breath. If the UN really wants to pursue Israeli war crimes in Israel, then they’ll have to figure out a way to do it in a way that avoids US intervention and obstructionism.
http://blogs.mcclatchydc.com/jerusalem/2009/09/un-finds-gaza-war-crimes-israel-declares-war-on-un.html

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/09/20099465355732165.html

Israel’s prime minister is set to approve plans to build hundreds of new homes on Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank, before considering US demands for a construction freeze.

Israel is slowly taking the land from Palestinians by force, under a smoke screen of Israeli law, that is internationally recognized as illegal.

Israel’s goal is to take ALL the land from the Palestinians so that the Palestinians have no land left for a Palestinian state. With no land for a Palestinian State, Israel doesn’t have to make peace with the Palestinians. They just have to steal all their land, and do it slowly enough that the world doesn’t force them to stop.

Every Friday, Palestinians in Bil’in protest the Israeli Separation Wall that cuts through their village.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli Separation Wall cutting through the West Bank villiage of Bil’in is illegal.

Israel has refused to stop expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The calls for a “temporary freeze” on new construction has been met with a sudden flurry of Israeli-approved settlement building plans. These permits will likely allow Israel to continue construction for several months with no “new” plans required. They’ll just keep working on the huge list of plans that they approved previously, wait for the demands for a “freeze” to lull, and keep expanding as they’ve done before.

Israel doesn’t want peace with the Palestinians. Israel wants to expand until it has taken all the land from the Palestinians and pushed the Palestinians out. It’s a slow invasion is all, Israel’s slow burning war against the Palestinian people.

excerpt:

In one of the cases mentioned, two women and three children were standing in front of their home after a soldier ordered them outside. At least three of them were holding pieces of white cloth when a soldier opened fire, killing two girls aged two and seven and wounding the third girl and their grandmother.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/08/200981335844986966.html

Israel defies US demands to stop illegal settlements in Palestinian lands, claims it owns all of Jeruselem.

There will be no peace between Israel and Palestine so long as Israel insists on throwing a temper tantrum every time the world tells it to stop hitting its brother.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/07/200972014225118853.html

Israel turned away another ship with humanitarian aid for Gaza on 29 June 2009.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009630134729211311.html

When Israel itself was blockaded by Egypt back in 1967, Israel insisted a blockade was an act of war.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002752.html

Anyone think Israel is going to embrace peace with the palestinians and support a two state solution isn’t paying attention.