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Right of return and international law– why the Clinton Parameters are a problem

Noam Sheizaf, an Israeli journalist who blogs at Promised Land , has a post up supporting the idea of an Obama administration imposed “peace plan” based (at least as a starting point) on the “Clinton Parameters” and disagrees with my negative assessment of the plan. He raises good points that should be debated and talked about, and the issues Sheizaf raises are ones that divide those on the political left who care about bringing an end to the Israeli occupation and seeing justice for Palestinians.
First, Sheizaf says:

I assume the Clinton Parameters would serve as a starting point for negotiations on an actual agreement (that what was supposed to happen in Camp David), but even if they were to be implemented as they are, I think opposing them would be a grave mistake, and a move that would play right into the hands of those who wish to prolong Israeli control over the West Bank and Gaza.

If the “Clinton Parameters” were to serve as a starting point, as Sheizaf states, what would an end point be? It’s not hard to imagine that if the base of negotiations start with a proposal that is already, in my opinion, unfair and unjust for Palestinians, then any agreement coming out of that would be even more unfair.
It’s the nature of the power relations between the two sides: Israel, backed by the United States, is in an exponentially better position than the Palestinians when sitting down at the negotiating table. And I don’t buy that the Obama administration is or will be an “honest broker,” and that they will continue to side with the Israelis (This is more likely with a Labor-led government than with Netanyahu, but the point remains. It’s not as if Labor is much better than Likud.)
On refugees, Sheizaf argues that the most Israelis, be they on the left or the right, do not accept the right of Palestinians to return and that it would have to be imposed on Israel, and that implementing the right of return is logistically problematic or impossible.
What’s missing from Sheizaf raising objections to the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland is two fundamental things: international law, and the preference of the Palestinian people themselves. International law is clear that the Palestinians have a right to return to the land that was taken away from them.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, arguably one of the most important documents in the post-World War Two era, states, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 unambiguously calls for the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Subsequent U.N. documents have reaffirmed this right.
As for the preferences of the Palestinian people, it’s clear the vast majority of them have no interest in giving up their right to return. The organization OneVoice published an April 2009 poll that found that 92% of Palestinians find it essential or desirable to have the right of return and compensation, and “the prospect of ‘An Israeli recognition of the suffering of the Palestinian refugees, while most refugees return to the West Bank or Gaza and some return to Israel (1948)’ was ‘essential or desirable’ for a majority of Palestinians at 53% and ‘unacceptable’ for only 23%.”
I’m not an absolutist, and ultimately, a just agreement on refugees will have to be negotiated between Palestinians and Israelis. But we, especially as privileged Jews, can’t just dismiss Palestinian claims on refugees.
The elephant in the room, then, is the question of Zionism and the desirability of maintaining an ethnically exclusive Jewish State on land stolen from Palestinians. The arguments against the right of return rest on Israeli fears that the Jewish State will be no more.
I’m a Jewish-American, and I don’t have as much of a direct stake in the resolution to this problem as Sheizaf does, but it’s giving in to racism if we use as a justification the maintenance of a Zionist state to deny Palestinians their rights. In terms of a solution to the conflict, I don’t think partition is workable anymore, and am a proponent of a one-state or bi-national solution. Ultimately, though, that decision rests with Palestinians and Israelis.
I don’t purport to offer an detailed solution to just how a right to return would be implemented. But let’s not dismiss Palestinian concerns so easily. International law should be the baseline for a resolution.
Sheizaf also says:

The idea that “nor Obama neither the PLO chairman can deny the refugees’ right of return” simply echoes the Israeli rigth-wing mantra that no Israeli leader can give up parts of land because “they belong to the entire Jewish people”. If the leader of PLO can’t sign an agreement with Israel or declare independence, who can?

There is no equivalency between the claim that “Greater Israel” belongs to the Jewish People only, and the Palestinian refugees’ right to return. Why? Again, look at international law: there is no enshrined right for Jews to settle in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.  There is an enshrined, legal right for Palestinians to return.
One last response to Sheizaf’s post. He says:

As for the other the reasons Kane notes for opposing the Clinton Parameters, they are simply absurd. Having several Israeli monitoring stations for three years is the thing that should make us join Netanyahu in opposing a settlement?
 Even when the peace agreement with Egypt was signed it gave Israel around two years to dismantle its settlements and clear army bases. Almost any international agreement works in stages. Is that such a problem?

I don’t think this is “absurd.” If we’re talking about a demilitarized Palestinian state, why should Israel have any type of military presence within the West Bank? Of course, I understand that these things take time. But it’s a legitimate concern to have, and we should question why Israel should reserve the right to maintain a military presence while Palestinians wouldn’t have a military under the “Clinton Parameters.”
 
Related posts:

  1. American Jews launch campaign to ‘break the law of return’
  2. The right of return, universal justice, and U.S. foreign policy
  3. ‘Geneva Accord Is the Answer on Refugees: Compensation, and a Return to Palestine’

Judge Goldstone barred from grandson’s bar mitzvah

Many of you have already read this news from JTA:

South African judge Richard Goldstone has been barred from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah.
Following negotiations between the South African Zionist Federation and the Beth Hamedrash Hagadol in Sandton, an affluent suburb of Johannesburg where the event is due to take place, an agreement was reached with the family that will keep Goldstone from attending the synagogue service early next month.

For myself, I can only say that this hurts my heart, I want to reach out to Jewish friends today who reject this hateful edict. The crisis of Israel is a crisis for Jewish communities around the world. The Israeli crisis, and this news, demonstrate what we have always tried to talk about, and that Walt and Mearsheimer addressed: the Diaspora is essential to the Israeli state, and any hedge on that support is perceived as an assassination. (This is also J Street’s problem.)
Of course we all think about 71-year-old Judge Goldstone not being able to see a big moment in the life of his grandson, and we honor what he did with his amazing Goldstone report, which is a part of Jewish history as well as Palestinian history and the history of international law, too.
A few years back Henry Siegman said that he has family members who do not talk to him–another man who has accepted the red badge of courage. Siegman has grown from this injury; maybe Goldstone will too.
Two other thoughts. Famously at Hebrew University, on the 300th anniversary of Spinoza’s birth, the scholar Joseph Klausner declared that the excommunication of Spinoza by the Amsterdam rabbis was lifted. It was a symbolic moment. Maybe it will come quicker this time for the fine judge.
My own grandfather was something of a scoundrel. At my bar mitzvah in Baltimore 40 years ago he gave me a 100-dollar bill, and a bunch of friends crowded round to look at it, and a few minutes later I could not find it. The story is produced as evidence that I am allergic to money, which is true enough; but lately my mother has told me via my sisters that they think that my grandfather took it back, or I put it down, and he pocketed it. So today for me the story is about my sisters and my mother being much shrewder than I am.
What does this story have to do with anything? I have carried it for 40 years, it is one of my gifts, worth a lot more than the money. My heart hurts for Goldstone’s grandson, deprived of a vital interaction. He has been hurt by the Zionist community more than the judge, let him learn from that.
Related posts:

  1. The excommunication of Judge Goldstone
  2. ‘NYT’ blackout of Judge Goldstone continues
  3. At Yale, Judge Goldstone faces down his accusers

The war among the Israelis over settlements

Here is an interesting poll by the Truman Institute showing that Israeli public opinion has shifted somewhat against the settlements:

A survey of the Israeli general public and Israeli settlers taken in early March shows three-fifths of the Israeli public (60%) support “dismantling most of the settlements in the territories as part of a peace agreement with the Palestinians.” This is eleven points higher than the previous reading (49%) taken in December, 2009, and is the highest level recorded since 2005, during the debate over evacuating the Gaza Strip.

So the good news is that Obama taps his foot, and it has an effect. Think if he put his foot down! How much would it take Netanyahu gov’t to fall? The other news is that the numbers are starkly different among the Jewish settlers. They are overwhelmingly against dismantling, and more than half of them favor some form of resistance to such an order.

The preferences of settlers and the Israeli public clash sharply: A 69 percent majority of settlers oppose dismantling most settlements as part of a peace agreement (23% in favor), while a 60 percent majority of the Israeli public support doing so, with 33% opposed. This is up sharply from plurality support of 49 to 43 percent last December.
However, the current near two-to-one Israeli public support for dismantling most settlements is misperceived by Israeli settlers, and even by the Israeli public to a lesser extent: Most settlers (57%) believe that a majority of the Israeli public oppose dismantling most settlements — the reverse from what is actually the case.

It reminds me of what Micha Kurz of Grassroots Jerusalem told me a while back, the real battle is between the Jewish dispossessors of the Palestinians and those who want to live with the Palestinians. The coexistence Jews will win in the end, but how long will that be?
Related posts:

  1. 2 Out of 3 American Jews Want an End to Occupation, New Settlements
  2. American street wants Obama to ‘get tough’ on settlements
  3. Special relationship is melting in the sun

NYT: Obama ‘incensed’ by Netanyahu

The Times seems to be dealing with the embarrassment of Ethan Bronner by having Helene Cooper report on shifts in Obama’s policy on Middle East from Washington. This is a really good report from her (and Mark Landler) yesterday, saying flatly that Obama was “incensed” by Netanyahu’s East Jerusalem plans and their announcement when Joe Biden was in J’lem.
The piece also highlights the important but obvious Petraeus doctrine, that the Israel/Palestine problem is hurting the U.S. across the Islamic world and costing lives too. Typically, the Times quotes three Israel lobbyists, Martin Indyk, Rob’t Wexler and Ronald Lauder. I wish it would quote some Arabs or Palestinians.
Related posts:

  1. ‘The Times’ continues to parrot the lobby’s talking points even in the suggestion that Netanyahu is somehow Obama’s co-equal (What planet is this?)
  2. Obama plans to confront Netanyahu over settlements, borders, 2 states, the whole megillah
  3. The drumbeat: Netanyahu adviser fears ‘the West is in trouble’ under Obama

Follow the Berkeley divestment debate live


The Berkeley Student Senate will be reconsidering divestment tonight and could possibly overturn Student President’s veto of the divestment bill. Jewish Voice for Peace will be live tweeting the proceedings and you can follow their reports below. You can also follow the #ucbdivest hashtag if you’re on twitter.
Also, below the twitter feed is a document that JVP has compiled of notable endorsements of the divestment action.
Update: The JVP twitter account below reached its limit overnight and JVP reports were moved to jvplive2. It seems after over 12 hours of debate the motion to overturn was tabled and will be reconsidered later. From the JVP twitter feed: “Motion is tabled!!!! this means no winners or losers. Veto was not sustained or overturned. Finally.”

Jewish Support for Divestment from Israeli Occupation at UC Berkeley

Related posts:

  1. Follow Mondoweiss from AIPAC on Twitter
  2. Klein on Berkeley divestment: ‘when our governments fail to apply sanctions for defiant illegality, other forms of pressure must come into play’
  3. Berkeley student senate votes for divestment, 16-4

‘Forward’: Finkelstein has a ‘disease’

Also, he hates himself and those who made him, is a bruised apple, and full of poison, and in the grip of of a great force that is compelling him to do and say strange things– all from Mark Cohen’s review of the documentary, American Radical, in the Forward, which is thoughtfully titled, “A Jewish Frankenstein.”
Cohen says it’s all because his parents survived the Holocaust. I agree, Finkelstein has some mishigoss because of the Holocaust. And he’s alone? How mean.
Related posts:

  1. Historic Freud lectures at Clark are bookended, a century later, by censorship of Finkelstein
  2. What if they gave a massacre and ‘the Forward’ couldn’t even mention it?
  3. Psst! Lobby, forget about Oliphant– look at the anti-parochial cartoonist at the ‘Forward’: Eli Valley

See: www.mondoweiss.net

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