The mounting diplomatic tension over the upcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood is somewhat puzzling since this vote already took place twice. On December 15, 1988, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution with an overwhelming majority (104 in favor, 2 against, and 36 abstentions) calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state on the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip. The General Assembly passed a similar resolution on December 18, 2008. The new resolution expected to pass in the General Assembly will thus be redundant.
It will also be irrelevant since General Assembly resolutions are not binding in international law. They are mere recommendations. The UN Charter does not grant the General Assembly the power to establish states, and the idea that Israel owes its existence to a UN vote is a misconception. On November 29, 1947, the General Assembly endorsed the recommendation of UNSCOP (United Nations Special Committee on Palestine) to divide the British Mandate between a Jewish state and an Arab state. This was a mere recommendation that became moot as soon as it was passed since the Arab League rejected it flatly and since the Arab armies attacked the nascent Jewish state.
Nor can the General Assembly accept a new member state without the Security Council’s recommendation. Kosovo (which is recognized by 75 countries) is not a UN member because Russia is blocking its membership at the Security Council. The US Government has already announced that it will veto the admission of “Palestine” at the UN without a prior peace agreement with Israel. France and Britain, for their part, are wavering. Yet, even without a US veto, how can the Security Council accept a state that has not been declared and therefore doesn’t exist?
States need to be declared by their leaders. Were Abbas to do so, he would blatantly violate Article 31 of the Oslo Agreement ("Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the Permanent Status negotiations"). Once the Oslo Agreement is officially cancelled by the Palestinian Authority (PA), Israel will be free to act unilaterally as well (it probably will).
The PA does not meet all the legal criteria to become a state (i.e. a permanent population; a defined territory; a government; the ability to interact diplomatically with other governments). The PA’s territory is not defined; it is disputed. There never was a Palestinian state before; there never was a border between Israel and Jordan between 1949 and 1967 but a “temporary armistice line” defined as such in the Rhodes Agreements; and UN Security Council Resolution 242 does not require from Israel a withdrawal to those arbitrary and indefensible lines. Moreover, there isn’t one Palestinian government but two: a PLO government in Ramallah and a Hamas government in Gaza. This is why Abbas tried to reach a deal with Hamas, but this deal fell through.
A Palestinian statehood declaration at this point would thus be illegal, and a General Assembly resolution will be both redundant and meaningless.
And yet, the expected UN vote will have far-reaching political and moral consequence, especially if European countries decide to endorse it.
The PA Chairman complains about the absence of negotiations with Israel while he is the one who has refused to talk to Israel for the past two years. His behavior is remindful of the famous anecdote in which a man murders his parents and then asks the Judge for mercy on the ground that he is an orphan.
The true reason why Abbas has opted for unilateralism is that he has come to realize that Israel will not sign a peace agreement that includes the so-called Palestinian “right of return.” Abbas also knows that Western governments stand with Israel on that issue, because the Palestinian definition of the so-called “right of return” would turn Israel into a bi-national state with an Arab majority, while the Palestinian state will not tolerate a single Jew (Abbas explicitly said so recently). The “two-state solution” and the “right of return” are mutually exclusive.
Unilateralism will enable the Palestinians to obtain statehood (even virtually and illegally) without having to pay the price demanded by Israel and the West, i.e. making peace with Israel and abandoning the so-called “right of return.” Unilateralism, then, will perpetuate the conflict and will legitimize the idea that accepting and recognizing Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is no longer a condition and a requirement for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
UN members who will vote in favor of the Palestinian move at the General Assembly will in effect be accomplice to the perpetuation of the conflict and to the de facto denial of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Erdogan’s Dhimmi Problem
Under Islamic law (“Shariah”), non-Muslims (such as Christians and Jews) are mostly free to practice their religion in private but are discriminated and treated as second-class citizens, or dhimmis. As the Quran clearly states, non-Muslims must “feel themselves subdued” (Sura 9:29). When the Jews regained their independence in 1948, they not only rebelled against “dhimmitude.” They also regained and freed, like the Spaniards after the Reconquista, a land once ruled by Islam. To Muslims, this was -and still is- a double offence.
Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan has taken upon himself to make Israel a “dhimmi state.” Edorgan was raised as a Sufi Muslim and was imprisoned in 1998 for singing out loud that "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” While mainstream Western media are at pains to describe Turkey’s Islamist AKP Party as “moderate,” Erdogan himself declared on Kanal D TV in August 2007 that describing Islam as moderate “is offensive and an insult to our religion.” Erdogan has been embracing the presidents of Iran and Sudan. While Sudan’s president is accused of genocide by the International Criminal Court, and while Turkey has been asked to apologize for the Armenian genocide, Erdogan has declared that “No Muslim can perpetuate genocide.”
Erdogan comes from an anti-Jewish tradition. His political mentor Necmettin Erbakan was an anti-Semite. As soon as he became Prime Minister in 2003, Ergodan adopted a hostile policy toward Israel. In March 2004, Erdogan called Israel a “terrorist state” following the elimination of Ahmad Yassin. In February 2006, he received Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Ankara. In January 2009, he publicly humiliated Shimon Peres at the Davos conference. In October 2009, the Turkish state television started airing fiction series showing Israeli soldiers intentionally murdering Palestinian children. In November 2009, Erdogan declared that he’d rather meet Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In March 2010, Erdogan claimed that the Temple Mount, Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem were never Jewish sites.
While Erdogan’s hatred of Israel is authentic, his public outbursts at Israel are opportunistic. Those outbursts are the easiest way for him to be acclaimed as a hero by Islamists both in Turkey and around the world. The Israeli government made the right decision by refusing to behave as a “dhimmi state.” The attitude of the Obama Administration, by contrast, is irresponsible and scandalous. Instead of making Erdogan pay the price for his foreign policy choices, the Obama Administration has been hopelessly trying to appease him.
Erdogan is ultimately responsible for the death of his co-citizens aboard the “Mavi Marmara.” He is the one who sent out the jihadist organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (or IHH) to militarize Gaza and arm Hamas. Yet, President Obama called Erdogan after the Marmara incident to express “his deep condolences for the loss of life and injuries resulting from the Israeli military operation.” The Palmer Report recently released by the UN (an organization not known for its pro-Israel bias) says unambiguously that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza was legal, that Turkey should have done more to stop the flotilla, and that Israeli soldiers were brutally attacked and had to use force in self-defense. And yet the Obama Administration is still asking Israel to apologize instead of scolding Turkey for its troublemaking.
Rather than stopping Erdogan from bullying Israel and from destabilizing the Middle East with his irresponsible policies, the Obama Administration has adopted an appeasing stance, which in turn is encouraging Erdogan who is now threatening to go to war in order to lift the siege of Gaza.
It is precisely because the Obama Administration has opted for appeasement that Israel must show steadfastness. As Churchill has said, an appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile hoping he will be eaten last. Israel cannot afford to play that game. But steadfastness is not enough. Israel should go on the offensive by exposing Erdogan’s hypocrisy to the world.
Doing so is no rocket science. While scolding Assad for shooting at Syrian demonstrators, Erdogan ordered last month air strikes in Kurdistan, killing over 100 Kurds. While saying that Israel should accept the establishment of a Palestinian state, Erdogan is adamant not to allow an independent Kurdish state to emerge. While Erdogan urges Israel to negotiate with Hamas, he himself recently declared that Turkey “considers it a disgrace to sit down at the negotiating table with [the Greek Cypriots] at the United Nations” as Turkey just celebrated its 37 year-old occupation of Cyprus. And in 2006, after obtaining Syria’s capitulation to Turkey’s occupation and annexation of the Alexandretta Province, Erdogan offered Israel to broker a peace deal with Syria based on Israeli, not Syrian, capitulation over the Golan.
While Erdogan must be made to understand that Jews are no longer dhimmis, we Israelis have to realize that the end of dhimmitude does not only mean the end of humiliation. It also provides the ability, and perhaps even the duty, to make our enemies get a taste of their own medicine.
Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Erdogan has taken upon himself to make Israel a “dhimmi state.” Edorgan was raised as a Sufi Muslim and was imprisoned in 1998 for singing out loud that "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” While mainstream Western media are at pains to describe Turkey’s Islamist AKP Party as “moderate,” Erdogan himself declared on Kanal D TV in August 2007 that describing Islam as moderate “is offensive and an insult to our religion.” Erdogan has been embracing the presidents of Iran and Sudan. While Sudan’s president is accused of genocide by the International Criminal Court, and while Turkey has been asked to apologize for the Armenian genocide, Erdogan has declared that “No Muslim can perpetuate genocide.”
Erdogan comes from an anti-Jewish tradition. His political mentor Necmettin Erbakan was an anti-Semite. As soon as he became Prime Minister in 2003, Ergodan adopted a hostile policy toward Israel. In March 2004, Erdogan called Israel a “terrorist state” following the elimination of Ahmad Yassin. In February 2006, he received Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Ankara. In January 2009, he publicly humiliated Shimon Peres at the Davos conference. In October 2009, the Turkish state television started airing fiction series showing Israeli soldiers intentionally murdering Palestinian children. In November 2009, Erdogan declared that he’d rather meet Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In March 2010, Erdogan claimed that the Temple Mount, Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem were never Jewish sites.
While Erdogan’s hatred of Israel is authentic, his public outbursts at Israel are opportunistic. Those outbursts are the easiest way for him to be acclaimed as a hero by Islamists both in Turkey and around the world. The Israeli government made the right decision by refusing to behave as a “dhimmi state.” The attitude of the Obama Administration, by contrast, is irresponsible and scandalous. Instead of making Erdogan pay the price for his foreign policy choices, the Obama Administration has been hopelessly trying to appease him.
Erdogan is ultimately responsible for the death of his co-citizens aboard the “Mavi Marmara.” He is the one who sent out the jihadist organization Insani Yardim Vakfi (or IHH) to militarize Gaza and arm Hamas. Yet, President Obama called Erdogan after the Marmara incident to express “his deep condolences for the loss of life and injuries resulting from the Israeli military operation.” The Palmer Report recently released by the UN (an organization not known for its pro-Israel bias) says unambiguously that Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza was legal, that Turkey should have done more to stop the flotilla, and that Israeli soldiers were brutally attacked and had to use force in self-defense. And yet the Obama Administration is still asking Israel to apologize instead of scolding Turkey for its troublemaking.
Rather than stopping Erdogan from bullying Israel and from destabilizing the Middle East with his irresponsible policies, the Obama Administration has adopted an appeasing stance, which in turn is encouraging Erdogan who is now threatening to go to war in order to lift the siege of Gaza.
It is precisely because the Obama Administration has opted for appeasement that Israel must show steadfastness. As Churchill has said, an appeaser is someone who feeds the crocodile hoping he will be eaten last. Israel cannot afford to play that game. But steadfastness is not enough. Israel should go on the offensive by exposing Erdogan’s hypocrisy to the world.
Doing so is no rocket science. While scolding Assad for shooting at Syrian demonstrators, Erdogan ordered last month air strikes in Kurdistan, killing over 100 Kurds. While saying that Israel should accept the establishment of a Palestinian state, Erdogan is adamant not to allow an independent Kurdish state to emerge. While Erdogan urges Israel to negotiate with Hamas, he himself recently declared that Turkey “considers it a disgrace to sit down at the negotiating table with [the Greek Cypriots] at the United Nations” as Turkey just celebrated its 37 year-old occupation of Cyprus. And in 2006, after obtaining Syria’s capitulation to Turkey’s occupation and annexation of the Alexandretta Province, Erdogan offered Israel to broker a peace deal with Syria based on Israeli, not Syrian, capitulation over the Golan.
While Erdogan must be made to understand that Jews are no longer dhimmis, we Israelis have to realize that the end of dhimmitude does not only mean the end of humiliation. It also provides the ability, and perhaps even the duty, to make our enemies get a taste of their own medicine.
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