{"id":51469,"date":"2014-12-22T12:00:32","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T12:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=51469"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:09","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:09","slug":"the-us-feels-the-heat-on-palestine-vote-at-un","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/the-us-feels-the-heat-on-palestine-vote-at-un\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Feels the Heat on Palestine Vote at UN"},"content":{"rendered":"

17 Dec 2014<\/em> – The floodgates have begun to open across Europe on recognition of Palestinian statehood. On Friday [12 Dec 2014] the Portuguese parliament became the latest European legislature to call on its government to back statehood, joining Sweden, Britain, Ireland, France and Spain.<\/p>\n

In coming days similar moves are expected in Denmark and from the European Parliament. The Swiss government will join the fray too this week, inviting states that have signed the Fourth Geneva Convention to an extraordinary meeting to discuss human rights violations in the occupied territories. Israel has threatened retaliation.<\/p>\n

But while Europe is tentatively finding a voice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, silence reigns across the Atlantic. The White House appears paralysed, afraid to appear out of sync with world opinion but more afraid still of upsetting Israel and its powerful allies in the US Congress.<\/p>\n

Now there is an additional complicating factor. The Israeli public, due to elect a new Israeli government in three months\u2019 time, increasingly regards the US role as toxic. A poll this month found that 52 per cent viewed President Barack Obama\u2019s diplomatic policy as \u201cbad\u201d, and 37 per cent thought he had a negative attitude towards their country \u2013 more than double the figure two years ago.<\/p>\n

US Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to the White House\u2019s difficulties this month when he addressed the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of US policy elites to discuss the Middle East. He promised that Washington would not interfere in Israel\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n

According to the Israeli media, he was responding to pressure from Tzipi Livni, sacked this month from Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s government, triggering the forthcoming election, and opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog, of the centre-left Labor party.<\/p>\n

The pair recently made a pact in an effort to oust Netanyahu. Their electoral success \u2013 improbable at the moment \u2013 offers the White House its best hope of an Israeli government that will at least pay lip service to a renewal of peace negotiations, which collapsed last April. They have warned, however, that any sign of backing from the Obama administration would be the kiss of death at the polls.<\/p>\n

US officials would like to see Netanyahu gone, not least because he has been the biggest obstacle to reviving a peace process that for two decades successfully allayed international pressure to create a Palestinian state. But any visible strategy against Netanyahu is almost certain to backfire.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s difficulties are only underscored by the Palestinians\u2019 threat to bring a draft resolution before the UN Security Council as soon as this week, demanding Israel\u2019s withdrawal by late 2016 to the 1967 lines.<\/p>\n

Given the current climate, the Palestinians are hopeful of winning the backing of European states, especially the three key ones in the Security Council \u2013 Britain, France and Germany \u2013 and thereby isolating the US. Arab foreign ministers met Kerry on Tuesday in an effort to persuade Washington not to exercise its veto.<\/p>\n

The US, meanwhile, is desperately trying to postpone a vote, fearful that casting its veto might further discredit it in the eyes of the world while also suggesting to Israeli voters that Netanyahu has the White House in his pocket.<\/p>\n

But indulging the Israeli right also has risks, bolstering it by default. That danger was driven home during another session of the Saban Forum, addressed by settler leader Naftali Bennett. He is currently riding high in the polls and will likely be the backbone of the next coalition government.<\/p>\n

Bennett says clearly what Netanyahu only implies: that most of the West Bank should be annexed, with the Palestinians given demilitarised islands of territory that lack sovereignty. The model, called \u201cautonomy\u201d, is of the Palestinians ruling over a series of local councils.<\/p>\n

The Washington audience was further shocked by Bennett\u2019s disrespectful treatment of his interviewer, Martin Indyk, who served as Obama\u2019s representative at the last round of peace talks. He accused Indyk of not living in the real world, dismissively calling him part of the \u201cpeace industry\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bennett\u2019s goal, according to analysts, was to prove to Israeli voters that he is not afraid to stand up to the Americans.<\/p>\n

Given its weakening hand \u2013 faced with an ever-more rightwing Israeli public and a more assertive European one \u2013 Washington is looking towards an unlikely saviour. The hawkish foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman used to be its bete noire, but he has been carefully recalibrating his image.<\/p>\n

Unlike other candidates, he has been aggressively promoting a \u201cpeace plan\u201d. The US has barely bothered examining its contents, which are only a little more generous than Bennett\u2019s annexation option, and involve forcibly stripping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Israel of their citizenship.<\/p>\n

Lieberman, however, has usefully created the impression that he is a willing partner to a peace process. At the weekend he even suggested he might join a centre coalition with Livni and Herzog.<\/p>\n

Lieberman is cleverly trying to occupy a middle ground with Israeli voters, demonstrating that he can placate the Americans, while offering a plan so unfair to the Palestinians that there is no danger voters will consider him part of the \u201cpeace industry\u201d.<\/p>\n

That may fit the electoral mood: a recent poll showed 63 per cent of Israelis favour peace negotiations, but 70 per cent think they are doomed to fail. The Israeli public, like Lieberman, understands that the Palestinians will never agree to the kind of subjugation they are being offered.<\/p>\n

The Israeli election\u2019s one certain outcome is that, whoever wins, the next coalition will, actively or passively, allow more of the same: a slow, creeping annexation of what is left of a possible Palestinian state, as the US and Europe bicker.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, since 2001. He is the author of: <\/em>Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006); <\/em>Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (2008); and <\/em>Disappearing Palestine: Israel\u2019s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). In 2011 he was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize<\/a> for Journalism.<\/em> The same year, Project Censored<\/a> voted one of Jonathan\u2019s reports, \u201cIsrael brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank\u201d, the ninth most important story censored in 2009-10.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 jonathan-cook.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The floodgates have begun to open across Europe. On Friday [12 Dec 2014] the Portuguese parliament became the latest European legislature to back statehood, joining Sweden, Britain, Ireland, France and Spain. Similar moves are expected in Denmark and the EU. The Swiss government will join the fray too this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51469\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}