Unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood?

[The Archregimancy]

The Palestinian Authority (or at least the West Bank-based portion controlled by Fatah) may be about to give up on the US-brokered peace process with Israel and attempt to unilaterally declare independence (using the 1967 borders) with support from the UN Security Council:

Palestinian leaders from President Mahmoud Abbas down have alarmed Israeli ministers by swinging their weight behind a planned effort to secure UN backing for a unilaterally declared independent state in the West Bank and Gaza.

In an innovative strategy which would not depend on the success of currently stalled negotiations with Israel, the leaders are preparing a push to secure formal UN Security Council support for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders as a crucial first step towards the formation of a state.

Although there is no fixed timetable, Palestinian officials see the second half of 2011 as a plausible starting date for such a process. That is when the Palestinian Authority is due to fulfil Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's widely applauded two-year plan for completing work on all the institutions needed for a fully-fledged state.

One senior Palestinian official said here that the new plan was "the last resort of the peace camp in Palestine" given the current negotiating impasse left in the wake of the US failure to persuade Israel to agree a total freeze on Jewish settlement building in the West Bank as a preliminary to talks.

From:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-push-for-an-independent-state-causes-israeli-alarm-1821261.html

See also:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/palestinians-may-seek-statehood-at-un-20091116-ii84.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8361654.stm


Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether this tactic is justified, I don't see how the Palestinian Authority can expect to get any UN Security Council vote past a US veto, or why this should have any more impact than the previous unilateral declaration of independence in 1988.

Unless, perhaps, Abbas has decided that the negotiations with Israel are so hopeless - especially since Hilary Clinton appeared to undermine stated US policy by stating a settlement freeze wasn't necessary - that he has nothing left to lose.

Thoughts?

Keep it flame-free, please - I obviously appreciate that this is an emotive topic that both sides feel strongly about.

[Yootopia]

Instaveto.

[Kobrania]

It would be nice to have the Zionists put down a peg.

[Yootopia]

It would be nice to have the Zionists put down a peg.

Yeah but they wouldn't be, so there we go.

[Kobrania]

If they do get independence, wouldn't it be illegal for the Zionist Israeli state to build on Palestinian land?

[Yootopia]

If they do get independence

Which they won't.

wouldn't it be illegal for the Zionist Israeli state to build on Palestinian land?

It already is.

[Little Jim P]

Meh, just give both sides nukes and let them bomb each other into oblivion. No more Palestine, no more Israel, no more problem.

[Neo Art]

meh. Can I declare my bedroom a sovereign nation?

[Yootopia]

Meh, just give both sides nukes and let them bomb each other into oblivion. No more Palestine, no more Israel, no more problem.

Then the Sunnis would attack the Shi'ites a bit more.

[Little Jim P]

Meh, just give both sides nukes and let them bomb each other into oblivion. No more Palestine, no more Israel, no more problem.

Then the Sunnis would attack the Shi'ites a bit more.

Yes, but my solution can be applied just about anywhere there's a conflict.

[Yootopia]

Meh, just give both sides nukes and let them bomb each other into oblivion. No more Palestine, no more Israel, no more problem.

Then the Sunnis would attack the Shi'ites a bit more.

Yes, but my solution can be applied just about anywhere there's a conflict.

As a Briton, who loves the World Balance of Power and all that, I can't abide nuking the Levant or Africa, I'm afraid.

[Lunatic Goofballs]

In my opinion, the Palestinians should have declared their independence 20 years ago. If you want independence, you fight for it. You don't blow up bars and malls because you think Israelis suck. I throw a lot of criticism Israel's way, but I always thought the Palestinians were senseless and more than a little crazed for making the fight all these years about Israel instead of about Palestine.

[Yootopia]

In my opinion, the Palestinians should have declared their independence 20 years ago. If you want independence, you fight for it. You don't blow up bars and malls because you think Israelis suck. I throw a lot of criticism Israel's way, but I always thought the Palestinians were senseless and more than a little crazed for making the fight all these years about Israel instead of about Palestine.

Quite, and I'm sure most Palestinians probably don't care about who's technically in charge of their country so long as they have jobs, safety and enough food and amenities to care for their families.

[Virgin Incursion]

If they do get independence, wouldn't it be illegal for the Zionist Israeli state to build on Palestinian land?

We have covered this point on NS before , its according to what side of the argument you are looking at this from.

[Call to power]

I'm having a vision...I see a protesters outside the UN...waving...Palestinian flags...and.a piece of paper is being put in some sort of shredding device inside *starts speaking in tongues*

doesn't this require acknowledgment of the state of Israel...wouldn't that remove a fair bit of backing for this?

In my opinion, the Palestinians should have declared their independence 20 years ago. If you want independence, you fight for it. You don't blow up bars and malls because you think Israelis suck. I throw a lot of criticism Israel's way, but I always thought the Palestinians were senseless and more than a little crazed for making the fight all these years about Israel instead of about Palestine.

because fighting Israel directly is going to totally work

[The Archregimancy]

In my opinion, the Palestinians should have declared their independence 20 years ago.

They did. Twenty One years ago. And a fat lot of difference it made last time around - which is why I'm sceptical about the usefullness of the tactic this time around.


Here's the full text of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, issued on the 15th of November 1988 (taken from http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=11&id=27)

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Palestine, the land of the three monotheistic faiths, is where the Palestinian Arab people was born, on which it grew, developed and excelled. Thus the Palestinian Arab people ensured for itself an everlasting union between itself, its land, and its history.

Resolute throughout that history, the Palestinian Arab people forged its national identity, rising even to unimagined levels in its defense, as invasion, the design of others, and the appeal special to Palestine's ancient and luminous place on the eminence where powers and civilizations are joined. All this intervened thereby to deprive the people of its political independence. Yet the undying connection between Palestine and its people secured for the land its character, and for the people its national genius.

Nourished by an unfolding series of civilizations and cultures, inspired by a heritage rich in variety and kind, the Palestinian Arab people added to its stature by consolidating a union between itself and its patrimonial Land. The call went out from Temple, Church, and Mosque that to praise the Creator, to celebrate compassion and peace was indeed the message of Palestine. And in generation after generation, the Palestinian Arab people gave of itself unsparingly in the valiant battle for liberation and homeland. For what has been the unbroken chain of our people's rebellions but the heroic embodiment of our will for national independence. And so the people was sustained in the struggle to stay and to prevail.

When in the course of modern times a new order of values was declared with norms and values fair for all, it was the Palestinian Arab people that had been excluded from the destiny of all other peoples by a hostile array of local and foreign powers. Yet again had unaided justice been revealed as insufficient to drive the world's history along its preferred course.

And it was the Palestinian people, already wounded in its body that was submitted to yet another type of occupation over which floated that falsehood that "Palestine was a land without people." This notion was foisted upon some in the world, whereas in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (1919) and in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), the community of nations had recognized that all the Arab territories, including Palestine, of the formerly Ottoman provinces, were to have granted to them their freedom as provisionally independent nations.

Despite the historical injustice inflicted on the Palestinian Arab people resulting in their dispersion and depriving them of their right to self-determination, following upon U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181 (1947), which partitioned Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish, yet it is this Resolution that still provides those conditions of international legitimacy that ensure the right of the Palestinian Arab people to sovereignty.

By stages, the occupation of Palestine and parts of other Arab territories by Israeli forces, the willed dispossession and expulsion from their ancestral homes of the majority of Palestine's civilian inhabitants, was achieved by organized terror; those Palestinians who remained, as a vestige subjugated in its homeland, were persecuted and forced to endure the destruction of their national life.

Thus were principles of international legitimacy violated. Thus were the Charter of the United Nations and its Resolutions disfigured, for they had recognized the Palestinian Arab people's national rights, including the right of Return, the right to independence, the right to sovereignty over territory and homeland.

In Palestine and on its perimeters, in exile distant and near, the Palestinian Arab people never faltered and never abandoned its conviction in its rights of Return and independence. Occupation, massacres and dispersion achieved no gain in the unabated Palestinian consciousness of self and political identity, as Palestinians went forward with their destiny, undeterred and unbowed. And from out of the long years of trial in ever-mounting struggle, the Palestinian political identity emerged further consolidated and confirmed. And the collective Palestinian national will forged for itself a political embodiment, the Palestine Liberation Organization, its sole, legitimate representative recognized by the world community as a whole, as well as by related regional and international institutions. Standing on the very rock of conviction in the Palestinian people's inalienable rights, and on the ground of Arab national consensus and of international legitimacy, the PLO led the campaigns of its great people, molded into unity and powerful resolve, one and indivisible in its triumphs, even as it suffered massacres and confinement within and without its home. And so Palestinian resistance was clarified and raised into the forefront of Arab and world awareness, as the struggle of the Palestinian Arab people achieved unique prominence among the world's liberation movements in the modern era.

The massive national uprising, the intifada, now intensifying in cumulative scope and power on occupied Palestinian territories, as well as the unflinching resistance of the refugee camps outside the homeland, have elevated awareness of the Palestinian truth and right into still higher realms of comprehension and actuality. Now at last the curtain has been dropped around a whole epoch of prevarication and negation. The intifada has set siege to the mind of official Israel, which has for too long relied exclusively upon myth and terror to deny Palestinian existence altogether. Because of the intifada and its revolutionary irreversible impulse, the history of Palestine has therefore arrived at a decisive juncture.

Whereas the Palestinian people reaffirms most definitively its inalienable rights in the land of its patrimony:

Now by virtue of natural, historical and legal rights, and the sacrifices of successive generations who gave of themselves in defense of the freedom and independence of their homeland;

In pursuance of Resolutions adopted by Arab Summit Conferences and relying on the authority bestowed by international legitimacy as embodied in the Resolutions of the United Nations Organization since 1947;

And in exercise by the Palestinian Arab people of its rights to self-determination, political independence and sovereignty over its territory,

The Palestine National Council, in the name of God, and in the name of the Palestinian Arab people, hereby proclaims the establishment of the State of Palestine on our Palestinian territory with its capital Jerusalem (Al-Quds Ash-Sharif).

The State of Palestine is the state of Palestinians wherever they may be. The state is for them to enjoy in it their collective national and cultural identity, theirs to pursue in it a complete equality of rights. In it will be safeguarded their political and religious convictions and their human dignity by means of a parliamentary democratic system of governance, itself based on freedom of _expression and the freedom to form parties. The rights of minorities will duly be respected by the majority, as minorities must abide by decisions of the majority. Governance will be based on principles of social justice, equality and non-discrimination in public rights of men or women, on grounds of race, religion, color or sex, and the aegis of a constitution, which ensures the rule of law and an independent judiciary. Thus shall these principles allow no departure from Palestine's age-old spiritual and civilizational heritage of tolerance and religious coexistence.

The State of Palestine is an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation, at one with that nation in heritage and civilization, with it also in its aspiration for liberation, progress, democracy and unity. The State of Palestine affirms its obligation to abide by the Charter of the League of Arab States, whereby the coordination of the Arab states with each other shall be strengthened. It calls upon Arab compatriots to consolidate and enhance the reality of state, to mobilize potential, and to intensify efforts whose goal is to end Israeli occupation.

The State of Palestine proclaims its commitment to the principles and purposes of the United Nations, and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It proclaims its commitment as well to the principles and policies of the Non-Aligned Movement.

It further announces itself to be a peace-loving State, in adherence to the principles of peaceful co-existence. It will join with all states and peoples in order to assure a permanent peace based upon justice and the respect of rights so that humanity's potential for well-being may be assured, an earnest competition for excellence may be maintained, and in which confidence in the future will eliminate fear for those who are just and for whom justice is the only recourse.

In the context of its struggle for peace in the land of Love and Peace, the State of Palestine calls upon the United Nations to bear special responsibility for the Palestinian Arab people and its homeland. It calls upon all peace-and freedom-loving peoples and states to assist it in the attainment of its objectives, to provide it with security, to alleviate the tragedy of its people, and to help it terminate Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories.

The State of Palestine herewith declares that it believes in the settlement of regional and international disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with the U.N. Charter and resolutions. With prejudice to its natural right to defend its territorial integrity and independence, it therefore rejects the threat or use of force, violence and terrorism against its territorial integrity or political independence, as it also rejects their use against territorial integrity of other states.

Therefore, on this day unlike all others, November 15, 1988, as we stand at the threshold of a new dawn, in all honor and modesty we humbly bow to the sacred spirits of our fallen ones, Palestinian and Arab, by the purity of whose sacrifice for the homeland our sky has been illuminated and our Land given life. Our hearts are lifted up and irradiated by the light emanating from the much blessed intifada, from those who have endured and have fought the fight of the camps, of dispersion, of exile, from those who have borne the standard for freedom, our children, our aged, our youth, our prisoners, detainees and wounded, all those ties to our sacred soil are confirmed in camp, village, and town. We render special tribute to that brave Palestinian Woman, guardian of sustenance and Life, keeper of our people's perennial flame. To the souls of our sainted martyrs, the whole of our Palestinian Arab people that our struggle shall be continued until the occupation ends, and the foundation of our sovereignty and independence shall be fortified accordingly.

Therefore, we call upon our great people to rally to the banner of Palestine, to cherish and defend it, so that it may forever be the symbol of our freedom and dignity in that homeland, which is a homeland for the free, now and always.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful:
“Say: 'O God, Master of the Kingdom,
Thou givest the Kingdom to whom Thou wilt,
and seizes the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt,
Thou exalted whom Thou wilt, and Thou
abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand
is the good; Thou are powerful over everything.”

[Lunatic Goofballs]

I'm having a vision...I see a protesters outside the UN...waving...Palestinian flags...and.a piece of paper is being put in some sort of shredding device inside *starts speaking in tongues*

doesn't this require acknowledgment of the state of Israel...wouldn't that remove a fair bit of backing for this?

In my opinion, the Palestinians should have declared their independence 20 years ago. If you want independence, you fight for it. You don't blow up bars and malls because you think Israelis suck. I throw a lot of criticism Israel's way, but I always thought the Palestinians were senseless and more than a little crazed for making the fight all these years about Israel instead of about Palestine.

because fighting Israel directly is going to totally work

That depends who backs em up.

[H N Fiddlebottoms VIII]

meh. Can I declare my bedroom a sovereign nation?

You're a lawyer, you figure it out. I'm sure there's a form or something.
Form DMX-3892 for Futile Declaration of Independent Statehood.
Where to file: In your nearest waste bin. You could take it to a UN waste bin if it makes you feel any better.

[Call to power]

SNIP

wasn't that the one where the Palestinians rioted and stuff but didn't use weapons and it totally worked until the Israelis assassinated the leader? I would be less ignorant but I can't remember the name of the thing so that means I can't just paste what Wiki says

That depends who backs em up.

nobody not that it really matters as dislodging Israel is crazy talk

[Lunatic Goofballs]

SNIP

wasn't that the one where the Palestinians rioted and stuff but didn't use weapons and it totally worked until the Israelis assassinated the leader? I would be less ignorant but I can't remember the name of the thing so that means I can't just paste what Wiki says

That depends who backs em up.

nobody not that it really matters as dislodging Israel is crazy talk

I like crazy talk.

But the only part of Israel that anybody(that matters) is talking about dislodging is the part they have no right to.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I'll support an Independence movement for Palestine if they actually fight on their land instead of sending bombs strapped to kids and rockets into Israel. They need tochange their tactics and their rhetoric. They need to make the fight about Palestine not about Israel. That I'd support.

[Czardas]

A unilateral declaration of statehood would be more or less useless without recognition from Israel itself.

So unless the UN can put diplomatic pressure on Israel to accept it, I doubt anything will come of such a declaration.

[The_pantless_hero]

If they do get independence,

Never happen as long as Israel continues to wag the US. You would think the US ran the death camps from the way they treat Israel.

[H N Fiddlebottoms VIII]

SNIP

wasn't that the one where the Palestinians rioted and stuff but didn't use weapons and it totally worked until the Israelis assassinated the leader? I would be less ignorant but I can't remember the name of the thing so that means I can't just paste what Wiki says

That depends who backs em up.

nobody not that it really matters as dislodging Israel is crazy talk

I like crazy talk.

But the only part of Israel that anybody(that matters) is talking about dislodging is the part they have no right to.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I'll support an Independence movement for Palestine if they actually fight on their land instead of sending bombs strapped to kids and rockets into Israel. They need tochange their tactics and their rhetoric. They need to make the fight about Palestine not about Israel. That I'd support.

If they actually tried fighting a stand up fight, they'd just get mowed down. How many tanks and aircraft does the Palestinian authority have?
Whining to the UN and blowing up buses are the only tactics they can put into any kind of use, as useless, harmful and infuriating as they are.

[Call to power]

I can't speak for anybody else, but I'll support an Independence movement for Palestine if they actually fight on their land instead of sending bombs strapped to kids and rockets into Israel. They need tochange their tactics and their rhetoric. They need to make the fight about Palestine not about Israel. That I'd support.

I know your an American so its in your nature to be stupid and violent but god damn do you honestly think its that simple?

go on tell me how would your independence movement possibly hope to fight Israel on conventional terms, perhaps the Israelis are like the aliens in signs and if you spray water on them they melt...presumably the Israeli armour is made of cardboard

then you can tell me how if its really that easy a peaceful solution can't be achieved and how the Palestinians can stop their shitty new country from being a hot-bed of terrorist activity towards Israel like it already is

[Lunatic Goofballs]

SNIP

wasn't that the one where the Palestinians rioted and stuff but didn't use weapons and it totally worked until the Israelis assassinated the leader? I would be less ignorant but I can't remember the name of the thing so that means I can't just paste what Wiki says

That depends who backs em up.

nobody not that it really matters as dislodging Israel is crazy talk

I like crazy talk.

But the only part of Israel that anybody(that matters) is talking about dislodging is the part they have no right to.

I can't speak for anybody else, but I'll support an Independence movement for Palestine if they actually fight on their land instead of sending bombs strapped to kids and rockets into Israel. They need tochange their tactics and their rhetoric. They need to make the fight about Palestine not about Israel. That I'd support.

If they actually tried fighting a stand up fight, they'd just get mowed down. How many tanks and aircraft does the Palestinian authority have?
Whining to the UN and blowing up buses are the only tactics they can put into any kind of use, as useless, harmful and infuriating as they are.

Like I said, that depends who backs em.