Amsterhammer said:
Possibly someone in India would view the intrusion of religion into politics as something perfectly natural and ordinary, since that is what you are used to. To enlightened westerners, Iran is possibly the worst example you could mention in conjunction with words like 'democratic' and 'forward'. As Rhub has rightly pointed out, a theocracy is the most misplaced of all possible regimes in the 21st century. The mullahs have turned Iran into an abominable pariah state, a travesty of what we consider 'democratic'.
As for the Palestinians - do they deserve to have their own state? Absolutely. While I can understand some of the 'realpolitik' considerations leading to the US veto, I am nevertheless disappointed that Obama is so beholden to the unbelievably powerful Jewish lobby that he feels unable to put his weight behind what I see as a historical inevitability.
There will be an independent Palestine one day, but that will not solve the problems of the region. The bottom line is that even in the extremely unlikely event of all other issues being solved, the status of Jerusalem will always remain as a stumbling block - the Arabs will always want it back, Israel will never give it up.
Things were really sensational today in the UN, with Abu Mazen receiving a standing ovation, something that's extremely rare in the house of glass, for his appeals to the international community. He was also predictably most severe with Israel in terms of its obstinacy and its imperialism. Never has he enjoyed such a high approval rate at 85% among his people.
Just as predictable, though, was Israel's and the US's position, both Netanyahu and Obama having categorically rejected any sovereignty concession to the Palestinians just yet, stating that "no mere resolution can establish peace" and that it wasn't the time to make hasty and compromising (to whom?) decisions, or act precipitously. But this was obvioulsy no more than a stall tactic that's quickly running beyond its historical expiration date.
While the Israelis additionally have said that any dismantling of the colonies would amount to an "ethnic cleansing of jews." A most ironic statement, however, since it is made without considering that such settlements themselves, apart from having been condemned internationally as an illegal breech of both the 48 and 67 Israeli border stipulations, have resulted in a veritable travesty for the Palestinians. Illegal colonies which are thus viewed as violent acts of abominable humiliation for Arabs in the broader sense. Seen from the Arab perspective inside and outside the region, Israel's attempts to return their state to the biblical confines of pre-Roman antiquity, as especially promoted by the religiously hard-line and conservative rabbinic jews, who have a fervent ally in the current Prime Minister and the Knesset, amounts to no less than an attempted and methodically pursued Palestinian genocide under the aegis of the Americans. This only makes more appalling and grotesque such appeals against what has actually taken place and it lays blame on another for the crimes you have committed, I thought, but not them. Indeed what the Israelis would refer to as a hypothetical "ethnic cleansing," the Arabs around the region have seen as impudent and condemnable acts of imperialism in their territory, which, if left unchecked, would result in the total expungement of the local Arabs. In any other place around the world, moreover, such would be viewed as if the US invaded Canada and began to establish satellite colonies in another's homeland.
However, since the UN with its seat in NY has largely been in this regard viewed from the Arab perspective as an American puppet organization and since the superpower has always sided with Israel, despite the fact that the international community has repeatedly condemned the Jewish extra-territorial settlements as illegal, the brazen injustice has been allowed to continue without international consequence.
As far as no resolution being able to establish peace is concerned, such reasoning is merely a vapid ideology, as well as a pathetic alibi, that has become increasingly exposed for being the base hypocrisy that it is, especially in terms of the more recent US' bellicose attempts to bring democracy to the Middle East and the nascent so called Arab spring that has ensued partly as a result. This has only further isolated Israel in a region that now feels like it has every right to ask for legitimacy and justice.
What the Israelis and Americans conveniently overlook, therefore, and are consequently out of touch with the reality of the current regional and sub-regional developments; is that blindly holding on to past policies and models without compromise, only makes them appear more hypocritical and arrogant, as well as simply being out of touch with the present course of history. In addition, Israel fails to grasp that the time for having it all its way is over and that the only means to establish any form of enduring peace with the Arabs is to give up the colonies and fully recognize the neighboring Palestinian state, which already de facto exists. Otherwise the violence and acts of destabilizing terrorism, on both sides, can only but persist. Of course the former knows that caving into the latter's demands, means that it will then be made to face accountabilty in the Hague international criminal court of justice, something that it absolutely wants to avoid in order to be able to pursue its policy of total expropriation of Palestinian lands. Among the Israeli hardliners such is viewed as the Jewish State's "Manifest Destiny," which amounts to - and under a so called divine and biblical justification - what the US did to the native American popultions. Something hardly acceptable, let alone justifiable, in this day and age, under the current human rights and international peace promoting ideals that govern the very UN at which a decision is to be made on this case. One regarding a world order that it hopes to promote and uphold, and over which the democratic US holds a privileged and decisive leadership position. All of which makes a veto on the part of America especially repulsive and reprehensible, I've thought, to say nothing of how
hypocritical. It goes against every secular and Enlightenment/democratic principle America and the West are supposed to uphold. How long, though, might will make right is the open question that begs to be answered. And how long will such an anachronistic and decidedly anti-progressive policy be given US approval?
There are those who would argue, however, that even if Israel were to do all this that the Arabs will never give up the terrorism, with groups like Hamas still having a place among Palestinian sympathies and that, as you say, the thorny question of Jerusalem will never be resolved.
Yet I find this to be a rather ignoble cop-out that, once again, simply reflects the fruit of one's prepotency over and intransigence with the other, only because it is deluded in a belief that it can continue ad infinitem with an increasingly untenable one-way policy. For the best way to marginalize and ultimately eliminate groups like Hamas, is to take the wind out of their sails and eliminate their raison d'etre by making the first step in giving full UN state status to Palestine. There can be no other way, also because there are a majority among the exhausted Palestinians who would rather have a partial conquest and live without bombs than to have nothing and live with them, because they know, like Israel, that they can't have it all their way, unjust as this may appear to them. Indeed just as the moderate Abu Mazen has done in not requesting a pre-48, but a pre-67, accord, even if this will not be accepted by Hamas.
It is thus interesting to note that Hamas is the first to hope for Abu Mazen's failure. At the sulfuric city of Hebron, a Hamas stronghold, there is hence no surprise that there is more anger than hope on the streets for Obama's "betrayal," as the Palestinians naturally expected it. "When he arrived at the White House his ideas had given us hope, though what he said in the UN demonstrates that he's no different from his predecessors," pressed Mohammad Zidane the union delegate in support of Abu Mazen's discourse at New York. Whereas Hamas, which once again wants to dance on the ashes of Mazen's denied initiative since that gives them continued reason to thrive, has said through its official spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri: "It was wrong from the start to go to the UN. Obama's speech reflects the American tendency without reserve to favor Israel and its military occupation of our land, which only demonstrates that the Arabs and the Palestinians were mistaken to have continued to count on the Americans."
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