The Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa is calling on the New Zealand government to reject outright the US’s so-called “deal of the century” which claims to bring peace to the Middle East.
The sheer absurdity of the US proposal is astonishing.
Among other things it proposes to
- Accept illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land
- Approve Israel annexing (stealing) most of the occupied West Bank for
- Approve the ongoing brutal military occupation of Palestinian land and the siege of Gaza
- Refuse Palestinian refugees the right to return to their land and homes
- Legalise the on-going ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem
The deal is based on injustice, theft, race-based brutality and denial of human rights to the Palestinian people.
It seeks to overturn numerous UN resolutions and turn international law on its head.
The “deal” is rejected by Palestinians, progressive Jewish groups in Israel and around the world and by the vast mass of humanity.
In the 1980s New Zealand did not accept white South African attempts to maintain its racist oppression of black South Africans. Instead we intensified out efforts to boycott the South African regime till the pressure became unbearable and apartheid in South Africa was abandoned.
We must take the same successful path to force Israel to abandon its racist, apartheid policies towards Palestinians.
Intensifying the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel is the only viable way forward.
Agree. The Palestinian situation is so awful that sometimes it seems unfixable. That is the aim of the Israeli State of course–to wear people down–“Incremental Genocide” is one way to put it.
The Palestinian people are brutalised, neighbouring Mid East peoples that should be offering support are threatened and brutalised by Israel and the US, and even international solidarity supporters like Kia Ora Gaza offering humanitarian are brutalised. So one effective, practical thing available to everyone is BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).
I reject these two con men and their racket. Palestine isn’t theirs to sell.
PS: I love the American, Israeli and Palestinian peoples
The ‘deal of the century’ is between Trump and Netanyahu crafted by Trump’s Jewish son in law with no input from the Palestinians. How dumb do they think we are?..or perhaps they know how dumb we are.
I doubt the US will ever condemn Israel for anything it does.
Not whilst Israel has the greatest number of nuclear weapons on the planet and is only an almost ‘stone throw’ from Iran, Iraq and other oil rich countries in the Middle East.
Trump needs Israel so he can conduct his war-games on say Iran. Israel needs America and Trump for money. For Trump and Israel it will be a win/win situation for them and a lose/lose situation for Palestine.
For Trump and Israel it will be a win/win situation for them and a lose/lose situation for Palestine.
A Crime Against Humanity
“A whole book could be written about all the ways the Trump Plan for the hapless Palestinians contravenes international law.”
On Tuesday, an American president being impeached for abuse of power announced a historic plan for Israel-Palestine alongside an Israeli prime minister who was just indicted for bribery and corruption.
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The plan was drafted by a team allegedly led by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who has no real government position and is a far right wing Israel nationalist, in consultation with the far right wing Likud government of Israel, headed by PM Binyamin Netanyahu. The Palestinians declined to be involved in what was obviously a crooked and fixed process that gave away their East Jerusalem to Netanyahu before it even got going. Read more at Juan Cole – A Crime Against Humanity
The frightening thing is many puppet govts will agree to it without consulting their voters and get away with it.
Politics happens behind closed doors and big money call the tune.
When the ADL’s Silicon Valley social media fusion centre is up and running dissent on these issues will no longer be an issue for the US government.
Guess who is pushing the narrative here that it is needed? Look at who is funding the fusion centre, and who is funding hate speech and misinformation and disinformation think tanks, protests and articles here. One and the same.
Wake up, lefties.
The Guardian’s take:
Martin Chulov Middle East correspondent The Guardian, Tue 28 Jan 2020
“Where once there was fury, Palestinian issue now stirs up apathy”
For much of the last 70 years the cause of Palestine stirred the Arab street. From Yemen to Morocco and all points in between, laments were sung in song and enshrined in poetry as the decades mounted without a Palestinian state. Regional statesmen built careers by standing by a people without a land. Wars were fought and lost in their name.
After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, that slowly began to change and by the time Iran became the preoccupation of the US and its allies in the region, the Palestinians were cast into the unfamiliar role of playing second fiddle. Then came Donald Trump, and ever since the once-overarching cause of the region has barely been given a seat in the orchestra pit.
The unveiling of the US president’s much-delayed Middle East “peace plan” has generated neither enthusiasm nor anger – only apathy – in a region that no longer views the fate of the Palestinians as a lynchpin, or – in some cases – even a cause worth championing loudly.
So far has the pendulum swung that ambassadors from Oman, Bahrain and the UAE were present when Trump unveiled the plan in the White House. This was no longer whispered support from the shadows – instead it marked a very public endorsement.
Even in Jordan and Lebanon, which are more tied than other countries to what may come next, the lead-up brought little outrage. As Trump spoke, south Beirut, long a bastion of resistance to Israel, was adorned with posters of the slain Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said the US plan would not have happened without the “complicity and betrayal” of several Arab states. The rest of the city felt weighed down by its more pressing concerns – how to outride an economic meltdown.
Riyadh, which once drew much of its regional clout from defending the Palestinians, was mute as the hour drew near. So too, Abu Dhabi, which shares its larger neighbour’s focus on Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and rails at the latter’s links to the Palestinian group Hamas. In Cairo, a bedrock of the earlier years of Palestinian struggles, there was little talk of a plan set to shred the scope of deals put to earlier leaders.
There was to be no return to 1967 lines, only a hint of Arab control of part of East Jerusalem, Israeli settlements would be annexed and the Jordan Valley kept under Israeli control. There were suggestions of land links between Gaza and what was left of the West Bank, and the remnants of Palestinian control could be called a state; but no Palestinian leader could, or would dare go for it. “It’s like being invited to Christmas dinner after only the bones of the turkey are left,” said Raad Ghandour, a 36-year-old Palestinian from the Sabra Shatila camp in the Lebanese capital. “It’s shameful to propose such a thing.”
Despite the enormous shift in what the US tabled in 2000 at Bill Clinton’s Camp David summit and what it is prepared to do now, there was no pushback among its allies – all of whom had been briefed ahead of time. Saudi Arabia, in particular, had been an intrinsic part of the lead-up process; the country’s crown prince is on warm terms with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser on the Middle East, Jared Kushner, who put the plan together. The pair had come to share many aspects of a worldview, particularly the thinking that drove Trump’s transactional mindset.
The Palestinians had become a burden, financially and politically, and were no longer worth the investment, the Saudi heir to the throne had concluded. There were bigger fish to fry in Iran, after all, and Israel could help them do that.
Improved relations with Israel over the past three years have aimed to condition the kingdom to the change in approach – and foe. Over the weekend, Israel allowed its citizens to travel to Saudi Arabia for religious or trade purposes. Gulf states, too, are relaxing travel bans on a country that was long seen as the obstacle to regional peace, but is increasingly being viewed as a partner.
Where this leaves the Palestinians, or a cause that had galvanised the region for so long, remains of great alarm to many who see no enduring peace as long as grievances from the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 are left unaddressed.
There will be pro forma protests from the countries that have underwritten such a profound historical shift, and claims that a two-state solution remains essential.
But this announcement seems very much like the death-knell for the formula once envisaged by Trump’s predecessors. The conversation has now moved so far in one direction it is likely to stay there. And those in the region who once championed the cause do not seem to mind.
There seems a fair amount of weaseling on Palestine from people that never really supported the struggle anyway.
Here is a thought that has just crossed my mind in regards to this “agreement” between Trump and Netanyahu.
We all know Trump hates anyone who is Arabic. In fact he is probably jealous of the Arabs in the oil rich countries that have more money than he ever will..
He is treating the Palestinians with the same open contempt he has towards ALL ARABS.
He wants Israel to be the strongest country in the Middle East mainly because it(Israel)has more nuclear weapons on its soil than the US. Trump will never want an argument with Israel because he needs that country to be the launching pad for his military attacks on say Iran.
Also so many years on I can only guess Trump wants to be the 21st century version of Menachen Begin and Anwar Sadat with Jimmy Carter standing nearby clapping.
Trump is too self-serving, arrogant and obsessed with looking like a big man. But he is mentally unstable and probably will throw the Palestinians(even those living in America)under the Israel war machines when it suits him and his agendas.
Meanwhile, a report reveals that Israeli leaders will now be brought before the International Criminal Court.
On December 20, 2019, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced her intention to open an investigation into war crimes committed in Palestine from June 13, 2014.
Excerpt:
The Trial. Who is Responsible, what are the Crimes?
Regarding Israel: the highest political and military leaders.
The crimes: premeditated killings of a non-combatant population, the bombing of civilian targets, use of prohibited weapons (phosphorus, depleted uranium, cluster shells, dart shells, explosive bullets, nerve gases), the crime of colonization, unlawful siege, displacement of populations, etc.
To a lesser degree, Palestinian Authority officials may be held accountable for crimes that have occurred mainly as a result of “security cooperation” with the occupying power in the West Bank (torture, death in detention), and participation in the unlawful siege (power cuts, reduction in civil servants’ salaries as well as the amount of pensions). Gaza’s combatant armed forces, Hamas and Islamic Jihad will be accused of war crimes (essentially sending rockets without a geolocation system and therefore at risk of reaching civilians).
In that event, it will be interesting to see how the judges construe Article 31c and d of the Rome Statute. The latter specifically envisages asymmetrical conflicts in which one of the parties, far less armed than the attacker, may have to commit war crimes in order to ensure the survival of combatants or the protected population, and would then be exempt from criminal liability.
israeli-leaders-before-the-international-criminal-court
Israeli leaders will now be brought before the International Criminal Court.
However, the Trump-Netanyahu deal has sought to pre-empt this.
The plan announced Tuesday by the White House demands Palestinians “dismiss all pending actions” before the International Criminal Court.
trump-netanyahu-deal-effort-torpedo-icc-war-crimes-probe
“Tens of thousands” of protestors are out in force on the West Bank and in Gaza:
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have rallied on Tuesday evening in the besieged Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, to protest against the announcement of the US ‘peace plan’, known as ‘deal of the century’.
Palestinians in Gaza Strip observed a general strike on Wednesday. All the shops were shut down, while government and financial institutions did not open to business, and schools and universities suspended classes. Videos and more at this link
Greater Israel, here we come. Few Kiwis care a flying f***.
You obviously think it is fine to murder Palestinians if you support the corrupt peace plan proposed. If you knew history & the violence used by Jewish groups from before 1917 to independence in 1948 you would understand why Palestinian groups had to use the same methods to seek equality in their treatment. It is clear that both sides have blood on their hands but the undisputed cause of the conflict is the unwarranted Zionist presence in the land & their unjust methods in union with the European powers then the USA to constantly reduce opportunity for the Palestinian people.
NZ values trade and traditional ‘allies’, so will not do anything at all about this.
We agree, once again, John.
Reject.
But sanctions are counter productive.
Agreed. Will be interesting to see how NZ govt responds.
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