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Talking Points:
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
by Stephen Zunes and Chris Toensing
April 12, 2002
General:
- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of competing nationalist movements
battling for a homeland on the same territory. It is not a religious or ethnic
conflict at its root. The conflict is not intractable: the majority of both
Israelis and Palestinians are willing to accept territorial compromise and
share historic Palestine in two states side by side in return for peace and
security.
- The root of the present war is Israel's 34-year occupation of Palestinian
lands: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip. This phenomenon, rather
than the person of Ariel Sharon or the person of Yasir Arafat, is the primary
obstacle to peace. The centerpiece of U.S. policy should be to end the
occupation, including removal of settlements, as soon as possible. Ceasefires
fall considerably short of this goal.
- To stop the present frightening escalation in Israel-Palestine, it is
urgent that the U.S. support the immediate deployment of a UN peacekeeping
force to not only guarantee security of Israeli and Palestinian civilians but
also to oversee the end of the occupation.
Palestinian Violence:
- Occupation and repression can never justify terrorism. Similarly,
terrorism can never justify occupation and repression, nor do terrorist acts
by a few negate the Palestinian people's right to self-determination.
- The Palestinian Authority under President Yasir Arafat has been inept,
corrupt, and autocratic. But Arafat is the elected leader of the Palestinians,
and both Israel and the U.S. must treat him as such. The U.S. should support
Palestinian NGO leaders' call for new elections in Palestinian self-rule
areas, as well as an end to the Israeli occupation.
- A clear distinction should be made between violent Palestinian resistance
that targets civilians inside Israel and violent Palestinian resistance that
targets Israeli occupation forces in the occupied territories. The former is a
war crime and can never be legitimized. The latter is recognized as legitimate
under international law. However, nonviolent forms of resistance by the
Palestinians would likely be the most effective means of advancing their
cause.
Israeli Security:
- Israel would be far more secure within its internationally recognized
pre-1967 borders than attempting to defend an archipelago of illegal
settlements amidst a hostile population. Israelis have died from political
violence in greater numbers in the occupied territories than within Israel
itself. Similarly, Israel utilizes far more troops as occupation forces than
it does defending the country's borders or maintaining internal security.
- As reiterated in the recent Arab summit in Beirut, an Israeli withdrawal
to within its internationally recognized borders (perhaps with some minor and
reciprocal adjustments), would result in the security guarantees and full
normalized relations from Arab states that Israel has long sought. This would
put both Israel and its neighbors into compliance with UN Security Council
resolutions 242 and 338, long considered to be the basis for a comprehensive
Arab-Israeli peace, and recently reiterated by the Bush administration as the
basis of U.S. policy.
The Peace Process:
- On virtually all of the outstanding issues in the peace process (the
extent of the Israeli withdrawal, the fate of the Israeli settlements, the
status of Jerusalem, and the resettlement of Palestinian refugees), the
Palestinian negotiating position is far more consistent with international
law, UN Security Council resolutions, and U.S. policy prior to the Clinton
administration than is the Israeli negotiating position.
United States Policy:
- The United States' contradictory role as the chief mediator in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and as the chief military, economic, and
diplomatic supporter of Israel's occupation has been a major contribution to
the collapse of the peace process. Since 1969, the U.S. has used its veto
power in the UN Security Council to protect Israel from censure for its
violations of international law more than thirty times. Tacit Bush
administration support for Israeli offensives in the West Bank in March-April
2002 revealed the complete isolation of U.S. policy toward this conflict in
the international arena. The U.S. has so far lost credibility as a broker in
the peace process that it should step down. Instead, the U.S. should support
UN efforts, most urgently a peacekeeping force, to resolve the conflict based
on principles of international law and good-faith negotiations.
- U.S. diplomats have encouraged anti-Jewish sentiment in the Arab world by
greatly exaggerating to their counterparts the influence of American Jews in
shaping U.S. foreign policy as a means of avoiding responsibility for U.S. use
of Israel to advance its own strategic interests. A more balanced U.S. policy
toward Israel-Palestine is urgent to undercut the anti-Jewish appeals of some
elements in the Arab and Islamic world.
- Israel's ongoing violations of internationally
recognized human rights standards--including mass detention without
charge, collective punishment, destruction of civilian targets, extrajudicial
killings, and torture on an administrative basis--requires a suspension of
U.S. military aid to Israel under the Foreign Assistance Act, which forbids
security assistance to any government which "engages in a consistent pattern
of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights" without a
waiver [22 U.S.C. Secs. 2034, 2151n]. The U.S. must make military and other
aid to Israel conditional upon its progress in ending the occupation and
negotiating in good faith on other outstanding issues in the peace process.
(Stephen Zunes, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> FPIF's Mideast Editor,
compiled these talking points together with Chris Toensing, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> editor of the
Middle East Report.)
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0204israeltalk.html
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