http://themilitant.com/2017/8102/810201.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 2 January 9, 2017
(lead article, news analysis)
UN Israel vote registers blow to Palestinian national fight
BY NAOMI CRAINE
In a departure from Washington’s long-standing bipartisan policy, the
Barack Obama administration decided not to block a resolution adopted by
the United Nations Security Council Dec. 23 condemning the continual
expansion of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.
The resolution states in part that “the establishment by Israel of
settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including
East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant
violation under international law and a major obstacle to the
achievement of the two-State solution.”
The vote in fact registers a blow to the decades-long struggle of the
Palestinian people against national oppression. It reinforces the
dead-end course of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships to
rely on Washington and other imperialist powers to pressure Tel Aviv,
while shackling the Palestinian masses as passive bystanders. It gives a
boost to forces in Israel pushing for greater inroads into Palestinian
territory.
It reflects the absence of any Palestinian leadership fighting for a way
forward — a negotiated agreement that includes recognition of the state
of Israel, coupled with recognition of a Palestinian state, as it exists
today, as a stepping-stone to the fight for a single, contiguous
homeland for the Palestinian people. Only this fight can provide the
basis for advancing the interests of working people of all nationalities
in the region today.
Educating and mobilizing Palestinian workers and farmers to campaign to
reach such an agreement could break the cycle of past years of war,
bloodshed and more settlements.
This would open the door to their renewed involvement as actors in
history. As the Militant said in its August 25, 2014, editorial, “it
would open space to fight the balkanization of Palestine, for jobs for
the unemployed, for land and water rights and for Palestinians’ freedom
to travel, including the right to cross into Israel to work. It would
provide stronger footing for economic and social development in Gaza and
the West Bank. And it would create political space for the class
struggle and the advancement of working-class solidarity in Israel, the
West Bank and Gaza.”
Emboldened by the Security Council vote and the continued lack of
political mobilization in the West Bank, Israeli Education Minister
Naftali Bennett said he would introduce legislation to annex a
substantial part of the West Bank. Bennett’s pro-settlement Jewish Home
party is in the governing coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu’s Likud party. Netanyahu has backed expanding many
settlements, while giving lip service to support for negotiating a
“two-state” agreement.
The vote in the Security Council was 14-0. For decades, the U.S.
government, a permanent Security Council member, used its veto to block
any resolution critical of its ally in Tel Aviv. Washington’s abstention
provoked sharp debate within the U.S. ruling class, including between
the Obama administration in its final days and President-elect Donald
Trump.
The resolution set off a flurry of diplomatic protests and
recriminations by Netanyahu against members of the Security Council. He
recalled Israel’s ambassadors to New Zealand and Senegal, whose
representatives sponsored the resolution, and canceled scheduled trips
to Israel by the Senegalese foreign minister and Ukrainian prime minister.
Netanyahu accused Obama of staging a “shameless ambush” with the vote,
and said he looks forward to working with Trump. The Obama
administration has often been at odds with Tel Aviv, as it has shifted
priorities in the Middle East, looking to an agreement with the Iranian
government to slow down its nuclear program as a stepping stone to new
alliances in the region in search of stability for U.S. imperialist
interests. Obama refused to meet with the Israeli prime minister when he
spoke to Congress against the Iran deal, and openly opposed his
re-election in March 2015.
Dead-end course reinforced by UN
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas praised the resolution as
offering “the legal basis to resolve” the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal called it a “step in the right direction.”
In the name of “internationalizing” the struggle, Abbas has increasingly
looked to intervention by imperialist governments and institutions, such
as the United Nations and European Union, to put pressure on Tel Aviv.
Now the Palestinian leaders say they will “use the resolution in
international bodies,” the New York Times reported Dec. 26. Neither has
the perspective of turning to and mobilizing the Palestinian toilers to
fight effectively for their social and political rights, much less
mutual recognition, which is the only way to push back the seizure of
more land by Israeli settlements.
Some 580,000 Israeli Jews now live in these areas beyond the 1967
border, in settlements scattered throughout the West Bank and in housing
developments built up around eastern Jerusalem, ringing the city’s Arab
neighborhoods. These include 123 settlements authorized by Tel Aviv and
about 100 unauthorized outposts, carving up Palestinian land right up to
the border of Jordan.
Both the Palestinian Authority and the reactionary Islamist Hamas have
organized and encouraged terrorist actions and provocations, including
unconscionable attacks on civilians, handing Tel Aviv a pretext for
murderous repression and leading to demoralization of Palestinian
workers and farmers. The course of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas
treats the Palestinian toilers as cannon fodder and undercuts the
ability to win support among working people inside Israel — where
growing social contradictions point toward coming class battles.
That’s why fighting for an agreement that starts with recognition of
Israel as well as a Palestinian state as it exists today is an essential
immediate demand working people should back.
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home