From Wall Street to Tahrir Square, Grassroots Efforts Cannot be Unfocused and Leaderless

https://now.mmedia.me/lb/en/commentaryanalysis/occupying_wall_street_and_tahrir_

The “Occupy Wall Street” protests in the United States raise a problem familiar to the contemporary Arab world: What happens to a political movement that is leaderless and unfocused?

The wave of discontent in the West is directly linked to the grave economic conditions facing the middle classes in these societies. The focus on Wall Street reflects a sense of deep resentment at the continued massive profits by the same financial companies that are rightly blamed for the meltdown of 2008 and the ongoing financial crisis.

When President Barack Obama and the Democratic Party used this discontent to sweep Republicans out of the White House and both houses of Congress in a crushing 2008 victory, the reaction on the right was, literally, hysterical. It gave rise to the “Tea Party” movement that purported to be as angry at Republicans and former President George W. Bush as with the Democrats.

However, unlike the all-inclusive Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Party was exclusive. It repeated an essential demand outlined in Richard J. Hofstadter’s classic 1964 essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” to “take the country back” from a monstrous and alien conspiracy aiming to destroy it. This rage was best expressed more recently in the paranoid panic of sobbing talk-show host Glenn Beck.

Mainstream Republicans were able to mobilize the energy of the Tea Party to win back the House of Representatives in 2010, a classic example of how a spontaneous, grassroots movement can be cultivated, funded and directed by an organized political leadership. It became a movement that looked like a leaderless and spontaneous outburst of popular sentiment, but that was in effect put to work by a highly organized party in the focused service of a specific political goal.

The irony is that the intense passions released by the Tea Party have now become a liability in the next challenge facing the Republicans, namely unseating Obama and retaking the White House. For this, they will need to appeal to a broad-base of mainstream, independent and swing American voters, who are likely to regard Tea Party rhetoric as unhinged.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, by contrast, shows no signs of being mobilized by a political party or organization to create real change in politics or policy. Any movement so broad-based, leaderless (though there are some organizers who can be identified) and, frankly, unfocused runs the risk of simply fizzling out without leaving any lasting legacy.

Disappointment with Obama and the Democrats runs so high that it is hard to imagine Occupy Wall Street developing into a potent base to aid his re-election. However, the most logical consequence would be an emboldened and more aggressively reformist Obama second term. The lack of convergence between the organized liberals in the Democratic Party and the protesting leftists thus far seems complete, in contrast to the way Republicans used the Tea Party for their own purposes.

Arabs should be very familiar with this conundrum. The Egyptian experience in particular has shown the limitations of a leaderless, spontaneous movement. It creates momentum but cannot harness it. That can only be done by organized political groupings.

The Tahrir protesters sought the departure of President Hosni Mubarak and his sons, and the military arranged for that and took over. This amounts to regime decapitation but not regime change. Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood is quietly and effectively preparing to become the main beneficiary of planned parliamentary elections, while professional politicians like the former Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, are campaigning for the presidency. For now the military rules, and it has become a criminal offense to mock these new collective pharaohs.

In other words, the ideals of the Tahrir protesters, apart from the absence of Mubarak, hardly seem to have been realized. Existing organizations, predictably, are using the momentum the protests created for their own ends. Power is in the streets, as Lenin said, just waiting to be picked up. Among those picking it up these days are Islamist mobs and army rioters attacking Coptic protesters.

There is movement toward a new system in Egypt, but what it will look like is anybody’s guess (although I did suggest a three-way power-sharing arrangement months ago, recognizing this is a highly optimistic scenario). All organized groups are jockeying to take advantage of the space and momentum created by the protesters, to the exclusion, and possibly at the expense, of most of the protesters themselves.

Another good example of a grassroots movement disconnected from organized political leadership is the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign that sometimes targets the Israeli occupation, and sometimes Israel itself. In neither case is it well coordinated with a Palestinian national leadership that can translate the momentum it produces into results. Until it is, the efforts of the so-called BDS campaign are unlikely to have a significant effect on the strategic equation. The endeavor might make people feel good, but it won’t make much of a difference.

Protest and grassroots movements, by being focused and connected to existing political institutions, can have a genuine impact. Otherwise they risk their efforts being co-opted or simply fizzling out with a whimper.

A New Sectarianism is Reshaping the Arab World

Across the Arab world, terrifying sectarian dynamics are starting to
emerge, essentially pitting Arab Sunnis versus all religious
minorities. The elements of this have been obvious for quite a while,
but the pattern has become so pronounced and almost pervasive that it
demands to be recognized no matter how frightening the prospects.

Throughout the region, political forces are lining up time and again
along this extremely dangerous binary divide. For instance, the
ecumenism of the Egyptian revolution has given way to the most
gruesome sectarian violence between the military and Islamist mobs on
the one hand and Coptic protesters on the other hand. This was
particularly evident over the weekend, with deadly clashes and
sectarian incitement raging throughout Cairo.

The Syrian regime has done its best to cast the uprising in that
country in a sectarian light, with a disturbing degree of success.
Regional support for Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite-minority rule is now
almost entirely restricted to non-Sunni Arabs (as well as Iran),
including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Shia-led Iraqi government, Shia
parliamentarians and activists in Kuwait and other Gulf States, and a
significant number of Christians in Lebanon and Syria.

By contrast, Assad’s alliance with Hamas, the Palestinian branch of
the Muslim Brotherhood, has collapsed largely along sectarian lines.
Support for Assad among Arab Sunnis has dropped to virtually zero,
including all Sunni-dominated governments. Support for his rule has
also further exacerbated the already deeply-damaged reputation of
Hezbollah among Arab Sunnis.

The Sunni Arab world, meanwhile, has been largely silent about the
campaign of relentless persecution and repression against the Shia
majority in Bahrain, implicitly backing the oppressive rule of the
Sunni-minority royal family.

Sectarian tensions simmer in Kuwait but are held at bay by the
country’s wealth and small population. In Saudi Arabia, however, they
have been bubbling away for months, particularly in the country’s
oil-rich eastern provinces. Last week they boiled over in Al-Awamiyah,
as Shia rioters were fired on by security forces. Saudi spokespersons
dismissed the incident as “nonsectarian” and merely criminal in
nature, but immediately undermined their arguments by blaming Iran for
the unrest.

The narrative of the last few years of the previous decade—the
“culture of resistance” (which supposedly included both Sunni and Shia
Islamists and some Arab nationalists) versus the “culture of
accommodation” (a term of abuse for all moderate or pro-Western forces
in the Arab world)—has been completely subsumed by this emerging
sectarian narrative.

It will be rightly objected that this scattershot analysis is
superficial, and that in each society there are many detailed and
specific forces at play, particularly in countries as diverse as
Lebanon or Iraq. It will further be observed that there are many
exceptions to this pattern, such as the role of imprisoned Sunni
social democrat Ibrahim Sharif in Bahrain or the presence of
Christians, Alawites and others in the Syrian opposition.

It is absolutely true that when you look at individual groves, there
are many details that do not correspond to this narrative or dynamic;
but it’s also plainly the new shape the broader forest is taking. I’ve
been watching this pattern emerge for a long time without being
willing to clearly identify it in writing, both because there are so
many details that complicate, and even contradict, such a reading, and
in hope that other dynamics would prevent a regional sectarian divide
from becoming definitive.

I now think it’s impossible to deny that the single most important
factor shaping the Arab regional dynamic is a sectarian divide, not
between Sunnis and Shia, but between Sunnis and everybody else. On the
sidelines are also significant divisions between Arabs and ethnic
minorities such as Kurds or Berbers, but it is the sectarian split
that is the real dividing line these days. This new sectarian
consciousness has greatly assisted the rise of Turkey as a regional
power, strongly aligned with Arab Sunnis, at least for the moment.

Iran is probably the biggest single loser in the regional realignment
so far, and the mainstay of many governments trying to blame unrest on
“foreign powers” (along with al Qaeda, Israel, the United States,
Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, depending on which government is
making excuses). However, an Arab world divided along sectarian lines
will continue to provide potential openings for Iran in Shia and other
non-Sunni areas, even where they have had little or no influence in
the past.

The emerging sectarian narrative threatens to rip apart many Arab
societies, and indeed the Arab world in general. More than military
dictatorships or violent organizations that may seek to exploit these
tensions, the illusions that Sunni Arabs across the region are seeking
to impose a new and repressive order on non-Sunni Arabs, or that
non-Sunni Arabs are subversive elements or disloyal agents of Iran or
other foreign powers, pose the gravest threat to a better future in
the Middle East.

These narratives are almost always implicit, but they are on the brink
of becoming hegemonic. Counter-narratives, based on deeds as well as
words, are more urgently needed than ever. If they wish to avoid it,
Arab political and religious leaders are going to have to move quickly
to prevent this stark sectarian divide from defining the regional
landscape into the future.

Arab and Muslim Americans should welcome the death of al-Awlaki

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=318069&MID=0&PID=0

The elimination in a CIA drone strike of Anwar al-Awlaki, al Qaeda’s major English-language sock puppet and propagandist, has many problematic aspects. However, from an Arab- and Muslim-American perspective it can only be a very good thing.

Awlaki was not a “key leader” in al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. His death will do virtually nothing to change the political situation in Yemen. Most Yemenis are unaware of his existence and do not care about his death. AQAP is only one of a myriad of Islamist and Salafist-Jihadist groups in Yemen, and is not a major factor in the power struggle between members of the Yemeni elite. This struggle will likely determine the outcome of the battle over that country’s future.

That said, Awlaki’s death was highly significant on two counts. First, he was a key figure in al Qaeda’s current strategy (as clearly articulated by its paramount leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri) of seeking to organize terrorist attacks in the West. Zawahiri’s recent statements have emphasized the need for extremely small groups and preferably lone individuals who have self-radicalized on the basis of the kind of propaganda relentlessly issued by Awlaki through the Internet.

Zawahiri has insisted that Western al Qaeda sympathizers should operate in the greatest secrecy, preferably alone, because communications invariably lead to discovery and the collapse of terrorist plots. Most would-be “jihadists” in the West are failing to heed such advice. They are also, typically, focusing on military targets that are difficult to attack, rather than “soft targets” such as civilian areas. This tactic is largely proving to be a failure because few Western Muslims are interested in violence. And in the rare cases that they are, they have generally disregarded Zawahiri’s admonitions and have been apprehended before launching successful attacks.

However, in at least one dreadful instance, Awlaki’s propaganda helped inspire and direct a major and successful act of terrorism on American soil: the Fort Hood massacre conducted by Major Nidal Hasan. Awlaki was apparently in e-mail contact with Hasan before he embarked on his murderous rampage, and Awlaki’s insidious propaganda plainly helped inspire that outrage. Awlaki has also been linked to a plot to ship explosives in printer cartridges on commercial airliners bound for the United States, as well as to the Nigerian “underwear bomber” who failed to bring down a commercial airliner over Detroit. Neither of those plots succeeded, but both almost did.

Second, Awlaki was an American born in New Mexico and a former senior cleric at a large and important mosque just outside Washington, DC. This has been exhibit A in the claims of professional Islamophobes and anti-Arab racists that the American-Muslim community poses a significant threat to the rest of American society. Awlaki’s activities, even if they are seen mainly as “speech acts,” posed a direct and very serious threat to the wellbeing of Arab- and Muslim- Americans generally because of his identity and virulent extremism.

American officials have said that the simultaneous death of another American al Qaeda extremist, Samir Khan, who was editor of the group’s English-language propaganda publication Inspire, was a bonus and that Awlaki was the main target. However, Khan’s loss may be an even bigger blow from a practical point of view to al Qaeda, which has lost someone key in radicalizing Western Muslims.

But Khan was little-known in the United States, while Awlaki was a malignant cancer on the reputation of Arab- and Muslim-Americans. He was also frequently cited by those who would stigmatize these communities as a potentially dangerous fifth column requiring discriminatory special treatment from the government.

The bottom line is that Awlaki preached that all Americans, of whatever origin, were fair game and should be killed at every possible opportunity. That, of course, includes Arab- and Muslim-Americans. So Awlaki not only threatened the reputation of these communities, but also potentially their members as well. This man wanted us all dead, so eliminating him was, quintessentially, an act of self-defense.

There are real and important constitutional issues and due process concerns about this assassination, and they will have to be debated in the coming months. However, due process arguments need to take into consideration the practical implausibility of the capture and trial of these individuals, what such an effort would have entailed, and the real options the US government faced in dealing with them.

These concerns notwithstanding, Arab- and Muslim-Americans should welcome the elimination of a man who posed a real and serious threat to their standing and, indeed, their very lives.

Gilad Atzmon and John Mearsheimer: self-criticism, self-hate and hate

I've long been an advocate that self-criticism, both as an individual and as a group, is an essential element of healthy political engagement. Group-think, political orthodoxy and correctness, and chauvinistic received wisdom are the worst kinds of political poison. Triumphalism and/or paranoia are the inevitable consequences, and they lead to grotesque distortions of perception and judgment. Self-criticism, especially of a group one identifies with and participates in, is not only healthy, it is indispensable. Without it, political thought is reduced to mere cheerleading, defensiveness and quickly degenerates into irrational hatred of the other while indefensibly championing the self.

So healthy self-criticism is to be applauded and supported whenever it emerges. It is also an essential element of dialogue between groups, because without it an understanding of other parties' grievances and the failings and even crimes done in one's own name are simply not acknowledged. While continuously defending Arabs, Arab Americans and Muslims from anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia, I've tried to engage in as much self-criticism of the failings of these identity groups as possible in my writings, and this has inevitably garnered me a great deal of criticism from those who disapprove of it. Some have argued that at a time when the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States are under heavy attack from bigots and racists, now is the time to circle the wagons and not to look inward, openly, honestly and self critically. Anyone who reads my work will know that I reject this categorically.

Self-criticism, though, is very different from its more extreme relative: self-hatred. When constructive self-criticism gives way to embracing bigoted narratives that demonize and stigmatize identity groups with which one either does or did identify with, this is no longer self-criticism but self-hatred. There is a small coterie of professional former Muslim Islamophobes, such as the man who sometimes calls himself “Walid Shoebat,” and anti-Arab racists of Arab origin most notably Brigitte Gabriel, who make a tidy living off of peddling this garbage to credulous American audiences, particularly from the evangelical Christian and Jewish ultra-right lecture circuit and book-buying public. It is one of the great tragedies of contemporary American public discourse that there is a real, and indeed growing, market for this kind of bile, no matter how over the top. These individuals, in fact, compete with and outbid each other in how extreme they can be in their anti-Arab and anti-Muslim rhetoric, and often have acrimonious relationships based on market share jealousy.

The dichotomy between self-criticism versus self-hatred has recently reemerged in a controversy regarding the endorsement by University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer of a new book by the Israeli (or former Israeli) jazz saxophonist and political agitator Gilad Atzmon. Mearsheimer has been heavily criticized in some quarters for this endorsement, and has defended himself on the Foreign Policy blog of his some-time co-author Harvard professor Stephen Walt. Mearsheimer's main defense is that he found nothing objectionable in the book (which I have not read and will not bother to read either, for reasons which will become abundantly clear), and was not familiar with Atzmon or his other writings. The first thing that needs to be pointed out is that it was incumbent on Mearsheimer not simply to pick up the text he was sent but do a little bit of homework on the author he was being asked to embrace. Had he done so, he would have realized that Atzmon long since crossed the line from Jewish self-criticism to self-hatred in a repulsive and indefensible manner.

In his defense, Mearsheimer acknowledges that Atzmon is, indeed, self-hating, but he seems to confuse unhealthy self-hatred with healthy self-criticism: "The more important and interesting issue is whether Atzmon is a self-hating Jew. Here the answer is unequivocally yes. He openly describes himself in this way and he sees himself as part of a long dissident tradition that includes famous figures such as Marx and Spinoza." But Aztmon is not a dissident, in any meaningful sense of the word, leveling constructive criticism against his fellow Jews and Israelis. Instead, as Mearsheimer would have discovered if he had done his homework, Atzmon frequently traffics in the worst kind of anti-Semitism. Comparing him to Spinoza is simply absurd, and he goes far beyond Marx in his condemnations of his fellow Jews. Moreover, I don't know any self-respecting Marxists who aren't embarrassed by some of the harsher passages in Marx's writings about other Jewish Europeans.

I'm not going to subject my readers to any lengthy catalog of the worst of Atzmon. It's well-documented, and the fact that Mearsheimer is, or at least claims to be, unaware of any of this is, in itself, an embarrassment to any self-respecting academic who wants to comment on such issues. Atzmon calls himself a leftist, but in a straightforwardly racist manner distinguishes between genuine Marxism and a pathological Jewish version: "Jewish Marxism is very different from Marxism or socialism in general. While Marxism is a universal paradigm, its Jewish version is very different. It is there to mould Marxist dialectic into a Jewish subservient precept. Jewish Marxism is basically a crude utilisation of ‘Marxist-like’ terminology for the sole purpose of the Jewish tribal cause. It is a Judeo-centric pseudo intellectual setting which aims at political power." A ccording to Atzmon, "Jewish Marxism is there to suppress any form of engagement with the Jewish question by means of spin. It is there to stop scrutiny of Jewish power and Jewish lobbying." As Andy Newman correctly noted in The Guardian, "This is a wild conspiracy argument, dripping with contempt for Jews."

Atzmon has also disturbingly argued that, "American Jewry makes any debate on whether the "Protocols of the elder of Zion" [sic] are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews (in fact Zionists) do control the world." Atzmon argues that he is only referring to Zionists and not Jews, so these comments cannot be considered anti-Semitic. Yet the first sentence in the passage clearly refers to “American Jewry” in general and the second to “American Jews” which he describes in general as being “in fact Zionists.” His disclaimers are completely unconvincing and are absolutely belied by the language and structure of his text, which are not equivocal. It's also noteworthy that this article appears to have been permanently removed from his website, but it can still be accessed here. As Atzmon himself notes, the bracketed comment “in fact Zionists” does not appear in his original text, and he added it later to try to establish that his essay “contains no anti-Semitic or anti Jewish sentiment." I'd challenge any reader of the full original text linked above to agree with that assessment.

One could go on much further, but there's no need. The above quotations demonstrate unequivocally that, for whatever reason, Atzmon does not traffic in healthy self-criticism, but in fact indulges in fairly extreme forms of anti-Semitism, and therefore in self-hatred of an extremely unhealthy variety. A lot of this is very reminiscent of the anti-Semitic ravings of another self-described former-Israeli, "Israel Shamir," who my former co-author, Ali Abunimah, and I warned pro-Palestinian activists about back in April 2001. Not surprisingly, Atzmon is a big fan of Shamir, claiming that, “As an ex-Jew, Shamir is a very civil and peaceful man and probably is the sharpest critical voice of ‘Jewish power’ and Zionist ideology.”

Regarding Shamir, Abunimah and I wrote, “Perhaps some are ready to overlook statements that appeal to anti-Semitic sentiments because the person making them identifies himself as a Jew. But the identity of the speaker makes such statements no less odious and harmful. We do not have any need for some of what Israel Shamir is introducing into the discourse on behalf of Palestinian rights, which increasingly includes elements of traditional European anti-Semitic rhetoric. Such sentiments will harm, not help, the cause.” Based on his comments cited above, and so many others, obviously exactly the same calculation applies to Atzmon. He may see himself as a champion of Palestine and the Palestinians, but through his self-hatred, which has degenerated, at least in those statements, into hatred pure and simple, he can only harm it, and indeed badly.

Gilad Atzmon is no Israel Shahak, a real leftist critic and a genuine heir of Spinoza, who was at the same time a devoted citizen of Israel who served all his required military and other civic duties while railing against its policies and attacking what he saw as the idiocies of Jewish religious fundamentalism. Shahak is often falsely cited as self-hating or anti-Semitic, but he was neither. His was a genuine, healthy form of self-criticism, and although he occasionally took self-criticism to its extremes, he knew where the line between self-criticism and self-hatred was, and he never crossed it. Atzmon, as the above citations demonstrate, does what Shahak never for a moment did, and engages in a fairly advanced version of self-hatred. And with self-hatred of this degree, there is really no distinction with simple hatred itself. As many of the anti-Arab racists and Islamophobes of Arab and Muslim origin demonstrate, being a part or formerly a part of an identity group doesn't in and of itself stop someone from becoming a purveyor of the worst forms of hate against it.

Why Mearsheimer found Atzmon compelling in spite of these attitudes, even if they are largely concealed, implicit or downplayed in his book, is a very disturbing question. Ever since he and Walt began criticizing the role of the pro-Israel lobby (Jewish power in Israel and the United States being a subject that deserves serious interrogation of the kind being done by Peter Beinart, among others), Mearsheimer (far more than Walt) has been developing an outright vendetta with the Jewish mainstream that, I fear, has become deeply personal and therefore distorted. Last year he gave a dreadful speech at the Palestine Center in Washington in which he abandoned his long-standing good advice to Arab and Muslim Americans to develop an alliance for a two-state solution with peace-minded Jewish Americans. Instead, he counseled Palestinians and their allies that Israel would never agree to the creation of a Palestinian state and that because of demographics and other factors, Palestinians would ultimately prevail, and that in effect they need do nothing to achieve that victory (save, he noted, not engaging in the kind of violence that might rationalize another round of Israeli ethnic cleansing). In response to that worst of all possible advice, I dubbed him the “Kevorkian of Palestine,” because I believe he was preaching a form of assisted suicide. He was repeating the siren song Palestinians and other Arabs have been telling themselves about Israel and Zionism since the 1920s: that demographics are destiny and steadfastness alone would secure a victory over the Israeli national project. To say that history has proven this logic incorrect, and led from defeat to defeat, would be a gross understatement.

I cannot claim to see into Mearsheimer's mind, but it struck me at the time that this terrible speech was probably prompted more by a desire to provoke and annoy his antagonists in the pro-Israel lobby than being intended to do anything to help Palestinians achieve independence or an end to occupation (or, for that matter, anything constructive whatsoever). In the same vein, it's hard not to see his endorsement of Atzmon's book as anything other than another extension of this unconstructive, unhealthy and unhelpful two-way vendetta he has with the Jewish-American mainstream. Like the anti-Semitic ravings of Shamir and Atzmon, Mearsheimer's endless quarrel with the Jewish-American establishment does nothing whatsoever to help Palestinians or Arab Americans achieve any of their important goals, most especially ending the Israeli occupation.

There is, of course, plenty of hatred that is not self-hatred but simple hatred of others. A recent video released by a Jerusalem Post editor, Caroline Glick, and her cohort Noam Jacobson is an excellent example of how certain strands of Jewish Israeli discourse are so rooted in a paranoid chauvinism that it shamelessly expresses itself in the most ugly racist stereotypes against a wide variety of other ethnicities and identities. There has been a shameful silence from mainstream Jewish-American groups and commentators about this video, and I would say that for the sake of their own credibility, Jewish Americans who agree with what I have said so far in this posting about Atzmon need to end that silence immediately and condemn this video for what it is: the most repulsive form of racism aimed at many ethnicities. One can only imagine the uproar had an editor of a major Arab newspaper produced a video remotely approaching this one in terms of stereotyping, racism and shameless hatred.

The phenomenon of Arab anti-Semitism is also disturbingly common and well-documented, and I've been a strident critic of it, especially here on the Ibishblog. Combating racism directed towards others from within one's own community is the first step in a serious self-critical engagement with one's fellows, compatriots and coreligionists. But self-criticism that crosses the line into self-hatred and becomes, therefore, hatred pure and simple directed against one's own community of origin isn't any better because of the identity, or former identity, of the purveyor of hate. There is no difference between chauvinistic hatred of the other based on ethnic paranoia and internalized hatred of what is, or used to be, one's own community based on some kind of neurotic and probably Oedipal rebellion and rejection. There are lots of outstanding Jewish and Jewish Israeli critics of Israeli policies, culture and attitudes, and lots of Arab and Arab-American critics of Arab governments, culture and attitudes as well. Walid Sheobat and Brigitte Gabriel are not among them, and neither are Israel Shamir or Gilad Atzmon. Hate is hate, and the source is immaterial and no defense whatsoever.

As for Mearsheimer, his defense of his endorsement is unconvincing, and by standing by it even when confronted with what he claims he did not know about Atzmon before "blurbing" his new book, he has provided his strongest critics with powerful new ammunition to dismiss his opinions as too distorted to merit serious consideration. He certainly can't be compared with Atzmon, and it may be that some of the accusations against him have been unfair. But there's no excuse for his ongoing endorsement, particularly now that he is fully aware of Atzmon's history and views, which he openly agrees amount to self-hatred but has not yet admitted clearly cross the line into anti-Semitic hate speech. Yet again, Prof. Mearsheimer gets a well-deserved F. With this latest blunder, he has finally and permanently flunked out of the respectable conversation about the Middle East and anything related to it.

Where Do We Go from Here? Five things that Palestine could do to push forward the quest for statehood.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/09/30/palestinian_statehood_un_where_do_we_go?page=full

In a perfunctory meeting on Wednesday morning, Sept. 28, as expected, and per its usual procedure for dealing with would-be new United Nations members since the late 1960s, the Security Council referred the Palestinian application to one of its standing committees. The committee — which meets and votes in secret and requires unanimity to refer the matter back to the Security Council — is scheduled to begin considering the application on Friday morning. The membership process usually takes weeks, but can take only days (as with the most recent U.N. member, South Sudan) or years (as in the case of Kuwait). Neither the committee nor the Security Council is under any specific obligation to act on the request in a limited time frame, so the process theoretically could drag on indefinitely.

Because the required nine-vote Security Council majority is by no means yet ensured, and because the United States is publicly committed to vetoing a Security Council vote if one ever takes place anyway, full U.N. membership is effectively barred for the Palestinians under the present circumstances. Therefore, the application will have to serve as leverage to achieve something else if it is to produce anything meaningful. So what options does this leave the Palestinians? Let’s take a look at five, moving from the least to the most confrontational:

1) Declare moral and political victory and move on.

The Palestinians have made their moral and legal case for statehood in President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech and their formal application. And if the established international peace process should decisively fail, they do have other options, no matter how risky. The Security Council referral to the committee buys everyone time to look for compromises, particularly given that the Palestinian membership bid cannot succeed. If they choose not to press the issue in the Security Council, the Palestinians could seek advantages in other venues, as follows.

2) Work with the Quartet on more advantageous language for renewed negotiations. It is highly significant that the Middle East Quartet — the United States, the European Union, Russia, and the U.N. Secretariat — issued a statement in conjunction with Abbas’s address and the Palestinian application. The statement showed that the Quartet has not resolved the differences that emerged in its ranks this year, particularly over whether Palestinians should be required to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state.” But it reasserted the importance and viability of the established processes.

Working with the Palestinians and the Israelis separately, the Quartet could issue a statement laying out the framework for new negotiations, timetables, and even clearer terms of reference that might provide the Palestinians with a significant diplomatic achievement — even if the renewal of direct talks with a reasonable prospect of success has to wait until political circumstances in the United States, in Israel, and among the Palestinians become more favorable.

3) Pursue a General Assembly resolution in cooperation with the EU.

The Palestinians are well positioned to win almost any of a number of possible resolutions they could bring before the General Assembly, but they can do this in either a cooperative or a confrontational manner with Western states. They could work with the European Union, which is badly and uncomfortably divided on the issue, to craft language that Europeans could unite behind and that would protect them from the most serious American and Israeli retaliation, as well as provide them significant diplomatic advances. Many important EU member states, particularly France and Spain, are supportive of Palestinian nonmember U.N. observer status, but others are concerned that this would provide Palestinians’ with access to the International Criminal Court and other law enforcement mechanisms to pursue charges against Israel. Some Europeans have been working on a new legal status for Palestine that would be an upgrade from the PLO observer mission but would protect Israel from potentially facing such charges.

4) Pursue a General Assembly resolution independently.

Palestinians could independently pursue nonmember observer-state status, and they would no doubt have a majority to secure that. But this could precipitate a crisis not only with the United States — which has threatened to cut funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) — but probably with some important European countries as well, the two main reliable external donors to the PA’s annual budget. A crisis in relations with the Americans would also greatly complicate the resumption of negotiations, which Abbas and other Palestinian leaders acknowledge will be essential for the actual realization of an independent Palestine.

The least aggressive independent action the Palestinians could pursue in the General Assembly would be a resolution acknowledging their right to statehood, but not securing nonmember state status. The most aggressive would be a resolution under the “Uniting for Peace” formula laid down in General Assembly Resolution 377A (1950), which was designed to overcome differences among Security Council permanent members on urgent matters. This would have to be tabled following a U.S. veto in the Security Council and would authorize member states to take coercive measures “to maintain or restore international peace and security.” This might be interpreted as authorizing sanctions and other coercive measures against Israel. However, numerous countries have had sanctions and boycotts against Israel and, indeed, the Palestinians for decades without the authorization of Resolution 377. More importantly, a 377 resolution would not address or enhance the question of Palestinian statehood or U.N. membership, and in that sense is completely off topic.

5) Try to force a vote in the Security Council.

The Palestinians are trying to secure commitments for a nine-vote majority and could try to force a vote on their application in the Security Council, even though they know this will ultimately be vetoed by the United States. Palestinians believe they have recently won over Gabon and Nigeria, meaning that, in addition to Brazil, China, India, Lebanon, Russia, and South Africa, they have eight commitments to vote yes. The rest of the members are likely to vote no or abstain. The Palestinians are focusing their efforts on Colombia and Bosnia, both of which will be difficult to convince. Alone among South American countries, Columbia does not recognize Palestine, and it has an important security relationship with Israel. Bosnia, which is a confederation of three ethnic communities, is divided on the matter, with Muslim Bosniaks and Croats supporting Palestinian membership but Serbs opposing it because of a potential similar application by Kosovo.

If Palestinians cannot secure a nine-vote majority, then there is virtually no rationale for pressing their case in the Security Council. But if they can, some Palestinians and their allies argue that they could achieve a “moral victory” by forcing the United States to use its veto to block Palestinian membership. Such a moral victory, however, could come at a tremendous cost — loss of U.S. and other Western aid, a souring of relations with the United States, and unspecified harsh retaliationthreatened by numerous Israeli leaders, including potentially withholding Palestinian tax revenues that make up the bulk of the PA’s annual budget.

For the moment, the Security Council has bought everyone time by referring the matter to the committee and has averted but not foreclosed a universally damaging confrontation. The various compromise tracks are very much in the Palestinians’ interests, and there are promising signs they understand this. In defiance of all expectations, while the Israeli cabinet was unable to agree on any unified response to the Quartet’s statement, by contrast, following a meeting of its executive committee, PLO Secretary-General Yasser Abed Rabbo welcomed the statement, though he also reiterated the Palestinian demand for a settlement freeze.

If they play their cards right, Palestinian leaders will have made the moral case for their statehood, demonstrated that they do have options outside the established peace process, and secured new diplomatic leverage and political capital at home. But if they mishandle diplomacy in the coming weeks and months, they could face a very dangerous crisis in relations with the West, and especially with the United States, which they can ill afford.

The Palestinian Statehood Bid – What Comes Next? (with Prof. Saliba Sarsar)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/saliba-sarsar/the-palestinian-statehood_b_984890.html

President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all played mainly to their domestic political bases at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week. Despite the drama, nothing in the basic discourse has changed, no party shifted its bottom-line positions, and none of it brought us any closer to peace or improved the situation on the ground.

Abbas gave a rousing speech articulating the Palestinian narrative and case for independence, but didn’t offer any outreach to the Israeli public. Netanyahu gave a defiant speech, including denouncing the UN as a “house of lies” aimed mainly at securing his leadership of the Israeli right. And Obama — who offered empathy to Israel and the Jewish narrative but none to the Palestinians — was essentially defending himself from a relentless attack from the Republican right on his Israel policies.

All three leaders emerged from the UN meeting politically strengthened, but the prospects for peace were not. Netanyahu marshaled Israel’s international assets to nip the Palestinian bid for full UN membership in the bud. The application will no doubt be referred to the 15-member Membership Committee, which meets and votes in secret and which requires unanimity to refer the application back to the Security Council for a possible vote. Past precedent shows this process can take years. Even if Palestinians decide to push for a vote in the Security Council, and can secure an at-present uncertain nine-vote majority, the Obama administration is publicly committed to vetoing their membership.

Caught between the rock of Israeli occupation and the hard place of (at least thus far) failed diplomacy, the Palestinian leadership sought recourse at the UN, knowing full well they were risking a damaging confrontation with the United States over a potential veto. By submitting a formal application for full UN membership, Abbas may appear to have taken a confrontational approach, but in fact the Palestinians have left an important opportunity for compromise open by not demanding any immediate vote or action.

That opportunity is best represented by the statement of the Middle East Quartet issued to coincide with the Abbas and Netanyahu speeches. It is clear that the Quartet has not resolved its differences which have emerged over the past year, particularly the question of Palestinian recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state,” but this body remains the most promising venue for creating a new framework, and even terms of reference, for future negotiations when political realities adjust to allow for their resumption with a reasonable prospect of success.

While the resumption of such negotiations will depend a great deal on improvements in internal Palestinian and Israeli political conditions, and especially on the resolution and outcome of the US presidential election, it is imperative that the prospects for a genuine two-state solution are preserved, and even enhanced. To achieve peace, Israelis and Palestinians must move beyond binary worldviews that cast each other simply as enemies in order to appreciate the complexity and interdependence of their relationship, not only now but into the future.

This means, first and foremost, preserving, protecting and enhancing the gains made on the ground in the occupied West Bank by the Palestinian institution-building program led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Many members of Congress from both parties and Republican presidential candidates have been irresponsibly calling for a cut in US funding to the Palestinian Authority and any international organizations that accord upgraded status to the Palestinians.

Nothing could be more shortsighted than threats by grandstanding members of Congress to cut US aid to the PA, the single biggest source of external funding for the Palestinians, which would undermine the legitimacy of the moderate, secular, nationalist leadership in Ramallah and ultimately threaten the viability of both negotiations and negotiators.

It would jeopardize the important cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces that has greatly reduced violence and restore law and order in some key areas of the West Bank. It could undermine, perhaps fatally, the credibility not just of individual political leaders but the whole Palestinian national strategy that seeks the establishment of an independent state living alongside Israel in peace, security and mutual dignity. And it would play directly into the hands of rejectionists forces like Hamas and the extreme settler movement that cling to a zero-sum mentality that seek a total victory of one party at the expense of the other.

It is evident that the status quo is untenable, the conflict has no military solution, and a negotiated agreement is the only alternative to continued conflict. The Israeli occupation must end and, in turn, Israel must become an accepted member of the community of nations in the Middle East. No Israeli, we hope, wants to occupy another people and no Palestinian, we believe, wants to be occupied. The few benefits the Israelis accrue from occupation (e.g., arable land, settlements, water resources) can be better secured through long-term arrangements with friendly neighboring countries, including a State of Palestine. Real “strategic depth” doesn’t come from belligerent occupation. It comes from an end of conflict.

Even though the presidential campaign is underway, Obama and his team should not shrink from urging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to do the right thing and resume negotiations within a specific time frame and with clear terms of reference, which becomes the basis of a just and lasting peace. The Quartet statement was a welcome indication that serious diplomacy continues and a reasonable framework for resumed negotiations can be developed in the coming weeks, even if the actual resumption of talks may have to wait for a more propitious political environment on all sides.

Abbas and Netanyahu have returned to their countries with stronger political positions and therefore more leverage and leeway to take bold moves that help lay the political groundwork for the resumption of talks aimed at a fair compromise.

Regardless of what transpires at the UN with respect to Palestine’s membership, it must become the impetus towards increased commitment on the part of the international community to finally fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and the yearning of Israelis for peace and security. The parties cannot accomplish this on their own.

Now is the time for leaders on all sides to rise above politics and use their strengthened positions to begin the difficult, and probably prolonged, process for creating a more positive political environment that can eventually produce successful negotiations. Above all, the gains that have been secured on the ground through the Palestinian institution-building program and Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation — which are real and not theoretical — must not be squandered, but protected and enhanced.

Abbas at the UN: The speech Yasser Arafat never gave

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=315757

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ moving speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Friday was certainly the high point of his career. His address will be forever remembered because Abbas was able to do what no Palestinian leader has ever done in the past: make the moral case for Palestinian independence in a clear, coherent, reasonable manner at the highest international forum.

Most importantly, Abbas’ message was internationally receivable. Only the most recalcitrant supporters of the Israeli occupation could fail to have been moved by his words. Many in the room, including some jaded individuals, were left in tears.

This was the speech the late President Yasser Arafat never gave, missing two key opportunities to do so. In his first address to the General Assembly in 1974, Arafat appeared as a belligerent revolutionary speaking about holding a gun in one hand and an olive branch in the other. His comments were well-received among many Arabs and others in the Third World, but they played right into the hands of those who sought to depict him as a violent terrorist. Arafat’s speech at the Oslo Agreements signing ceremony at the White House in 1993 was rambling, semi-coherent and downright boring.

Abbas’ speech on Friday did for the Palestinian cause what Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver did for Zionism and Israeli statehood in a powerful UN speech in 1947. This was especially true of his closing remarks, in which Silver said that the Jewish people were “no less deserving” of statehood than others. Abbas’ speech also echoed the 1993 White House speech of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in which he said the conflict must end, emphasizing the word “enough.”

The most important part of Abbas’ speech was his blunt question to the international community about the Israeli occupation, now more than 40 years old. “Is this acceptable?” Abbas asked. In another crucial passage, he observed that “in the absence of absolute justice, we decided to adopt the path of relative justice—justice that is possible and could correct part of the grave historical injustice committed against our people.” The only important element that could have strengthened Abbas’ speech was a concerted outreach to the Israeli public, but this was not his goal or mission at that moment.

Even most Israeli journalists noted the rapturous reception the speech received from the representatives of the international community and what this implied about the level of global support for Palestinian independence. By contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address was insulting and offensive, describing the United Nations itself as a “house of lies.” Netanyahu said that he was committed to a two-state solution, but time and again made the case for continuing the occupation.

To many Israelis and Americans, the Palestinian move at the UN looks very confrontational. However, it actually leaves the window for a compromise wide open. The Palestinians have submitted their application for full UN membership to the Security Council, but they are not pressing for an immediate vote that could prompt a US veto.

In a move that was extremely significant, the Middle East Quartet issued a statement in conjunction with Abbas’ speech showing that it had not resolved its differences over the Palestinian issue. Nevertheless, it placed the Palestinian UN bid back in the context of the established peace process. What happens in the coming weeks will depend greatly on whether the Quartet can develop language that lays down the basis for future negotiations, when political circumstances allow for them to resume with a reasonable prospect of success.

Alternatively, the European Union, which is uncomfortably divided over the statehood issue, may develop language for a General Assembly resolution that it can unite behind. Such a measure could provide the Palestinians with significant diplomatic gains, without provoking a confrontation with Israel and the United States.

Now the most important task is to protect and enhance the successes developed by the institution-building program of the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli military confirms that security cooperation with the Palestinian security services remains “strong,” and international donors have reaffirmed that Palestinians are ready for independence.

Meanwhile, Republicans in the US Congress are chomping at the bit to cut or eliminate American aid to the Palestinian Authority, which represents the single biggest source of external funding for the Palestinians. Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, in turn, is threatening to withhold Palestinian tax revenues that make up the bulk of the annual Palestinian Authority budget.

Everyone has been playing to their domestic constituencies, and both Abbas’ and Netanyahu’s political positions have been strengthened by their performances. Even US President Barack Obama’s address was more of a campaign speech than anything else, offering empathy to Israel but none to the Palestinians.

Now is the time to move beyond the theatrics at the UN and return to what is achievable. This means continuing to build the basis of a Palestinian state through international support and providing funding for institution-building. It also means serious work by all parties to lay the groundwork for successful negotiations, so that domestic political dynamics in the key societies involved can be aligned with their stated policies of seeking a genuine two-state solution.

Abbas at the UN: The speech Yasser Arafat never gave

http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=315757

Obama at the UN on Israel-Palestine: Good Politics, Poor Diplomacy

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/obama-at-the-un-on-israel-palestine-good-politics-poor-diplomacy/245482/

If you’d wanted to gauge how strained relations between the Obama administration and the Palestinian leadership have become, all you’d need do is watch the shaking heads of the Palestinian representatives at the United Nations General Assembly during the U.S. President’s speech there on Wednesday.

Obama reiterated the American commitment to a two-state solution and the creation of an independent Palestine, both established U.S. policy. Rhetorically, however, his speech recognized most of the core elements of the Israeli narrative but virtually none of the Palestinian one.

Obama spoke about Israel being surrounded by enemies and powerful states that threaten its destruction. He expressed sympathy for Israelis being attacked by rockets and suicide bombers, and neighboring children being “taught to hate them.” He invoked the Jewish narrative of exile, oppression, and the Holocaust.

All of which is fine, of course. But what was missing was virtually any acknowledgment of the Palestinian narrative, except for the right to statehood. He made no mention of the occupation, the settlements, the 1967 borders, the refugees, Jerusalem, or any other aspect of the Palestinian narrative or concerns.

Unfortunately, that he made such a deeply unbalanced speech was little surprise. It comes
in the middle of a crisis in relations between the Obama administration and the Palestinian leadership, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, that is being intensified by the Palestinian insistence on seeking some form of recognition of Palestinian statehood at the UN.

American opposition to the statehood bid is driven in part by a desire to protect the U.S.-brokered, bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process, although it has effectively broken down in recent years. It’s also based on reasonable observations that such negotiations are ultimately the only way to fully resolve the conflict. No other party is seriously vying with the United States for the role of broker. Moreover, Israel would be deeply wary of any other way forward, given that it only really trusts the Americans.

The Obama administration isn’t on particularly warm terms with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu either. Many in the administration regarded his last visit to Washington as a series of affronts, perhaps the most serious of which was Netanyahu’s public lecturing of the U.S. president in a speech to Congress that seemed to make common cause with the same Republicans who are seeking to unseat the President in November. But the special relationship between the U.S. and Israel remains, essentially independent of political relations between the two governments, as Obama’s nods to Israel’s concerns in his speech reflect.

Indeed, Obama’s UN address was at least as much driven by domestic political considerations as by frustration with Palestinian leaders, Israeli leaders, or the stalled peace process. Republicans are ruthlessly harassing him from his right on this issue. Texas Governor Rick Perry, currently the highest-polling GOP candidate for the presidential nomination, recently accused him of “appeasement” of the Palestinians, despite his tough stance on their UN initiative. House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wasted no time in denouncing the President’s UN speech for not threatening, as she has, to defund the Palestinian Authority, the relevant U.S. commitments to the UN, and international agencies that work with the Palestinians, should they persist with the UN bid.

Though Obama can claim credit for the elimination of Osama bin Laden and the ouster of former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, Republicans sense an opportunity to harass him from his right on Israel and to try to diminish his Jewish donor base, if not the reliably Democratic Jewish vote.

It’s not unusual in international relations that politics trumps policy. But this is happening, to an unusually and very dangerously high degree, among the Palestinians, the Israelis, and the Americans at the moment.

Abbas’ UN bid is, to a large extent, likely driven by considerations about his own legacy as well as by the ability of the secular, nationalist leadership in Ramallah to hold off political challenges from Hamas. A great deal of the Israeli intransigence is driven by an open competition between Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for leadership of the Israeli right (this political stand-off may also be the single biggest factor explaining Israel’s bizarre refusal to apologize to Turkey over last year’s deadly flotilla incident). A politically empowered minority is driving Israel’s most self-defeating policies, above all the expansion of profoundly provocative settlements.

And then there are the Americans. The election season is inhibiting the administration from any bold new moves to restart talks, redefine the terms of negotiations, or pressure Israel to make the necessary steps towards a meaningful compromise.

Obama’s UN speech may well have been good politics, but it wasn’t especially good policy. It will almost certainly be widely misread in the convulsing Arab world as evidence that the U.S. remains part of the problem — rather than the key to the solution — of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The speech did nothing to help broker a compromise at the UN, which all parties badly need, including the United States, and would be in everybody’s best interests. It won’t help dissuade the Palestinians from pursuing an aggressive course at the UN, no matter how risky or unwise that might be. And it won’t do anything to help restart negotiations.

It’s understandable that the President is exasperated with both parties and deeply uncomfortable at the prospect of having to cast a veto in the Security Council against Palestinian statehood. Obama made those sentiments extremely clear today. It may have been an accurate reflection of the mood in the administration and in Congress, and it might even help Obama get reelected. But it didn’t do U.S. policy goals any favors.

Could a U.N. Upgrade Help the Palestinians Prosecute Israeli Officials?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2011/09/could_a_un_upgrade_help_the_palestinians_prosecute_israeli_officials.html

Would a Palestinian state recognized by the United Nations have the right to bring legal action against Israel and Israeli officials at the International Criminal Court or the U.N.’s own International Court of Justice?

This question, which is far more complicated than it seems, turns out to be at the heart of conflict over Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ efforts to secure recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations. In a May 16 New York Times op-ed, President Abbas said he was hoping that U.N. membership would “pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.” Palestinians clearly hope this would be the case, and it’s clear that Israel, the United States, and some European states are worried about that too.

As of this writing, Abbas says he’s going to submit an application for full U.N. membership to Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon after his speech on Friday. But Abbas knows that the required nine-vote Security Council majority is significantly in doubt, and that even if it can be secured the United States is publicly committed to vetoing any such resolution. Therefore, the most Palestinians can accomplish is for the U.N. General Assembly to vote to upgrade Palestine to a nonmember observer state. No plans for a General Assembly resolution have been announced—presumably because the Palestinians are still pushing hard for the more ambitious Security Council victory—but there is little doubt the Palestinians could win a majority for one.

It is this nonmember observer status that could cause a showdown over the Palestinians’ right to petition international legal bodies. At the U.N. itself, nonmember status would not do much to change the Palestinians’ rights and prerogatives, but it could theoretically provide them access to a number of international law enforcement agencies and mechanisms, most notably the International Criminal Court, which was created by a treaty among many nations.

Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, president of the ICC Assembly of State Parties, told the Wall Street Journal that a Palestinian observer state could join the ICC and try to initiate proceedings against Israel under the Statute of Rome. Because Israel is itself not a party to the ICC, Israeli officials cannot be prosecuted on the basis of their Israeli nationality. And so far the Palestinians have not had success bringing criminal action against Israelis for their acts in the Palestinian territories, because the legal status of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip—is internationally undetermined. The ICC essentially ignored a 2009 effort by the Palestinian Authority to get the ICC to take action against Israel regarding the war in Gaza.

However, if the General Assembly were to recognize an observer Palestinian state in its 1967 borders, not only could Palestine become a party to the ICC, it could claim to be the legal sovereign in the occupied territories and seek charges for Israeli actions in those territories on that basis.

At the ICC, Israel would not only be vulnerable to charges regarding unlawful military actions against persons and property, but also for settlement activity, which the Statute of Rome defines as a war crime. It is also potentially vulnerable to charges under the “crime of apartheid,” which is defined as “inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” That would certainly seem to apply to the social, legal, and political system enforced by Israel in the occupied territories, although the question of intending maintenance of it might be an out for the Israelis on this issue.

The European Union finds itself badly and uncomfortably divided into three camps on the question of nonmember U.N. observer status for Palestine: those opposed, those supporting, and those ambivalent about such an upgrade. The Europeans have been negotiating among themselves to try to find a formula they could unite behind and also provide some diplomatic benefits acceptable to the Palestinians.

European countries worried about Palestinian access to the ICC blocked a Spanish-French proposal for nonmember observer status for Palestine, and there has even been discussion among Europeans about creating a new legal status for the Palestinians that would provide an upgrade in status but block potential access to the ICC and other international legal enforcement agencies.

Even if the Palestinians got nonmember state status at the U.N., which is the maximum they could achieve under the present circumstances, and were able to become party to the ICC, there are serious doubts about their practical ability to bring charges against Israel or Israeli officials. Any request for such charges would be more a diplomatic and political question than a legal one, and both the ICC and prosecutors would be subject to significant domestic and international political pressures that make it hard to imagine such a scenario actually unfolding.

The recent history of the ICC suggests that diplomatic and political realities are more important than ICC membership in prompting such indictments. The Goldstone Report on the Gaza War, for example, accused both Israel and Hamas of serious war crimes, but this was not acted on by the ICC. Opposition came not only from traditional defenders of Israel like the United States and France, but also from Russia and China, who were worried about the potential precedent regarding the behavior of military forces acting against guerrillas or insurgents in heavily populated areas.

By contrast, neither Sudan nor Libya were parties to the ICC, and the areas in which their militaries were operating were, at the time, within the sovereign territory of their governments. This did not prevent the U.N. Security Council from authorizing investigations that led to the indictments of Sudanese President Omar Bashir and Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi and some of his sons.

Both of these examples strongly suggest that the international diplomatic and political climate is much more important to securing ICC indictments than membership in that organization. And the indictment of Bashir has not been acted on. He even attended the independence ceremony of the new Republic of South Sudan, standing in the presence of U.N. Secretary General Ban and many other world leaders. These precedents suggest that whatever technical advantages the Palestinians might gain from a U.N. upgrade, they will still face significant hurdles to legal action. Under the present international political and diplomatic climate, it’s quite difficult to imagine any international law enforcement agency such as the ICC actually bringing charges against Israel.