{"id":1308,"date":"2006-02-15T06:27:36","date_gmt":"2006-02-15T10:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/wordpress\/?p=1308"},"modified":"2006-02-15T06:27:36","modified_gmt":"2006-02-15T10:27:36","slug":"whats-that-smell-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=1308","title":{"rendered":"What’s that smell?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n<\/a><\/div>\n

The Israel\/Palestine Working Group of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Peace Task Force have published a draft of policy guidelines<\/a> for the conflict. It acknowledges the biassed manner in which both Democrat and Republican administrations have “brokered the peace” but refrains from denouncing them outright as liars. It calls for an end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and an equitable resolution of the refugee problem but makes no mention of Jerusalem, which renders these progressive guidelines less of a bargain for the Palestinians than the Clinton parameters<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This issue does not call for U.S. mediation but a U.S. govt. willing to enforce international law. <\/p>\n

The draft should demand Israel’s return to the 1967 borders. The apartheid wall should be dismantled or moved to those borders. East Jerusalem, at least<\/a>, should be returned to the Palestinians and the refugees guaranteed the right to return according to international law or however the Palestinians decide to negotiate it, not how the United States or Israel chooses to interpret it then enforces with the mightiest military power at large in the world today. <\/p>\n

Israel should be sanctioned until these demands are met.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, DemocracyNOW! aired an edited debate between Fmr. Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami and Professor Norman Finkelstein on Israel, the Palestinians, and the Peace Process<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As Professor Finkelstein put it:<\/p>\n

The main context, in my opinion, is as follows. Since the mid-1970s, there’s been an international consensus for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. Most of your listeners will be familiar with it. It’s called a two-state settlement, and a two-state settlement is pretty straightforward, uncomplicated. Israel has to fully withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza and Jerusalem, in accordance with the fundamental principle of international law, cited three times by Mr. Ben-Ami in the book, his book, that it’s inadmissible to acquire territory by war. The West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem, having been acquired by war, it’s inadmissible for Israel to keep them. They have to be returned. On the Palestinian side and also the side of the neighboring Arab states, they have to recognize Israel’s right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. That was the quid pro quo: recognition of Israel, Palestinian right to self-determination in the West Bank and Gaza with its capital in Jerusalem. That’s the international consensus. <\/p>\n

It’s not complicated. It’s also not controversial. You see it voted on every year in the United Nations. The votes typically something like 160 nations on one side, the United States, Israel and Naru, Palau, Tuvalu, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands on the other side. That’s it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Not complicated. Not controversial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Israel\/Palestine Working Group of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Peace Task Force have published a draft of policy guidelines for the conflict. It acknowledges the biassed manner in which both Democrat and Republican administrations have “brokered the peace” but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-l6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}