Soon, judging from news reports, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, will be debating the Palestinian application for full UN membership. Israel most emphatically opposes the Palestinian application and the U.S. obliges and threatens to veto it in the Security Council. The contentious issue is not the manner and timing of the Palestinian membership application but that the new Palestinian State will be based on the pre-1967 borders.
While I am an admirer of the state of Israel for their exceptional achievements in almost every field of human endeavor, the Palestinian issue is one the Israelis have failed to manage in a wise and pragmatic manner. All sides, Israelis, Palestinians and American mediators, past and present, should share in the blame for the failure to resolve this issue.
The Palestinians, having waited for 20 years since the Oslo Accords, that promised them a full sovereign Palestinian State living along side with the state of Israel, have decided to seek full UN membership status now. They have every right to do so and I do not see how a Palestinian State that is a full member of the UN would be detrimental to Israel and US interests. Full UN membership carries with it not only rights but in equal manner duties and responsibilities, among them, the obligation to not allow its territory to be used to launch attacks on other countries.
The new Palestinian State will have additional responsibilities to mend fences with the Hamas faction in Gaza and replicate there the very successful state building process in West Bank. The Hamas leadership and other militant groups in the region will be under greater regional pressure to abandon their terrorist tactics against the state of Israel. To further reassure Israel of its security against potential aggression, the UN Security Council, NATO powers and the Arab League could work out security guarantees to both Israel and Palestine. Arab League members should impress upon Hamas and Hezbollah to desist from further attacks on Israel and encourage all Arab and Muslim countries to recognize the State of Israel.
All sides seem to agree that the 1967 borders should be adjusted to accommodate Israel's legitimate security concerns. But there are abundant cases in the world where land and maritime borders have not been settled decades and yet were not an impediment to a country achieving independence.
The dilemma and challenge for Israel is to vacate most of West Bank. But Israeli leaders and settlers are the ones who created this problem for themselves and must now have the courage and wisdom to leave West Bank and hand over the settlements to the Palestinian authorities.
A special fund could be set up, led by the US and Europe, to buy back from Israel the thousands of housing units, schools, health clinics, etc scattered in the West Bank. While no amount of money would ever suffice to buy back the lives lost, Palestinians would receive high quality infrastructures that in some way would constitute a small form of compensation for decades of humiliation and dispossession.
When in 1999 Indonesia decided to leave my country after 24 years of occupation, almost every building, houses, schools, clinics, factories, etc were razed to the ground. The departing forces left behind a country in complete ruins. Yet we celebrated our hard-won independence without anger and revenge. The new Timor-Leste born from the ashes of destruction and the new democratic Indonesia are today exemplary friends and neighbors.
To my friends in Israel and the US, I will say, do not oppose Palestinian UN membership; support it instead. Provide the financial means the Palestinian leaders need to turn their economy around. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu told me in his office in Jerusalem earlier this year that he wanted to see an economically prosperous Palestinian state. I believe he meant it. Now is his chance to show vision and bold leadership by endorsing Palestinian UN membership, lift the Gaza blockade, and facilitate trade.
In the following days, Israelis and Palestinians should sit down face to face and begin the painstaking negotiations on the settlements and border issues and the status of Jerusalem.
I have heard arguments from all sides. Arguments against full Palestinian UN membership are not persuasive. After more than 60 years of absence, to a great extent due to past Palestinian and Arab leaderships miscalculations, it is time that the five million Palestinians living in West Bank and Gaza, and the many others scattered in the region and elsewhere, see their national flag hoisted along aside that of other powers of the world, great and small, rich and poor.
* Jose Ramos-Horta, 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and President of Timor-Leste, made State Visits to Israel and Palestine earlier this year. See Reflections on a Visit to Israel and Palestine.
Follow José Ramos-Horta on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JoseRamosHorta
Mira Sucharov: Laughing Our Way Through the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Lord Weidenfeld of Chelsea: The Dangerous Consequences of Palestinian Statehood
Maen Rashid Areikat: UN Membership Enhances Peace
Rabbi Jason Miller: FaceGlat, Orthodox Jewish Version of Facebook, Gets Hacked ... Again
Thank you!
Every point - Very well put, Mr.President Ramos-Horta!
There really is no reason for the Palestinians not to have their own country now, absolutely and completely. And for all of us to be done with Wars and strife and suffering in that part of the World.
Thank you again,
G'bless
Hope they listen!
Israel has made as many concessions as possible while the Palestinian have made none. They have broken promises and committments and are not ready for a state of their own. Their president is in the 80 month of a 48 month term, local elections are cancelled and Hamas, a terrorist organization is breathing down his neck. They are not ready for statehood. That is what the UN should recognize.
Palestine recognises Israel, yet has issues with it.
The most extensive violators of Security Council resolutions are Israel, Turkey and Morocco.
A survey of the nearly 1,500 resolutions passed by the Security Council (..) reveals more than ninety resolutions currently violated by countries other than Iraq.
The vast majority of these violations are by governments closely allied to the United States.
For example, in 1975, after Morocco's invasion of Western Sahara and Indonesia's invasion of East Timor, the Security Council passed a series of resolutions demanding immediate withdrawal. Today, East Timor is free.
Moroccan forces still occupy Western Sahara.
Turkey remains in violation of Security Council Resolution 353 and more than a score of resolutions calling for its withdrawal from northern Cyprus, which Turkey, a NATO ally, invaded in 1974.
Israel's refusal to respond positively to the formal acceptance this past March by the Arab League of the land-for-peace formula put forward in Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 arguably puts Israel in violation of these resolutions, long seen as the basis for Middle East peace. More clearly, Israel has defied Resolutions 267, 271 and 298, which demand that it rescind its annexation of greater East Jerusalem, as well as dozens of other resolutions insisting that Israel cease its violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
US Double Standards Stephen Zunes
http://www.thenation.com/article/us-double-standards
http://www¬.todayszam¬an.com/new¬s-199996-t¬urkey-is-w¬orst-human¬-rights-vi¬olator-ect¬hr-says.ht¬ml
catch up!
UN Security Council post? Just asking?
Regardless of what "name" the people are being described, it is obvious people are upset all over the world for several different reasons and are making their voices heard around the globe....and for
good reasons: high unemployment, no jobs, stagnant economies, outsourcing industry, unfair taxes, and living in polluted enviromental poverty under opressive and/or corrupt leaders running their countries governments ruled either by Dictators, Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Parliaments, Politicans, etc. How the United States votes on the Palestine Resolution is a decision that will affect the future of a continuing relationship with one country and negative relationships with several countries. The President Obama and Congress know what is the right thing to do...but will they do it?
That was no uprising, it was anarachy and criminality. There was nothing political to it. I don't think the riots in England can be compared to those in Greece, Syria or Yemen.
Just sayin'
In a nutshell Sir you have amplified the problem. The Pals as history has clearly shown WONT celebrate without anger and revenge. If they did there would be the end of the matter-two states side by side in harmony