30 jan 2020
The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has expressed grave concern over the “Peace to Prosperity” plan for Israel and Palestine presented by the U.S. administration, this week.
“Peace can never be unilaterally imposed,” writes LWF president Archbishop Panti Filibus Musa, and LWF General Secretary Rev Dr Martin Junge, in a statement released yesterday.
“The plan ignores fundamental principles of international law and human rights conventions, as well as numerous UN General Assembly and UN Security Council resolutions, setting a dangerous precedent for the future.”
WAFA further reports that the LWF called upon the international community to take immediate actions to reduce the suffering of the Palestinian population, and LWF member churches to support the ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and the LWF World Service program in Jerusalem.
“International law, including human rights conventions, was developed as a response to the horrors of the Second World War,” said LWF General Secretary Junge. “Their purpose is to safeguard peace and security. It is deeply worrying that the ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan undermines them.”
“Peace can never be unilaterally imposed,” writes LWF president Archbishop Panti Filibus Musa, and LWF General Secretary Rev Dr Martin Junge, in a statement released yesterday.
“The plan ignores fundamental principles of international law and human rights conventions, as well as numerous UN General Assembly and UN Security Council resolutions, setting a dangerous precedent for the future.”
WAFA further reports that the LWF called upon the international community to take immediate actions to reduce the suffering of the Palestinian population, and LWF member churches to support the ministry of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, and the LWF World Service program in Jerusalem.
“International law, including human rights conventions, was developed as a response to the horrors of the Second World War,” said LWF General Secretary Junge. “Their purpose is to safeguard peace and security. It is deeply worrying that the ‘Peace to Prosperity’ plan undermines them.”
The Israeli human rights organisation, “B’Tselem,” said, in statement, that US President Donald Trump’s plan drains the principles of international law of any meaning and completely neuters the concept of accountability for breaching them.
B’Tselem added that the American administration’s plan, branded as the “Deal of the Century,” is more like Swiss cheese, with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians.
There are many ways to end the occupation, but the only legitimate options are those based on equality and human rights for all. This is why the current plan which legitimizes, entrenches and even expands the scope of Israel’s human rights abuses, perpetuated now for over 52 years, is utterly unacceptable.
The Trump plan drains the principles of international law of any meaning and completely neuters the concept of accountability for breaching them. Trump suggests rewarding Israel for the unlawful and immoral practices in which it has been engaging ever since it seized the Territories.
Israel will be able to continue plundering Palestinian land and resources; it will also get to keep its illegal settlements and even annex more territory; all in complete defiance of international law. Israeli citizens who live in the Territories will continue to enjoy all the rights granted to other Israeli citizens, including full political rights and freedom of movement, as if they were not living inside an occupied area at all.
Palestinians, on the other hand, will be relegated to small, enclosed, isolated enclaves, with no control over their lives as the plan eternalizes the fragmentation of Palestinian space into disconnected slivers of territory in a sea of Israeli control, not at all unlike the Bantustans of South Africa’s Apartheid regime.
With no territorial contiguity, Palestinians will not be able to exercise their right to self-determination and will continue to be completely dependent on Israel’s goodwill for their daily life, with no political rights and no way to influence their future.
They will continue to be at the mercy of Israel’s draconian permit regime and need its consent for any construction or development. In this sense, not only does the plan fail to improve their predicament in any way, but, in fact, it leaves them worse off as it perpetuates the situation and gives it recognition.
This plan reveals a world view that sees Palestinians as perennial subjects rather than free, autonomous human beings. A “solution” of this sort, one that fails to ensure the human rights, liberty and equality of all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and instead perpetuates one side’s oppression and dispossession of the other – is not a legitimate solution.
As a matter of fact, it is no solution at all, just a recipe for generations more of oppression, injustice, and violence.
B’Tselem added that the American administration’s plan, branded as the “Deal of the Century,” is more like Swiss cheese, with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians.
There are many ways to end the occupation, but the only legitimate options are those based on equality and human rights for all. This is why the current plan which legitimizes, entrenches and even expands the scope of Israel’s human rights abuses, perpetuated now for over 52 years, is utterly unacceptable.
The Trump plan drains the principles of international law of any meaning and completely neuters the concept of accountability for breaching them. Trump suggests rewarding Israel for the unlawful and immoral practices in which it has been engaging ever since it seized the Territories.
Israel will be able to continue plundering Palestinian land and resources; it will also get to keep its illegal settlements and even annex more territory; all in complete defiance of international law. Israeli citizens who live in the Territories will continue to enjoy all the rights granted to other Israeli citizens, including full political rights and freedom of movement, as if they were not living inside an occupied area at all.
Palestinians, on the other hand, will be relegated to small, enclosed, isolated enclaves, with no control over their lives as the plan eternalizes the fragmentation of Palestinian space into disconnected slivers of territory in a sea of Israeli control, not at all unlike the Bantustans of South Africa’s Apartheid regime.
With no territorial contiguity, Palestinians will not be able to exercise their right to self-determination and will continue to be completely dependent on Israel’s goodwill for their daily life, with no political rights and no way to influence their future.
They will continue to be at the mercy of Israel’s draconian permit regime and need its consent for any construction or development. In this sense, not only does the plan fail to improve their predicament in any way, but, in fact, it leaves them worse off as it perpetuates the situation and gives it recognition.
This plan reveals a world view that sees Palestinians as perennial subjects rather than free, autonomous human beings. A “solution” of this sort, one that fails to ensure the human rights, liberty and equality of all people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and instead perpetuates one side’s oppression and dispossession of the other – is not a legitimate solution.
As a matter of fact, it is no solution at all, just a recipe for generations more of oppression, injustice, and violence.
The Palestinian Center For Human Rights (PCHR): While the Oslo Accords sacrificed human rights and the international law for more than a quarter of a century, the U.S president Donald Trump’s Middle East plan constitutes a full destruction of international law, and legitimizes more than 50 years of Israeli violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) since 1967, that amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Rather than referring to the principles of international law and the United Nations (UN) resolutions, including UN Security Council resolutions endorsed by the U.S., the current U. S Administration flouts these principles and promotes the logic of force over truth and rewards Israel for its crimes.
Under the so-called peace process, Israel continued to take chunks of the oPt and create irreversible facts on the ground, including tripling its settlement expansion schemes; creating a Jewish majority in occupied East Jerusalem, isolating and forcing its local Palestinian population out of the city; constructing the annexation wall; imposing a closure on the Gaza Strip; severing the cities, villages and refugee camps of the West Bank apart by settlements, settler bypass roads and hundreds of military checkpoints.
In short, the Israeli military occupation managed to change the features of the oPt, seized its resources and deprived Palestinians from their inalienable rights in favor of Israeli settlers.
Israel created a new version of apartheid in which settlers enjoy privileges at the expense of the indigenous population who are besieged and separated in Bantustans, stripped of their rights guaranteed by international law and oppressed by the means of law and brute force that are enforced by its occupation forces and military rule.
Trump’s plan legitimizes all the above in the name of peace, and upholds Israel’s control over the oPt, yet exempts it from its responsibility towards the population. Under Trump’s scheme, Palestinians would have a mirage of a state that has limited autonomy and lacks geographical integrity or sovereignty over its lands and resources.
We firmly reject Trump’s plan, which legitimizes Israeli crimes and deprives Palestinians of their legal and political rights, and sets foundation for a new type of apartheid.
We believe that the only way to reach a just and lasting peace is through respecting international law, including IHL and the international human rights law, protecting the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights, including their right to self-determination, and ending the Israeli military occupation.
Therefore, we call upon the international community to stand for and protect rule of law and support international accountability mechanisms, including the International Criminal Court.
The international community should take firm action against Israel’s plans, supported by the U.S Administration as evident in Trump’s proposed peace plan, to annex the Northern Jordan Valleys and other parts of the West Bank
Public Document
**************************************
Follow PCHR on Facebook and Twitter
For more information, please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893
Gaza- Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser “al-Thalathini” Street – Al-Roya Building- Floor 12 , El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org
Rather than referring to the principles of international law and the United Nations (UN) resolutions, including UN Security Council resolutions endorsed by the U.S., the current U. S Administration flouts these principles and promotes the logic of force over truth and rewards Israel for its crimes.
Under the so-called peace process, Israel continued to take chunks of the oPt and create irreversible facts on the ground, including tripling its settlement expansion schemes; creating a Jewish majority in occupied East Jerusalem, isolating and forcing its local Palestinian population out of the city; constructing the annexation wall; imposing a closure on the Gaza Strip; severing the cities, villages and refugee camps of the West Bank apart by settlements, settler bypass roads and hundreds of military checkpoints.
In short, the Israeli military occupation managed to change the features of the oPt, seized its resources and deprived Palestinians from their inalienable rights in favor of Israeli settlers.
Israel created a new version of apartheid in which settlers enjoy privileges at the expense of the indigenous population who are besieged and separated in Bantustans, stripped of their rights guaranteed by international law and oppressed by the means of law and brute force that are enforced by its occupation forces and military rule.
Trump’s plan legitimizes all the above in the name of peace, and upholds Israel’s control over the oPt, yet exempts it from its responsibility towards the population. Under Trump’s scheme, Palestinians would have a mirage of a state that has limited autonomy and lacks geographical integrity or sovereignty over its lands and resources.
We firmly reject Trump’s plan, which legitimizes Israeli crimes and deprives Palestinians of their legal and political rights, and sets foundation for a new type of apartheid.
We believe that the only way to reach a just and lasting peace is through respecting international law, including IHL and the international human rights law, protecting the Palestinian people’s inalienable rights, including their right to self-determination, and ending the Israeli military occupation.
Therefore, we call upon the international community to stand for and protect rule of law and support international accountability mechanisms, including the International Criminal Court.
The international community should take firm action against Israel’s plans, supported by the U.S Administration as evident in Trump’s proposed peace plan, to annex the Northern Jordan Valleys and other parts of the West Bank
Public Document
**************************************
Follow PCHR on Facebook and Twitter
For more information, please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893
Gaza- Jamal ‘Abdel Nasser “al-Thalathini” Street – Al-Roya Building- Floor 12 , El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip. E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org
by Jonathan Cook
Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details.
The so-called “Vision for Peace” unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently the swaths of territory it seized illegally over the past half-century that deny the Palestinians any hope of a state.
The White House has discarded the traditional US pose as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders were not invited to the ceremony, and would not have come had they been. This was a deal designed in Tel Aviv more than in Washington – and its point was to ensure there would be no Palestinian partner.
Importantly for Israel, it will get Washington’s permission to annex all of its illegal settlements, now littered across the West Bank, as well as the vast agricultural basin of the Jordan Valley. Israel will continue to have military control over the entire West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his intention to bring just such an annexation plan before his cabinet as soon as possible. It will doubtless provide the central plank in his efforts to win a hotly contested general election due on March 2.
The Trump deal also approves Israel’s existing annexation of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will be expected to pretend that a West Bank village outside the city is their capital of “Al Quds”. There are incendiary indications that Israel will be allowed to forcibly divide the Al Aqsa mosque compound to create a prayer space for extremist Jews, as has occurred in Hebron.
Further, the Trump administration appears to be considering giving a green light to the Israeli right’s long-held hopes of redrawing the current borders in such a way as to transfer potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinians currently living in Israel as citizens into the West Bank. That would almost certainly amount to a war crime.
The plan envisages no right of return, and it seems the Arab world will be expected to foot the bill for compensating millions of Palestinian refugees.
A US map handed out on Tuesday showed Palestinian enclaves connected by a warren of bridges and tunnels, including one between the West Bank and Gaza. The only leavening accorded to the Palestinians are US pledges to strengthen their economy. Given the Palestinians’ parlous finances after decades of resource theft by Israel, that is not much of a promise.
All of this has been dressed up as a “realistic two-state solution”, offering the Palestinians nearly 70 per cent of the occupied territories – which in turn comprise 22 per cent of their original homeland. Put another way, the Palestinians are being required to accept a state on 15 per cent of historic Palestine after Israel has seized all the best agricultural land and the water sources.
Like all one-time deals, this patchwork “state” – lacking an army, and where Israel controls its security, borders, coastal waters and airspace – has an expiry date. It needs to be accepted within four years. Otherwise, Israel will have a free hand to start plundering yet more Palestinian territory. But the truth is that neither Israel nor the US expects or wants the Palestinians to play ball.
That is why the plan includes – as well as annexation of the settlements – a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognised: the Palestinian factions must disarm, with Hamas dismantled; the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas must strip the families of political prisoners of their stipends; and the Palestinian territories must be reinvented as the Middle East’s Switzerland, a flourishing democracy and open society, all while under Israel’s boot.
Instead, the Trump plan kills the charade that the 26-year-old Oslo process aimed for anything other than Palestinian capitulation. It fully aligns the US with Israeli efforts – pursued by all its main political parties over many decades – to lay the groundwork for permanent apartheid in the occupied territories.
Trump invited both Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, and his chief political rival, former general Benny Gantz, for the launch. Both were keen to express their unbridled support.
Between them, they represent four-fifths of Israel’s parliament. The chief battleground in the March election will be which one can claim to be better placed to implement the plan and thereby deal a death blow to Palestinian dreams of statehood.
On the Israeli right, there were voices of dissent. Settler groups described the plan as “far from perfect” – a view almost certainly shared privately by Netanyahu. Israel’s extreme right objects to any talk of Palestinian statehood, however illusory.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition will happily seize the goodies offered by the Trump administration. Meanwhile the plan’s inevitable rejection by the Palestinian leadership will serve down the road as justification for Israel to grab yet more land.
There are other, more immediate bonuses from the “deal of the century”.
By allowing Israel to keep its ill-gotten gains from its 1967 conquest of Palestinian territories, Washington has officially endorsed one of the modern era’s great colonial aggressions. The US administration has thereby declared open war on the already feeble constraints imposed by international law.
Trump benefits personally, too. This will provide a distraction from his impeachment hearings as well as offering a potent bribe to his Israel-obsessed evangelical base and major funders such as US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in the run-up to a presidential election.
And the US president is coming to the aid of a useful political ally. Netanyahu hopes this boost from the White House will propel his ultra-nationalist coalition into power in March, and cow the Israeli courts as they weigh criminal charges against him.
How he plans to extract personal gains from the Trump plan were evident on Tuesday. He scolded Israel’s attorney-general over the filing of the corruption indictments, claiming a “historic moment” for the state of Israel was being endangered.
Meanwhile, Abbas greeted the plan with “a thousand nos”. Trump has left him completely exposed. Either the PA abandons its security contractor role on behalf of Israel and dissolves itself, or it carries on as before but now explicitly deprived of the illusion that statehood is being pursued.
Abbas will try to cling on, hoping that Trump is ousted in this year’s election and a new US administration reverts to the pretence of advancing the long-expired Oslo peace process. But if Trump wins, the PA’s difficulties will rapidly mount.
No one, least of all the Trump administration, believes that this plan will lead to peace. A more realistic concern is how quickly it will pave the way to greater bloodshed.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Join the debate on Facebook
More articles by:Jonathan CookJonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/
Much of Donald Trump’s long-trailed “deal of the century” came as no surprise. Over the past 18 months, Israeli officials had leaked many of its details.
The so-called “Vision for Peace” unveiled on Tuesday simply confirmed that the US government has publicly adopted the long-running consensus in Israel: that it is entitled to keep permanently the swaths of territory it seized illegally over the past half-century that deny the Palestinians any hope of a state.
The White House has discarded the traditional US pose as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. Palestinian leaders were not invited to the ceremony, and would not have come had they been. This was a deal designed in Tel Aviv more than in Washington – and its point was to ensure there would be no Palestinian partner.
Importantly for Israel, it will get Washington’s permission to annex all of its illegal settlements, now littered across the West Bank, as well as the vast agricultural basin of the Jordan Valley. Israel will continue to have military control over the entire West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced his intention to bring just such an annexation plan before his cabinet as soon as possible. It will doubtless provide the central plank in his efforts to win a hotly contested general election due on March 2.
The Trump deal also approves Israel’s existing annexation of East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will be expected to pretend that a West Bank village outside the city is their capital of “Al Quds”. There are incendiary indications that Israel will be allowed to forcibly divide the Al Aqsa mosque compound to create a prayer space for extremist Jews, as has occurred in Hebron.
Further, the Trump administration appears to be considering giving a green light to the Israeli right’s long-held hopes of redrawing the current borders in such a way as to transfer potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinians currently living in Israel as citizens into the West Bank. That would almost certainly amount to a war crime.
The plan envisages no right of return, and it seems the Arab world will be expected to foot the bill for compensating millions of Palestinian refugees.
A US map handed out on Tuesday showed Palestinian enclaves connected by a warren of bridges and tunnels, including one between the West Bank and Gaza. The only leavening accorded to the Palestinians are US pledges to strengthen their economy. Given the Palestinians’ parlous finances after decades of resource theft by Israel, that is not much of a promise.
All of this has been dressed up as a “realistic two-state solution”, offering the Palestinians nearly 70 per cent of the occupied territories – which in turn comprise 22 per cent of their original homeland. Put another way, the Palestinians are being required to accept a state on 15 per cent of historic Palestine after Israel has seized all the best agricultural land and the water sources.
Like all one-time deals, this patchwork “state” – lacking an army, and where Israel controls its security, borders, coastal waters and airspace – has an expiry date. It needs to be accepted within four years. Otherwise, Israel will have a free hand to start plundering yet more Palestinian territory. But the truth is that neither Israel nor the US expects or wants the Palestinians to play ball.
That is why the plan includes – as well as annexation of the settlements – a host of unrealisable preconditions before what remains of Palestine can be recognised: the Palestinian factions must disarm, with Hamas dismantled; the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas must strip the families of political prisoners of their stipends; and the Palestinian territories must be reinvented as the Middle East’s Switzerland, a flourishing democracy and open society, all while under Israel’s boot.
Instead, the Trump plan kills the charade that the 26-year-old Oslo process aimed for anything other than Palestinian capitulation. It fully aligns the US with Israeli efforts – pursued by all its main political parties over many decades – to lay the groundwork for permanent apartheid in the occupied territories.
Trump invited both Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, and his chief political rival, former general Benny Gantz, for the launch. Both were keen to express their unbridled support.
Between them, they represent four-fifths of Israel’s parliament. The chief battleground in the March election will be which one can claim to be better placed to implement the plan and thereby deal a death blow to Palestinian dreams of statehood.
On the Israeli right, there were voices of dissent. Settler groups described the plan as “far from perfect” – a view almost certainly shared privately by Netanyahu. Israel’s extreme right objects to any talk of Palestinian statehood, however illusory.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition will happily seize the goodies offered by the Trump administration. Meanwhile the plan’s inevitable rejection by the Palestinian leadership will serve down the road as justification for Israel to grab yet more land.
There are other, more immediate bonuses from the “deal of the century”.
By allowing Israel to keep its ill-gotten gains from its 1967 conquest of Palestinian territories, Washington has officially endorsed one of the modern era’s great colonial aggressions. The US administration has thereby declared open war on the already feeble constraints imposed by international law.
Trump benefits personally, too. This will provide a distraction from his impeachment hearings as well as offering a potent bribe to his Israel-obsessed evangelical base and major funders such as US casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in the run-up to a presidential election.
And the US president is coming to the aid of a useful political ally. Netanyahu hopes this boost from the White House will propel his ultra-nationalist coalition into power in March, and cow the Israeli courts as they weigh criminal charges against him.
How he plans to extract personal gains from the Trump plan were evident on Tuesday. He scolded Israel’s attorney-general over the filing of the corruption indictments, claiming a “historic moment” for the state of Israel was being endangered.
Meanwhile, Abbas greeted the plan with “a thousand nos”. Trump has left him completely exposed. Either the PA abandons its security contractor role on behalf of Israel and dissolves itself, or it carries on as before but now explicitly deprived of the illusion that statehood is being pursued.
Abbas will try to cling on, hoping that Trump is ousted in this year’s election and a new US administration reverts to the pretence of advancing the long-expired Oslo peace process. But if Trump wins, the PA’s difficulties will rapidly mount.
No one, least of all the Trump administration, believes that this plan will lead to peace. A more realistic concern is how quickly it will pave the way to greater bloodshed.
A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
Join the debate on Facebook
More articles by:Jonathan CookJonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jonathan-cook.net/
