This week’s postings@JfJfP.com

This last week, February 20th-26th 2017, the Trumpish kicking over of existing conventions, especially those supported by elites, is now reverberating in the MEPP (Middle East Peace Process). The 2-state solution has long been the only – but very widely – accepted solution to the Palestine/Israel conflict. In 1974 the UN passed a resolution on the “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine”. It called for “two States, Israel and Palestine … side by side within secure and recognized borders” together with “a just resolution of the refugee question in conformity with UN resolution 194”.

Apart from the issue of refugees, international agreement on the ‘solution’ has been constant for 43 years. It gained its feasibility from international support, led by the USA. But President Trump, along with a smirking PM Netanyahu, have tossed it into the known unknowns. Right-wing Israelis are delighted. There are many voices saying out loud what others have ben saying less effectually for years: the 2-state solution is dead.

Palestinian journalist and intellectual Ramzy Baroud says
The two-state solution was never devised for implementation
His judgment is that it was simply devised to pacify Palestinians. Now and then PM Netanyahu says he still supports it – to keep the far right, the USA and EU off his back.

Prof. Avi Shlaim, JfJfP signatory, is one those who are convinced the 2-state solution is dead. What supporters of Palestinians should be doing is concentrating on establishing Palestinian rights. He believes civil society and the BDS movement can help achieve this though doesn’t specify how. For a desire to transmute into a right there must usually be a state to enact that right:
Needed – bodies to enforce universal rights

What else is an alternative. There has always been support for One State but it’s been marginal. Those who are now advocating one state are inspired by a huge degree of idealism – that Palestinians and Israeli Jews could share a state in a spirit of equality and justice:
Signs for ‘One Democratic State’ appear in Palestinian town

Nobody (except the perpetrators) knows who put these ODS signs up. But it brings a little known organisation and movement into the spotlight: One Democratic State in Historic Palestine. It seems to be a product of one persistent Palestinian American and American conflict resolution bodies – they have held a number of international conferences. It would embody ‘universal values and equal protection and treatment for all’.
One-state gains momentum- it’s universal

Veteran analyst and reporter Jonathan Cook says that Trump has reminded Palestinians that it was always about one state – as it was, and is, for the Israeli far-right. Palestinians hope that the end of the 2-state solution might create space for their own liberation movement which will define its own borders. Jewish Home et al see it as their chance to annex the West Bank and experiment with their own form of apartheid:
Israel’s borders up for grabs

The laying to rest of the corpse of the peace process, of American withdrawal from it, has boosted PM Netanyahu’s feelers towards Arab states in the hope that they will settle it all. Despite all his contacts he failed to grasp that none would act over the heads of the Palestinians – knowing that would achieve nothing:
Let the Arabs sort it out

According to Israeli journalist Ben Caspit an American President washing his hands of the problem and saying the people should decide has put ‘The Israeli political system … in an uproar’. The feeling that the strongest in Israel can now do anything they like is existentially terrifying for many Israelis.

UK censorship

There’s a phenomenon in Britain that has yet to be properly analysed. That is the grasping by the right-wing elite – government, civil servants, press – of any measure which will silence Israel’s critics.

As with the ban on local governments having any relation with BDS action so now both the Prevent strategy (yes the one that was sold as detecting Muslim extremists) and the adoption by Mrs. May of the IHRA as her government’s policy – parliament has had nothing to do with any of these decisions – have led to the banning and censoring of pro-Palestinian speakers in public spaces, especially universities:
Mrs May’s IHRA used to silence critics of Israel

Every single measure to persuade public bodies, like universities or local councils, to adopt BDS policies or pass motions critical of the Israeli occupation are found to be illegal under Prevent or IHRA policies – as defined by the Cabinet office. Parliament should get a grip on this.

This depends on factual information being available to all – especially MPs. It is the ‘liberal elites’ which block this according to right-wing outlets – euphemistically described as populist.

The dominant story in Israel has been the trial of Elor Azaria
The Azaria show trial

The censors who limit and change what can be published are alive and well in Israel. The populist charge is that these controllers are ‘the liberal elite’. In a security state such as Israel almost any bit of information can be defined as a threat to National Security. In Israel, to exercise censorship is in the interests of national security. It is undertaken by the Military Censor. What she says goes:
Taking the people’s name in vain

Sorry, but we’ve not finished with Trump. An excellent article by Asher Schechter (Haaretz) says Trump is not antisemitic. We should stop projecting threats to our own identity onto him. He is simply an ‘opportunist who stokes racism for his own purposes’. His enemy aliens are Muslims and Mexicans. He probably has no views on Jews as such – unlike his followers.
Too up himself to have any views on Jews

Antisemitism in the USA was, until recently, thought to be dead. That’s changed. Hostility to Muslims – encouraged by the president- has filled the gap. So this story has been posted as a rejoinder and it’s a good story:
Muslims create fund to restore Jewish cemetery

Several articles have been published recently in the US (come on UK – raise your game) on the phenomenon of Zionist anti-semitism. JfJfP has posted several pieces pointing out that in real life Zionists may be antisemitic. Zionists want Israel to be a powerful body in the global assault on belligerent Muslims; as for Jews, they may or may not be thought as alien:
The Zionists who won’t live near Jews

And from Mondoweiss the same phenomenon. There are distinct and horrible echoes of people who admire state power (Israel) and despise the alien weakling. There are distinct fascistic (21st century style) attitudes in the admiration for military Israel versus the largely pacific Jews of Europe:
Antisemitic Zionism

The Israeli NGO B’Tselem is admirable and indispensable. It knows that gathering facts on violence agains Palestinians, the theft of their property, thoroughly researched, is the best response to the Israeli government narrative of being the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’- and all Palestinians are terrorists. Among other methods, they provide cameras which provide evidence that the Israeli story of ‘existential threat’ is nonsense.
Resist by recording Israeli theft and violence
The value of recording equipment