This week’s postings on JfJfP.com website

And a Happy New Year to all our signatories, readers and well-wishers. (And our ill-wishers, may you have better thoughts.)

There is no doubt about the dominant issue in coverage and commentary on Israel / Palestine this turn-of-the-year week, December 29th – January 4th. The application to the UN Security Council, presented by Jordan, to accept a resolution declaring that the borders of Israel, and negotiations for border definition and ending of the occupation, should be completed within two years. The resolution failed, by one vote, to achieve the necessary majority, relieving the US (anxious about its relations with Arab states) of the need  to veto it.

Having failed, the PNA* then, as it said it would, put in its application to become a signatory to the ICC – International Criminal Court, fully aware that this might involve charges against itself of crimes against international law.

This application was hailed by Al Jazeera as a ‘turning point’, evoked apologies from France for supporting the resolution and foot-shuffling from other European countries, who hid their heads under the blanket of ‘negotiations for a two-state solution’. Governments (except for France) unanimously ignored their own parliaments’ resolutions on Palestinian statehood. Will the parliaments respond?

The responses of Israel to this diplomatic move beggars belief. “You cannot agitate and provoke your way to a state” said a spokesman from UN-created Israel, which had done exactly that. Practically, they responded with punitive measures.  Putting a resolution to the UNSC is a crime?
PNA asserts power to prosecute war crimes
Punish PNA for new power
Security Council turns down Palestinian statehood
* On this website, we prefer to use the abbreviation PNA as that government is formally the Palestinian National Authority and PA is a very common abbreviation for many offices and organisations.

Two contrasting articles about making Palestinian resistance effective: Daoud Kuttab makes the excellent point that when Israel launches bloody massacres on Palestinians there is international publicity; when it is enforcing its routine bureaucratic machinery of wretched humiliation and restriction of all freedoms on Palestinians, most of the world ignores it. Ramzy Baroud, another veteran reporter of Palestinian life is, however, encouraged by the energy, variety and resoluteness of Palestinian resistance.
2014 produced a diverse and determined Palestinian resistance, Ramzy Baroud
 Publicise Palestinian plight, Daoud Kuttab

BDS – 2014 the best year so far. An upbeat assessment of the changes effected by the BDS campaign in 2014

And for a thoughtful read, a discussion between Alan Johnson and Michael Walzer of the distinctive politics produced by those with no experience or expectation of state power, European Jews: Politics of stateless Jews

There are many other issues of interest, but for a light-hearted one with a menacing undertow, Know someone who is pro-Palestinian? Secretly, instantly report the scoundrel.