Poor old Lord Keynes. The world's press has spent the past week blackening his name. Not intentionally: most of the dunderheads reporting the G20 summit that took place over the weekend really do believe that he proposed and founded the International Monetary Fund. It's one of those stories that passes unchecked from one journalist to another.The truth is more interesting. At the UN's Bretton Woods conference in 1944, John Maynard Keynes put forward a much better idea. After it was thrown out, Geoffrey Crowther - then the editor of the Economist magazine - warned that "Lord Keynes was right ... the world will bitterly regret the fact that his arguments were rejected." But the world does not regret it, for almost everyone - the Economist included - has forgotten what he proposed.One of the reasons for financial crises is the imbalance of trade between nations. Countries accumulate debt partly as a result of sustaining a trade deficit. They can easily become trapped in a vicious spiral: the bigger their debt, the harder it is to generate a trade surplus. International debt wrecks people's development, trashes the environment and threatens the global system with periodic crises.As Keynes recognised, there is not much the debtor nations can do. Only the countries that maintain a trade surplus have real agency, so it is they who must be obliged to change their policies. His solution was an ingenious system for persuading the creditor nations to spend their surplus money back into the economies of the debtor nations.He proposed a global bank, which he called the International Clearing Union. The bank would issue its own currency - the bancor - which was exchangeable with national currencies at fixed rates of exchange. The bancor would become the unit of account between nations, which means it would be used to measure a country's trade deficit or trade surplus.Every country would have an overdraft facility in its bancor account at the International Clearing Union, equivalent to half the average value of its trade over a five-year period. To make the system work, the members of the union would need a powerful incentive to clear their bancor accounts by the end of the year: to end up with neither a trade deficit nor a trade surplus. But what would the incentive be?Keynes proposed that any country racking up a large trade deficit (equating to more than half of its bancor overdraft allowance) would be charged interest on its account. It would also be obliged to reduce the value of its currency and to prevent the export of capital. But - and this was the key to his system - he insisted that the nations with a trade surplus would be subject to similar pressures. Any country with a bancor credit balance that was more than half the size of its overdraft facility would be charged interest, at a rate of 10%. It would also be obliged to increase the value of its currency and to permit the export of capital. If, by the end of the year, its credit balance exceeded the total value of its permitted overdraft, the surplus would be confiscated. The nations with a surplus would have a powerful incentive to get rid of it. In doing so, they would automatically clear other nations' deficits.When Keynes began to explain his idea, in papers published in 1942 and 1943, it detonated in the minds of all who read it. The British economist Lionel Robbins reported that "it would be difficult to exaggerate the electrifying effect on thought throughout the whole relevant apparatus of government ... nothing so imaginative and so ambitious had ever been discussed". Economists all over the world saw that Keynes had cracked it. As the Allies prepared for the Bretton Woods conference, Britain adopted Keynes's solution as its official negotiating position.But there was one country - at the time the world's biggest creditor - in which his proposal was less welcome. The head of the American delegation at Bretton Woods, Harry Dexter White, responded to Keynes's idea thus: "We have been perfectly adamant on that point. We have taken the position of absolutely no." Instead he proposed an International Stabilisation Fund, which would place the entire burden of maintaining the balance of trade on the deficit nations. It would impose no limits on the surplus that successful exporters could accumulate. He also suggested an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which would provide capital for economic reconstruction after the war. White, backed by the financial clout of the US treasury, prevailed. The International Stabilisation Fund became the International Monetary Fund. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development remains the principal lending arm of the World Bank.The consequences, especially for the poorest indebted countries, have been catastrophic. Acting on behalf of the rich, imposing conditions that no free country would tolerate, the IMF has bled them dry. As Joseph Stiglitz has shown, the fund compounds existing economic crises and creates crises where none existed before. It has destabilised exchange rates, exacerbated balance of payments problems, forced countries into debt and recession, wrecked public services and destroyed the jobs and incomes of tens of millions of people.The countries the fund instructs must place the control of inflation ahead of other economic objectives; immediately remove their barriers to trade and the flow of capital; liberalise their banking systems; reduce government spending on everything except debt repayments; and privatise the assets which can be sold to foreign investors. These happen to be the policies which best suit predatory financial speculators. They have exacerbated almost every crisis the IMF has attempted to solve.You might imagine that the US, which since 1944 has turned from the world's biggest creditor to the world's biggest debtor, would have cause to regret the position it took at Bretton Woods. But Harry Dexter White ensured that the US could never lose. He awarded it special veto powers over any major decision made by the IMF or the World Bank, which means that it will never be subject to the fund's unwelcome demands. The IMF insists that the foreign exchange reserves maintained by other nations are held in the form of dollars. This is one of the reasons why the US economy doesn't collapse, no matter how much debt it accumulates.On Saturday the G20 leaders admitted that "the Bretton Woods institutions must be comprehensively reformed". But the only concrete suggestions they made were that the IMF should be given more money and that poorer nations "should have greater voice and representation". We've already seen what this means: a tiny increase in their voting power, which does nothing to challenge the rich countries' control of the fund, let alone the US veto.Is this the best they can do? No. As the global financial crisis deepens, the rich nations will be forced to recognise that their problems cannot be solved by tinkering with a system that is constitutionally destined to fail. But to understand why the world economy keeps running into trouble, they first need to understand what was lost in 1944.
Thursday, 15 January 2009
This is indeed a class war, and the campaign against the Aga starts here
Climate change allows the richest on earth to trash the lives of the poorest, no matter how Furedi's cult spins it
Comments (501)
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday 13 January 2009
Article history
It would be stupid to claim that environmentalism is never informed by class. Compare, for example, the campaign against patio heaters with the campaign against Agas. Patio heaters are a powerful symbol: heating the atmosphere is not a side-effect, it's their purpose. But to match the fuel consumption of an Aga, a large domestic patio heater would have to run continuously at maximum output for three months a year. Patio heaters burn liquefied petroleum gas, while most Agas use oil, electricity or coal, which produce more CO2. A large Aga running on coal turns out nine tonnes of carbon dioxide per year: five and a half times the total CO2 production of the average UK home. To match that, the patio heater would have to burn for nine months.
So where is the campaign against Agas? There isn't one. I've lost count of the number of aspirational middle-class greens I know who own one of these monsters and believe that they are somehow compatible (perhaps because they look good in a country kitchen) with a green lifestyle. The campaign against Agas - which starts here - will divide rich greens down the middle.
But it is even more stupid to dismiss all environmentalism as a middle-class whim. It's the poor who live beside polluting factories, whose lives are wrecked by opencast mining, who can't afford to move away from motorways or flood zones. They are hit first and worst by climate change. Those who claim that all environmentalists are middle or upper class ignore the tens of millions of peasants and labourers who have mobilised on green issues in south Asia, Africa and Latin America. They indulge a transparent sophistry: some greens are aristocrats; all green issues are therefore the preserve of toffs.
Nowhere is this class-branding more evidently wrong than in the debate over flying. This week the government is expected to announce that a third runway will be built at Heathrow. MPs, airline bosses and rightwing newspapers have been trying to soften us up by insisting that this is happening for the benefit of the poor. Those trying to stop new runways are toffs preventing working-class people from having fun.
The group that has worked hardest to portray the issue this way is the weird cult that arose from the Revolutionary Communist party. This Trotskyist splinter, whose chief theorist is the sociology professor Frank Furedi, has spent the last 30 years moving ever further to the right. The magazine it founded in 1988, Living Marxism (later called LM), celebrated power and demanded total market freedom. It campaigned against bans on tobacco advertising, child pornography and the ownership of handguns. It denied that genocide had taken place in Rwanda, or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. It provided a platform for writers from the hard-right Institute for Economic Affairs and Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise. Frank Furedi started writing for the Centre for Policy Studies, which was founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. He and the LM writer Tony Gilland wrote to the supermarket chains, offering - for £7,500 - to educate "consumers about complex scientific issues".
LM closed in 2000, and was replaced by the web magazine Spiked. Edited by Brendan O'Neill, it concentrates on denying the existence of social and environmental problems, and attacking protest movements with a hatred so intense and disproportionate that it must contain an element of self-disgust.
O'Neill, who still describes himself as a Marxist and blogs for the Guardian, calls environmentalism a "death cult" run by "fear-mongering, snobbish, isolationist puritans". The "anti-flying squad" is "illiberal, irrational, parochial, narrow-minded and backward". Plane Stupid's recent protest at Stansted, he says, was motivated by "unabashed, undiluted, unattractive class hatred".
If you understand and accept what climate science is saying, you need no further explanation for protests against airport expansion. But if, like Brendan and his fellow travellers, you refuse to accept that man-made climate change is real, you must show that the campaign to curb it is the result of an irrational impulse. The impulse they choose, because it's an easy stereotype and it suits their prolier-than-thou posturing, is the urge to preserve the wonders of the world for the upper classes. "Cheap flights," O'Neill claims, "has become code for lowlife scum, an issue through which you can attack the 'underclass', the working class and the nouveau riche with impunity."
The connection seems obvious, doesn't it? More cheap flights must be of greatest benefit to the poor. A campaign against airport expansion must therefore be an attack on working-class aspirations. It might be obvious, but it's wrong.
The Sustainable Development Commission collated the figures on passengers using airports in the United Kingdom between 1987 and 2004. During this period, total passenger numbers more than doubled and the price of flights collapsed. The number of people in the lowest two socio-economic categories (D and E) who flew rose, but their proportion fell, from 10% of passengers in 1987 to 8% in 2004. By 2004, there were over five times as many passengers in classes A and B than in classes D and E.
Today, the Civil Aviation Authority's surveys show, the average gross household income of leisure passengers using Heathrow is £59,000 (the national average is £34,660); the average individual income of the airport's business passengers (36% of its traffic) is £83,000. The wealthiest 18% of the population buy 54% of all tickets, the poorest 18% buy 5%.
O'Neill champions Ryanair, Britain's biggest low-cost carrier, as the hero of the working classes. So where would you expect this airline to place most of its advertising? I have the estimated figures for its spending on newspaper ads in 2007. They show that it placed nothing in the Sun, the News of the World, the Mirror, the Star or the Express, but 52% of its press spending went to the Daily Telegraph. Ryanair knows who its main customers are: second-home owners and people who take foreign holidays several times a year.
Who, in the age of the one-penny ticket, is being prevented from flying? It's not because they can't afford the flights that the poor fly less than the rich; it's because they can't afford the second homes in Tuscany, the skiing holidays at Klosters or the scuba diving in the Bahamas. British people already fly twice as much as citizens of the United States, and one fifth of the world's flights use the UK's airports. If people here don't travel, it's not because of a shortage of runways.
At the core of the campaign against a third Heathrow runway are the blue-collar workers and working-class mums of the village of Sipson, whose homes are due to be flattened so that the rich can fly more. If wealthy people don't like living under a flight path, they can move; the poor just have to lump it. Through climate breakdown, the richest people on earth trash the lives of the poorest.
Yes, this is a class war; and Brendan O'Neill and his fellow travellers have sided with the toffs. These Marxist proletarian firebrands are defending the class they profess to hate. Bosses of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your planes.
www.monbiot.com
Comments (501)
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday 13 January 2009
Article history
It would be stupid to claim that environmentalism is never informed by class. Compare, for example, the campaign against patio heaters with the campaign against Agas. Patio heaters are a powerful symbol: heating the atmosphere is not a side-effect, it's their purpose. But to match the fuel consumption of an Aga, a large domestic patio heater would have to run continuously at maximum output for three months a year. Patio heaters burn liquefied petroleum gas, while most Agas use oil, electricity or coal, which produce more CO2. A large Aga running on coal turns out nine tonnes of carbon dioxide per year: five and a half times the total CO2 production of the average UK home. To match that, the patio heater would have to burn for nine months.
So where is the campaign against Agas? There isn't one. I've lost count of the number of aspirational middle-class greens I know who own one of these monsters and believe that they are somehow compatible (perhaps because they look good in a country kitchen) with a green lifestyle. The campaign against Agas - which starts here - will divide rich greens down the middle.
But it is even more stupid to dismiss all environmentalism as a middle-class whim. It's the poor who live beside polluting factories, whose lives are wrecked by opencast mining, who can't afford to move away from motorways or flood zones. They are hit first and worst by climate change. Those who claim that all environmentalists are middle or upper class ignore the tens of millions of peasants and labourers who have mobilised on green issues in south Asia, Africa and Latin America. They indulge a transparent sophistry: some greens are aristocrats; all green issues are therefore the preserve of toffs.
Nowhere is this class-branding more evidently wrong than in the debate over flying. This week the government is expected to announce that a third runway will be built at Heathrow. MPs, airline bosses and rightwing newspapers have been trying to soften us up by insisting that this is happening for the benefit of the poor. Those trying to stop new runways are toffs preventing working-class people from having fun.
The group that has worked hardest to portray the issue this way is the weird cult that arose from the Revolutionary Communist party. This Trotskyist splinter, whose chief theorist is the sociology professor Frank Furedi, has spent the last 30 years moving ever further to the right. The magazine it founded in 1988, Living Marxism (later called LM), celebrated power and demanded total market freedom. It campaigned against bans on tobacco advertising, child pornography and the ownership of handguns. It denied that genocide had taken place in Rwanda, or ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. It provided a platform for writers from the hard-right Institute for Economic Affairs and Centre for the Defence of Free Enterprise. Frank Furedi started writing for the Centre for Policy Studies, which was founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher. He and the LM writer Tony Gilland wrote to the supermarket chains, offering - for £7,500 - to educate "consumers about complex scientific issues".
LM closed in 2000, and was replaced by the web magazine Spiked. Edited by Brendan O'Neill, it concentrates on denying the existence of social and environmental problems, and attacking protest movements with a hatred so intense and disproportionate that it must contain an element of self-disgust.
O'Neill, who still describes himself as a Marxist and blogs for the Guardian, calls environmentalism a "death cult" run by "fear-mongering, snobbish, isolationist puritans". The "anti-flying squad" is "illiberal, irrational, parochial, narrow-minded and backward". Plane Stupid's recent protest at Stansted, he says, was motivated by "unabashed, undiluted, unattractive class hatred".
If you understand and accept what climate science is saying, you need no further explanation for protests against airport expansion. But if, like Brendan and his fellow travellers, you refuse to accept that man-made climate change is real, you must show that the campaign to curb it is the result of an irrational impulse. The impulse they choose, because it's an easy stereotype and it suits their prolier-than-thou posturing, is the urge to preserve the wonders of the world for the upper classes. "Cheap flights," O'Neill claims, "has become code for lowlife scum, an issue through which you can attack the 'underclass', the working class and the nouveau riche with impunity."
The connection seems obvious, doesn't it? More cheap flights must be of greatest benefit to the poor. A campaign against airport expansion must therefore be an attack on working-class aspirations. It might be obvious, but it's wrong.
The Sustainable Development Commission collated the figures on passengers using airports in the United Kingdom between 1987 and 2004. During this period, total passenger numbers more than doubled and the price of flights collapsed. The number of people in the lowest two socio-economic categories (D and E) who flew rose, but their proportion fell, from 10% of passengers in 1987 to 8% in 2004. By 2004, there were over five times as many passengers in classes A and B than in classes D and E.
Today, the Civil Aviation Authority's surveys show, the average gross household income of leisure passengers using Heathrow is £59,000 (the national average is £34,660); the average individual income of the airport's business passengers (36% of its traffic) is £83,000. The wealthiest 18% of the population buy 54% of all tickets, the poorest 18% buy 5%.
O'Neill champions Ryanair, Britain's biggest low-cost carrier, as the hero of the working classes. So where would you expect this airline to place most of its advertising? I have the estimated figures for its spending on newspaper ads in 2007. They show that it placed nothing in the Sun, the News of the World, the Mirror, the Star or the Express, but 52% of its press spending went to the Daily Telegraph. Ryanair knows who its main customers are: second-home owners and people who take foreign holidays several times a year.
Who, in the age of the one-penny ticket, is being prevented from flying? It's not because they can't afford the flights that the poor fly less than the rich; it's because they can't afford the second homes in Tuscany, the skiing holidays at Klosters or the scuba diving in the Bahamas. British people already fly twice as much as citizens of the United States, and one fifth of the world's flights use the UK's airports. If people here don't travel, it's not because of a shortage of runways.
At the core of the campaign against a third Heathrow runway are the blue-collar workers and working-class mums of the village of Sipson, whose homes are due to be flattened so that the rich can fly more. If wealthy people don't like living under a flight path, they can move; the poor just have to lump it. Through climate breakdown, the richest people on earth trash the lives of the poorest.
Yes, this is a class war; and Brendan O'Neill and his fellow travellers have sided with the toffs. These Marxist proletarian firebrands are defending the class they profess to hate. Bosses of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your planes.
www.monbiot.com
Straw plan for private inquests back on agenda
• National security cases would be held with no jury
• Reform of murder law also on coroners and justice bill
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009
Article history
Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will today revive his plan to hold inquests that involve aspects of national security in private without a jury when the coroners and justice bill is published.
The controversial measure, which could be invoked in cases like those of British servicemen killed by American forces in Iraq and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London tube, was shelved last month when it faced severe criticism during the passage of the Counter-Terrorism Act.
Straw is to confirm today that the bill will also contain a proposal first floated two years ago to prevent high-profile convicted criminals from profiting from published accounts of their crimes.
He is to introduce a civil recovery scheme targeting the profits made by criminals serving sentences of at least two years without making the publishing, film and media industries criminally liable at the same time.
Accounts of prison life, such as those published by Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, will be exempt from the new provisions as will accounts of criminal activity that was never punished, accounts of other people's crimes or truly fictional works. The publishing industry has already voiced its anxiety about the plan amid fears that bestselling author and former drug smuggler Howard Marks could be among those targeted as well as recent autobiographies by "serial hostage taker" Charles Bronson and former paramilitary leader, Johnny Adair. But it is not yet clear whether the civil recovery scheme will operate retrospectively.
The coroners and justice bill will also contain the first overhaul for 50 years of the law on murder, with reforms of the partial defences of provocation and diminished responsibility.
The reintroduction of the plan to hold inquests into deaths involving aspects of national security with a specially selected coroner sitting without a jury is expected to lead to renewed parliamentary opposition. The joint human rights committee has already described the proposal as "an astonishing provision" with serious implications for the obligation, under the European convention on human rights, to provide an adequate and effective investigation where a person has been killed as a result of the use of force by a state agent.
Ministers believe the proposal is needed to enable inquests to be held in cases which involve material that shouldn't be made public in the interests of national security. But the secret inquest plan could also apply in cases which could affect Britain's relationship with its allies.
Eighteen months ago Oxfordshire coroner Andrew Walker ruled that the killing of a British soldier, Lance Corporal Matty Hull, when his convoy in Iraq was fired on by a US pilot was an unlawful criminal act. Walker went on to strongly criticise the Ministry of Defence in a series of inquests into deaths of servicemen in Iraq.
In the Menezes case, the problem was circumvented by security services officers giving evidence anonymously.
Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian, Wednesday 14 January 2009
Article history
Jack Straw, the justice secretary, will today revive his plan to hold inquests that involve aspects of national security in private without a jury when the coroners and justice bill is published.
The controversial measure, which could be invoked in cases like those of British servicemen killed by American forces in Iraq and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes on the London tube, was shelved last month when it faced severe criticism during the passage of the Counter-Terrorism Act.
Straw is to confirm today that the bill will also contain a proposal first floated two years ago to prevent high-profile convicted criminals from profiting from published accounts of their crimes.
He is to introduce a civil recovery scheme targeting the profits made by criminals serving sentences of at least two years without making the publishing, film and media industries criminally liable at the same time.
Accounts of prison life, such as those published by Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken, will be exempt from the new provisions as will accounts of criminal activity that was never punished, accounts of other people's crimes or truly fictional works. The publishing industry has already voiced its anxiety about the plan amid fears that bestselling author and former drug smuggler Howard Marks could be among those targeted as well as recent autobiographies by "serial hostage taker" Charles Bronson and former paramilitary leader, Johnny Adair. But it is not yet clear whether the civil recovery scheme will operate retrospectively.
The coroners and justice bill will also contain the first overhaul for 50 years of the law on murder, with reforms of the partial defences of provocation and diminished responsibility.
The reintroduction of the plan to hold inquests into deaths involving aspects of national security with a specially selected coroner sitting without a jury is expected to lead to renewed parliamentary opposition. The joint human rights committee has already described the proposal as "an astonishing provision" with serious implications for the obligation, under the European convention on human rights, to provide an adequate and effective investigation where a person has been killed as a result of the use of force by a state agent.
Ministers believe the proposal is needed to enable inquests to be held in cases which involve material that shouldn't be made public in the interests of national security. But the secret inquest plan could also apply in cases which could affect Britain's relationship with its allies.
Eighteen months ago Oxfordshire coroner Andrew Walker ruled that the killing of a British soldier, Lance Corporal Matty Hull, when his convoy in Iraq was fired on by a US pilot was an unlawful criminal act. Walker went on to strongly criticise the Ministry of Defence in a series of inquests into deaths of servicemen in Iraq.
In the Menezes case, the problem was circumvented by security services officers giving evidence anonymously.
THE 1947 PARTITION OF PALESTINE
Palestine's land surface was approximately 26,320,505 dunums (26,320 km²), of which about one third was cultivable. By comparison, the size of modern day Israel (as of 2006) is 20,770,000 dunums (20,770 km²) (Geography of Israel). The land in Jewish possession had risen from 456,000 dunums (456 km²) in 1920 to 1,393,000 dunums (1,393 km²) in 1945[58] and 1,850,000 dunums (1,850 km²) by 1947 (Avneri p. 224).[59] No reliable figures of private land ownership by Arabs were available, due to the lack of centralized records under the Ottoman Land Code. The 1939 White Paper had imposed prohibitions and restrictions on land transfers to the Jewish citizenry. As a result, 94 per cent of the territory was reserved for Arab use on a de facto and de jure basis. The Zionist Organization had established a similar system under the Jewish National Fund, or JNF, which held its land purchases in trust 'for the Jewish people as a whole'.[60] The Fund's charter specified that the purpose of the JNF was to purchase land for the settlement of Jews. This was usually interpreted to mean that the JNF should not lease land to non-Jews.
The UN General Assembly made a recommendation for a three-way partition of Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally administered zone including the religiously significant towns Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The two states envisioned in the plan were each composed of three major sections, linked by extraterritorial crossroads. The Jewish state would receive the Coastal Plain, stretching from Haifa to Rehovot, the Eastern Galilee (surrounding the Sea of Galilee and including the Galilee panhandle) and the Negev, including the southern outpost of Umm Rashrash (now Eilat). The Arab state would receive the Western Galilee, with the town of Acre, the Samarian highlands and the Judean highlands, and the southern coast stretching from north of Isdud (now Ashdod) and encompassing what is now the Gaza Strip, with a section of desert along the Egyptian border.
The partition defined by the General Assembly resolution differed somewhat from the UNSCOP report partition. Most notably, Jaffa was constituted as an enclave of the Arab State and the boundaries were modified to include Beersheba and a large section of the Negev desert within the Arab State and a section of the Dead Sea shore within the Jewish State.
The land allocated to the Arab state (about 43% of Mandatory Palestine[61]) consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one third of the coastline. The highlands contain the major aquifers of Palestine, which supplied water to the coastal cities of central Palestine, including Tel Aviv. The Jewish state was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.[61] The state included three fertile lowland plains — the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley.
The bulk of the proposed Jewish State's territory, however, consisted of the Negev Desert. The desert was not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time. The Jewish state was also given sole access to the Red Sea.
The plan called for the new states to honor the existing international commitments and submit any disputes to the International Court of Justice. Under the Anglo-French Accords of 1922, 1923 and 1926 Syria and Lebanon had been granted the same rights of access to Lake Tiberias (aka Sea of Galilee and Lake Kinneret) as the Jewish and Arab Palestinians in the British Mandate territory. Under the 1923 Agreement:
"...Any existing rights over the use of waters of the Jordan by the inhabitants of Syria shall be maintained unimpaired.... ... The inhabitants of Syria and of the Lebanon shall have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lakes Huleh and Tiberias and on the River Jordan between the said lakes as the inhabitants of Palestine, but the Government of Palestine shall be responsible for the policing of the lakes.[62]
The 1926 Accord stipulated that
"All the inhabitants, whether settled or semi-nomadic, of both territories who, at the date of the signature of this agreement enjoy grazing, watering or cultivation rights, or own land on the one or the other side of the frontier shall continue to exercise their rights as in the past."
Apart from the Negev, the land allocated to the Jewish state was largely made up of areas in which there was a significant Jewish population. The land allocated to the Arab state was populated almost solely by Arabs.[63]
The plan tried its best to accommodate as many Jews as possible into the Jewish state. In many specific cases, this meant including areas of Arab majority (but with a significant Jewish minority) in the Jewish state. Thus the Jewish State would have an overall large Arab minority. Areas that were sparsely populated (like the Negev), were also included in the Jewish state to create room for immigration in order to relieve the "Jewish Problem".[64]
The UNSCOP plan would have had the following demographics (data based on 1945). This data does not reflect the actual land ownership by Jews, local Arabs, Ottomans and other land owners. This data also excludes the land designated to Arabs in trans-Jordan (country of Jordan, west of the river Jordan).
Territory
Arab and other population
% Arab and other
Jewish population
% Jewish
Total population
Arab State
725,000
99%
10,000
1%
735,000
Jewish State
407,000
45%
498,000
55%
905,000
International
105,000
51%
100,000
49%
205,000
Total
1,237,000
67%
608,000
33%
1,845,000
Data from the Report of UNSCOP — 1947
The UNSCOP Report also noted that "in addition there will be in the Jewish State about 90,000 Bedouins, cultivators and stock owners who seek grazing further afield in dry seasons."[65]
Iraq & Israel: Double Standards
The Middle East roadmap is another example of how Israel is treated as a special case when it comes to obeying Security Council resolutions. Iraq suffered invasion, allegedly because it failed to obey Security Council resolutions. By contrast, the roadmap process, like the Oslo process before it, allows Israel to negotiate about the extent to which it obeys Security Council resolutions, if at all.
Jack Straw told the House of Commons on 25 November 2002:
"Today, Iraq stands in breach of nine separate chapter VII Security Council resolutions. It has completely ignored 23 distinct obligations out of a total of 27. That plainly cannot be allowed to continue. As President Bush said to the UN General Assembly on 12 September, the UN has either to enforce the writ of its own resolution or risk becoming irrelevant. Happily, the Security Council responded to his challenge [by passing resolution 1441]."
President Bush had told the UN General Assembly:
"We want the United Nations to be effective, and respectful, and successful. We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime."
Today, states other than Iraq stand in breach of upwards of a hundred Security Council resolutions. But, strangely, neither George nor Jack is in the least bit concerned that the UN is risking irrelevance by failing to enforce these. Israel is the worst culprit: it's in breach of more than 30 resolutions stretching back over more than 30 years, most stemming from its occupation and subsequent colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.
It is widely assumed that these resolutions require action by parties other than Israel, and that is why it is appropriate to have a peace process in which all parties can take part. Israel has done a good job of giving currency to this notion, even though a glance at Security Council resolutions concerning Israel (which are available on the UN website here) quickly shows that it is unfounded.
Even the Prime Minister believes it to be true, though perhaps it is merely a convenient pretence on his part. Defending his government's belligerent attitude to Iraq for non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, while condoning Israel's non-compliance, he told the House of Commons on 24 September 2002:
"I think that one thing, however, must be stated clearly: the UN resolutions in respect of the Middle East impose obligations on both sides. They impose obligations in respect of support for terrorism and recognition of Israel as well as withdrawal from the occupied territories. That is why, in the end, the only way of making progress in the Middle East is for all the aspects of the UN's will to be implemented in relation to the Middle East."
That is just wrong, as we shall see.
Arguably resolution 242 on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories passed on 22 November 1967 does require action by other parties. The key paragraph of it is:
"[The Security Council] Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
"(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
"(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;"
Certainly, the inclusion of sub-paragraph (ii) has given Israel the excuse not to implement (i) and withdraw from the territories it occupied since 1967.
But this is not true of about 30 resolutions against Israel (see list compiled by Stephen Zunes here). Each of these is an explicit demand for action from Israel, and Israel alone.
Three examples:
252 (21 May 1968) on the annexation of parts of Jerusalem:
"2. [The Security Council] Considers that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status;
"3. [The Security Council] Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind all such measures already taken and to desist forthwith from taking any further action which tends to change the status of Jerusalem;"
446 (22 March 1979) on the establishment of Jewish settlements:
"[The Security Council] Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories;"
497 (17 December 1981) on the annexation of the Golan Heights:
"1. [The Security Council] Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect;
"2. [The Security Council] Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, should rescind forthwith its decision;"
Those resolutions place obligations on Israel, and Israel alone, and it is obviously within Israel's power of Israel to carry out those obligations. None of them require negotiation with other states. Israel doesn't need to negotiate with anybody before undoing the annexation of the annexed parts of Jerusalem or of the Golan Heights. Nor does it need to negotiate with anybody before dismantling the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
The US/UK invaded Iraq and overthrew its regime, for failing to obey Security Council resolutions (allegedly). If the same standard were applied to Israel, it would be required to obey those resolutions that demand action from it alone, prior to any peace process to bring about a wider settlement in Palestine.
Ethnic cleansing
Double standards are in operation about the implementation of Security Council resolutions. They are also in operation about ethnic cleansing. Palestinian refugees expelled from their lands in 1947/8 and 1967 will not be allowed to return by Israel, and it can be guaranteed that no Western government will say a word of support for their right of return, let alone do something to bring it about.
Compare that the paroxysms of righteous anger that were generated by ethnic cleansing (of non-Serbs, at least) in Yugoslavia; it was unthinkable that ethnic cleansing be allowed to stand there, and the West was even prepared to contemplate military action to reverse it.
Labour & Trade Union Review
July 2003
You recall that the USA and UK invaded Iraq for its failure to comply with Security Council Resolutions here are the other resoltutions that Israel and other USA allies have not complied with but no action has been taken!!!
The cases are listed in order of resolution number, followed by the year in which the resolution was passed, the country or countries in violation, and a brief description of the resolution.
Resolution 252 (1968) IsraelUrgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon.
262 (1968) IsraelCalls upon Israel to pay compensation to Lebanon for destruction of airliners at Beirut International Airport.
267 (1969) IsraelUrgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
271 (1969) IsraelReiterates calls to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem and calls on Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers.
298 (1971) IsraelReiterates demand that Israel rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
353 (1974) TurkeyCalls on nations to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Cyprus and for the withdrawal without delay of foreign troops from Cyprus.
354 (1974) TurkeyReiterates provisions of UNSC resolution 353.
360 (1974) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus "without delay."
364 (1974) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
367 (1975) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
370 (1975) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
377 (1979) MoroccoCalls on countries to respect the right of self-determination for Western Sahara.
379 (1979) MoroccoCalls for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Western Sahara.
380 (1979) MoroccoReiterates the need for compliance with previous resolutions.
391 (1976) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
401 (1976) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
414 (1977) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
422 (1977) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
440 (1978) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
446 (1979) IsraelCalls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers, to rescind previous measures that violate these relevant provisions, and "in particular, not to transport parts of its civilian population into the occupied Arab territories."
452 (1979) IsraelCalls on the government of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction, and planning of settlements in the Arab territories, occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.
465 (1980) IsraelReiterates previous resolutions on Israel's settlements policy.
471 (1980) IsraelDemands prosecution of those involved in assassination attempts of West Bank leaders and compensation for damages; reiterates demands to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention.
484 (1980) IsraelReiterates request that Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
487 (1981) IsraelCalls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
497 (1981) IsraelDemands that Israel rescind its decision to impose its domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan region.
541 (1983) TurkeyReiterates the need for compliance with prior resolutions and demands that the declaration of an independent Turkish Cypriot state be withdrawn.
550 (1984) TurkeyReiterates UNSC resolution 541 and insists that member states may "not to facilitate or in any way assist" the secessionist entity.
573 (1985) IsraelCalls on Israel to pay compensation for human and material losses from its attack against Tunisia and to refrain from all such attacks or threats of attacks against other nations.
592 (1986) IsraelInsists Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Conventions in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories.
605 (1987) Israel"Calls once more upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide immediately and scrupulously by the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, and to desist forthwith from its policies and practices that are in violations of the provisions of the Convention."
607 (1986) IsraelReiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
608 (1988) IsraelReiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
636 (1989) IsraelReiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
641 (1989) IsraelReiterates previous resolutions calling on Israel to desist in its deportations.
658 (1990) MoroccoCalls upon Morocco to "cooperate fully" with the Secretary General of the United Nations and the chairman of the Organization of African Unity "in their efforts aimed at an early settlement of the question of Western Sahara."
672 (1990) IsraelReiterates calls for Israel to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
673 (1990) IsraelInsists that Israel come into compliance with resolution 672.
681 (1990) IsraelReiterates call on Israel to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
690 (1991) MoroccoCalls upon both parties to cooperate fully with the Secretary General in implementing a referendum on the fate of the territory.
694 (1991) IsraelReiterates that Israel "must refrain from deporting any Palestinian civilian from the occupied territories and ensure the safe and immediate return of all those deported."
716 (1991) TurkeyReaffirms previous resolutions on Cyprus.
725 (1991) Morocco"Calls upon the two parties to cooperate fully in the settlement plan."
726 (1992) IsraelReiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
799 (1992) Israel"Reaffirms applicability of Fourth Geneva Convention…to all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and affirms that deportation of civilians constitutes a contravention of its obligations under the Convention."
809 (1992) MoroccoReiterates call to cooperate with the peace settlement plan, particularly regarding voter eligibility for referendum.
822 (1993) ArmeniaCalls for Armenia to implement the "immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from the Kelbadjar district and other recently occupied areas of Azerbaijan."
853 (1993) ArmeniaDemands "complete and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces" from Azerbaijani territory.
874 (1993) ArmeniaReiterates calls for withdrawal of occupation forces.
884 (1993) ArmeniaCalls on Armenia to use its influence to force compliance by Armenian militias to previous resolutions and to withdraw its remaining occupation forces.
904 (1994) IsraelCalls upon Israel, as the occupying power, "to take and implement measures, inter alia, confiscation of arms, with the aim of preventing illegal acts of violence by settlers."
973 (1995) MoroccoReiterates the need for cooperation with United Nations and expediting referendum on the fate of Western Sahara.
995 (1995) MoroccoCalls for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts to move forward with a referendum.
1002 (1995) MoroccoReiteration of call for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts.
1009 (1995) CroatiaDemands that Croatia "respect fully the rights of the local Serb population to remain, leave, or return in safety."
1017 (1995) MoroccoReiterates the call for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts and to cease "procrastinating actions which could further delay the referendum."
1033 (1995) MoroccoReiterates call for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts.
1044 (1996) SudanCalls upon Sudan to extradite to Ethiopia for prosecution three suspects in an assassination attempt of visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and to cease its support for sanctuary and offering of sanctuary to terrorists.
1054 (1996) SudanDemands that Sudan come into compliance with UNSC resolution 1044.
1056 (1996) MoroccoCalls for the release of political prisoners from occupied Western Sahara.
1070 (1996) SudanReiterates demands to comply with 1044 and 1054.
1073 (1996) Israel"Calls on the safety and security of Palestinian civilians to be ensured."
1079 (1996) CroatiaReaffirms right of return for Serbian refugees to Croatia.
1092 (1996) Turkey/CyprusCalls for a reduction of foreign troops in Cyprus as the first step toward a total withdrawal troops as well as a reduction in military spending.
1117 (1997) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a reduction of foreign troops in Cyprus as the first step toward a total withdrawal troops and reduction in military spending.
1120 (1997) CroatiaReaffirms right of return for Serbian refugees to Croatia and calls on Croatia to change certain policies that obstruct this right, and to treat its citizens equally regardless of ethnic origin.
1145 (1997) CroatiaReiterates Croatian responsibility in supporting the political and economic rights of its people regardless of ethnic origin.
1172 (1998) India, PakistanCalls upon India and Pakistan to cease their development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
1178 (1998) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a substantial reduction of foreign troops and reduction in military spending.
1185 (1998) MoroccoCalls for the lifting of restrictions of movement by aircraft of UN peacekeeping force.
1215 (1998) MoroccoUrges Morocco to promptly sign a "status of forces agreement."
1217 (1998) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a substantial reduction of foreign troops and reduction in military spending.
1251 (1999) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a substantial reduction of foreign troops and reduction in military spending.
1264 (1999) IndonesiaCalls on Indonesia to provide safe return for refugees and punish those for acts of violence during and after the referendum campaign.
1272 (1999) IndonesiaStresses the need for Indonesia to provide for the safe return for refugees and maintain the civilian and humanitarian character of refugee camps.
1283 (1999) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolution 1251.
1303 (2000) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolutions 1283 and 1251.
1319 (2000) IndonesiaInsists that Indonesia "take immediate additional steps, in fulfillment of its responsibilities, to disarm and disband the militia immediately, restore law and order in the affected areas of West Timor, ensure safety and security in the refugee camps and for humanitarian workers, and prevent incursions into East Timor." Stresses that those guilty of attacks on international personnel be brought to justice and reiterates the need to provide safe return for refugees who wish to repatriate and provide resettlement for those wishing to stay in Indonesia.
1322 (2000) IsraelCalls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying power.
1331 (2000) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolution 1251 and subsequent resolutions.
1338 (2001) IndonesiaCalls for Indonesian cooperation with the UN and other international agencies in the fulfillment of UNSC resolution 1319.
1359 (2001) MoroccoCalls on the parties to "abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law to release without further delay all those held since the start of the conflict."
1384 (2001) Turkey/CyprusReiterates 1251 and all relevant resolutions on Cyprus.
1402 (2002) IsraelCalls for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian cities.
1403 (2002) IsraelDemands that Israel go through with "the implementation of its resolution 1402, without delay."
1405 (2002) IsraelCalls for UN inspectors to investigate civilian deaths during an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
1416 (2002) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolution 1251 and all relevant resolutions on Cyprus.
1435 (2002) IsraelCalls on Israel to withdraw to positions of September 2000 and end its military activities in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of security and civilian infrastructure.
Explanatory Notes:
This list deals exclusively with resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, a fifteen-member body consisting of five permanent members (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) and ten non-permanent members elected for rotating two-year terms representing various regions of the world. The Security Council's primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, is for the maintenance of international peace and security. For a resolution to pass, it must be approved by a majority of the total membership with no dissenting vote from any of the five permanent members. Since the early 1970s, the United States has used its veto power nearly fifty times, more than all other permanent members during that same period combined. In the vast majority of these cases, the U.S. was the only dissenting vote. The preceding list, therefore, includes only resolutions where the United States voted in the affirmative or abstained.
This list does not include resolutions that merely condemn a particular action, only those that specifically proscribe a particular ongoing activity or future activity and/or call upon a particular government to implement a particular action. Nor does this list does include resolutions where the language is ambiguous enough to make assertions of noncompliance debatable, such as UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 on the Arab-Israeli conflict that put forward the formula of "land for peace," to cite the most famous. Similarly, it does not include broad resolutions calling for universal compliance not in reference to a particular conflict, particularly if there is not a clear definition. For example, in a resolution that proscribes the harboring of terrorists, there is no clear definition for what constitutes a terrorist. This list does not include nonstate actors, such as secessionist governments, rebel groups or terrorists, only recognized nation-states.
Furthermore, this list does not include resolutions that were also violated for a number of years that are now moot (such as those dealing with Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, South Africa's occupation of Namibia, and Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon). If these were also included, the number of violations would double. In most of these cases, the United States played a key role in blocking enforcement of these resolutions as well.
Finally, it should be noted that this is only a partial list, since some of the resolutions involved technical questions I was unable to judge, particularly when they involved parts of the world with which we were less familiar. S.Z.
The UN General Assembly made a recommendation for a three-way partition of Palestine into a Jewish State, an Arab State and a small internationally administered zone including the religiously significant towns Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The two states envisioned in the plan were each composed of three major sections, linked by extraterritorial crossroads. The Jewish state would receive the Coastal Plain, stretching from Haifa to Rehovot, the Eastern Galilee (surrounding the Sea of Galilee and including the Galilee panhandle) and the Negev, including the southern outpost of Umm Rashrash (now Eilat). The Arab state would receive the Western Galilee, with the town of Acre, the Samarian highlands and the Judean highlands, and the southern coast stretching from north of Isdud (now Ashdod) and encompassing what is now the Gaza Strip, with a section of desert along the Egyptian border.
The partition defined by the General Assembly resolution differed somewhat from the UNSCOP report partition. Most notably, Jaffa was constituted as an enclave of the Arab State and the boundaries were modified to include Beersheba and a large section of the Negev desert within the Arab State and a section of the Dead Sea shore within the Jewish State.
The land allocated to the Arab state (about 43% of Mandatory Palestine[61]) consisted of all of the highlands, except for Jerusalem, plus one third of the coastline. The highlands contain the major aquifers of Palestine, which supplied water to the coastal cities of central Palestine, including Tel Aviv. The Jewish state was to receive 56% of Mandatory Palestine, a slightly larger area to accommodate the increasing numbers of Jews who would immigrate there.[61] The state included three fertile lowland plains — the Sharon on the coast, the Jezreel Valley and the upper Jordan Valley.
The bulk of the proposed Jewish State's territory, however, consisted of the Negev Desert. The desert was not suitable for agriculture, nor for urban development at that time. The Jewish state was also given sole access to the Red Sea.
The plan called for the new states to honor the existing international commitments and submit any disputes to the International Court of Justice. Under the Anglo-French Accords of 1922, 1923 and 1926 Syria and Lebanon had been granted the same rights of access to Lake Tiberias (aka Sea of Galilee and Lake Kinneret) as the Jewish and Arab Palestinians in the British Mandate territory. Under the 1923 Agreement:
"...Any existing rights over the use of waters of the Jordan by the inhabitants of Syria shall be maintained unimpaired.... ... The inhabitants of Syria and of the Lebanon shall have the same fishing and navigation rights on Lakes Huleh and Tiberias and on the River Jordan between the said lakes as the inhabitants of Palestine, but the Government of Palestine shall be responsible for the policing of the lakes.[62]
The 1926 Accord stipulated that
"All the inhabitants, whether settled or semi-nomadic, of both territories who, at the date of the signature of this agreement enjoy grazing, watering or cultivation rights, or own land on the one or the other side of the frontier shall continue to exercise their rights as in the past."
Apart from the Negev, the land allocated to the Jewish state was largely made up of areas in which there was a significant Jewish population. The land allocated to the Arab state was populated almost solely by Arabs.[63]
The plan tried its best to accommodate as many Jews as possible into the Jewish state. In many specific cases, this meant including areas of Arab majority (but with a significant Jewish minority) in the Jewish state. Thus the Jewish State would have an overall large Arab minority. Areas that were sparsely populated (like the Negev), were also included in the Jewish state to create room for immigration in order to relieve the "Jewish Problem".[64]
The UNSCOP plan would have had the following demographics (data based on 1945). This data does not reflect the actual land ownership by Jews, local Arabs, Ottomans and other land owners. This data also excludes the land designated to Arabs in trans-Jordan (country of Jordan, west of the river Jordan).
Territory
Arab and other population
% Arab and other
Jewish population
% Jewish
Total population
Arab State
725,000
99%
10,000
1%
735,000
Jewish State
407,000
45%
498,000
55%
905,000
International
105,000
51%
100,000
49%
205,000
Total
1,237,000
67%
608,000
33%
1,845,000
Data from the Report of UNSCOP — 1947
The UNSCOP Report also noted that "in addition there will be in the Jewish State about 90,000 Bedouins, cultivators and stock owners who seek grazing further afield in dry seasons."[65]
Iraq & Israel: Double Standards
The Middle East roadmap is another example of how Israel is treated as a special case when it comes to obeying Security Council resolutions. Iraq suffered invasion, allegedly because it failed to obey Security Council resolutions. By contrast, the roadmap process, like the Oslo process before it, allows Israel to negotiate about the extent to which it obeys Security Council resolutions, if at all.
Jack Straw told the House of Commons on 25 November 2002:
"Today, Iraq stands in breach of nine separate chapter VII Security Council resolutions. It has completely ignored 23 distinct obligations out of a total of 27. That plainly cannot be allowed to continue. As President Bush said to the UN General Assembly on 12 September, the UN has either to enforce the writ of its own resolution or risk becoming irrelevant. Happily, the Security Council responded to his challenge [by passing resolution 1441]."
President Bush had told the UN General Assembly:
"We want the United Nations to be effective, and respectful, and successful. We want the resolutions of the world's most important multilateral body to be enforced. And right now those resolutions are being unilaterally subverted by the Iraqi regime."
Today, states other than Iraq stand in breach of upwards of a hundred Security Council resolutions. But, strangely, neither George nor Jack is in the least bit concerned that the UN is risking irrelevance by failing to enforce these. Israel is the worst culprit: it's in breach of more than 30 resolutions stretching back over more than 30 years, most stemming from its occupation and subsequent colonisation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.
It is widely assumed that these resolutions require action by parties other than Israel, and that is why it is appropriate to have a peace process in which all parties can take part. Israel has done a good job of giving currency to this notion, even though a glance at Security Council resolutions concerning Israel (which are available on the UN website here) quickly shows that it is unfounded.
Even the Prime Minister believes it to be true, though perhaps it is merely a convenient pretence on his part. Defending his government's belligerent attitude to Iraq for non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, while condoning Israel's non-compliance, he told the House of Commons on 24 September 2002:
"I think that one thing, however, must be stated clearly: the UN resolutions in respect of the Middle East impose obligations on both sides. They impose obligations in respect of support for terrorism and recognition of Israel as well as withdrawal from the occupied territories. That is why, in the end, the only way of making progress in the Middle East is for all the aspects of the UN's will to be implemented in relation to the Middle East."
That is just wrong, as we shall see.
Arguably resolution 242 on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories passed on 22 November 1967 does require action by other parties. The key paragraph of it is:
"[The Security Council] Affirms that the fulfilment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:
"(i) Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;
"(ii) Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;"
Certainly, the inclusion of sub-paragraph (ii) has given Israel the excuse not to implement (i) and withdraw from the territories it occupied since 1967.
But this is not true of about 30 resolutions against Israel (see list compiled by Stephen Zunes here). Each of these is an explicit demand for action from Israel, and Israel alone.
Three examples:
252 (21 May 1968) on the annexation of parts of Jerusalem:
"2. [The Security Council] Considers that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status;
"3. [The Security Council] Urgently calls upon Israel to rescind all such measures already taken and to desist forthwith from taking any further action which tends to change the status of Jerusalem;"
446 (22 March 1979) on the establishment of Jewish settlements:
"[The Security Council] Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the occupied Arab territories;"
497 (17 December 1981) on the annexation of the Golan Heights:
"1. [The Security Council] Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect;
"2. [The Security Council] Demands that Israel, the occupying Power, should rescind forthwith its decision;"
Those resolutions place obligations on Israel, and Israel alone, and it is obviously within Israel's power of Israel to carry out those obligations. None of them require negotiation with other states. Israel doesn't need to negotiate with anybody before undoing the annexation of the annexed parts of Jerusalem or of the Golan Heights. Nor does it need to negotiate with anybody before dismantling the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.
The US/UK invaded Iraq and overthrew its regime, for failing to obey Security Council resolutions (allegedly). If the same standard were applied to Israel, it would be required to obey those resolutions that demand action from it alone, prior to any peace process to bring about a wider settlement in Palestine.
Ethnic cleansing
Double standards are in operation about the implementation of Security Council resolutions. They are also in operation about ethnic cleansing. Palestinian refugees expelled from their lands in 1947/8 and 1967 will not be allowed to return by Israel, and it can be guaranteed that no Western government will say a word of support for their right of return, let alone do something to bring it about.
Compare that the paroxysms of righteous anger that were generated by ethnic cleansing (of non-Serbs, at least) in Yugoslavia; it was unthinkable that ethnic cleansing be allowed to stand there, and the West was even prepared to contemplate military action to reverse it.
Labour & Trade Union Review
July 2003
You recall that the USA and UK invaded Iraq for its failure to comply with Security Council Resolutions here are the other resoltutions that Israel and other USA allies have not complied with but no action has been taken!!!
The cases are listed in order of resolution number, followed by the year in which the resolution was passed, the country or countries in violation, and a brief description of the resolution.
Resolution 252 (1968) IsraelUrgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures that change the legal status of Jerusalem, including the expropriation of land and properties thereon.
262 (1968) IsraelCalls upon Israel to pay compensation to Lebanon for destruction of airliners at Beirut International Airport.
267 (1969) IsraelUrgently calls upon Israel to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
271 (1969) IsraelReiterates calls to rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem and calls on Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers.
298 (1971) IsraelReiterates demand that Israel rescind measures seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem.
353 (1974) TurkeyCalls on nations to respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Cyprus and for the withdrawal without delay of foreign troops from Cyprus.
354 (1974) TurkeyReiterates provisions of UNSC resolution 353.
360 (1974) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus "without delay."
364 (1974) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
367 (1975) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
370 (1975) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
377 (1979) MoroccoCalls on countries to respect the right of self-determination for Western Sahara.
379 (1979) MoroccoCalls for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Western Sahara.
380 (1979) MoroccoReiterates the need for compliance with previous resolutions.
391 (1976) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
401 (1976) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
414 (1977) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
422 (1977) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
440 (1978) TurkeyReaffirms the need for compliance with prior resolutions regarding Cyprus.
446 (1979) IsraelCalls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying powers, to rescind previous measures that violate these relevant provisions, and "in particular, not to transport parts of its civilian population into the occupied Arab territories."
452 (1979) IsraelCalls on the government of Israel to cease, on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction, and planning of settlements in the Arab territories, occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.
465 (1980) IsraelReiterates previous resolutions on Israel's settlements policy.
471 (1980) IsraelDemands prosecution of those involved in assassination attempts of West Bank leaders and compensation for damages; reiterates demands to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention.
484 (1980) IsraelReiterates request that Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention.
487 (1981) IsraelCalls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the safeguard of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency.
497 (1981) IsraelDemands that Israel rescind its decision to impose its domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan region.
541 (1983) TurkeyReiterates the need for compliance with prior resolutions and demands that the declaration of an independent Turkish Cypriot state be withdrawn.
550 (1984) TurkeyReiterates UNSC resolution 541 and insists that member states may "not to facilitate or in any way assist" the secessionist entity.
573 (1985) IsraelCalls on Israel to pay compensation for human and material losses from its attack against Tunisia and to refrain from all such attacks or threats of attacks against other nations.
592 (1986) IsraelInsists Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva Conventions in East Jerusalem and other occupied territories.
605 (1987) Israel"Calls once more upon Israel, the occupying Power, to abide immediately and scrupulously by the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Times of War, and to desist forthwith from its policies and practices that are in violations of the provisions of the Convention."
607 (1986) IsraelReiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
608 (1988) IsraelReiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
636 (1989) IsraelReiterates call for Israel to cease its deportations.
641 (1989) IsraelReiterates previous resolutions calling on Israel to desist in its deportations.
658 (1990) MoroccoCalls upon Morocco to "cooperate fully" with the Secretary General of the United Nations and the chairman of the Organization of African Unity "in their efforts aimed at an early settlement of the question of Western Sahara."
672 (1990) IsraelReiterates calls for Israel to abide by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
673 (1990) IsraelInsists that Israel come into compliance with resolution 672.
681 (1990) IsraelReiterates call on Israel to abide by Fourth Geneva Convention in the occupied Arab territories.
690 (1991) MoroccoCalls upon both parties to cooperate fully with the Secretary General in implementing a referendum on the fate of the territory.
694 (1991) IsraelReiterates that Israel "must refrain from deporting any Palestinian civilian from the occupied territories and ensure the safe and immediate return of all those deported."
716 (1991) TurkeyReaffirms previous resolutions on Cyprus.
725 (1991) Morocco"Calls upon the two parties to cooperate fully in the settlement plan."
726 (1992) IsraelReiterates calls on Israel to abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention and to cease its practice of deportations from occupied Arab territories.
799 (1992) Israel"Reaffirms applicability of Fourth Geneva Convention…to all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including Jerusalem, and affirms that deportation of civilians constitutes a contravention of its obligations under the Convention."
809 (1992) MoroccoReiterates call to cooperate with the peace settlement plan, particularly regarding voter eligibility for referendum.
822 (1993) ArmeniaCalls for Armenia to implement the "immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces from the Kelbadjar district and other recently occupied areas of Azerbaijan."
853 (1993) ArmeniaDemands "complete and unconditional withdrawal of the occupying forces" from Azerbaijani territory.
874 (1993) ArmeniaReiterates calls for withdrawal of occupation forces.
884 (1993) ArmeniaCalls on Armenia to use its influence to force compliance by Armenian militias to previous resolutions and to withdraw its remaining occupation forces.
904 (1994) IsraelCalls upon Israel, as the occupying power, "to take and implement measures, inter alia, confiscation of arms, with the aim of preventing illegal acts of violence by settlers."
973 (1995) MoroccoReiterates the need for cooperation with United Nations and expediting referendum on the fate of Western Sahara.
995 (1995) MoroccoCalls for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts to move forward with a referendum.
1002 (1995) MoroccoReiteration of call for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts.
1009 (1995) CroatiaDemands that Croatia "respect fully the rights of the local Serb population to remain, leave, or return in safety."
1017 (1995) MoroccoReiterates the call for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts and to cease "procrastinating actions which could further delay the referendum."
1033 (1995) MoroccoReiterates call for "genuine cooperation" with UN efforts.
1044 (1996) SudanCalls upon Sudan to extradite to Ethiopia for prosecution three suspects in an assassination attempt of visiting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and to cease its support for sanctuary and offering of sanctuary to terrorists.
1054 (1996) SudanDemands that Sudan come into compliance with UNSC resolution 1044.
1056 (1996) MoroccoCalls for the release of political prisoners from occupied Western Sahara.
1070 (1996) SudanReiterates demands to comply with 1044 and 1054.
1073 (1996) Israel"Calls on the safety and security of Palestinian civilians to be ensured."
1079 (1996) CroatiaReaffirms right of return for Serbian refugees to Croatia.
1092 (1996) Turkey/CyprusCalls for a reduction of foreign troops in Cyprus as the first step toward a total withdrawal troops as well as a reduction in military spending.
1117 (1997) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a reduction of foreign troops in Cyprus as the first step toward a total withdrawal troops and reduction in military spending.
1120 (1997) CroatiaReaffirms right of return for Serbian refugees to Croatia and calls on Croatia to change certain policies that obstruct this right, and to treat its citizens equally regardless of ethnic origin.
1145 (1997) CroatiaReiterates Croatian responsibility in supporting the political and economic rights of its people regardless of ethnic origin.
1172 (1998) India, PakistanCalls upon India and Pakistan to cease their development of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
1178 (1998) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a substantial reduction of foreign troops and reduction in military spending.
1185 (1998) MoroccoCalls for the lifting of restrictions of movement by aircraft of UN peacekeeping force.
1215 (1998) MoroccoUrges Morocco to promptly sign a "status of forces agreement."
1217 (1998) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a substantial reduction of foreign troops and reduction in military spending.
1251 (1999) Turkey/CyprusReiterates call for a substantial reduction of foreign troops and reduction in military spending.
1264 (1999) IndonesiaCalls on Indonesia to provide safe return for refugees and punish those for acts of violence during and after the referendum campaign.
1272 (1999) IndonesiaStresses the need for Indonesia to provide for the safe return for refugees and maintain the civilian and humanitarian character of refugee camps.
1283 (1999) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolution 1251.
1303 (2000) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolutions 1283 and 1251.
1319 (2000) IndonesiaInsists that Indonesia "take immediate additional steps, in fulfillment of its responsibilities, to disarm and disband the militia immediately, restore law and order in the affected areas of West Timor, ensure safety and security in the refugee camps and for humanitarian workers, and prevent incursions into East Timor." Stresses that those guilty of attacks on international personnel be brought to justice and reiterates the need to provide safe return for refugees who wish to repatriate and provide resettlement for those wishing to stay in Indonesia.
1322 (2000) IsraelCalls upon Israel to scrupulously abide by the Fourth Geneva Convention regarding the responsibilities of occupying power.
1331 (2000) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolution 1251 and subsequent resolutions.
1338 (2001) IndonesiaCalls for Indonesian cooperation with the UN and other international agencies in the fulfillment of UNSC resolution 1319.
1359 (2001) MoroccoCalls on the parties to "abide by their obligations under international humanitarian law to release without further delay all those held since the start of the conflict."
1384 (2001) Turkey/CyprusReiterates 1251 and all relevant resolutions on Cyprus.
1402 (2002) IsraelCalls for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian cities.
1403 (2002) IsraelDemands that Israel go through with "the implementation of its resolution 1402, without delay."
1405 (2002) IsraelCalls for UN inspectors to investigate civilian deaths during an Israeli assault on the Jenin refugee camp.
1416 (2002) Turkey/CyprusReiterates UNSC resolution 1251 and all relevant resolutions on Cyprus.
1435 (2002) IsraelCalls on Israel to withdraw to positions of September 2000 and end its military activities in and around Ramallah, including the destruction of security and civilian infrastructure.
Explanatory Notes:
This list deals exclusively with resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, a fifteen-member body consisting of five permanent members (the United States, Russia, China, France, and the United Kingdom) and ten non-permanent members elected for rotating two-year terms representing various regions of the world. The Security Council's primary responsibility, under the UN Charter, is for the maintenance of international peace and security. For a resolution to pass, it must be approved by a majority of the total membership with no dissenting vote from any of the five permanent members. Since the early 1970s, the United States has used its veto power nearly fifty times, more than all other permanent members during that same period combined. In the vast majority of these cases, the U.S. was the only dissenting vote. The preceding list, therefore, includes only resolutions where the United States voted in the affirmative or abstained.
This list does not include resolutions that merely condemn a particular action, only those that specifically proscribe a particular ongoing activity or future activity and/or call upon a particular government to implement a particular action. Nor does this list does include resolutions where the language is ambiguous enough to make assertions of noncompliance debatable, such as UNSC resolutions 242 and 338 on the Arab-Israeli conflict that put forward the formula of "land for peace," to cite the most famous. Similarly, it does not include broad resolutions calling for universal compliance not in reference to a particular conflict, particularly if there is not a clear definition. For example, in a resolution that proscribes the harboring of terrorists, there is no clear definition for what constitutes a terrorist. This list does not include nonstate actors, such as secessionist governments, rebel groups or terrorists, only recognized nation-states.
Furthermore, this list does not include resolutions that were also violated for a number of years that are now moot (such as those dealing with Indonesia's occupation of East Timor, South Africa's occupation of Namibia, and Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon). If these were also included, the number of violations would double. In most of these cases, the United States played a key role in blocking enforcement of these resolutions as well.
Finally, it should be noted that this is only a partial list, since some of the resolutions involved technical questions I was unable to judge, particularly when they involved parts of the world with which we were less familiar. S.Z.
War crimes in Gaza? Let's look closer to home
If Britain had fulfilled its ICJ obligations in 2004, it could have helped tackle this conflict before it escalated beyond diplomacy
Comments (194)
Phil Shiner
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 January 2009 13.30 GMT
Article history
As reported this week, there are repeated calls for the UK and the international community to condemn Israel's disproportionate and, therefore, illegal attacks on the civilian population of Gaza. At the same time, David Miliband urges an effective immediate ceasefire while repeatedly emphasising that the "attacks" from Hamas – which he talks about first – and the "military action" by Israel must stop. So far, this diplomatic language has been completely ineffective: the Israeli assault on Gaza continues unabated. However, if the UK and other EU states in particular, had complied with their international obligations, as clearly set out in the advisory opinion of the international court of justice in July 2004, this crisis could have been nipped in the bud at the outset (as could Israel's bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza in August 2006).
The ICJ's opinion on the wall could not be clearer. It identifies 11 international obligations breached by Israel by the construction of the wall and the maintenance of the system flowing from it of gates, permits, and illegal settlements on Palestinian land. These included non-derogable rules on the Palestinian right to self-determination and the prohibition on the acquisition of land by force. The ICJ then identify seven separate obligations for other states – in the context of these non-derogable rules – that include two negative obligations that states must not: one, render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation; and, two, recognise the illegal situation. Negative obligations have a lower threshold than positive ones and the burden on the UK and other EU states to meet these negative international obligations from July 2004 has been a high one.
It is noteworthy that the UK, as one such state, has done nothing effective to meet these obligations, and has, in fact, increased its aid and assistance in Israel since the ICJ's opinion. These are some examples of its positive encouragement of Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories since July 2004:• It has massively increased the value of arms-related products licensed to Israel in recent times (a doubling from 2004 to 2005 and a huge increase again with £20m approved in the first quarter of 2008); • It has resisted all attempts by campaigners that it should apply effective pressure within the EU that the EU-Israel association agreement – of great importance to Israel's trading figures – should be suspended as the human rights obligations underpinning it have been breached; • It has continued to invite Israel's arms companies to exhibit at the biannual Docklands arms fair; • It has continued to propagate the myth that the Quartet's roadmap process is the answer to the humanitarian crisis in the OPTs, which has allowed it to resist any positive action.
The UK has breached its international obligations – so clearly set out in the ICJ's opinion – as have all the other EU states. Real effective pressure could have been applied by these states from July 2004 onwards. There is no doubt that Israel's trading figures are heavily reliant on the positive agreement with the EU, and that arms-related products from the UK and other EU states are clearly implicated in attacks on civilians from 2004 onwards. This newspaper, for instance, carried an article in July 2006 that identified all the different UK components in an Apache helicopter, and we all know the role played by these aircraft in the present crisis. Handwringing pleas that both sides should enter into a binding ceasefire agreement have had no effect. However, if the UK and other EU states had ceased some, if not all, of their trading activities since 2004, even if only temporarily to make the point, the hand of the international community at the outset of this crisis could have been strong and effective. Israel could have been told it must immediately cease all attacks on civilians in Gaza on pain of:
• An immediate suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement and other trading and arms related activities with EU states; • A security council resolution under chapter VII of the UN charter obliging all states to follow this lead.
However, once again, the UK government shows that it is willing to publicly flout international law, if the rule of law gets in the way of its political objectives.
Comments (194)
Phil Shiner
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 January 2009 13.30 GMT
Article history
As reported this week, there are repeated calls for the UK and the international community to condemn Israel's disproportionate and, therefore, illegal attacks on the civilian population of Gaza. At the same time, David Miliband urges an effective immediate ceasefire while repeatedly emphasising that the "attacks" from Hamas – which he talks about first – and the "military action" by Israel must stop. So far, this diplomatic language has been completely ineffective: the Israeli assault on Gaza continues unabated. However, if the UK and other EU states in particular, had complied with their international obligations, as clearly set out in the advisory opinion of the international court of justice in July 2004, this crisis could have been nipped in the bud at the outset (as could Israel's bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza in August 2006).
The ICJ's opinion on the wall could not be clearer. It identifies 11 international obligations breached by Israel by the construction of the wall and the maintenance of the system flowing from it of gates, permits, and illegal settlements on Palestinian land. These included non-derogable rules on the Palestinian right to self-determination and the prohibition on the acquisition of land by force. The ICJ then identify seven separate obligations for other states – in the context of these non-derogable rules – that include two negative obligations that states must not: one, render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation; and, two, recognise the illegal situation. Negative obligations have a lower threshold than positive ones and the burden on the UK and other EU states to meet these negative international obligations from July 2004 has been a high one.
It is noteworthy that the UK, as one such state, has done nothing effective to meet these obligations, and has, in fact, increased its aid and assistance in Israel since the ICJ's opinion. These are some examples of its positive encouragement of Israel's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories since July 2004:• It has massively increased the value of arms-related products licensed to Israel in recent times (a doubling from 2004 to 2005 and a huge increase again with £20m approved in the first quarter of 2008); • It has resisted all attempts by campaigners that it should apply effective pressure within the EU that the EU-Israel association agreement – of great importance to Israel's trading figures – should be suspended as the human rights obligations underpinning it have been breached; • It has continued to invite Israel's arms companies to exhibit at the biannual Docklands arms fair; • It has continued to propagate the myth that the Quartet's roadmap process is the answer to the humanitarian crisis in the OPTs, which has allowed it to resist any positive action.
The UK has breached its international obligations – so clearly set out in the ICJ's opinion – as have all the other EU states. Real effective pressure could have been applied by these states from July 2004 onwards. There is no doubt that Israel's trading figures are heavily reliant on the positive agreement with the EU, and that arms-related products from the UK and other EU states are clearly implicated in attacks on civilians from 2004 onwards. This newspaper, for instance, carried an article in July 2006 that identified all the different UK components in an Apache helicopter, and we all know the role played by these aircraft in the present crisis. Handwringing pleas that both sides should enter into a binding ceasefire agreement have had no effect. However, if the UK and other EU states had ceased some, if not all, of their trading activities since 2004, even if only temporarily to make the point, the hand of the international community at the outset of this crisis could have been strong and effective. Israel could have been told it must immediately cease all attacks on civilians in Gaza on pain of:
• An immediate suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement and other trading and arms related activities with EU states; • A security council resolution under chapter VII of the UN charter obliging all states to follow this lead.
However, once again, the UK government shows that it is willing to publicly flout international law, if the rule of law gets in the way of its political objectives.
'War on terror' was a mistake, says Miliband
Foreign secretary argues west cannot kill its way out of the threats it faces
Julian Borger, Amethi, India
The Guardian, Thursday 15 January 2009
Article history
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today argues that the use of the "war on terror" as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused "more harm than good".
In an article in today's Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot "kill its way" out of the threats it faces.
British officials quietly stopped using the phrase "war on terror" in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister.
In remarks that will also be made in a speech today in Mumbai, in one of the hotels that was a target of terrorist attacks in November, the foreign secretary says the concept of a war on terror is "misleading and mistaken".
"Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good," Miliband says, adding that, in his opinion, the whole strategy has been dangerously counterproductive, helping otherwise disparate groups find common cause against the west.
"The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common," Miliband argues, in a clear reference to the signature rhetoric of the Bush era. "We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is."
"Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology," he says.
He argues that "the war on terror implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one - to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists". But he quotes an American commander, General David Petraeus, saying the western coalition in Iraq "could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife".
Instead of trying to build western solidarity against a shared enemy, Miliband argues it should be constructed instead on the "idea of who we are and the values we share".
He goes on to say that "democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating. It is an argument he links directly with the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. "That is surely the lesson of Guantánamo and it is why we welcome president-elect Obama's clear commitment to close it."
After the al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration presented the threat of a global terrorist onslaught as justification for pre-emptive military action, long-term detention without trial and severe interrogation techniques widely denounced by human rights groups as torture. The incoming Obama administration is expected to avoid using the term "war on terror" and adopt a more multilateral and less military-focused approach to global threats.
British officials are signalling, in increasingly public ways, that they cannot wait for the new team to take office next Tuesday, and wave goodbye to an eight-year administration with which they felt increasingly ill at ease, particularly following the departure of Tony Blair in 2007.
Miliband said last night that the incoming administration's proposed use of "smart power" meshed with his arguments. "The new administration has a set of values that fit very well with the values and priorities I am talking about," he said during a visit to Amethi, northern India.
Asked whether he had not left it late in the Bush era to make his criticism, the foreign secretary said British officials had stopped thinking in terms of a single war on terror more than two years ago, and had been putting a "more comprehensive approach" into practice.
British officials said the timing of the speech was dictated more by the Mumbai attacks than Bush's departure, but added that the transition in Washington meant the language could be less cautious than it might otherwise have been.
UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Julian Borger, Amethi, India
The Guardian, Thursday 15 January 2009
Article history
The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today argues that the use of the "war on terror" as a western rallying cry since the September 11 attacks has been a mistake that may have caused "more harm than good".
In an article in today's Guardian, five days before the Bush administration leaves the White House, Miliband delivers a comprehensive critique of its defining mission, saying the war on terror was misconceived and that the west cannot "kill its way" out of the threats it faces.
British officials quietly stopped using the phrase "war on terror" in 2006, but this is the first time it has been comprehensively discarded in the most outspoken remarks on US counterterrorism strategy to date by a British minister.
In remarks that will also be made in a speech today in Mumbai, in one of the hotels that was a target of terrorist attacks in November, the foreign secretary says the concept of a war on terror is "misleading and mistaken".
"Historians will judge whether it has done more harm than good," Miliband says, adding that, in his opinion, the whole strategy has been dangerously counterproductive, helping otherwise disparate groups find common cause against the west.
"The more we lump terrorist groups together and draw the battle lines as a simple binary struggle between moderates and extremists or good and evil, the more we play into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common," Miliband argues, in a clear reference to the signature rhetoric of the Bush era. "We should expose their claim to a compelling and overarching explanation and narrative as the lie that it is."
"Terrorism is a deadly tactic, not an institution or an ideology," he says.
He argues that "the war on terror implied a belief that the correct response to the terrorist threat was primarily a military one - to track down and kill a hardcore of extremists". But he quotes an American commander, General David Petraeus, saying the western coalition in Iraq "could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife".
Instead of trying to build western solidarity against a shared enemy, Miliband argues it should be constructed instead on the "idea of who we are and the values we share".
He goes on to say that "democracies must respond to terrorism by championing the rule of law, not subordinating. It is an argument he links directly with the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. "That is surely the lesson of Guantánamo and it is why we welcome president-elect Obama's clear commitment to close it."
After the al-Qaida attacks of 11 September 2001, the Bush administration presented the threat of a global terrorist onslaught as justification for pre-emptive military action, long-term detention without trial and severe interrogation techniques widely denounced by human rights groups as torture. The incoming Obama administration is expected to avoid using the term "war on terror" and adopt a more multilateral and less military-focused approach to global threats.
British officials are signalling, in increasingly public ways, that they cannot wait for the new team to take office next Tuesday, and wave goodbye to an eight-year administration with which they felt increasingly ill at ease, particularly following the departure of Tony Blair in 2007.
Miliband said last night that the incoming administration's proposed use of "smart power" meshed with his arguments. "The new administration has a set of values that fit very well with the values and priorities I am talking about," he said during a visit to Amethi, northern India.
Asked whether he had not left it late in the Bush era to make his criticism, the foreign secretary said British officials had stopped thinking in terms of a single war on terror more than two years ago, and had been putting a "more comprehensive approach" into practice.
British officials said the timing of the speech was dictated more by the Mumbai attacks than Bush's departure, but added that the transition in Washington meant the language could be less cautious than it might otherwise have been.
UK-US relations have been particular sour in recent days after Washington reneged on a pledge to back a largely British-drafted UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The White House over-ruled US diplomats after a demand from the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Dismantle zionism
The December 2008 Gaza Massacre
John Docker and Ned Curthoys
We are part of an increasing number of people around the world of Jewish descent who are sickened by the coldly calculated massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza and who utterly repudiate Israel's claim that it acts in the name of Jews the world over. Like Antony Loewenstein we deplore the 'myth of Israel' as perpetual victim and rational peace seeker, and its stranglehold over media reportage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The massacre in Gaza cries out not only for immediate condemnation but for historical explanation. As scholars working in the fields of genocide studies and research into the long history of European colonization, it seems clear to us that Israel – as in the history of white Australia since 1788 – is a genocidal settler colonial society that since its founding in 1948 continually seeks to destroy the foundations of life of the indigenous Palestinians, their health, dignity, livelihood, personal security, access to education, and political organisation, so that the Palestinians can be replaced by colonizing Zionist settlers. Recent genocide scholarship has highlighted how much the original definition of genocide (by Raphael Lemkin in chapter nine of his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) linked genocide and colonization as a two stage process of destruction of the home society (not necessarily by physical annihilation qua Nazism) and replacement by the incoming colonizers. Such has been the continuing historical pattern of Israel in relation to the indigenous people of the land. In 1948 the Zionist forces violently drove out over 700,000 Palestinians by deploying 'admonitory massacres', as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has evoked in horrific detail in his recent The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). Pappé details the continuous series of massacres in 1948-49 and sporadically thereafter that the Zionists perpetrated against the Palestinians in order to 'Judaize' ethnically-cleansed Palestinian lands. In 1967 the Israeli state conquered the West Bank and Gaza and has aggressively continued a genocidal pattern of replacement and destruction, creating and expanding Jewish settlements, stealing Palestinian land and ghettoizing remaining Palestinian communities, attempting, through a brutal military occupation, to make life humiliating and unbearable for the Palestinians.
What we are now witnessing is a form of settler colonization reminiscent of nineteenth century Australia, in which a settler colonial 'logic of elimination' (to quote historian of settler colonialism, Patrick Wolfe) combines massacre and population sequestration (reserves) to incapacitate the sovereign self determination of an indigenous people. Yet indigenous peoples have always resisted the genocidal processes of destruction and replacement that settler colonialism enacts. The indigenous peoples of Australia have magnificently resisted and still do, despite all their historical sufferings. The indigenous Palestinians as a people are also resisting the disaster that Zionism and Israel have brought upon them, thereby providing the continuing possibility of a future coexistence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
The December 2008 Gaza massacre by Zionist Israel poses an intense dilemma for Israel's organized Jewish supporters and much of the Jewish diaspora, who have for decades cooperated with and been complicit in the ongoing, incremental Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Israel is guilty under article II, part C of the UN Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'. Will the Jews of the world continue to be so supportive, or will they historically disavow genocidal settler colonialism in the Middle East and question their own previous support? Historically, Israel is the imposition of a European nation state, founded on the notion of one people, one religion, one ethnicity, in an area of the world, the Levant, which through the centuries has been a space where Jews, Muslims and Christians have lived together in the same societies. The very idea so precious to Zionism, of Israel as a Jewish state, is absurd, as the great Jewish jurist and Australian governor-general Isaac Isaacs pointed out in the 1940s. What if Australia called itself a Protestant state, immediately making all non-Protestants second class citizens systematically facing abuse, discrimination, and state violence, as Palestinian Israelis do to the present day? Israel/Palestine should become a democratic state, a democracy where all who live in that land are full citizens whatever their religion or ethnicity.
The Australian government not that long ago in its apology over the Stolen Generations extended sympathy and understanding to the indigenous people of Australia. Why doesn't it extend a similar sympathy to the indigenous people of Palestine?
Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism
John Docker and Ned Curthoys
We are part of an increasing number of people around the world of Jewish descent who are sickened by the coldly calculated massacre of the Palestinians of Gaza and who utterly repudiate Israel's claim that it acts in the name of Jews the world over. Like Antony Loewenstein we deplore the 'myth of Israel' as perpetual victim and rational peace seeker, and its stranglehold over media reportage of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The massacre in Gaza cries out not only for immediate condemnation but for historical explanation. As scholars working in the fields of genocide studies and research into the long history of European colonization, it seems clear to us that Israel – as in the history of white Australia since 1788 – is a genocidal settler colonial society that since its founding in 1948 continually seeks to destroy the foundations of life of the indigenous Palestinians, their health, dignity, livelihood, personal security, access to education, and political organisation, so that the Palestinians can be replaced by colonizing Zionist settlers. Recent genocide scholarship has highlighted how much the original definition of genocide (by Raphael Lemkin in chapter nine of his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe) linked genocide and colonization as a two stage process of destruction of the home society (not necessarily by physical annihilation qua Nazism) and replacement by the incoming colonizers. Such has been the continuing historical pattern of Israel in relation to the indigenous people of the land. In 1948 the Zionist forces violently drove out over 700,000 Palestinians by deploying 'admonitory massacres', as the Israeli historian Ilan Pappé has evoked in horrific detail in his recent The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006). Pappé details the continuous series of massacres in 1948-49 and sporadically thereafter that the Zionists perpetrated against the Palestinians in order to 'Judaize' ethnically-cleansed Palestinian lands. In 1967 the Israeli state conquered the West Bank and Gaza and has aggressively continued a genocidal pattern of replacement and destruction, creating and expanding Jewish settlements, stealing Palestinian land and ghettoizing remaining Palestinian communities, attempting, through a brutal military occupation, to make life humiliating and unbearable for the Palestinians.
What we are now witnessing is a form of settler colonization reminiscent of nineteenth century Australia, in which a settler colonial 'logic of elimination' (to quote historian of settler colonialism, Patrick Wolfe) combines massacre and population sequestration (reserves) to incapacitate the sovereign self determination of an indigenous people. Yet indigenous peoples have always resisted the genocidal processes of destruction and replacement that settler colonialism enacts. The indigenous peoples of Australia have magnificently resisted and still do, despite all their historical sufferings. The indigenous Palestinians as a people are also resisting the disaster that Zionism and Israel have brought upon them, thereby providing the continuing possibility of a future coexistence between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
The December 2008 Gaza massacre by Zionist Israel poses an intense dilemma for Israel's organized Jewish supporters and much of the Jewish diaspora, who have for decades cooperated with and been complicit in the ongoing, incremental Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Israel is guilty under article II, part C of the UN Genocide Convention, in that it intends to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic group by 'deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part'. Will the Jews of the world continue to be so supportive, or will they historically disavow genocidal settler colonialism in the Middle East and question their own previous support? Historically, Israel is the imposition of a European nation state, founded on the notion of one people, one religion, one ethnicity, in an area of the world, the Levant, which through the centuries has been a space where Jews, Muslims and Christians have lived together in the same societies. The very idea so precious to Zionism, of Israel as a Jewish state, is absurd, as the great Jewish jurist and Australian governor-general Isaac Isaacs pointed out in the 1940s. What if Australia called itself a Protestant state, immediately making all non-Protestants second class citizens systematically facing abuse, discrimination, and state violence, as Palestinian Israelis do to the present day? Israel/Palestine should become a democratic state, a democracy where all who live in that land are full citizens whatever their religion or ethnicity.
The Australian government not that long ago in its apology over the Stolen Generations extended sympathy and understanding to the indigenous people of Australia. Why doesn't it extend a similar sympathy to the indigenous people of Palestine?
Committee for the Dismantling of Zionism
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