Israel Matzav

What kind of 'Palestinian state'?

If God forbid there is ever a 'Palestinian state,' what will it look like? Evelyn Gordon has some idea.

With regard to democracy, consider just a few of the events of the last three months: The PA once again proved itself incapable of holding even local elections, canceling a scheduled vote for the fourth time in two years; on the national level, PA President Mahmoud Abbas is now in the 81^st month of a 48-month term. It banned journalists from reporting the human rights abuses documented by an official PA body, the Independent Commission for Human Rights, which found that both the PA and Hamas (which govern the West Bank and Gaza, respectively) were guilty of torture and arbitrary detentions. It arrested a Palestinian professor who publicly criticized his university for failure to comply with a court order. It pulled a popular satirical television show from its state-owned TV channel because the show lampooned the PA’s security forces and civil service. (Don’t satirical TV shows usually lampoon their own governments?) Its official media blacklisted Palestinian union leaders who accused the PA of refusing to clamp down on corruption. It’s not exactly a shining picture of freedom of expression, regular elections and other pillars of the democratic order, is it?

As for the PA’s peacefulness, consider a few more events of the last three months: A Palestinian cabinet minister accused Israel of being the world’s “major harvesting and trading center” for organs, and specifically of harvesting organs from “the bodies of dead Palestinian martyrs”; the PA government neither denounced nor dissociated itself from this classic blood libel. A leading member of Abbas’s “moderate” Fatah party, one of Abbas’s close associates, declared that Fatah never has and never will recognize Israel.

The state-run television channel repeatedly glorified suicide bombers who murdered Israeli civilians (here and here, for instance). A PA community center run by a senior member of Abbas’s party taught schoolchildren that pre-1967 Israel is stolen Palestinian land, and their mission is to reclaim it someday; Abbas himself declared pre-1967 Israel to be occupied Palestinian territory just this week.

State-run television vowed the Palestinians would bulldoze the Western Wall plaza – where thousands of Jews from all over the world pray daily – if and when they gain control of East Jerusalem. It’s not exactly a shining picture of readiness to live alongside Israel in peace and security, is it?

But none of that is likely to stop many European countries - let alone countries of the Third World - from voting in favor of a 'Palestinian state.' In fact, the notion of a 'Palestinian state' is very popular in the United Kingdom, France and Germany among others, even though those countries have not officially decided yet how they will vote.

The poll, conducted by YouGov on behalf of Avaaz, an organization that has been petitioning in support of the Palestinian statehood bid, showed that 59 percent in the UK favored statehood recognition in the UN, while in France and Germany the figures were higher at 69% and 71%, respectively.

Europeans in the three nations also overwhelmingly support the right of the Palestinians to their own independent state: 71% in the UK, 82% in France and 86% in Germany, the Guardian reported.

Despite widespread support on the European street, none of the three countries have officially announced their intentions for the Palestinian UN bid on September 20, and policy differences with regards to the Palestinian state surfaced among EU nations when a number of European foreign ministers met in Poland earlier this month.

"So far the positions in the EU are very divergent," Austrian Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger said in Poland.

If a 'Palestinian state' is likely to behave in ways that are anathema to most Europeans, why do so many Europeans support it?

Labels: European anti-Semitism, Palestinian state RIGHT NOW syndrome, Unilateral declaration of independence (UDI)

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:41 AM