Jefferson Corner

Israel and the US always insisted that as a condition for Israel and the US to even think of talking let alone end the occupation is for the Palestinians to recognize Israel. Arafat, without the benefit of smart legal advice and as a way to save his ass after siding with Saddam, decided to strip down and gave full recognition to Israel, without defining which Israel he and his PLO was recognizing, and without insisting on ending the settlements, let alone removing the settlements. The PLO gave full recognition to “Greater Israel” without Israel ever giving recognition to a Palestinian State. All Arafat got for was several canton under occupations with Israeli corpals guarding the gates and with Palestinians having to navigate some 400 different check points. Then Hamas came to power and as expected, the US, Israel and now the European Union decided not to deal with Hamas until it recongizes Israel. Of course without ever giving any indication which Israel should Hamas recongnize, and if such recognition ends the Occupation. Hamas not the smart and political savvy organization it is, did not know how to deal with this issue head on, decided to reach to 1,400 years of history, and offer a “Hudna” which Israeli and Jewish scholars know more about Hudna than all of the Islamic clerics Hamas have. Hamas wasted one whole year without taking the challenge and asking the question which Israel should Hamas recognize? and whether the US and Israel needs to have every single Palestinian, woman, man or child, under Occupation or in the Diaspora sign and deliver to the White House valid and notorized signitures of all 7 million Palestinians and if the delivery of all 7 million signitures will end the Israeli Occupation. Failure of Hamas to anticipate this demand, and its failure to take up the challenge is but another proof that Hamas does not have the leadership or the political sophistication to deal with Israel and the US. What follows is a very interesting article that address the very basic issues of recongitions and what does it mean?
Sami Jamil Jadallah

The Christian Science Monitor
from the February 02, 2007 edition
What ‘Israel’s right to exist’ means to Palestinians
Recognition would imply acceptance that they deserve to be treated as subhumans.
By John V. Whitbeck JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA
Since the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel and much of the West have asserted that the principal obstacle to any progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace is the refusal of Hamas to “recognize Israel,” or to “recognize Israel’s existence,” or to “recognize Israel’s right to exist.”
These three verbal formulations have been used by Israel, the United States, and the European Union as a rationale for collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The phrases are also used by the media, politicians, and even diplomats interchangeably, as though they mean the same thing. They do not.
“Recognizing Israel” or any other state is a formal legal and diplomatic act by one state with respect to another state. It is inappropriate – indeed, nonsensical – to talk about a political party or movement extending diplomatic recognition to a state. To talk of Hamas “recognizing Israel” is simply to use sloppy, confusing, and deceptive shorthand for the real demand being made of the Palestinians.
“Recognizing Israel’s existence” appears on first impression to involve a relatively straightforward acknowledgment of a fact of life. Yet there are serious practical problems with this language. What Israel, within what borders, is involved? Is it the 55 percent of historical Palestine recommended for a Jewish state by the UN General Assembly in 1947? The 78 percent of historical Palestine occupied by the Zionist movement in 1948 and now viewed by most of the world as “Israel” or “Israel proper”? The 100 percent of historical Palestine occupied by Israel since June 1967 and shown as “Israel” (without any “Green Line”) on maps in Israeli schoolbooks?
Israel has never defined its own borders, since doing so would necessarily place limits on them. Still, if this were all that was being demanded of Hamas, it might be possible for the ruling political party to acknowledge, as a fact of life, that a state of Israel exists today within some specified borders. Indeed, Hamas leadership has effectively done so in recent weeks.
“Recognizing Israel’s right to exist,” the actual demand being made of Hamas and Palestinians, is in an entirely different league. This formulation does not address diplomatic formalities or a simple acceptance of present realities. It calls for a moral judgment.
There is an enormous difference between “recognizing Israel’s existence” and “recognizing Israel’s right to exist.” From a Palestinian perspective, the difference is in the same league as the difference between asking a Jew to acknowledge that the Holocaust happened and asking him to concede that the Holocaust was morally justified. For Palestinians to acknowledge the occurrence of the Nakba – the expulsion of the great majority of Palestinians from their homeland between 1947 and 1949 – is one thing. For them to publicly concede that it was “right” for the Nakba to have happened would be something else entirely. For the Jewish and Palestinian peoples, the Holocaust and the Nakba, respectively, represent catastrophes and injustices on an unimaginable scale that can neither be forgotten nor forgiven.
To demand that Palestinians recognize “Israel’s right to exist” is to demand that a people who have been treated as subhumans unworthy of basic human rights publicly proclaim that they are subhumans. It would imply Palestinians’ acceptance that they deserve what has been done and continues to be done to them. Even 19th-century US governments did not require the surviving native Americans to publicly proclaim the “rightness” of their ethnic cleansing by European colonists as a condition precedent to even discussing what sort of land reservation they might receive. Nor did native Americans have to live under economic blockade and threat of starvation until they shed whatever pride they had left and conceded the point.
Some believe that Yasser Arafat did concede the point in order to buy his ticket out of the wilderness of demonization and earn the right to be lectured directly by the Americans. But in fact, in his famous 1988 statement in Stockholm, he accepted “Israel’s right to exist in peace and security.” This language, significantly, addresses the conditions of existence of a state which, as a matter of fact, exists. It does not address the existential question of the “rightness” of the dispossession and dispersal of the Palestinian people from their homeland to make way for another people coming from abroad.
The original conception of the phrase “Israel’s right to exist” and of its use as an excuse for not talking with any Palestinian leaders who still stood up for the rights of their people are attributed to former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It is highly likely that those countries that still employ this phrase do so in full awareness of what it entails, morally and psychologically, for the Palestinian people.
However, many people of goodwill and decent values may well be taken in by the surface simplicity of the words, “Israel’s right to exist,” and believe that they constitute a reasonable demand. And if the “right to exist” is reasonable, then refusing to accept it must represent perversity, rather than Palestinians’ deeply felt need to cling to their self-respect and dignity as full-fledged human beings. That this need is deeply felt is evidenced by polls showing that the percentage of the Palestinian population that approves of Hamas’s refusal to bow to this demand substantially exceeds the percentage that voted for Hamas in January 2006.
Those who recognize the critical importance of Israeli-Palestinian peace and truly seek a decent future for both peoples must recognize that the demand that Hamas recognize “Israel’s right to exist” is unreasonable, immoral, and impossible to meet. Then, they must insist that this roadblock to peace be removed, the economic siege of the Palestinian territories be lifted, and the pursuit of peace with some measure of justice be resumed with the urgency it deserves.
• John V. Whitbeck, an international lawyer, is the author of, “The World According to Whitbeck.” He has advised Palestinian officials in negotiations with Israel.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0202/p09s02-coop.html

Share This

( leaders of militias; Hamas, Fatah and Presidential Security, that kills and murder Palestinians are unfit and unqualified to lead and represent the Palestinian people). The PLO with tens of billions of dollars and with 40 years of unquestionable leadership failed to liberate, certainly failed to even manage under the occupation, and is too incompetent, too corrupt and with no more ligitimacy to represent any one.
Mission:
The Palestine Agency intent to earn the rights, privilege and trust to represent the Palestinian people outside the Occupied Territories, not by a questionable decision by a questionable organization like the Arab league, the Arab heads of states, but by working hard to earn the trust, confidence and votes of the Palestinians in the Diaspora it seeks to represent. There is an urgent need for an organization like the Palestine Agency to represent the legal, economic, social, political interest of all those Palestinians living in Arab countries and those living in Europe, Africa, North America and Australia and other countries of the world.
The Palestine Agency was incorporated as a not for profit organization in the USA, to represent the legal, economic, political, cultural and social interest of all those Palestinians living in the Diaspora, and to represent that interest in host countries and within present day Israel.
The Palestine Agency can learn from the Jewish experience in the Diaspora on how best to protect the interest of the Palestinians, how best to reclaim rights and lost properties, how best to track and bring to trial all those who killed and murdered Palestinians, track and bring to trial go all those who committed war crimes against the Palestinians in Occupied Palestine, in Lebanon and in Syria. Track and bring to trial all those who stole their lands and properties, track and bring to trial all those who fraudulently acquired Palestinian lands for use as Israeli settlements especially the properties of those living outside Palestine. A Palestine Documentation Center similar to the Simon Weisenthal Center will do just that.
It is unacceptable after 55 years of “exiles” that we Palestinians continue to rely on UN and other international agencies to manage our affairs, run our refugee camps, run our schools, run our clinics, even run the distributions of our food. It is time we took charge of our own destiny.
The Palestine Agency intent on creating one of the best and competent “Pro-Pono Law Firm’ made up of Palestinian lawyers from around the world who can and will represent the best legal interest of the Palestinian people and take the necessary legal actions and steps to addresses all of the wrongs we had to suffer for more than 100 years. To take on those who have wronged us for so long, and to make sure that our rights are well protected now and in the future.
The Palestine Agency intents and will proceed to create one of the best “Pro-Pono Consulting Firm” made up of Palestinian professionals and experts in all disciplines who, working with the legal team will insure that the rights and interests of the Palestinian people in “historical Palestine” and in host countries are protected and well represented. Those rights and interest and are not “fair game” for Israel or for any country or organization. The Palestine Agency will earn the right, as true representative of the Diaspora people, to sit at the table and represent the interest of ALL Palestinian people in the Diaspora and represent the interest of the Palestinian people hosted in the Arab countries. The Palestine Agency will have a “mandate” to represent all Diaspora Palestinians.
Next Step:
I invite all “independent” Palestinian groups, organizations and individuals who have the courage, and vision to make a difference, to join and make the Palestine Agency, the people organization and institution that we all can be very proud to be associated with. Together we will make sure that the Palestine Agency is not a one “man/woman” shop, but a true representative of the Palestinian people and accountable to its constituents. The Palestine Agency is not a “public relation” organization, but an action oriented organization, with lots of hard and difficult work and tasks ahead. I urge all of you to join, and help the Palestine Agency to be the kind of organization that can make a difference in the lives of Palestinians in the Diaspora.
The charter calls for organizing conventions in countries to select the committee that will lead the Palestine Agency and organize its affairs and work toward earning the trust and votes of the Palestinians in the Diaspora. We need to move and move fast before it is too late
The charter calls for organizing conventions in countries to select the committee that will lead the Palestine Agency and organize its affairs and work toward earning the trust and votes of the Palestinians in the Diaspora. We need to move and move fast before it is too late.
In the next six months’ concerted efforts will be made to enlist and sign up independent activist from around the world to organize an international conference in Europe (no restrictions on visa) and launch the Palestine Agency and establish chapters around the Middle East and in other countries with substantial Palestinian community.
Sami Jamil Jadallah
Fairfax, VA, USA and El-Bireh, Palestine
Organizer and Sponsor
Palestine Agency is registered as a Not for Profit organizations in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Share This

( leaders of militias; Fatah, Hamas and Presidential Security, that kills and murder Palestinians are unfit to lead Palestinians to freedom and independance)
With Hamas and Fatah fighting over the little crumbs under the Israeli Occupation, and fighting over ministries with little or no power, and with both leaderships having vested interest in the funding and maintenance of their own militias and much more involved in making sure their own cadre, especially Fatah are getting the kind of cars, homes and personal privileges they are getting now while the rest of the nation suffers. There is no time and no room to give any attention to the more pressing issues of the Apartheid Wall, the expansion of settlements, the daily incursion of towns and cities, of the hundreds of checkpoints and of course not to mention ending the Israeli Occupation, and providing the kind of daily security the people need to carry on with whatever little and miserable life they have under the Israeli Occupation, let alone a useless and ineffective government.
While Mahmoud Abbas is counting on American to deliver Israel to the Palestinians rather than the other way around, Khalid Mishal is counting on Syria and Iran to deliver Israel to Hamas rather than the other way around, both are looking to the wrong parties to help them with ending the Israeli Occupation.
Under all these circumstances it is unlikely that the Palestinian Authority under Hamas, the PLO, Fatah or the Palestine National Council can have the time, the means or the resources, the competence and priority to give any attentions to the pressing issues facing the more than 5 million Palestinians in exile. The present Palestinian leadership is unfit and is incompetent to take care of the needs of the people under the Israeli Occupation, certainly they do not have the means, the competence, certainly the credibility to represent the interest of the Palestinians in the Diaspora.
With the PLO having no legitimacy, credibility nor competence to represent any one The Palestine Agency is the alternative for the more than 5 million Palestinians in exile. It is an organization that they can have total ownership of, rather than leave the decision to represent them like the PLO with a cadre that proved incompetent to do any thing right, that proved it is nothing but a total fraud lead by leadership that represents no one, but themselves. The Palestine Agency will be that representative body where competent and accountable leadership are elected from Diaspora. The Palestine Agency can be that organization to represent the true face and image of the Palestinian exiles, where hundreds of thousands of professionals can make a difference. The Palestine Agency, can be with the help and support of every one, can be that organization that Israel and the US and the world community have to deal with rather than dealing with a bunch of incompetent leadership that we have now. The Palestine Agency will certainly add to the bargaining position of the Palestinian Authority when it comes to the final negotiations between The Palestinian Authority, Israel and the world community. We the Palestinian people of the Diaspora demand a seat at the table!
More…..

Share This

Why PALESTINE AGENCY and Why Now?
Introduction and background:
(leaders of militias that kills and murder Palestinians have no place and is unfit to represent let alone lead the Palestinians to freedom).
Ever since chosen by Arab heads of states, most of whom were of questionable legitimacy, the PLO and its leadership have lead the Palestinian people from one disaster to another, from one failure to another, from one “strategic mistake” to another. Even when it has a chance to negotiate with Israel under the Oslo Accord, it negotiated for itself a role, recognition of Israel, while failing to negotiate the most important issues; ending the Israeli Military Occupation, freedom and independence for the Palestinian people and addressing the rights of all Palestinian in the Diaspora.
Over the last 35 year, the PLO leadership has always acted not in the best interest of the Palestinian people, but in the best interest of the PLO as an organization with vested interest for its leadership and cadre and it’s so called “institutions”. This was the case in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Kuwait and now in the Occupied Territories, after Oslo Accord.
The Palestine National Congress as the representative body of all Palestinians in Occupied Palestine and in the Diaspora, never lived up to its name and responsibilities of faithful representations of the people, failed to exercise its duties of checks and balances, accepted decisions and actions of the PLO and its leadership without critical assessment of the issues and decisions, and for the most part remained silent, on status and decisions affecting the Palestinians in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and the Gulf States especially Kuwait. The daily needs and interests of millions of Palestinian gave way to the more pressing interest of the leadership perpetuating its role and of course its selfish benefits and interests and failed to call the leadership to accounts for its actions and failures, in Jordan, in Lebanon, in Libya, in Kuwait and under Oslo.
Palestinian intellectuals, thinkers, artists, and businessmen for the most part, went along with the leadership and never challenging the leaderships on its failures. After Oslo few Palestinian intellectuals dared to challenge Arafat questioning his leadership and his actions. The Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestine National Congress forfeited the privilege and right to represent the Palestinians in the Diaspora.
No one takes responsibilities for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians killed or murdered, and no one knows where are the billions of dollars raised by the PLO from Diaspora Palestinians and donations from Arab nations; yet, there was never any accounting of any of these funds and actions. Arafat death and the possible loss of billions of dollars of the “people money” demand immediate actions making sure that the public and people interest are protected. It is time to renegotiate the relationship between the Palestinians of the Diaspora and the PLO and the PNC.
Moreover, under Oslo Accord, the PLO for all practical and legal purposes merged into the Palestinian Authority, leaving millions of Palestinians around the world without any legal representation. Thus the urgent need for the Palestinians of the Diaspora to organize.
The death of Yaser Arafat and the assumption of Mahmoud Abbas may bring about a change, yet to be responsive and accountable leadership. However, it is unlikely that Mahmoud Abbas and his team of old guards, or for that matter any one else, can make fundamental changes in the way the PLO, Fatah or the Palestine National Council operate.
With Mahomud Abbas busy with the task of trying to put an end to the militia war going on in Gaza, in which his own private militia is a party to and with Hamas failing to live up to its commitments to change and cleaning house, getting more involved in regional alliances that do not service the cause of liberation and having proved it is but another militia, not to mention living in time past and with rhetoric that is over 1400 years old. The Palestinian leadership inside the Occupied Territories depending for the most part on militias that does not serve the cause of liberation, it is time to let go of the PLO.
Instead of focusing on ending the Israeli Occupation, putting an end to the expansions of Israeli settlements and stopping the building of the Apartheid Wall, and of course putting in place effective administrative and financial reforms and putting those whose fleeced the citizens behind bars, we see the Palestinian leaderships whether of that of Hamas, Fatah or the PLO all are drowning in a cup of Turkish coffee. How can such a leadership that could not manage the mundane day-to-day things under the Occupation provide the leadership and vision of representing the interests of the Palestinians in the Diaspora?
More…

Share This