The pro-Palestinian activists are not pro-Palestinian
What have “pro-Palestinian” activists done for the Palestinians?
Did they help Palestinians achieve national independence? Did they help them build an economy? Did they help them build a civil society? Did they help them grow talent and integrity among their leaders? Did they help them define their identity as anything other than victims and terrorists?
Where are the pro-Palestinian conferences helping Palestinians achieve all these things? Where are the organizations who believe in the Palestinian identity and who help shape it towards the future? Where is the funding that would help grow the Palestinian civil society that Palestinian Bassem Eid believes is fundamental to the Palestinians’ future?
When the United Nations approved in 1947 the partition plan aiming to create a two-state solution that gave little to Jews, the Arabs were eager to kill it, and they used war to try to do it. Did anyone care that the Palestinians’ interests would have been greatly served by that plan?
Between 1948 and 1967, when Gaza and the West Bank were under full Arab control, did anyone attempt to create a Palestinian state on that land?
http://www.jpost.com/page.aspx?pageid=13&articleid=403339
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One of the best kept diplomatic secrets is that a broad international consensus has long existed on how to settle the Israel-Palestine conflict. (1) Although this conflict has been depicted as among the most intricate, the authoritative political, legal and human rights bodies in the world in fact concur on the basis of its resolution. In the jargon of the so-called peace process, the “final status” issues are supposed to be so intractable that they need be deferred until the last stage of negotiations. These final status issues include borders, East Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees. The documentary record shows, however, that, on the terms for resolving these allegedly “controversial” issues, Israel and the United States stand virtually alone.
The United Nations General Assembly annually votes on a resolution titled, “Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine.” This resolution uniformly includes these tenets for “achieving a peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine”:
“Affirming the principle of the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war”;
“Affirming also the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the territory occupied since 1967 and of Israeli actions aimed at changing the status of Jerusalem”;
“Stresses the need for: (a) The realization of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, primarily the right to self-determination; (b) The withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”;
“Also stresses the need for resolving the problem of the Palestine refugees in conformity with its resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948.”
Here is the recorded vote on this resolution the past decade:
In 2004 the International Court of Justice rendered a landmark advisory opinion on the legality of the wall Israel has been constructing in the West Bank.(2) The Court inventoried these “rules and principles of international law which are relevant in assessing the legality of the measures taken by Israel”:
“No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal”;
“the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967” have “no legal validity.”
in full: http://gandhifoundation.org/2009/05/16/resolving-the-israel-palestine-conflict-what-we-can-learn-from-gandhi-by-norman-g-finkelstein/
