Palestine’s Abbas Finally Says Will Go to UN Over Israeli Squatters ( Juan Cole )

[Jefferson23]

Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday signed a some 15 international treaties and UN legal instruments, including the Geneva Conventions, in preparation for going to the International Criminal Court over Israel’s illegal flooding of hundreds of thousands of Israeli squatters into the West Bank. These squatters have for the most part never paid Palestinians for the land on which they build their homes. They completely exclude Palestinians from their colonies on Palestinian land. Often they prevent Palestinian farmers from harvesting their crops near the settlements. They commit vandalism against Palestinian property and sometimes just shoot down Palestinian civilians. Over time, they aim to make an Palestinian state impossible by turning it prospective territory into Swiss cheese.

I wrote last month,

“In an important speech carried in Arabic by WAFA on March 12, Mahmoud Abbas explained that his commitment to the negotiations was time-bound, for a nine-month period, while Kerry tried to hammer out an agreement, especially on security and borders. Quotes below are from a USG translation carried by BBC Monitoring.


Abbas said that there was another negotiating track, completely distinct from the first, having to do with the Palestinian request that Israel release 104 prisoners in 4 groups. These prisoners had been arrested before 1993, i.e. before the Oslo Peace Accord. Basically he was pledging, he said, to forgo any resort to the International Criminal Court as a newly minted non-member observer state at the United Nations, for nine months if Israel would release these prisoners. This second track had, he said, nothing whatsoever to do with the first. That is, Israel was just buying time for its illegal settlement of Occupied Palestinian land by releasing the prisoners.”

The Israelis had pledged to release over 100 prisoners, but balked at letting the last group of 25 or so go unless Abbas agreed to extend negotiations past the deadline of April 29. These were prisoners jailed before the 1993 Oslo peace accords (on all the provisions of which Israel has by now reneged). It is not clear why the PLO had been willing to forgo the powerful tool of going to UN institutions for the release of 125 prisoners (Israel holds thousands).

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/palestines_abbas_finally_says_will_go_to_un_over_israeli_squatters_20140402

[bemildred]

1. The replys to this move by Abbas should be interesting.

Both from the US and Israeli governments, and the UN.

Mr. Cole has a way with words.

[Jefferson23]

2. I'll say. Squatters beware. n/t

[bemildred]

3. I didn't use to care for him much, Prof. Cole.

Too dry and sober. But lately he's really put some snap into his writing. I find I look for him. I suppose running a site means he has to think about attracting an audience, so there's his incentive. He's diversified his subject matter too.

[Jefferson23]

4. Maybe that's a contributing factor and he is getting older, taking more risks? n/t

[bemildred]

5. Hitting his stride. nt