Collective Punishment of Palestinians Won’t Lead to Peace Talks-- Decameron

photo from UNRWA, Gaza war, 2014

 

“The Trump administration sent notice to UNRWA that it is withholding over half of this year’s annual commitment, paying $60 million and freezing another $65 million. The move indicates the U.S. is leveraging its hefty payments to the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) to pressure Palestinian officials” to open negotiations with the Netanyahu government. (Mondoweiss)

Trump is cutting off UNRWA, one of the most important agencies in all the world for the survival of children in occupied Palestine.  It supplies medicine, potable water, food, clothing. Its facilities have been hit by Israeli air power again and again in the various Gaza wars and air strikes.  Israel says its strikes are collateral damage, or that UNRWA was being used as “human shields” for terrorists.  Israel’s war tactics against civilians are not collateral; they are collective punishment, and Trump is doing the same with the cutoff of funds to the UNRWA.  The argument that this will pressure the Palestinians to the bargaining table is nonsense. More countries in the region are distrusting the Trump Administration after this. President Mahmoud Abbas and the PLO have hardened their positions—they see nothing left to negotiate. Collective punishment will not lead to the negotiating table, and Trump's actions are backfiring.  

The overwhelming majority of the world’s nations condemned Trump’s announcement that he’s moving the US embassy to Jerusalem in order to take “Jerusalem off the table,” to help start peace talks between Israel and Palestine.  Then when the UN Security Council didn’t kowtow to the great Jerusalem announcement, Nikki Haley fumed that the UN “risks” seeing a massive cut in funds if it condemns Trump’s latter day Balfour Declaration (reminder: that was a short note to a super-rich Rothschild, not a diplomatic document).  Trump threatened to cut off funds to any country that opposed his move to Jerusalem.  Now, the cutoff of UNRWA money.  Trump’s UNRWA policy is revenge, not negotiations.  The champion of the “Art of the Deal” is digging himself a deepening hole.

Comments

[Decameron]

TV,
It's reported as you say it in the Israeli media all the time. Is it true? How about the baby and mother burned to death by settler terrorists while they slept in the West Bank? Should that family get some financial help? From whom? Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin understood that revenge was a dead end. For that he was killed by an Israeli terrorist. Tragic. Rabin said, at the White House in 1993: "We should not let the land flowing with milk and honey become a land flowing with blood and tears. Don't let it happen."

For the best book on the Rabin assassination, read "Murder in the Name of God," by two Israeli journalists.

[Babak Makkinejad]

HAMAS is a Legitimate Authority wagin war against an occupying power, morally equivalent to partisans in WWWII. IAF is the military instrument of an occupying power which lacks legitimacy in occupying areaz. Decades more war are in store.

[Babak Makkinejad]

Iran has helped in this matter and will continue to do so.

[JamesT]

Green Zone Café

Yes - the Izzies learned a long time ago (and the British before them) that it is all too easy to divide and rule the Bedouin Arabs. This ploy does not work so well on the Syrians - which is why IMO the neocons fear them so much.

[Fellow Traveler]

Trump will just reallocate the UNRWA funds to Bibi for him to disburse as he sees fit. Problem solved.

[Fred]

Decameron,

"... the transition in South Africa, which many of the academics, politicos, and activists (many from the Palestinian diaspora)look at as a possible future path, is the way to go."

How is that working out for the white population of South Africa now? How about neighboring Rhodesia Zimbabwe? "It's our turn now." is the phrase that comes to mind.

[robt willmann]

Here is a brief video clip from the Associated Press of Rabin speaking at the peace rally the day he was assassinated--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBTRLHMclhQ

This video is a little longer and may be from the same function--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNmFRNSNBg0

Assuming that a careful and legitimate autopsy on Rabin was done with proper preservation before it was done -- and that is only an assumption -- the autopsy report and related medical documents would be items of interest to read.

[Oilman2]

I'm with Fred here.

Words....nothing changes.

Take the money away and the dynamics change. Will the ROW step up when it will actually cost them something?

Nah - NIMBY, so who cares. May be tragic, but the world is replete with tragedy aplenty. Israel will not stop until Palestine is Israeli, or the tribes around them unite to stop them. Hence the push by Israel for regional instability.

[Patrick D]

JamesT,

I agree this puts Israel in a difficult spot. Trump's threats and now actions remind me of an attempt by Rand Paul some years ago to pass legislation to cut foreign aid to countries based on a litmus test that escapes me at the moment. One of the entities whose funding would have been cut was the PA.

That sounds pro-Israel on the surface but Israel and AIPAC saw where it would lead and intervened to kill the legislation.

Should be interesting to see whether Congress will step in to restore what is essentially another subsidy to Israel and how they will spin it if they do.

[Decameron]

To Fred. Some in Israel agree with you completely on South Africa, hence trying to find a way for two state solution.

[Decameron]

Thank you for the link of Rabin. Rabin's son spoke at Committee for the Republic event in DC in 2005. He espoused common interests could lead to a solution.

[Richardstevenhack]

Agree that a one-state solution is the only solution.

But as long as radical Zionists run Israel, it will never happen unless imposed on them by the international community.

And as long as the US is opposed to any such thing, it won't happen.

Thus, there are only three possible solutions:

1) Israel commits ethnic cleansing on the Palestinians and forces all of them out of Palestine.

2) Israel commits genocide on the Palestinians.

3) The Palestinians surrender and remain slaves in an apartheid state.

There is one other possibility: Some smart Arabs steal an Israeli nuke or two and blow up Tel Aviv. That would definitely result in the international community coming down on Israel, disarming it of its nukes, and imposing some sort of resolution.

[Jack]

Decameron,

Even if there are peace talks it ain't going anywhere. As we've seen in the past.

It is better to remove any doubts about the fictional two state solution. Neither side has the capacity to negotiate and come to any kind of a settlement. There never was such a train and if such a train existed it has long ago left the station.

If the Arabs and Muslims care about the Palestinians let them do something meaningful. America and the west in general are partisans in the conflict. They have no mediator role.

[jdledell]

The issue of the Palestinian Authority dissolving itself has been on the table for many years. This would force Israel, in theory, to provide schooling,roads etc for Palestinians which would be expensive for Israel. However, Israel has made it very clear that if the PA does dissolve, Israel will treat the Palestinians the same as their sheep and donkeys so it will cost Israel almost nothing. Whether Israel is bluffing or not is something Abbas is unwilling to chance.

You have to keep in mind that to the Israeli government and a majority of Israelis the Palestinians are not really humans created in G-d's image but akin to domestic animals. That is why the two state solution is dead and the one state solution is even deader.

One of the correspondents said the Palestinians are in a terrible situation no matter what they do and the only way to change the situation is all out war. The current military advantage Israel holds over the Arab states is not set in stone for all eternity. I suspect within 50 years, a volley of nuclear weapons will lay waste to Israel and we will have to wait another 2,000 years for the radiation to subside before we can once again return to Israel and Jerusalem.

[Walker]

The difference is that Israel is trying to punish Gazans in its attacks. Historically Israel has targeted civilians in an effort to break resistance. The US was not seeking to kill civilians in Mosul, nor the Russians in Idlib.

[Decameron]

Well said.

[Walker]

HAMAS is a Legitimate Authority waging war against an occupying power, morally equivalent to partisans in WWII.

Absolutely.

[Babak Makkinejad]

A new peace, call it Yalta II, necessary to prevent WWIII, will likely force a settlement in Palestine. Else, there is a high likelihood that in an analogous manner to WWI, the Global Balkans, i.e. the Near East, will trigger WWIII.

[Amir]

Little Brave Belgium just increased it donation with almost 2 Million dollars, in addition to the yearly $12 million. Your expectation that strangers would shed blood, on behalf of others, is unrealistic and not based on evidence in human history. A significant section of the Palestinians have already learned that one has to rely on one song, to gain independence. Now, the rust off the collaborators will realize that independence is not given to them but taken by them. This is a major step forward.

[Amir]

The difference is that Aleppo, In contrast to Gaza ghetto, has not been bombed for a few decades.

[Amir]

Look to the broadcast at 2:10 and you will know where Sanders stands: https://youtu.be/iPVKSiTmU8s Give me conservative zionists anytime above their liberal ones, the former is much easier to counter.