[NYTr] A New Direction for the Palestinian People (Boyle, 2000)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Francis Boyle

MSA News - Oct 12, 2000
http://msanews.mynet.net/new-direction.html

A NEW DIRECTION FOR THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE

by Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation
to the Middle East Peace Negotiations (1991-93)

Delivered at The National Press Club, Washington, D.C.
3 March 2000

When the Oslo Document was originally presented by the Israeli
government to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace
Negotiations in the Fall of 1992, it was rejected by the Delegation
because it obviously constituted a bantustan. This document carried out
Menachem Begin's disingenuous misinterpretation of the Camp David
Accords--expressly rejected by U.S. President Jimmy Carter--that all
they called for was autonomy for the people and not for the land too.

Soon thereafter, unbeknownst to the Delegation and to almost everyone
else, the Israeli government opened up a secret channel of negotiations
in Norway. There the Israeli government re-presented the document that
had already been rejected by the Palestinian Delegation in Washington,
D.C. It was this document, with very minor modifications, that was later
signed at the White House on 13 September 1993.

Before the signing ceremony, I commented to a high-level official of the
Palestine Liberation Organization: "This document is like a
straight-jacket. It will be very difficult to negotiate your way out of
it." This PLO official agreed with my assessment and responded: "Yes,
you are right. It will depend upon our negotiating skill."

Of course I have great respect for Palestinian negotiators. They have
done the best they can negotiating in good faith with the Israeli
government that has been invariably backed up by the United States. But
there has never been any good faith on the part of the Israeli
government either before, during or after Oslo. Ditto for the United
States.

Even if Oslo had succeeded, it would have resulted in the imposition of
a bantustan upon the Palestinian People. But Oslo has run its course!
Therefore, it is my purpose here today to chart a NEW DIRECTION for the
Palestinian People to consider.

First, we must immediately move for the de facto suspension of Israel
throughout the entirety of the United Nations System, including the
General Assembly and all U.N. subsidiary organs and bodies. We must do
to Israel what the U.N. General Assembly has done to the genocidal rump
Yugoslavia and to the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa! Here
the legal basis for the de facto suspension of Israel at the U.N. is
quite simple:

As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization,
Israel formally agreed to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II)
(1947) (partition/Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution
194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return), inter alia.
Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both
Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III). Therefore, Israel has
violated its conditions for admission to U.N. membership and thus must
be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the
entire United Nations System.

Second, any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the
basis of Resolution 181 (II) and its borders; Resolution 194 (III);
subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council
resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907
Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international
law.

Third, we must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States
government is an "honest broker." The United States government has never
been an honest broker from well before the very outset of these
negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided
with Israel against the Palestinians. We need to establish some type of
international framework to sponsor these negotiations where the
Palestinian negotiators will not be subjected to the continual bullying,
threats, harassment, intimidation and outright lies perpetrated by the
United States government.

Fourth, we must move to have the U.N. General Assembly impose economic,
diplomatic, and travel sanctions upon Israel pursuant to the terms of
the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950), whose Emergency Special Session
on Palestine is now in recess.

Fifth, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine must sue
Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for
inflicting acts of genocide against the Palestinian People in violation
of the 1948 Genocide Convention!

These five steps taken in conjunction with each other should be enough
to enable the Palestinian People to obtain restitution, reparations, and
the return to their homes and lands--INSHALLAH! By contrast, if the Oslo
process is continued, it will inevitably result in the imposition of a
bantustan upon the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine, as
well as the final dispossession and disenfranchisement of all
Palestinian People living in the diaspora. Consequently, I call upon all
Palestinian People living everywhere in the world to unite behind this
NEW DIRECTION that I have sketched out here today.