Ceasefire Magazine » Editor’s Desk: Editorial

Editorial | Frantz Fanon: Fifty Years On

Hicham Yezza — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 18:38:03 +0000

Fifty years ago, on December 6, 1961, Frantz Fanon – Martinique-born and “Algerien par choix”, medical doctor and psychiatrist, celebrated author and rebel journalist, WW2 veteran and independence war hero, diplomat and revolutionary – died of Leukaemia in a US hospital. He was 36 years old.

Six days later, on December 12, a detachment of the ALN, the Algerian National Liberation Army, paid full military honours at his funeral on liberated Algerian territory near the Tunisian border, his final resting place. Within six months, on July 5, 1962, the independent Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, the cause to which he dedicated half his active life, was born.

In the fifty years since his death, a lot has happened and yet, in a number of important ways, little has changed. Fanon’s life, from his earliest incursions into revolutionary struggle as a teenager, to the last months of his life, mostly spent lying in bed dictating, with furious urgency, his last work,The Wretched of the Earth, is astonishing in its arc, as if invented out of sheer will, which of course it was.

Two questions present themselves: What does Fanon mean to us today? Or, more incredibly, should he mean anything in the first place?

To the first question, the answer is: not enough. Fanon, like most cumbersome saints, whose actual words and actions are a lot harder to live up to than our notions of them, has morphed into a plasticine statue: venerated from afar, invoked in passing, enlisted in whatever the battle of the moment is, but never allowed to speak for himself (itself a deep irony, which those who have read him will feel with especial pain). Although commemorative events did take place this year in Algiers and a few other places, with a new edition of his complete works being released, he remains, in the year of Arab uprisings and Occupy, absurdly absent from our global conversation.

Some people do still read him of course, though in dwindling numbers and for increasingly epistemological purposes, but most mentions of him these days seem to be either from those who, as Edward Said put it, enjoy “rereading Fanon but trashing him at the same time” (Sidney Hook’s attacks in the 80s a case in point) or those who simply use Fanon’s name as mere punctuation, to pause for breath between Aimé Césaire and Malcolm X.

To the second question, the answer is a resounding yes. With four slender volumes, published within less than a decade, Fanon has utterly transformed the debate on race, colonialism, imperialism, otherness, and what it means for one human being to oppress another. Some of his positions might seem rather obvious to those who come to him today heaving under hefty Post-Colonial studies baggage, as if what he had to say is what everyone ought to know. But to quote Eagleton’s apt phrase on Stuart Hall, “if he had the air of a camp-follower, he had usually pitched a fair bit of the camp himself”.

Fanon’s first book, Black Skin, White Masks, a masterpiece of condensed critical scrutiny and controlled anger, was a focused attempt, through a “psychoanalytic unpacking of the colonized mind” (in Hamid Dabashi’s phrase) to dig deepest into the sources of the White-Black question, or as Fanon put it “le problème noir”. To say the book has retained its relevance would be platitudinous as well as inaccurate: its relevance has, if anything, been sharpened by a half century of betrayals of the decolonization struggle.

Fanon did not live to see Algeria become independent, but as Said repeatedly noted, that might have been a blessing. Seeing revolutionary comrades turn into a Bourgeoisie of state functionaries would have certainly been hard viewing for someone so dedicated to the emancipation of the ‘paysannerie’, The Wretched of the Earth.

Of course, the betrayals continue today. In Brown Skin, White Masks, his brilliant homage to, and updating of, Fanon’s analysis, Dabashi draws a damning portrait of the parallels between the ‘native informers’ denounced by Fanon – notably in his second chapter’s comprehensive demolition of Capecia’s I am a Martinican Woman - and current incarnations, such as Azar Nafizi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Hirsi Ali’s Infidel.

There isn’t, and will never be, enough space to do justice to how devastatingly compelling Fanon’s message was. But it would be remiss of me not to mention what I feel are two particularly neglected zones of shade. First, Fanon was as true an embodiment of l’intellectuel engagé as you’re likely to get. His involvement in revolutionary struggle wasn’t of the touristic kind that mediocrities like Bernard Henri-Levy have come to epitomise; he was neck-deep in operational matters within the FLN, at great risk to himself.

Secondly, Fanon’s intellectual approach was of extreme seriousness. One only needs to pay attention to how meticulous he was in reading others. Only someone with an extraordinary commitment to intellectual rigour could have turned György Lukács’ ‘Subject-Master’ dichotomy against itself, demonstrating, with incisive brilliance, that what Lukács intended as a space for reconciliation was, in fact, a time-bomb: the master-subject relation, transposed by Fanon into the settler-native context, was simply unsustainable. As he cautioned in his introduction to BSWM “the explosion won’t take place today. It is too early… or perhaps too late”.

Working with Rabemananjara, Richard Wright, Marcelino Dos Santos, Cheikh Anta Diop as well as Senghor and Césaire, Fanon traced a path for a humanist Pan-Africanism that must be restored. His most famous work, the Wretched of the Earth, still retains the rawness and vivid sense of immediacy that must have kept him going throughout those last months. People tend to focus on the first chapter, “On Violence”, and many have done so to attack him based on a vulgar (in Marx’s sense of the word) reading of his words. But I’ve always found the second chapter, on how liberation movements can go wrong, the most fascinating: Fanon seems to have that gift, common to all truly original minds, of being able to spot the iceberg from the merest glimpse of its tip.

Of course, like all truly dangerous thinkers, Fanon continues to receive his fair share of spurious attacks and hatchet jobs. As to serious, well-intentioned criticism, most of it seems to me to be based either on misreadings of him (Sydney Hook) or partial ones (notably Ashis Nandy’s inTraditions, Tyranny and Utopias).

Throughout his work, Fanon makes an unanswerable case for the notion of historical change by which the “oppressed classes are capable of liberating themselves from their oppressors” (Said). Again, this might seem rather obvious from the vantage point of post-9/11 politics, but people would do well to revisit the historical record. Sixty years ago, most liberation movements had started as heresies, rather than the certainties-in-waiting they have become in hindsight.

Fanon should not only be on everyone’s reading list but especially on their re-reading one too. His words, tinged with sadness, resolve, indignation and generosity are, above all, those of a supremely gifted mind and a principled man of action. Although he never got the opportunity to develop his theories into a full-blown framework (he had little to say about the economics of colonisation, for instance), he has left us, in his books and trenchant wartime journalism, a body of critical insights that will continue to inspire millions of revolutionaries and world-changers, all moved by that poetically reflective cry that concludes Black Skin, White Masks:

“Oh my body! Make me someone who always enquires!”

Frantz Fanon was the author of Black Skin, White Masks (1952), A Dying Colonialism (1959), L’An V de la révolution algérienne (1959), The Wretched of the Earth (1961), Towards African Revolution (1964). The Fanon Reader was published by Pluto Press in 2006.

Editorial | Can’t think of an alternative to the cuts? Think harder

Hicham Yezza — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:01:09 +0000

So, you live in block of flats with nine other tenants. One afternoon, someone goes into their bathroom for a quick illicit smoke and sets off a fire that burns half the building down. Names are taken and a bill is presented to all of you for the damages: 200.000 pounds. The case lands in the local court, a judge has to decide how to sort this out. He grants you all an audience.

Now, about your neighbours: one is a high-flying banker, two are nurses, two are teachers, two are pensioners, two are students and you, dear reader, are unemployed. The banker smokes.

“Of course”, the judge begins, “there’s a few ways we could do this”. One option would be for everyone to stump up 20K each. This would wipe out the life savings of the poorest half of the group and saddle them with debt for years to come. Alternatively, the judge continues, maybe the nurses could take out a loan? Or maybe the teachers can both sell their flats and move into a trailer? Maybe the pensioners could sell their war medals? Maybe the students can sell a kidney each?

You’re confused, as is everyone in the group. You think there’s a fairly obvious solution and are not sure why it’s not being brought up. You assume there’s something complicated going on and you’re just a bit slow. Still, you gather within you the courage to speak up. You start by pointing out that, since the banker caused the fire, and since the fine would barely make a dent in his budget, then maybe he should be asked to take on most of the burden. Incidentally, he’s best mates with the local police chief, the local press baron, the judge’s brother and the owner of the building, all of whom are peering down from the gallery.

“What an absurdly insane idea” the judge splutters indignantly, he literally cannot believe anyone can be this stupid. “In any case”, he adds “there’s no point in discussing this option; the banker won’t accept it as he might have to give up one of his dozen cars.”

Before you have time to digest what you’ve just heard, the banker stands up: he has a brilliant solution! How about the retirees give up half their pension for five years, the nurses sell their cars, the teachers spend their weekends giving private tuition for a decade, and you could simply sell your second-hand bike? “After all”, he wags his finger at you accusingly, “can’t you continue looking for work on foot?”

The judge erupts in applause, the press baron hails the idea as the greatest since the wheel, and the police chief tells your grumbling mates, up on their feet with outrage, that they better keep it quiet or else. The owner of your building, by the way, got his money back through insurance days ago but has come to court for “a bit of a laugh”.

Is my parable ham-fisted enough for you yet? Splendid! Here’s the good news: this story is a crude simplification of what’s being done to this country by the people who run it. The bad news: it’s only about 2.7% cruder than the reality. As far as the big picture goes, this is pretty much spot on.

Of course, you wouldn’t know it from reading the papers, or watching the news, or talking to anyone who’s anyone in government. Austerity measures are “needed”, “necessary”, “unavoidable”. We can’t continue to “live beyond our means,” we can’t pass on “huge debts” to “future generations”. “Cuts are painful”, our millionaire ministers wail mournfully, but they are “better than the alternative”. “Do you want to end up like the Irish?” They stare sternly, “like the Greeks? Like the Italians? Do you? DO YOU?”

And so on and so forth. An exhausted population, stunted into bafflement by the ruthless tsunami of pro-cuts propaganda, starts to give up. Some people even end up buying the “necessary cuts” spiel just because they have no energy to resist the onslaught of figures and pie charts and alarmist headlines and round-the-clock eggheads warning us of the unspeakable, impending apocalypse round the corner. “Give up trying to understand the problem”, they scream at a bewildered populace from on high, “just take this damn pill! It’s good for you!”

“But is it true?” You ask naively “Is it inevitable that the poor must get poorer? The disabled less care provision? The asylum seeker no legal aid? The mother of two less child support? The student a bigger fee burden? The pensioners even less of what little they had? Is it simply the case that there is no money?”

Well, I could bore you for a few hours with a counter-hurricane of statistics and flowcharts. I could inflict a round of pithy quotes from Nobel Prize winning economists, pleas from heads of charities, statistical tables from governmental documents, or youtube videos of single mothers, ethnic minority kids and disabled students, all explaining what an unnecessary disaster this government’s actions are proving to be for them and others. Instead, I’ll leave you with just one tiny fact: if everyone in the top 10% gives up 4% of their wealth, the UK deficit would be paid off today. Not in ten years, ten months or ten days, but today, as soon as the cheques clear.

But to look in that direction would be “absurdly insane”, obviously. Instead, let us cut jobs, raise tuition fees, obliterate welfare provision, decimate pensions and ruin millions of lives for a generation or two. Because that is what sensible, responsible governments are for.

The national strike on Wednesday is necessary, timely and could prove crucial in a fight that represents our best chance in a generation to fix this lopsided system where money always speaks loudest. The government’s attack on the poor and the vulnerable should be opposed by all those who believe in fairness, decency, and solidarity.

The strike is an integral part of this fight, and the government knows it. To take one example, according to media reports “former Border Agency staff are being offered up to £450 to work a single shift if they are willing to walk across picket lines and check passengers’ passports – more than four times the daily rate earned by most passport officials.” Let’s get this straight: this government is using taxpayers’ money to bribe former public sector workers to sabotage current public sector workers’ strike against this government’s attack on the public sector. How’s that for Chutzpah?

Cameron & co tell us the strike is a racket orchestrated by evil, greedy, power-hungry individuals with no mandate, who would inflict serious, irreversible real harm to the country unless stopped – Unintentionally reminding us of somebody.

There is another way of dealing with the deficit than forcing the poorer half of the country into indenture for decades to come. Those in government, and their mouthpieces, who claim they’re the ones being “realistic”, or bravely facing up to “hard truths” are either lying to themselves, or to everyone else.

For surely they know what a real act of bravery would be. Put simply, the Westminster crowd knows where the money is but, alas, hasn’t got the cojones to go after it, because it involves knocking on the heavy, gilded doors of their patrons and chums.

This system is broken. Those running things will only begin to fix it if and when we make the alternative to not fixing it costlier: just ask Charles I.

Blog | With or without an account, Facebook will be tracking you

Ceasefire Bites — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 21:28:17 +0000

Everyone knows most website behemoths, from Google to Yahoo, are doing everything they can get away with to track and keep their customers data.

And yet, it still comes as a mild shock (no?) whenever a relative safe haven is found to be not so safe after all.

Take today’s depressing story in USA Today which reveals that Facebook has been tracking users visiting its pages regardless of whether they have an account or not.

Money quote:

“Facebook officials are now acknowledging that the social media giant has been able to create a running log of the web pages that each of its 800 million or so members has visited during the previous 90 days. Facebook also keeps close track of where millions more non-members of the social network go on the Web, after they visit a Facebook web page for any reason.”

Video Blog | Retired police chief arrested at OWS after calling fellow officers ‘obnoxious, arrogant and ignorant’

Ceasefire Bites — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 19:57:21 +0000

The rolling circus of perpetual own-goals that is the NYPD’s crackdown on Occupy Wall Street is the gift that keeps on giving.

Fresh from having evicted peaceful protesters under the guise of keeping the community “safe”, using tactics more reminiscent, for the average American viewer, of smuggled footage of crackdowns in far away police states, officers have found nothing better to do than arrest one of their own, albeit someone who had retired (and thus in full possession again of a functioning brain).

Just when signs of weariness and ennui risked dragging OWS to the shore of irrelevance, Mayor Bloomberg has heroically jolted the whole thing back up into swing, not that he any clue about it.

Special Report | Did Zionist hackers bring down our Russell Tribunal website?

Harry Fear — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 05:29:01 +0000

last week has seen two significant cyber attacks occur, both relating to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

After Israel hijacked two Gaza-bound humanitarian vessels, the Canadian ‘Tahrir’ and Irish ‘Saoirse’, the hacktivist outfit Anonymous hijacked and temporarily disabled the websites of the Israel Defence Force and Mossad, causing much embarrassment to Israel.

Anonymous clarified their stance, stating, “We do not tolerate this kind of repeated offensive behavior [sic.] against unarmed civilians… If you [the Government of Israel] continue blocking humanitarian vessels to Gaza… then you will leave us no choice but to strike back again and again until you stop.”

This weekend saw the South African session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, a people’s tribunal, which sought to assess the prima facie evidence against Israel regarding the crime of apartheid. The tribunal took evidence from Arab-Israeli Knesset member Haneen Zoabi and Israeli activist Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, among others of high esteem.

As the Tribunal took evidence its website was under attack by unknown hackers, resulting in a total deactivation of the website. Even now, users trying to visit the website are redirected to a dead end.

Last year I volunteered my services to the Russell Tribunal and set up their website. Before I started my career in documentary-making I worked as an internet presence consultant and trained in website security. As such, I ensured that the website had an impressive level of cyber defences to guard against expected attacks. Thankfully, these defences have held water and the (malignant, presumably pro-Zionist) hackers were unable to attack the website itself.

Instead, the hackers seem to have gained control of the systems at 1&1 Internet Ltd., the company with whom the Tribunal holds its domain name. Inside 1&1’s systems the attackers hijacked the Tribunal’s domain name, redirecting it to a fallacious web address that corresponds to the viewer’s own computer. Put simply: anyone trying to visit the Tribunal’s website ends up at an error page (see above).

This attack is very sophisticated and no amateur attempt. The ability of the hackers to seemingly compromise the systems at 1&1 Internet Ltd., a large and esteemed multinational company, indicates the complexity of the attack and the hacker’s considerable resolve.

It’s early days to know for certain what has happened. But from what we’ve seen so far, this story is far from over.

Video Blog | David Held, Saif-al-Islam Gaddafi and the LSE

Ceasefire Bites — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:18:25 +0000

The controversy over David Held and his links to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi for a short time exposed the corporate nature of the present British university system.

The connections of Professor Held and the LSE to the Gaddafi family may have been too close (on moral grounds they were, but university policies are rarely decided on morality), and Lord Chief Justice Woolf may criticize both the academic and the LSE for a lapse in judgment, but this sort of partnership between authoritarian regimes and celebrated academics is not unusual in British higher education.

In fact, it is encouraged as good business practice as our columnist Paul Schloss will show in a two-part essay, due to be published next week in Ceasefire.

Blog - | Palestine joins UNESCO, US officials murder the English Language

Ceasefire Bites — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:15:50 +0000

Today’s vote at UNESCO, granting full membership of the UN body to the Palestinians, marks a symbolic victory for one of the world’s longest-suffering peoples, but also a new low (if such a thing can be imagined) in US diplomacy’s always-creative relationship with the English language.

Indeed, the Orwellian triangulations of US official-speak were painfully on display in the vindictive, petty and incoherent American response to the vote (see video below, with brilliant grilling by AP’s Matthew Lee of hapless DoS spokeswoman Victoria Nuland) which ought to become required reading/viewing for anyone trying to understand the destructive role the US has played, for decades, in preventing a just peace in the Middle East (Transcript below).

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

MS. NULAND: All right, everybody. Happy Halloween. I do have a statement at the top before we get started with regard to the Palestinian admission to UNESCO. Today’s vote by the member states of UNESCO to admit Palestine as a member is regrettable, premature, and undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace in the Middle East. The United States remains steadfast in its support for the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state. But such a state can only be realized through direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

The United States also remains strongly committed to robust multilateral engagement across the UN system. However, Palestinian membership as a state in UNESCO triggers longstanding legislative restrictions which will compel the United States to refrain from making contributions to UNESCO. U.S. engagement with UNESCO serves a wide-range of our national interests on education, science, culture, and communications issues. The United States will maintain its membership in and commitment to UNESCO, and we will consult with Congress to ensure that U.S. interests and influence are preserved.

Now let’s go to your questions.

QUESTION: Sorry, I just – does that mean that you have stopped, effectively today, contributing to UNESCO?

MS. NULAND: It does. We were to have made a $60 million payment to UNESCO in November and we will not be making that payment.

QUESTION: Right. Sorry. Sixty million?

MS. NULAND: Sixty million.

QUESTION: And that was – and that is what — a part of a tranche of the total of 80?

MS. NULAND: Correct.

QUESTION: All right. So, this was not particularly a banner day for U.S. diplomacy. If you count the abstentions, you had — 159 countries did not vote the way you did. Only 13 did. That would seem to suggest that these countries don’t agree with you that this is such a big problem. Those countries included the French – France. They included numerous members of the Security Council. What happens to them now that you’re punishing UNESCO? What happens to these countries that voted to, in this regrettable way that is going to undermine the peace process?

MS. NULAND: Well, those countries obviously made their own national decisions on this vote. We disagree with them. We made clear that we disagreed with them before the vote. We make clear that we disagree with them after the vote. We also make clear here today that we want to continue our relationship with UNESCO. But as we said before this vote, and as we have had to say today, legislative restrictions compel us to withhold our funding now. And that will have an impact on UNESCO.

QUESTION: But going back to – you said in your opening you said that this was regrettable, premature, and undermines our shared goal. Who’s shared goal? Who shares this goal, other than the 13 other countries that voted with you, now?

MS. NULAND: Countries all over the international system share the goal of a Palestinian state and secure borders –

QUESTION: Why would the possibly do something – how could they possibly do something that you say is so horrible and detrimental to that process? How can they – how can you still count them – count on them as sharing this goal?

MS. NULAND: You’ll have to speak to them about why they made the decision that they made. We considered that this was, as I said, regrettable, premature, and undermines the prospect of getting where we want to go. And that’s what we’re concerned about.

QUESTION: Okay and then how does it undermine, exactly? How does it undermine the prospect of where you want to go?

MS. NULAND: The concern is that it creates tensions when all of us should be concerting our efforts to get the parties back to the table.

QUESTION: The only tensions that it creates – the only thing it does is it upsets Israel and it triggers this law that will require you to stop funding UNESCO. Is there anything else? There’s nothing that changes on the ground is there?

MS. NULAND: Our concern is that this could exacerbate the environment which we’re trying to work through so that the parties will get back to the table.

QUESTION: How exactly does it exacerbate the environment if it changes nothing on the ground, unlike say, construction of settlements? It changes nothing on the ground. It gives Palestine membership in UNESCO, which is a body that the U.S. didn’t — was so unconcerned about for many years that it just wasn’t even a member.

MS. NULAND: Well, I think you know that this Administration is committed to UNESCO, rejoined UNESCO, wants to see UNESCO’s work go forward –

QUESTION: Well, actually, it was the last Administration that rejoined UNESCO, not this one. But the – I need to have some kind of clarity on how this undermines the peace process other than the fact that it upsets Israel.

MS. NULAND: Again, we are trying to get both of these parties back to the table. That’s what we’ve been doing all along. That was the basis for the President’s speech in May, basis of the diplomacy that the Quartet did through the summer, the basis of the statement that the Quartet came out with in September. So, in that context, we have been trying to improve the relationship between these parties, improve the environment between them, and we are concerned that we exacerbate tensions with this, and it makes it harder to get the parties back to the table.

QUESTION: Since the talks broke off last September until today, how many times have they met together with all your effort?

MS. NULAND: How many times have the parties met?

QUESTION: Yes.

MS. NULAND: I think you know the answer to that question.

QUESTION: Correct.

MS. NULAND: It doesn’t change the fact that we all are committed to trying –

QUESTION: So how can things get worse than they already are?

MS. NULAND: Matt, I think you’re engaged in a polemic here rather than questions.

Said. Please.

The full briefing (40min) can be watched below, the rest of the transcript continues underneath it.

QUESTION: You think you’re going to get better from the next person?

MS. NULAND: Go ahead, Said.

QUESTION: Yes, Victoria. On the shared values, does that mean that hundred and seven countries, you do not share values with?

MS. NULAND: A hundred and seven countries made their own decision on this vote.

QUESTION: Right.

MS. NULAND: We disagree with that vote, and we disagree with the implications, and we are concerned about the implications not only for the environment in which we are trying to get these parties back to the table, but also we’re concerned about the implications for UNESCO, which is an organization that we support.

QUESTION: Okay. Could you also explain to us how, when you cut off funds to UNESCO, which is 22 percent of their budget, almost $80 million, how will your membership – what kind of effect – or what kind of membership will you have with the organization?

MS. NULAND: Well, we want to continue working with UNESCO, because we believe that UNESCO advances U.S. interests, advances U.S. values, a whole list of programs that UNESCO is responsible for that we support, including literacy training for Afghan police and army cadets, tsunami early warning, nurturing and protecting journalists across the Middle East and Africa, conducting large-scale teacher training efforts throughout Africa.

So we want to continue to work with UNESCO, including remaining on UNESCO’s executive board, and we will continue our efforts to try to win reelection to UNESCO’s governing board. But we are not going to be able to continue contributing to the budget, and under UNESCO’s rules, if this continues for some two years, there could be implications for our membership status.

QUESTION: And finally, do you have any plans to dissuade the Palestinians from replicating what they have done with UNESCO with other UN agencies?

MS. NULAND: Well, we’re certainly making the point directly to the Palestinians and to the voting members of other organizations that we don’t see any benefit and we see considerable potential damage if this move is replicated in other UN organizations.

Andy.

QUESTION: And you said if this situation continues for two years then it could have implications for membership. Does that mean that if the U.S. doesn’t fund UNESCO for two years then it gets essentially chopped out of the organization? Is that what happens?

MS. NULAND: Well, it could have implications for our voting rights. Under UNESCO’s constitution, a member state will have no vote in the general conference if it gets more than two years in arrears in its contribution. So our actual arrearage status will begin in January.

QUESTION: Okay. And there’ve been comments that you’re hoping to work with Congress to figure out how the U.S. can remain involved in UNESCO’s activities. Do you have a road map for how this can happen, given that the vote has already taken place? I mean, is there another route by which you can circumvent this restriction, or are you hoping that UNESCO will somehow take the vote back? How can you possibly say that you’re going to continue to be involved with them if this funding ban remains in place?

MS. NULAND: Well, I think what we were talking about is that we now need to have consultations with Congress. We will have those consultations to identify how best we can move forward. As I’ve said, not paying our dues into these organizations could severely restrict and reduce our ability to influence them, our ability to act within them. And we think this affects U.S. interests, so we need to have conversations with Congress about what options might be available to protect our interests. But I don’t want to get ahead of where those conversations might take us.

QUESTION: But that – can you say that you have identified options that would allow you to protect U.S. interests that you’re going to present to Congress?

MS. NULAND: Well, I think we’ll need to have those conversations with the Congress before we start talking publicly about what the options might be.

Jill.

QUESTION: Toria, I mean, you could explain this as the U.S. becomes a deadbeat at UNESCO; it’s there but it’s not paying its dues. And others say that this overall undermines the influence of the United States. What do you say to that?

MS. NULAND: I think we’re concerned about it. We are very concerned about it, which is why we didn’t want it to happen in this first place and why we’re concerned about this move being replicated in other UN agencies. And why are we concerned about it? We’re concerned about it because UNESCO does things that are valuable to the United States, that represent the best of our values, and that do help advance U.S. interests along the lines that I discussed earlier. So we are concerned about it.

QUESTION: So you don’t agree with the Congress then that passed that rule?

MS. NULAND: We obviously have to comply with U.S. law. We have to comply with legislative restrictions. That said, we will now have a conversation with the Congress about how we go forward

Arshad.

QUESTION: As you recall, and as we discussed last week, Secretary Clinton in public on – or in an interview in October said that if this were to cascade to other UN agencies it could harm U.S. interests and that, therefore, she had already begun talking to members of Congress about flexibility that would allow the United States to potentially still participate in organizations like the IAEA or the WHO or FAO, were they to admit the Palestinians.

When you – in answer to Andy’s question and the other questions about your talks with Congress about where you go next, since the Secretary has already broached this subject, is what you plan to talk to Congress about is some way that the United States could continue funding UNESCO, either by amending the original law or creating waiver authority, finding some kind of a legislative solution that would allow the U.S. Government to continue funding UNESCO, or is that not what you’re talking about here?

MS. NULAND: I think there are a number of ways that this could go, and we need to have those conversations with Congress and see what the Congress might be prepared to support. But I don’t want to get ahead of those conversations.

QUESTION: But – I get that, but the Secretary, three weeks ago, already addressed this, and her comments were public and they were on your website, so I think it’s not unreasonable to ask is that what you’re talking about, getting flexibility so you can keep funding UNESCO?

MS. NULAND: Well, it’s certainly one of the options that we will discuss.

QUESTION: Toria –

QUESTION: Just a quick –

QUESTION: – to follow up on both Andy and Arshad’s point about Congress, the Secretary was before House Foreign Relations last week. Did she have any opportunity to personally press the chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen about this funding issue? Because Ros-Lehtinen has come out and said that she not only supports these restrictions but that she wants to actually toughen them, if that’s even possible on – in order to punish the Palestinians for pursuing this. What kind of outreach has the Secretary conducted in order to try to deal with this? And then I have a follow-up.

MS. NULAND: Well, Ros, she’s spoken to a number of members of Congress herself. She’s also organized the team to speak to members of Congress about what options we may have here. But again, we have to work with Congress because these are legislative constraints, and so if we’re going to move forward in a legislative way, we have to gain their support.

QUESTION: And then in terms of the impact on related organizations, several high-tech and pharmaceutical firms are said to be meeting here at State this afternoon to discuss how the lack of financial support from the U.S. might have an impact on their ability to work in the countries where UNESCO and the WINO have their work being conducted. What more can you tell us about this meeting? How does this affect the Apples, the Googles, the pharmas of the world, when they’re looking at potentially being shut out of potentially lucrative markets?

MS. NULAND: Well, Ros, I think you’re referring to the meeting that Assistant Secretary for International Organizations Esther Brimmer is having today with representatives from some of the U.S. majors around the world to explain what the implications of this vote might be for U.S. business abroad. But my understanding is Assistant Secretary Brimmer is particularly going to call their attention to the potential that the Palestinians may now gain admission to the World Intellectual Property Organization. So – and that might have some implications for our ability to work in that organization. And of course, that’s a very important organization for companies, like the high-tech list that you cited.

QUESTION: And then –

QUESTION: – quick follow-up?

QUESTION: Well, then, what do you do – then what is the U.S. Government then telling these companies, which have been extremely concerned about intellectual piracy, dummy drugs, dummy consumer products? Does – is U.S. business being unfairly impacted because of this legislative restriction, and how can the U.S. Government try to resolve it? Or rather, the Executive Branch, how can it resolve it so that the business community isn’t unduly upset by all this?

MS. NULAND: Well, obviously, she wants to make sure that these companies understand the implications of what has already happened, but also with regard to the intellectual property organization, WIPO, she wants to make sure that companies understand that Palestinian membership in WIPO could trigger – would trigger similar funding restrictions and could diminish U.S. influence in an organization that’s very important to these companies. So we need to make sure that our companies understand the implications of what’s happened and begin that conversation with them.

QUESTION: Would it be fair to suggest that perhaps, with this meeting, the State Department is hoping to induce these companies to lobby for a change, an easing of these restrictions on UNESCO funding?

MS. NULAND: I think the stage that we are at is to make sure that our companies understand what may or may not be happening in this circumstance so that we can open a conversation about how we protect their interests going forward.

Said, and then Andy.

QUESTION: Quick follow – yeah, a quick follow-up on Congress. Representative Kay Granger, chairperson of the subcommittee, said that not only will we cut funding to UNESCO but the other areas in the United Nations. Do you know what she’s talking about? What other cutoffs and so on in the offering as a result of that?

MS. NULAND: Well, obviously, I would refer you back to the congresswoman for clarification on her statement. I could – she may either have been talking about the World Intellectual Property Organization or she may have been talking about what will happen if this UN agency process cascades.

QUESTION: Back on the WIPO, actually, I was just wondering if you’d go a little bit further and explain to us what she’s telling the companies would be the effect of the reduced U.S. funding or an eliminated U.S. funding in WIPO. Does that – what would that – what effect would that practically have on U.S. companies operating overseas? Would it make the whole mechanism less efficient or would it reduce the protection for U.S. companies? What is the threat there to U.S. companies?

MS. NULAND: Andy, let me see if I can get a little bit more for you on the specifics of the message being given, but certainly to make clear that if there’s an application to WIPO then – and the Palestinians become WIPO members, that it will trigger the same kind of funding cutoff, so already the organization will have less money to work with, but also that it could diminish our influence within WIPO, which has been very important to these companies.

QUESTION: Quite apart from the congressional lot, you’re opposed to the Palestinians having membership in the World Intellectual Property Organization?

MS. NULAND: We are.

QUESTION: You are?

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: Because the Palestinians don’t have any intellectual property, or because their intellectual property, because they’re not a state, is somehow less protectable or less worthy of protection?

MS. NULAND: Because this is a cascade effect of the decision in the UNESCO which we consider –

QUESTION: What does protecting intellectual property have to do – anything to do with statehood?

MS. NULAND: It has to do with the declaration of state status in UNESCO, which cascades into WIPO, that we are opposed to.

QUESTION: I used to think that this government, my government, had some intellect itself, but this just seems ridiculous. You are going to oppose them in some kind of international weather organization as well? The Civil Aviation Organization?

MS. NULAND: Our position on this with regard to all the UN agencies is the same.

QUESTION: You can – you think that there is somewhere – somewhere in this building that someone can draw a intellectually responsible and acceptable argument that membership in the World Intellectual Property Organization should not be granted to the Palestinians because they are not a state, because their intellectual property, because they’re not a state, is somehow less deserving of protection than anyone else’s, including the Syrians, including whoever else?

MS. NULAND: Matt, the move here is not with regard to the aspiration that we all have for the Palestinians to have access to and full rights of all of these UN organizations. The concern here is trying to shortcut the process of statehood, trying to establish statehood through the back door –

QUESTION: But see, that’s the –

MS. NULAND: Can I finish my point, please?

QUESTION: Yeah.

MS. NULAND: Thank you. Rather than establishing true statehood the way it has to be done, which is in direct negotiations with their neighbor. And from that can flow all of the benefits of these organizations.

QUESTION: But not even the Palestinians themselves say that this is a way to statehood. They –

MS. NULAND: Well, but what has been granted here –

QUESTION: They know that this is not – this does not mean statehood.

MS. NULAND: What has been granted here in UNESCO is Palestinian membership and statehood status. That’s what’s of concern.

QUESTION: I’m sorry, and the Palestinian vote on that?

MS. NULAND: Excuse me?

QUESTION: The Palestinians didn’t vote for this. A hundred and seven other countries, including some of your best friends, voted for this. The Palestinians didn’t vote for it; they just simply put it up for – they put it up for a vote. They didn’t have a vote on this.

MS. NULAND: This began –

QUESTION: You lost.

MS. NULAND: Matt –

QUESTION: Why –

MS. NULAND: Are you asking me a question that you’d like me to answer, or are you just going to have an argument with me today?

QUESTION: No, no. I’m – I want to know why you think, and everyone else – which is a position that everyone else disagrees with, that this is somehow – that this hurts the peace process or hurts the ability of the Palestinians to get a state, short of just upsetting the Israelis?

MS. NULAND: Start with the premise this process in UNESCO began with a Palestinian petition for membership, which we thought was ill-advised and ill-considered, and which we so said to the Palestinians at the time. So the Palestinians made a move here that we didn’t think was conducive to the environment for the talks or conducive to getting us back to the table. That is our concern. We want to get the Palestinians their state. It’s only going to happen if we can get these parties back to the table. We have to create an environment that gets them back to the table, and this is not helpful.

QUESTION: Okay. But you accept that 107 countries disagreed with you.

MS. NULAND: A hundred and seven countries made their own decision. We disagree with them.

QUESTION: Right. Exactly. So, I mean, isn’t it maybe – doesn’t that tell you anything, that if you add in the abstentions, which included the Brits, your special ally, who abstained, then 159 countries disagreed with you?

MS. NULAND: It tells us that we are not any closer to a Palestinian state by virtue of this vote today. We are trying to get to that end state that we want, that the Palestinians want, and we don’t think this is helpful.

QUESTION: I’m just curious. Did the Secretary have any personal diplomacy on this subject? Did she make any calls to Brits, French, whoever, in recent days specifically regarding this UNESCO vote?

MS. NULAND: The Secretary has been making the case personally against this move in the UN agencies for weeks and weeks and weeks, and she had many, many conversations about this, particularly when we were in New York.

QUESTION: Do you have any update on your efforts to bring both parties to the table? And what about the meetings that – or the meeting that Under Secretary – Deputy Secretary Nides had today with Tony Blair?

MS. NULAND: I don’t have anything for you on the Tony Blair meeting. If we have anything to report, we’ll get it to you tomorrow.

I think you know where we are, that we had – Quartet had separate meetings with the parties last week. We have encouraged both parties now to go back and start working on concrete proposals for each other on land and on security. We will be working in Quartet format with each of the parties, and our aspiration still is to have them present real, meaty proposals to each other within the 90-day time clock from when this meeting happened last week.

QUESTION: Has the UNESCO vote changed or quickened the pace of lobbying at the UN mission in New York to prevent a vote for statehood in the GA?

MS. NULAND: I think the UNSC process is moving apace. They are still at the stage of analyzing the request, gathering information, et cetera.

Said.

QUESTION: Toria, today marks a milestone: It’s the 20^th anniversary of the Madrid process, the Madrid peace conference, begun exactly 20 years ago. And during that time, there was a great deal of intense negotiations and some stoppages and so on and other processes and many agreements, yet the settlements have gone on throughout all this time, although the United States position was expressed very clearly at the time that settlements must stop, yet they go on. Do you have a position today reflecting on all the settlement processes over the past 20 years?

MS. NULAND: Well, let me first say that we’ve also been working for peace for 20 years, and it remains a challenge. But our position on settlements hasn’t changed, and we continue to make it.

Anything else on this subject, or can we move on?

QUESTION: So what – if we just take it just a bit further, what incentive should the Palestinians have today when they see that a great deal of the land initially allocated for their state has been gobbled up by settlement? What incentive should they have to go back to negotiations?

MS. NULAND: I think the Secretary has said this best when she said that only when borders are settled is it going to be absolutely clear where they are. So if you want all of this to be settled, you have to go back to the negotiating table and you have to, before that, present your own proposals on land and security. So that’s what we’re asking the Palestinians to do. If they are concerned, as we are, by what is going on, then come back to the table and let’s get firm borders.

QUESTION: Okay. So why wouldn’t the United States then take the initiative and call for a peace conference to actually discuss the borders of the Palestinian state, period?

MS. NULAND: Because we don’t think, and our Quartet partners don’t think, and frankly, the parties don’t think, that having a big conference is going to get us any closer. We think that the next step ought to be concrete proposals by each side on borders and on security. This will give the Palestinians an opportunity to present to the Israelis and for the Israelis to present to the Palestinians what they think the right answer are that will allow us to see how close we are, allow us to see how we can move the process forward. That’s the right way to get closer to a state and secure borders.

QUESTION: Sticking to this 90-day process that was worked out last week for both sides to come up with proposals?

MS. NULAND: Correct, correct.

QUESTION: Just on the cascade effect, if it does happen, presumably the votes will be similar to the one in UNESCO, because you are in a distinct minority in pretty much every UN group in which you don’t have a veto – although you’re in a minority there as well – you seem to be admitting that the Palestinians have you over a barrel here. They can, if they continue to go to these various agencies, force the United States to withdraw into almost a shell by – maybe not immediately, but if you get kicked out of UNESCO for having not paid your dues in two years. I expect that the other organizations have similar rules, and so you will have shrunk your international outreach, correct?

MS. NULAND: I’m not going to get too far down the tracks here. We are trying to make clear what the implications for us, what the implications for these organizations, are of the move that the Palestinians started here. And we are hoping that this will end here and we can get back to the peace talks, because that is the place where we’re going to be able to achieve the aspirations of the Palestinian people. I mean, one of the things that’s most distressing about all of this is that not a single thing changes on the ground for a single Palestinian; life does not get better, as a result of what’s happened in UNESCO. And that’s been our concern from the beginning. If you care about quality of life for Palestinians and their having their own state, this is not the way to go.

QUESTION: Well, I didn’t want to get back into this, but the whole fact that nothing changes on the ground is exactly the argument that people make for saying this is not such a big deal and bad deal. But I want to get back to this. The Palestinians seem to have acted shrewdly here, no?

MS. NULAND: We disagree. We disagree.

QUESTION: Why? You’re going to –

MS. NULAND: For the reasons that I –

QUESTION: You’re going to lose your influence in UNESCO because of this, which you –

MS. NULAND: Because it doesn’t get them any closer to the state that they want, that they need, that they deserve. And it does exacerbate tensions in the region, which makes it harder to get back to the table. And it certainly doesn’t help our ability to help them through UNESCO, which does support cultural heritage sites in the Palestinian territories and throughout the Middle East. So we think it’s a mistake.

Other – can we move on? Moving on, please.

QUESTION: Turkey. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that they were providing some humanitarian aid for the earthquake. They said – the spokesman said they were doing so in coordination with the State Department, and I wanted to know what State is doing, also what the Turkish Government has asked for.

MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, the Turkish Government has put out a general appeal for assistance. So in that context, in the first instance – we talked about this last week – we have provided $300,000 in humanitarian assistance through the Turkish Red Crescent and other Turkish aid authorities. The Pentagon is also providing certain excess equipment in the humanitarian categories. For example, some winterized tents have gone. I actually don’t have the full list here in front of me, but it’s things like tents, medical supplies, other things that one traditionally needs as winter comes in an earthquake environment. And these are coming from European Command.

QUESTION: Is USAID providing anything as well or sending a team or anything?

MS. NULAND: USAID is working with the Turkish Red Crescent and other NGOs to ensure that the 300,000 that we are providing is being used for the – to the best advantage.

Other things? Please, Michel.

QUESTION: On Syria, President Asad has said yesterday, or has warned, that foreign intervention in his country would cause an earthquake that would burn the whole region. Do you have any reaction to that?

MS. NULAND: Well, my first reaction would be to say that President Asad, if he cared about the future of his country, would take the steps that we’ve been calling for. He would step aside so that a true democratic dialogue could begin. But even before that, he would withdraw his heavy weapons from cities and towns across Syria which are intimidating people. He would stop arresting, beating, keeping up – keeping locked up and torturing peaceful protestors. And he would allow a true dialogue to begin. That’s what the Arab League has called for. That’s what we have repeatedly called for.

And as we’ve said repeatedly, nobody wants to further militarize the situation in Syria. On the contrary, we want the violence to end. We want a true dialogue about a nonsectarian, democratic, peaceful future for Syria to begin. And it is Asad himself who is standing in the way of that. It is Asad himself who is not listening to the Arab League or anybody in the neighborhood who is a – who sees what’s going on. And all of us abhor the violence. So he needs to get on the side of his people.

QUESTION: Do you support the Arab League’s proposal to Syria?

MS. NULAND: Well, certainly were Asad to listen to the Arab League and take the steps that they have asked for, including immediate withdrawal of weaponry from the cities, an immediate end to the tortures, to the arrests, to the abuses, and immediate access to Syria for international monitors, including from the Arab League itself, the situation would improve. He seems unwilling to do that.

From our perspective, that would be a first step. We obviously also want to see a real democratic dialogue begin and we want to see Asad step aside.

QUESTION: Is the United States taking any special measures, as this was an especially violent and bloody weekend this past weekend? Are there any special measures that you are taking or initiatives that you are taking in coordination with other countries, especially China and Russia?

MS. NULAND: Well, it certainly was, as you said, Said, a very bloody weekend. By our count, at least 70 civilians were killed in Syria between October 28^th and October 30^th by Syrian security forces.

We are continuing to make our case in every interaction we have, both with our UN Security Council partners but also with countries in the region and our allies around the world, that we’ve got to continue to increase the pressure on the Asad regime, the political pressure but also the economic pressure. And no country should be selling weapons to this regime. No country should be aiding and abetting the regime by trading with it.

QUESTION: There are also allegations that many of the killings have occurred also by – carried out by opponents, armed opponents of the regime. Do you concur or do you have any information on that?

MS. NULAND: Our view of this, our analysis, is that the vast, vast, vast majority of the violence in Syria is propagated today at the hands of the regime. And to the degree that you have some acts of violence on the other side, it is the Asad regime’s unremitting, unrelenting violence of its own that is causing some reaction.

QUESTION: Do you foresee – I’m sorry. Could you foresee a scenario where the allegation that 10,000 Syrian soldiers have defected – would you foresee a scenario where these would have, like, a safe haven in the north, aided and supported and protected by Turkey and perhaps the United States?

MS. NULAND: Again, Said, where we are today, the vast majority of the Syrian opposition are saying that they don’t want this situation further militarized, that they don’t want foreign intervention. What they want is for the Asad regime’s violence to stop so dialogue can begin.
Andy.

QUESTION: Change topic?

MS. NULAND: Yeah. Anything else on Syria?

QUESTION: One more. Is there any specific date for Ambassador Ford to go back to Syria?

MS. NULAND: We’ve spoken about this before. He has bought his Thanksgiving turkey for his staff in Syria. He would like to be back in time to have Thanksgiving dinner in Damascus.

QUESTION: Moving to Afghanistan, the Kabul attack over the weekend – and I was wondering if you had any further information on that. There’s been a lot of speculation that there’s some Haqqani link to it, although nobody seems to have nailed that down. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on that and if you’ve had any communication with Pakistan on intelligence regarding Haqqani movements and so on, either related to that attack or other?

MS. NULAND: I don’t have anything particularly new. I think you know that ISAF and Afghan authorities are conducting an investigation, so I think we need to let that go forward and not get ahead of that.

Please.

QUESTION: There’s been reports that the South Korean unification minister is going to be here this week. Is he meeting anyone at State Department?

MS. NULAND: I do have those reports that he’s here. I don’t have a list of his meetings. Why don’t we take that for you? We’ll get back to you. Thanks.

Anything else in the back?

QUESTION: Different topic. Now the world population is over 7 billion –

MS. NULAND: Yeah. That first baby of the 7 billion was born.

QUESTION: – has peoples worrying about the poverty and food shortage, something like that, environment. So what U.S. Government can do that – for that issues or – so what do you think about it? What is your comment for that?

MS. NULAND: Well, I think you know that we have extensive programs all around the world that are designed to mitigate the effects of environmental damage, to support water programs, and water sharing, to support health programs, to support population programs around the world both through UN organizations and through our bilateral programs with countries around the world. So those will obviously continue.

Andy.

QUESTION: I have one I submitted over the weekend and I’m still interested in. With all the talk of Saif al-Islam potentially being in Niger, there have been reports, which Niger officials have confirmed that there’s a U.S. team in Agadez — a U.S. military plane, unknown U.S. personnel. I’m just wondering if you can tell us who was there and what they were doing.

MS. NULAND: Yeah, thanks for that and I’m sorry we weren’t able to get back to you over the weekend. We did have a U.S. military plane in Agadez last week. It was carrying a small team of U.S. military personnel who met with local military leaders and units. This is part of our conversation about potential military-to-military partnership, and the visit was unrelated to the case of Saif Qadhafi.

QUESTION: Was it when (inaudible) was actually scheduled? I mean, was this that long –

MS. NULAND: Yeah. It was a previously planned, routine visit at the invitation of the Nigerian Government and it’s part of our effort to enhance our partnership with Niger in the area of security capability. I think you know that in April of this year we were able to lift previously held sanctions and restrictions on Niger so we are now moving into the category of trying to figure out what we can do together military to military. As we’ve talked about, they have a long, uncontrolled border and other things.

QUESTION: And that they’ve left now?

MS. NULAND: They’ve left now. Yes. Yes. The team is gone.

QUESTION: Were you asked last weekend if you were – did you have an answer to the question about the Georgians agreeing to a Swiss proposal on Russian WTO ownership?

MS. NULAND: We talked about this a little bit on Friday that, as you know –

QUESTION: Someone may have on background, I’m not sure who it was.

MS. NULAND: That’s true. I guess we did talk about it on background on Friday. So I think you know we’ve been supportive of the Swiss effort to negotiate a solution between Russia and Georgia, two customs and border issues that arise in the context of Russia’s desire to have Georgia’s support for its WTO membership. We obviously support Russia’s membership in WTO.

Our understanding is that the talks are going quite well. We’re encouraged by the progress; they’re not finished yet, however. The Georgians have accepted the Swiss proposal, the Russians are studying it, we’re working through some of the remaining issues – or the Swiss are – and we remain hopeful that this will be a good avenue for resolving the outstanding issues.

Good. Anything else? Said, one last one.

QUESTION: Yeah. One last thing on Saif al-Islam, following up on Andy’s question. If he were to sort of turn himself in, would he have to go, let’s say, to any particular embassy, like the American Embassy or the French Embassy? What is the proper protocol in this case?

MS. NULAND: If he were to turn himself in for justice? I mean –

QUESTION: To the ICC. International –

MS. NULAND: Well there are many ways this can go. As you know when the ICC has a warrant out for somebody, the options are either for ICC justice or for the host nation to make the case to the international community that it can pursue justice for these individuals to a standard that meets international standards. So either of those options would be on the table. He could turn himself in to the authorities of the country where he may be, to the TNC, to an embassy, et cetera.

Okay. Thank you very much.

(The briefing was concluded at 1:46 p.m.)

DPB # 164

Blog | On Herman Cain’s crazy campaign ad

Ceasefire Bites — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 01:37:00 +0000

US presidenial campaign adverts: we’ve seen cheesy, we’ve seen silly, we’ve seen OTT and we’ve even seen funny, but we’ve never seen this:

Herman Cain, the first post-post-post-modern candidate?

[UPDATE: The Herman Cain campaign has confirmed to CBS news that the ad is real and not a hoax. Oh dear!]

Blog | Ex-Israeli secret service boss: “Netanyahu is a coward and a liar”

Ceasefire Bites — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 13:27:12 +0000

This past weekend saw the publication of a rather strange (even by his own standards) interview with Jaccob Perry, former head of Israel’s internal secret service, Shabak.

In the interview, Perry calls Benjamin Netanyahu a “coward and a liar”, and advances his own theory as to why the Israeli PM had agreed to last week’s prisoner swap deal with Hamas:

“let’s be honest here: Netanyahu did not do it for humanitarian reasons, but only to f%#@ Abu Mazen! He is so angry because of the UN bid for a Palestinian state that he decided to make a deal with Hamas.”

Later in the Interview, we find another moment of candour, albeit a rather saner-sounding one:

“We Israelis negotiate only when we are cornered, be it by a crisis or a state of war. It’s sad, because all of us know what the solution is. Yes, it’s painful, but there is no alternative. It breaks my heart to give back the Golan Heights to Syria, or give up East Jerusalem, but if we want a future for our grandchildren, it’s a must.”

Winston Churchill said “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.” Had he lived long enough, he would no doubt have pronounced his remark equally applicable to successive Israeli governments of the past few decades.

(It’s worth pointing out, en passant, that Perry’s fairly matter-of-factly observation, had it been uttered by a US columnist or official, would’ve been denounced as the vilest of heresies by US political and media elites.)

Analysis | One More Disappointment at the United Nations: Richard Falk on the Palmer Report

Richard Falk — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 09:34:24 +0000

When the UN Secretary General announced on 2 August 2010 that a Panel of Inquiry had been established to investigate the Israeli attacks of 31 May on the Mavi Marmara and five other ships carrying humanitarian aid to the beleaguered people of Gaza there was widespread hope that international law would be vindicated and the Israelis would finally be held accountable.

With the release of the Palmer Report these hopes have been largely dashed as the report failed to address the central international law issues in a credible and satisfactory manner.

Turkey, not surprisingly, responded strongly that it was not prepared to live with the central finding of the 105-page UN report reaching the astonishing conclusions that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is lawful and could be enforced by Israel against a humanitarian mission even in international waters.

Perhaps this outcome should not be so surprising after all. The Panel as appointed was woefully ill-equipped to render an authoritative result. Geoffrey Palmer, the Chair of the Panel, although a respected public figure, being the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and an environmental law professor, was not known to be an expert on either the international law of the sea or the law of war, and was generally believed to have been pro-Israeli throughout his political career.

Incredibly, the only other independent member of the Panel was Alvaro Uribe, the former President of Colombia, with no professional credentials relevant to the issues under consideration, and notorious both for his horrible human rights record while holding office and forging intimate ties with Israel by way of arms purchases and diplomatic cooperation that was acknowledged by ‘The Light Unto The Nations’ award given by the American Jewish Committee that should have been sufficient by itself to cast doubt on his suitability for this appointment. His presence on the panel compromised the integrity of the process, and made one wonder how could such an appointment can be explained, let alone justified.

The other two members of the panel were designated by the governments of Israel and Turkey, and predictably appended partisan dissents to those portions of the report that criticized the position taken by their respective governments.

Another unacceptable limitation of the report was that the Panel was constrained by its terms of reference that prohibited reliance on any materials other than what was presented in the two national reports submitted by the contending governments. This restriction meant that the panel was not free to recast its inquiry in such a way as to uncover additional evidence and to explore other legal approaches and assessments.

With these considerations in mind, we can only wonder why the Secretary General would have established a formal process so ill-equipped to reach findings that were supposedly designed to put the legal controversy to rest and resolve diplomatic tensions, which it has certainly failed to do. Such deficient foresight is itself one of the notable outcomes of this unfortunate UN abortive effort to promote the peaceful resolution of a potentially explosive international dispute.

It is also surprising that Turkey ever agreed to participate in such a panel. In retrospect, its participation was a serious diplomatic blunder. Turkey should have insisted on a larger panel with more qualified, and less aligned, members, and on a more open framework for ascertaining the fact and law.

Even such an ill-conceived panel did not altogether endorse Israeli behaviour on 31 May 2010. The panel found that Israel used excessive force and seemed legally and morally responsible for the deaths of the nine passengers on the Mavi Marmara. Israel was instructed to pay compensation and issue a statement of regret, which was a partial acknowledgement of wrongdoing, but falling far short of the Turkish demand for an apology.

In other words, the Palmer Report seems to fault seriously the manner by which the Israelis enforced the blockade, but unfortunately upheld the underlying legality of both the blockade along with its right of enforcement, and that is the rub. Such a conclusion contradicted the earlier finding of a more expert panel established by the Human Rights Council, as well as rejected the overwhelming consensus that had been expressed by qualified international law specialists on these core issues.

A gross inadequacy of the report was to treat the blockade as if exclusively concerned with upholding Israeli security, and thereby ignore the predominant purpose of the blockade of imposing an intolerable regime of collective punishment on the population of Gaza that has lasted for more than four years, although varying in severity from time to time.

While the Panel delayed the report several times to give diplomacy a chance to resolve the contested issues, Israel and Turkey could never quite reach closure. There were intriguing reports along the way that unpublicized discussions between representatives of the two governments had agreed upon a compromise arrangement consisting of Israel’s readiness to offer Turkey a formal apology and to compensate the families of those killed as well as those wounded during the attack, but when the time for announcing such a resolution of this conflict, Israel refused to go along.

In particular, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seemed unwilling to take the last step, claiming that it would demoralise the citizenry of Israel and signal weakness to Israel’s enemies in the region.

More cynical observers believed that the Israeli refusal to resolve the conflict was a reflection of domestic politics, especially Netanyahu’s rivalry with the even more extremist political figure, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who was forever accusing Netanyahu of being a wimpy leader and made no secret of his own ambition to be the next Israeli head of state. Whatever the true mix of reasons, the diplomatic track failed, despite cheerleading from Washington that openly took the position that resolving this conflict had become a high priority for American foreign policy.

And so the Palmer Report assumed a greater role than might have been anticipated for what was supposed to be no more than a technical inquiry about issues of law and fact. After the feverish diplomatic efforts failed, the Palmer panel seemed to offer the last chance for the parties to reach a mutually satisfactory resolution based on the application of international law and resulting recommendations that would delimit what must be done to overcome any violations that had taken place during the attack on the flotilla.

But to be satisfactory, the report had to interpret the legal issues in a reasonable and responsible manner. This meant, above all else, that the underlying blockade imposed more than four years ago on the 1.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza was unlawful, and should be immediately lifted.

On this basis, the enforcement by way of the 31 May attacks was unlawful, an offence aggravated by being a gross interference with freedom of navigation on the high seas, and aggravated even further by producing nine deaths among the humanitarian workers and peace activists on the Mavi Marmara, and by Israeli harassing and abusive behaviour toward the rest of the passengers.

Such conclusions should have been reached without difficulty by the panel, so obvious were these determinations from the perspective of international law as to leave little room for reasonable doubt. But this was not to be, and the report as written is a step backward from the fundamental effort of international law to limit permissible uses of international force to situations of established defensive necessity, and even then, to ensure that the scale of force employed, was proportional, respectful of civilian innocence, and weighed security claims against harmful humanitarian effects.

It is a further step back to the extent that it purports to allow a state to enforce on the high seas a blockade, condemned around the world for its cruelty and damaging impact on civilian mental and physical health, that has deliberately deprived the people of Gaza of the necessities of life as well as locked them into a crowded and impoverished space that has been mercilessly attacked with modern weaponry from time to time.

Given these stark realities it is little wonder that the Turkish Government reacted with anger and disclosed their resolve to proceed in a manner that expresses not only its sense of law and justice, but also reflects Turkish efforts in recent years to base regional relations on principles of fairness and mutual respect.

The Turkish Foreign Minister, realizing that the results reached by the Palmer Panel were unacceptable, formulated his own Plan B. This consisted of responses not only to the report, but to the failure of Israel to act responsibly and constructively on its own by offering a formal apology and setting up adequate compensation arrangements.

Israel had more than a year to meet these minimal Turkish demands, and repeatedly showed its unwillingness to do so. As Mr. Davutoglu made clear, this Turkish response was not intended to produce an encounter with Israel, but to put the relations between the countries back on ‘the right track.’ I believe that this is the correct approach under the circumstances as it takes international law seriously, and rests policy on issues of principle and prudence rather than opts for geopolitical opportunism. As Davutoglu said plainly, “The time has come for Israel to pay a price for its illegal action. The price, first of all, is being deprived of Turkey’s friendship.”

And this withdrawal of friendship is not just symbolic. Turkey has downgraded diplomatic representation, expelling the Israeli ambassador from Ankara and maintaining inter-governmental relations at the measly level of second secretary. Beyond this, all forms of military cooperation are suspended, and Turkey indicated that it intends to strengthen its naval presence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey has also suggested that it might initiate action within the General Assembly to seek an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice as to the legality of the blockade.

What is sadly evident is that Israeli internal politics have become so belligerent and militarist that the political leaders in the country are hamstrung, unable to take a foreign policy initiative that is so manifestly in their national interest. For Israel to lose Turkey’s friendship is second only to losing America’s support, and coupled with the more democratic-driven policies of the Arab Spring, this alienation of Ankara is a major setback for Israel’s future security in the region, underscored by the angry anti-Israeli protests in Cairo that exhibited the mood of the Egyptian people.

What is more, the Turkish refusal to swallow the findings of the Palmer Report adopts a political posture that is bound to have a popular resonance throughout the Middle East and beyond. At a time when some of Turkey’s earlier diplomatic initiatives have run into difficulties, most evidently in Syria, this stand on behalf of the victimised population of Gaza represents a rare display by a government of placing values above interests.

The people of Gaza are weak, abused, and vulnerable. In contrast, Israel is a military powerhouse, economically prospering, a valuable trading partner for Turkey, and having in the background an ace in the hole– the United States, ever ready to pay a pretty penny if it could induce a rapprochement, thereby avoiding the awkwardness of dealing with this breakdown between its two most significant strategic partners in the Middle East.

We should also keep in mind that the passengers on these flotilla ships were mainly idealists and political activists, seeking, non-violently, to overcome a humanitarian ordeal that the UN and the interplay of national governments had been unable and unwilling to address for several years.

This initiative by civil society activists deserved the support and solidarity of the world, not discouragement from the UN and a slap on the wrist by being chastened in the Palmer report, which expressed the opinion that challenging Israel by sending this kind of flotilla was irresponsible and provocative.

A more constructive view of the plight of the people of Gaza would have led the authors of the Palmer Report to view the flotilla as an empathetic and courageous undertaking that was justified by the inability of the UN or neighboring governments to end the collective punishment of the civilian population of Gaza.

Israel has managed, up to now, to avoid paying the price for defying international law. For decades it has been building unlawful settlements in occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. It has used excessive violence and relied on state terror on numerous occasions in dealing with Palestinian resistance, and has subjected the people of Gaza to sustained and extreme forms of collective punishment.

It attacked villages and Dahiya neighborhood of Beirut mercilessly in 2006, launched its massive campaign {‘Operation Cast Lead’) from land, sea, and air for three weeks at the end of 2008 against a defenseless Gaza, and then shocked world opinion with its violence against the Mavi Marmara in its nighttime attack in 2010. It should have been made to pay the price long ago for this pattern of defying international law, above all by the United Nations.

If Turkey sustains its position, it will finally send a message to Tel Aviv that the well-being and security of Israel in the future will depend on a change of course in its relation to the Palestinians, its regional neighbours, and the international community.

For Israel, the days of flaunting international law and fundamental human rights are no longer policy options that have no downside. Turkey is dramatically demonstrating that there can be a decided downside to Israeli flagrant lawlessness.

Despite this, Israel shows no disposition to mend its lawless ways, reinforcing the impression that its leaders are incapable of serving the genuine interests of Israel as a state or Israelis as a people.