Palestine presses on in the UN

Noa.

"..Given how much assistance the Deopartment for International Development gives to the Palestinian Authority, it seems on this issue the UK remains a payer but is no longer a player..."

Which contributions are in addition of course to our indirect contributions through the EU and UN and the various donations and remittances made by muslim organisations.

But on the matter of fence sitting the Coalition government is fast becoming a accomplished strategic ditherer.

"Alms effendi! Alms!" Or is that Arms?

Present mood swings notwithstanding, the irreversible tipping point in the UK's position from neutrality to active PA supporter on this will be reached

victor jara 67

"The anniversary of the Balfour decleration"
You mean when an imperial power gave someone else land to a third party.
With the Russel tribunal identifying a situation akin to apartheid in the occupied territories fortess Israel looks even more isolated.

Owen Morgan

Sorry, Daniel, but weren't you once employed to provide advice to Paddy Ashdown? That's pretty much the same as being the village idiot's stand-in, isn't it? Why do you expect anyone to respect anything you say now?

Nicholas

victor jara 67. No, by that time the imperial power Turkey had lost its occupied province of Palestine and was not in a position to give it to anyone.

Oh, that's not what you mean? Of course not. You mean this Balfour Declaration:-

"His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

The one where people like you choose to ignore the wording, the whole wording and nothing but the wording. Presumably you can read, but choose not to because it doesn't suit your political agenda.

What's done is done. Using the present problems as an opportunity for a swipe at Pax Britannica and a swipe based on a false implication, helps no-one.

DavidDP

"You mean when an imperial power gave someone else land to a third party."

I think you'll find that the imperial power in question gave the land (which they had taken over from a previous imperial power, which in turn had taken it over from a further previous imperial power....) to both peoples living there, given that Palestine at the time was inhabited by Arabs and Jews.

David Lindsay

The Henry Jackson's Society's briefing paper about UNESCO's admission of Palestine is truly priceless. It blusters on that Christian and Muslim holy places on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem might now be declared World Heritage Sites, thereby preventing the Israelis from bombing them to smithereens. It is assumed to be self-evident that such protection would be a bad thing, while such destruction would be a good thing. The Tomb of Rachel and the Tomb of the Patriarchs are explicitly included, but then the HJS's Israeli parent party wants to denaturalise the Orthodox Jews as surely as it wants to denaturalise the Arabs.

The UNESCO vote has still not quite brought home to the Americans that no one really notices their opinion anymore. It is a difficult lesson to learn. Even we and the French still dig out the trappings of Empire from time to time, and we both continued to affect them all the time for decades after the reality had gone away. That said, neither of us has ever become a bankrupt Chinese satrapy with the political institutions of a failed state or a banana republic. As the Arabs say, the dogs still bark, but the caravan has moved on.

daniel maris

The existence of a second state is a prerequisite of a two state solution, so I am all in favour of recognition of Palestine as a separate state from Israel.

David Lindsay

daniel maris, it has already happened. Only the Americans have not yet noticed. But they will. Where Britain is concerned, Officer Cadets are already passing out of Sandhurst with "Palestine" listed as their country.

Even in America, the nomination of Obama rather than Clinton was a serious blow to the Israel Lobby in the Democratic Party, historically its stronghold. The Republican Party, always more dubious about Israel, will nominate, if not in 2012 then certainly in 2016, a Presidential candidate most ill-disposed towards turning America and Americans into military and paramilitary targets by funding socialised medicine thousands of miles away in a country which is not even an American ally, but rather maintains an enormous spy network on American soil, also at the American taxpayer's expense.

If Palestine can join UNESCO, then Palestine can also join the International Criminal Court. No vote would be necessary. And by joining, Palestine would oblige all other state parties to extradite anyone whom she had indicted for crimes committed on her territory. Keep an eye out for that one. Especially since Israel refuses to join the ICC, and therefore cannot bring her own cases before it.

Geoffl

Swine Flue? Tough times for chimney sweeps...

Augustus

"You mean when an imperial power gave someone else land to a third party."

Was it, or was it not, conceded by the Arabs themselves that the government of the country under the British Mandate and through the Zionist organization as an administrative agency was infinitely better than the government of the Turks who were chased out of the country by General Allenby? And was it not infinitely better than anything that the Arabs could have created and maintained for themselves in the early 1920s? The US Congress in 1922
certainly thought so.

maxsceptic

Given how much assistance the Deopartment for International Development gives to the Palestinian Authority, it seems on this issue the UK remains a payer but is no longer a player.

The sensible move, therefore, is to cease being a 'payer'.

Augustus

In speech after speech, the PLO/PA leaders have spread a falsified version of history describing Israel as an artificial and colonial state. After 1921, however, and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, virtually all the states in the region - The Republic of Turkey, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, and the British Mandate of Palestine - were born, a fact that seems to have been forgotten. Jordan, formerly Transjordan, and now consisting 70% of Palestinians, was created then, too, on 80% of the land of the British Mandate that was supposed to become the Jewish national home - another fact that seems to have been forgotten. At that time, what is now called the West Bank was annexed by Jordan, and Gaza by Egypt. For many years, the PLO, founded in 1964, was nothing more than an instrument in the Arab-Soviet aggression against Israel. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the Western world became the PLO's major financier; while the PLO could then have disappeared, the West, and particularly the UN, did everything to save it. The West gave the PLO massive financial aid that makes the Palestinians the world's most subsidized people. The Palestinian Authority, especially if it links up with Hamas, is a rogue entity and should be treated as such. At present the Middle East is a zone of turbulence and extreme Islamist agitation. What really should concern Western leaders today is Islamist imperialism and the deeper meaning of the hatred of Israel.