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Sunday 27 May 2012

However they twist this, it's still a Red Line

After a meeting on Monday of the EU’s foreign ministers, there were growing calls for the EU finally to turn its back on the ‘Durban II’ UN anti-Israel hate-fest scheduled to take placed in Geneva next month. The Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said there was a ‘strong call to withdraw’ because of general scepticism about the direction of the final Declaration that was being prepared. The German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said:

I am in favor of canceling participation in the conference, unless the documents are changed substantially within the next hours and days.

Yesterday, the Durban negotiators released the latest version of the draft Declaration which they had striven to sanitise to meet such objections. But as Anne Bayefsky reports, although some of the more egregious demonisation of Israel has been removed, along with some watering down of the threat to free speech through outlawing defamation of religion, the core sticking point remains and is even strengthened – the re-affirmation of the 2001 Durban Declaration which singled out Israel for vilification as a racist state. In other words, the Geneva Declaration can pretend its hands are clean because the offending words are not in its text – but by reaffirming the text of the previous declaration, it achieves the same goal by attempted sleight of hand.

The danger of such a dishonest trick being pulled was precisely why the US had stipulated that the Geneva Declaration should

not reaffirm in toto the flawed 2001 Durban Declaration.

This was one of Obama’s Red Lines which he laid down could not be breached if the US was to participate at Geneva. Yesterday’s ‘cleaned-up’ text shows that this Red Line continues to be breached. Indeed, to repeat the point which those who thought they could sanitise the process have so obdurately failed to grasp (see below) -- it could not be otherwise, since reaffirming Durban 2001 is the foundational reason for ‘Durban II’.

What has happened is precisely what I predicted here – that the sum effect of the US delegation’s participation has been cosmetic changes to the text which do not derail its core objective, the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel. The rest of the text was negotiable. That part of it was not. By negotiating, the US delegation merely made it more, not less, likely that a fundamentally unconscionable document would be legitimised.

And those negotiations are continuing feverishly behind the scenes. As Bayefsky reports:

Tuesday’s development sent diplomats in Geneva scurrying off in different directions. The Netherlands decided to play hardball in the defense of democracy. The Dutch took the U.S. conditions seriously and publicly disseminated a complete alternative text two pages long in stark contrast to the U.N.’s 17-page draft. The Dutch draft is direct; it highlights in plain language that ‘freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our fight against racism;’ it includes protection for discrimination against sexual orientation; and it does not reaffirm Durban I.

Some members of the EU were not pleased. The French and the Germans are insisting the European Union act with one voice and are intent on dragging the Dutch back into the fold. The Italians have gone silent after announcing last week they were going to boycott, apparently succumbing to demands for European unity. American state officials are busy drafting alternative texts behind the scenes despite the preteens of non-participation. NGOs are pressuring the Obama administration not to leave for any reason. The Australians have been apparently struck dumb until President Obama tells them what he’ll do. The Palestinians are threatening to make the draft a lot worse if ‘reaffirming the Durban I Declaration’ is removed. The secretary-general of the Conference Navi Pillay--a native of Durban who promised the mayor to rescue the city’s good name--is helping Islamic states fight the forces that are serious about combating racism.

And the Obama administration, which despite its ambiguous ‘withdrawal’ is unofficially trying to broker and legitimise the final Declaration, is helping those states realise that twisted goal.

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