U.N. Votes for Observer Status for Palestine
The United Nations General Assembly has voted in favour of Palestine attaining observer status within its organisation. Australia abstained but New Zealand voted in favour of the motion.
Ron Proser
Federal Labor MP Michael Danby told J-Wire: “I hope I am wrong and the UN resolution turns out to give the Palestinian Authority the confidence to begin direct talks with their neighbours, the best outcome that might result. However, it is most likely to harm the prospects for peace as the granting of a virtual state by the UN encourages the Palestinians to launch endless law-fare via the International Criminal Court rather than enter into direct talks with Israel to resolve boarders, refugees and Jerusalem.”
Before the vote, Israel’s ambassador to the U.N. Ron Proser who recently visited Australia said:
“Today I stand before you tall and proud because I represent the world’s one and only Jewish state. A state built in the Jewish people’s ancient homeland, with its eternal capital Jerusalem as its beating heart.
We are a nation with deep roots in the past and bright hopes for the future. We are a nation that values idealism, but acts with pragmatism. Israel is a nation that never hesitates to defend itself, but will always extend its hand for peace.
Peace is a central value of Israeli society. The bible calls on us:
בקש שלום ורדפהו
“seek peace and pursue it.”
Peace fills our art and poetry. It is taught in our schools. It has been the goal of the Israeli people and every Israeli leader since Israel was re-established 64 years ago.
Israel’s Declaration of Independence states, “We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help…”
This week was the 35th anniversary of President Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem. In a speech just before that visit, President Sadat famously stood in the Egyptian parliament in Cairo and stated that he would go “to the ends of the earth” to make peace with Israel.
Israel’s Prime Minister at the time, Menachem Begin, welcomed President Sadat to Israel, and paved the way for peace. This morning Prime Minister Netanyahu stood at the Menachem Begin Center and said this about the resolution that you are about to vote on:
“Israel is prepared to live in peace with a Palestinian state, but for peace to endure, Israel’s security must be protected. The Palestinians must recognize the Jewish State and they must be prepared to end the conflict with Israel once and for all.
None of these vital interests, these vital interests of peace, none of them appear in the resolution that will be put forward before the General Assembly today and that is why Israel cannot accept it. The only way to achieve peace is through agreements that are reached by the parties and not through U.N. resolutions that completely ignore Israel’s vital security and national interests. And because this resolution is so one-sided, it doesn’t advance peace, it pushes it backwards.
As for the rights of Jewish people in this land, I have a simple message for those people gathered in the General Assembly today, no decision by the U.N. can break the 4000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.”
Mr. President,
The People of Israel wait for a Palestinian leader that is willing to follow in the path of President Sadat. The world waits for President Abbas to speak the truth that peace can only be achieved through negotiations by recognizing Israel as a Jewish State. It waits for him to tell them that peace must also address Israel’s security needs and end the conflict once and for all.
For as long as President Abbas prefers symbolism over reality, as long as he prefers to travel to New York for UN resolutions, rather than travel to Jerusalem for genuine dialogue, any hope of peace will be out of reach.
Mr. President,
Israel has always extended its hand for peace and will always extend its hand for peace. When we faced an Arab leader who wanted peace, we made peace. That was the case with Egypt. That was the case with Jordan.
Time and again, we have sought peace with the Palestinians. Time and again, we have been met by rejection of our offers, denial of our rights, and terrorism targeting our citizens.
President Abbas described today’s proceedings as “historic”. But the only thing historic about his speech is how much it ignored history.
The truth is that 65 years ago today, the United Nations voted to partition the British Mandate into two states: a Jewish state, and an Arab state. Two states for two peoples.
Israel accepted this plan. The Palestinians and Arab nations around us rejected it and launched a war of annihilation to throw the “Jews into the sea”.
The truth is that from 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was ruled by Jordan, and Gaza was ruled by Egypt. The Arab states did not lift a finger to create a Palestinian state. Instead they sought Israel’s destruction, and were joined by newly formed Palestinian terrorist organizations.
The truth is that at Camp David in 2000, and again at Annapolis in 2008, Israeli leaders made far-reaching offers for peace. Those offers were met by rejection, evasion, and even terrorism.
The truth is that to advance peace, in 2005 Israel dismantled entire communities and uprooted thousands of people from their homes in the Gaza Strip. And rather than use this opportunity to build a peaceful future, the Palestinians turned Gaza into an Iranian terror base, from which thousands of rockets were fired into Israeli cities. As we were reminded just last week, the area has been turned into a launching pad for rockets into Israeli cities, a haven for global terrorists, and an ammunition dump for Iranian weapons.
Time after time, the Palestinian leadership refused to accept responsibility. They refused to make the tough decisions for peace.
Israel remains committed to peace, but we will not establish another Iranian terror base in the heart of our country.
We need a peace that will ensure a secure future for Israel.
Three months ago, Israel’s Prime Minister stood in this very hall and extended his hand in peace to President Abbas. He reiterated that his goal was to create a solution of two-states for two-peoples—where a demilitarized Palestinian state will recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
That’s right. Two states for two peoples.
In fact, President Abbas, I did not hear you use the phrase “two states for two peoples” this afternoon. In fact, I have never heard you say the phrase “two states for two peoples”. Because the Palestinian leadership has never recognized that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people.
They have never been willing to accept what this very body recognized 65 years ago. Israel is the Jewish state.
In fact, today you asked the world to recognize a Palestinian state, but you still refuse to recognize the Jewish state.
Not only do you not recognize the Jewish state, you are also trying to erase Jewish history. This year, you even tried to erase the connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. You said that Jews were trying to alter the historic character of Jerusalem. You said that we are trying to “Judaize Jerusalem”.
President Abbas, the truth is that Jerusalem had a Jewish character long before most cities in the world had any character! Three thousand years ago King David ruled from Jerusalem and Jews have lived in Jerusalem ever since.
President Abbas, instead of revising history, it is time that you started making history by making peace with Israel.
Mr. President,
This resolution will not advance peace.
This resolution will not change the situation on the ground. It will not change the fact that the Palestinian Authority has no control over Gaza. That is forty percent of the population he claims to represent!
President Abbas, you can’t even visit nearly half the territory of the state you claim to represent.
That territory is controlled by Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization that rains missiles on Israel’s civilians. This is the same Hamas that fired more than 1,300 rockets into the heart of Israel’s major cities this month.
This resolution will not confer statehood on the Palestinian Authority, which clearly fails to meet the criteria for statehood.
This resolution will not enable the Palestinians Authority to join international treaties, organizations, or conferences as a state.
This resolution cannot serve as an acceptable terms of reference for peace negotiations with Israel. Because this resolution says nothing about Israel’s security needs. It does not call on the Palestinians to recognize Israel as the Jewish State. It does not demand an end of conflict and a termination of all claims.
Let me tell you what this resolution does do.
This resolution violates a fundamental binding commitment. This is a commitment that many of the states here today were themselves witness to. It was a commitment that all outstanding issues in the peace process would only be resolved in direct negotiations.
This resolution sends a message that the international community is willing to turn a blind eye to peace agreements. For the people of Israel, it raises a simple question: why continue to make painful sacrifices for peace, in exchange for pieces of paper that the other side will not honor?
It will make a negotiated peace settlement less likely, as Palestinians continue to harden their positions and place further obstacles and preconditions to negotiations and peace.
And unfortunately, it will raise expectations that cannot be met, which has always proven to be a recipe for conflict and instability.
There is only one route to Palestinian statehood. And that route does not run through this chamber in New York. That route runs through direct negotiations between Jerusalem and Ramallah that will lead to a secure and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
There are no shortcuts. No quick fixes. No instant solutions. As President Obama said in 2010, “Peace cannot be imposed from the outside.”
The real message of this resolution for the people of Israel is that the international community will turn a blind eye to violations of these agreements by the Palestinians.
Mr. President,
In submitting this resolution, the Palestinian leadership is once again making the wrong choice.
65 years ago the Palestinians could have chosen to live side-by-side with the Jewish State of Israel. 65 years ago they could have chosen to accept the solution of two states for two peoples. They rejected it then, and they are rejecting it again today.
The international community should not encourage this rejection. It should not encourage the Palestinian leadership to drive forward recklessly with both feet pressing down on the gas, no hands on the wheel, and no eyes on the road.
Instead it should encourage the Palestinians to enter into direct negotiations without preconditions in order to achieve an historic peace in which a demilitarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state.
Mr. President,
Winston Churchill said, “The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it … ignorance may deride it … malice may distort it … but there it is.”
The truth is that Israel wants peace, and the Palestinians are avoiding peace.
Those who are supporting the resolution today are not advancing peace. They are undermining peace.
The UN was founded to advance the cause of peace. Today the Palestinians are turning their back on peace. Don’t let history record that today the UN helped them along on their march of folly.”
The vote went
138 For
9 Against
41 Abstentions
Australia abstained
The “Nos and the Abstainers”
It is surely something Orwellian in the air if the most of an international community had supported elevating a state-in-making, the Hamas Authority of Palestine de-facto, to a higher level of international responsibilities at the international organization supposedly exemplifying the top-level human rights and co-existence-sustaining peacekeeping activities.
Well acquainted with realities of the Australian-style multiculturalism is hardly surprised by a pragmatic approach to this UN voting Canberra demonstrated as local inclinations, demographical and economical, simply reflected both a global trend of en-masse islamization and a traditional copycat in mother-country footsteps.
Most recent contacts with usually friendly Hon. Michael Danby’s office triggered a strong impression that his energetic international human-rights-related activities could extensively substantiate tackling the daily problems of voters, those being affected with internationally-spread calamities undoubtedly.
So far, this UN resolution is seen as an indicator of a global geopolitics’ climate change leaving none indifferent.
Kol Hakevod, Ron Proser, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN. Nobody could have said it any better than you have in your speech to the UN Assembly. What is truly incomprehensible is the multitude of deaf ears your words have fallen on: most people in most places not only don’t want to acknowledge the stark facts of the history of the last 65 years as enunciated by you, they want to rewrite them to an anti-Jewish formula. It’s not confined to anti-Israel, if it ever really was; it’s anti-Jewish – a new form of anti-Semitism sweeping the world.
In 2001 my mother asked me not long before she died, “Why is it, do you think, that so many people hate the Jews?” Her instinctual knowledge of that deep-seated hatred and animosity had been something that haunted her all her years, even in a place like Australia. She was craving a simple answer, I think, not so much all the elements we know of that contributed over the last two thousand years to the genocide, pogroms and persecution, morphing into what we have now. So, in that sense I was unable to satisfy her question.
Excuse me for getting away from the subject at hand, however in a wider sense world reaction associates with it, because we not only have the congratulations heaped upon the Palestinians for their ‘historic victory’ in this current UN affair, those congratulations go hand in hand with the expression of a most vitriolic denunciation of Israel.
138 Yea to 9 no? Is this correct? If so,it makes one concerned!
Whatever changes have been contemplated by the irrational supporters of an entity bent on the use of absurd methods , the determination of Israel and its friends to uphold its priciples and structures stands unshaken.
Palestinians consider today’s move as a victory which would determine new strategies, principally legal, in lowering Israel’s strength. Israel has been witnessing in the past decades an increase in negtive atttitudes toward its policies. Yet, Israel has been increasingly successful in implementing its policies internationally, includin the staving off of the assumed increase in the palestinian confidence that they are capable of attaining their destructive goals.
Watch the space that Israel keeps as its own territory of justice, rationale and most appropriate concrete measures. What palestinians shall be receiving from Israel and all those rational minds outside Israel in return for their jubilations of today, shall be a stronger, more determined Israel in NOT abandoning Israel’s way of a humane, reasonable society, one worth ptotecting and admiring.
Whoops, I think somthing with the logistics must have gone wrong. The post I was answering to is this one :
Ben Eleijah says:
November 30, 2012 12:40 pm at 12:40 pm
Hello Rita. Germany which is the home of the Nazis, is very cosy with israel. And 138 countries voted Yes and 40 abstained. All the pleas of bilateralism would be credible if supported by historical evidence. Israel was declared unilaterally and has been expanding settlements, highways and military stations in the West bank unilaterally. It has been building the barrier inside the West Bank unilaterally – if a two state solution – to which Zionists pay lip service, while denying the existance of the Palestinians nevertheless – being honestly offered, how do the facts on the ground support it ?
Whereas my answer seems to appear 2 x.
How fitting to stage this grotesk “happening” at the judeophobic UN just about on the anniversary of THE meeting between Hitler and his greatest fan, the Mufti of Jerusalm Haj Amin Husseini, which happened on the 28th November 1941.
How nauseating that the mufti’s dream which he shared with Hitler, namely the “final solution” should not only have survived but – like a nasty weed be florishing again. “Hitler has not finished his work” is a placard we see very often at those so-called “pro Palesteeeeenian” hate fests. I hope that with a name like yours you do not condone this.
As to your “take” on Israel’s recent history, I leave it up to people more knowledgeable about the real history to respond, I am neither Jewish nor Israeli.
However, while I feel deep contempt for what the UN has become, and for the cowardice of Australia, France, and the rest of the useful idiots, I am deeply angry and ashamed about the “abstinence” of Germany. Not only because of the holocaust, but because Germany is my country of birth.
*****************************************
“Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: The Jews are yours.”
– So wrote Former Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in his post-World War II memoirs.
Plus ca change plus ca reste la même chose.
Hello Rita. Coming to the Mufti, the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis even before the Mufti. The Anglo Palestine Bank broke the Jewish boycott of Nazi Germany. Fieval Polke and Renzo Kastner were the mediators between the Nazis and Zionists. Adolf Eichmann even visited British Palestine as a guest of the Zionists and was expelled to Egypt by the British.
Since older history seems to be your forte. So you might be aware of these facts.
Anti-semitic France’s middle name is “Vichy” anyway
Green/Unions/Labor Australia should be called “Pontius Pilate” from now on, or even St. Peter – for a few votes and Petrol Dollars they made me ashamed.
The UN: should be disbanded and indicted for facilitating Human Rights Violations.
How fitting to stage this grotesk “happening” at the judeophobic UN just about on the anniversary of THE meeting between Hitler and his greatest fan, the Mufti of Jerusalm Haj Amin Husseini, which happened on the 28th November 1941.
How nauseating that the mufti’s dream which he shared with Hitler, namely the “final solution” should not only have survived but – like a nasty weed be florishing again. “Hitler has not finished his work” is a placard we see very often at those so-called “pro Palesteeeeenian” hate fests. I hope that with a name like yours you do not condone this.
As to your “take” on Israel’s recent history, I leave it up to people more knowledgeable about the real history to respond, I am neither Jewish nor Israeli.
However, while I feel deep contempt for what the UN has become, and for the cowardice of Australia, France, and the rest of the useful idiots, I am deeply angry and ashamed about the “abstinence” of Germany. Not only because of the holocaust, but because Germany is my country of birth.
*****************************************
“Our fundamental condition for cooperating with Germany was a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for an explicit undertaking to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a manner befitting our national and racial aspirations and according to the scientific methods innovated by Germany in the handling of its Jews. The answer I got was: The Jews are yours.”
– So wrote Former Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini in his post-World War II memoirs.
Plus ca change plus ca reste la même chose.