A UN vote is due soon on whether to endorse a Palestinian state over the objections of Israel, which is alienating key allies like Turkey and Egypt and risking a regional conflict over its leader’s devotion to a policy that can accurately be described as lebensraum. Not a comfortable day for Germany.
Awkward
by Tim F| 92 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
wilfred
Comfortable day for you, Tim? Shall the wretched of the earth have their day in the sun, at last? Or must they be punted for yet another politically expedient moment?
Cue Lady Macbeth.
Linda Featheringill
Lebensraum, indeed. And it makes me sad to see the situation deteriorate to that point.
daveNYC
So it looks like they’ll get the nine votes, but eat a US veto. At which point it will be the US giving a big old FU to the Palestinians, and backing up our bestest buds the Israelis. Yep, no way there could be any fallout from something like that.
PeakVT
Why do American politicians hate America? Seriously, the US is harming its own interests here, all in defense of a government that is harming Israel’s long-term interests. It’s nucking futz.
Amir Khalid
Germany is not a “superpower”, unlike the US. So it has less prestige at stake. And yet I have a problem with their notion that to deserve international recognition as a state, Palestine must recognize Israel’s right to exist as a state, and undertake not to threaten its existence. As Germany must know, it is Palestine that exists at Israel’s sufferance, not the other way around. It’s not Palestine that encroaches in Israeli territory with illegal settlements. It’s not Palestine that has, and frequently wields, the power to shut down Israel’s borders at will. It’s not Palestine that responds to Israeli rocket attacks with overwhelming and disproportionate force. It’s not Palestine that runs a blockade against humanitarian aid to Israel. Palestine already recognizes israel as a state. it is hard to expect it to undertake not tro threaten Israel’s existence, when Israel’s leadership works every day against Palestine’s existence. Are the Germans still so torn up by guilt over the Holocaust that they don’t see this?
I’ve noted this before: The US can’t stop the UN General Assembly from voting to seat Palestine. Trying to do so would squander the goodwill that the US, under Obama, has been slowly building with the Muslim world and particularly the Middle East. This would endanger global stability as well as the US’ own efforts to mitigate the security threat from al-Qa’ida and the rest of that ilk.
chopper
probably won’t even get the nine votes they need anyway. i guess they’ll have to go to the general assembly first.
wilfred
“Palestine must recognize Israel’s right to exist as a state”
Critical thinking, please. Recognition of a Palestinian state with the 1967 bordcers contains the implicit recognition of an Israeli state, no?
eemom
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t know if “torn up by guilt” is the right phrasing, but I believe that Germany has a deeply ingrained aversion to any kind of action “against” Israel, even if it’s merely a perception.
chopper
@wilfred:
i think you should read his post again.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: I think Palestine has to “recognize Israel’s right to exist” as sort of a test to see that they are a sober, sane bunch of people.
Sure, they have many reasons to hate Israel, but they will never, ever, get their state without Israel’s aquiesence. So, this is sorta like a hazing ritual (like one where you really, really want to be in this frat, then drink this bong water).
They need to get the Israelis (those that aren’t really OK with a Palestinian state) to think ‘they get their damn state, that means no more rocket attacks, etc’, so they will allow whatever Israeli government to agree to do it.
This is realpolitik here. Having to do something distasteful to get a bigger & better reward for your people.
wilfred
Whose post? Tim’s or Amir’s?
Whatever, It’s time to take a position, that’s the point of the Palestinian effort.
catclub
another expression like ‘cleave’ and ‘sanction’ —
‘run a blockade’
The common point is each has an opposite meaning from itself.
Joey Maloney
In Holidays in Hell, his book about the Middle East, PJ O’Rourke described Germany as “the place from where Israelis learned their manners…in more ways than one”.
catclub
@Paul in KY: “as sort of a test to see that they are a sober, sane bunch of people.”
Wish they had applied to the Likudniks. They would not have passed. Likewise Dick Cheney. Likewise House GOP.
Amir Khalid
@Paul in KY:
I think the Palestinians have had plenty of “hazing” already, some 60 years worth of it in fact; don’t you?
Samara Morgan
i think the US might abstain.
SRW1
@Amir Khalid:
The political class in Germany by and large still is, and there’s a general preference in the population not to have to take a formal stand on issues involving Israel, though that is slowly changing.
chopper
@Amir Khalid:
well, the PLO did recognize israel’s right to exist. the borders, not really. the PA refused to recognize israel’s right to exist as a jewish state (abbas reiterated that recently), and of course obviously hamas never has.
guess it depends on what you mean by ‘israel as a state’.
SenyorDave
@catclub: @catclub: When it comes to Israel the House Dems are no better. They have repeatedly sandbagged Obama over Israel. Basically, the US Congress will support Israel even if it hurts the US.
daveNYC
@Paul in KY:
A decade or so ago, I might have gone along with it; but it’s no longer recognizing Israel’s right to exist as part of a settlement, it’s recognizing Israel as a Jewish state as a precursor to any negotiation. The hazing has increased, and they haven’t even gotten a bid yet.
chopper
@wilfred:
amir said that he took issue with germany’s insistence that “Palestine must recognize Israel’s right to exist as a state”, because he said they already did that.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Nobody but you thinks that.
Pococurante
“Lebensraum”?
That’s offensive. I take it this is a parody of “non-racist people who say racist crap” but substituting zionism?
Please go read up on the history of the land Israel has ceded back over time to its neighbors.
Start with the Sinai if nothing else, a concession that cost the Israeli public hugely in terms of energy independence.
What a blatant display of ignorance.
wilfred
Ok, but again, the movement towards recognition of a Palestinian state is de facto recognition of Israel, and a repudiation of Hamas. Second, the President has already envisaged a two state solution based on the 1967 borders, no? Recognize Palestine and negotiate the frontiers.
Look at a map of the region. Who made the borders in the first place? The borders between Israel and Palestine can’t be negotiated??
Reject this in the sweet breath of the Arab spring is to stand for oppression and tyranny – those are the stakes.
chopper
the sinai wasn’t israel’s to hold on to. land taken during war is not legitimate except for security purposes, and using the sinai for natural gas extraction and shit would have been completely against international law. hell, they started putting a few settlements there after 67, didn’t they? bogus.
catclub
@Pococurante: So Bibi Netanyahu was a big backer of the Sinai deal. I did not know that. The OP said that Netanyahu was pushing policies, not that the history of Israel demonstrated. You seem to have conflated the two.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: oh yeah?
the Sauds and the Turks think so.
you know brother…have you considered our dynamic here? you are the “good” token muslim….because you are a maftoon and tell the juicers what they want to hear.
im the “bad” muslim because i quote the Quran and the Prophet.
that is why Yut says im not a muslim at all.
:)
Paul in KY
@catclub: I know. The problem, of course, is that that particular bunch of insane people already has a country.
Samara Morgan
@wilfred: its SOP american foreign policy.
democracy for me but not for thee…..unless its in Americas interests.
Ash Can
@Pococurante: If the shoe fits…
Yutsano
@Samara Morgan: No child. You act like a Muslim to annoy your parents. Amir has lived it all his life. THAT’S the difference. You are also arrogant and haughty. Which has nothing to do with your supposed faith. You also question that which is between Amir and Allah, which is not your place.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: I agree. But the Israelis don’t. Plus, they (some powerful politicians in Israel) want to see the Palestinians act peaceful, even when extemely provoked. It is an unfair test, of course. But do they (the Palestininas) want their damned country or not?
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
I clicked on that Politico link. Nothing in the story even hints that the US might abstain, rather than vote against, in a UN Security Council vote on Palestine’s UN membership. Yet again, you demonstrate your poor reading comprehension.
El Cid
No one and no nation should have to recognize a nation’s “right” to exist. Nations have no right to exist.
The humans who live in them can likewise decide to merge with another nation or whatever. Nation-states are not to be considered super-entities with “rights” superseding actual people in any basic philosophical sense.
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: Empirically, Israel already exists.
how can they have a “right-to-exist?”
how can any entity grant them a “right-to-exist”?
Tim F.
@Pococurante: “Natural growth” is a near perfect grammatical synonym for lebensraum. It is the settlers’ own term for continually appropriating more land in the West Bank. I even heard a settler use the exact phrase ‘living space’ to describe their policy, bless his history-deprived soul.
Historically, most Israeli leaders have rejected the policy in public while some have endorsed it under the table and some have not. Sharon took concrete steps to shut it down, but was cut down by fate too soon. Rabin tried to take even more concrete steps and was cut down by a settler. Almost every American government, Bush II included, has singled out reckless settlements as a counterproductive problem for Israel.
Then came Bibi (again). More than anyone before, except if you count his own first term in the ’90s, Bibi made the settlers’ agenda his agenda. They are determined to pursue their mission of “natural growth”, so to speak, come hell or high water, and so is he.
Paul in KY
@daveNYC: I say call their damn bluff & say ‘Ok you have a right to exist as a Jewish state’. It’s not like Israel is going to be anything else anyway.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: and again you demonstrate your willingness to prostitute yourself to western ideology.
Here is a Saud POV.
again, abstaining might be the best move the US can make in a constrained gamespace.
eemom
@Paul in KY:
On the contrary, the “Jewish state” — Jewish DEMOCRACY –part is a huge issue, because the demographics are such that Israeli Arabs are going to outnumber Israeli Jews. So if there isn’t a Palestinian state, the Israeli state will eventually either cease to be “Jewish,” or it will cease to be a democracy (i.e., become a true apartheid state).
Pococurante
@chopper:
Land taken by aggressors, yes. Land taken by the attacked, no.
@Tim F.: The settlers are not anything close to a majority of the citizenry nor do they have exclusive control of all government policy. Your statement is on par with asserting the Tea Party is responsible for US government policy. I note you don’t address the decades of land ceded back by Israel, land that under global law there were entitled to keep.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: Samara, I do think it is funny that you tell a Muslim, whose family has probably been Muslim since 1227 or thereabouts, that he’s not Muslim enough.
You don’t have to tell me why, I have already read multiple posts outlining your opinions on his ‘Muslimness’.
Samara Morgan
@eemom: its already an apartheid state, and not a “democracy” by American standards, since there is not freedom of speech or freedom of religion.
Joey Maloney
Bibi won’t stop building settlements, let alone stop turning a blind eye to the illegal settlers, let alone actually dismantling and evacuating them, because if he tried he’d be out of a job in about 15 seconds. And that’s going to remain true of whoever sits in his chair so long as the extremist religious and racist political parties hold the balance of power in the Knesset.
It’d be nice if the huge social justice protests we just saw in Israel could change that equation somehow, but they were almost entirely focused on domestic problems and only touched on external issues indirectly – a lot of domestic goals can’t be achieved because they’re pissing away so much money on the military. (Sound familiar?)
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: no, i said he is a maftoon. a muslim charmed by western culture.
he admits this.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: The PLO/Hamas seem to think they can either recognize or not.
Tim F.
@catclub: Peace with Egypt paid more dividends than that natural gas ever would. The other cornerstones of Israel’s regional security, friendly relations with Turkey and Iran (which served as Israel’s reliable veto in the UN before America took on the job), were utterly dwarfed by the importance of a formal peace on their southern border.
Bibi and every other leader of Israel understood that arithmetic well enough.
Paul in KY
@eemom: It will become an apartheid state. There’s no way in Hell the Israelis are going to allow non-Jewish voters to vote out the Jewish state & its apparatus. Not. Gonna. Happen.
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: so what?
Israel already exists. it has weight and mass and a constitution and a military.
who cares what they say?
if Palestine was a state with borders and its own military, then there could be treaties and laws.
right now, the palis are stateless insurgents fighting occupiers.
kind of like the Taliban that are kiccking America’s ass in A-stan.
:)
Joey Maloney
Actually, Israel does not have a constitution, which is a big source of its internal political problems.
Amir Khalid
@Samara Morgan:
Prince Turki al-Faisal is laying out what Saudi Arabia thinks the US should do. You keep confusing that with what the US is actually going to do.
Tim F.
@Pococurante: Different leaders, different priorities. You know enough about Israel not to treat it as a monolith.
I will quote an insightful source on the matter. Let me know if it sounds familiar.
Samara Morgan
@Amir Khalid: lol.
im speculating about what the US WILL do.
and so are Egypt, Turkey and Saud….in private.
do i need to remind you that Hillary was running a kabuki scam on the Sauds, promising eternal fealty to Mubarak, while Obama was simultaneously telling Mubarak to step down?
chopper
@Pococurante:
was the 67 war ever recognized internationally as one israel fought in defense? only thing out of the UN was a demand that israel get out of the territories it held after the war was over.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: Since, as you say, they do exist, then why not say the magic words?
IMO, you are only recognizing reality. Then the Likudnicks can’t whine about how you don’t recognize their right to exist. You have taken that PR point away from them.
Gilles de Rais
@Samara Morgan: Such a breathtaking ignorance of history. The US will veto as surely as the sun will set this evening. I would bet my life on it.
In addition to ignoring a reality – that is a United States government owned and operated by and for the benefit of the Israeli state – you have not thought through the more prosaic issue of what would happen to Obama, and the Democratic Party, if the US were to be so rash as to even take the milquetoast step of abstaining. It would be the end for them. US voters have been told the Israelis are the good guys. They believe this, if you’ll pardon a pun, religiously. Realpolitik comes into play here. The Democratic party will not shoot themselves in the head over the Palestinians, who almost every American consider to be “Arab terrorists”. The Arabs will sell us their oil regardless. We’re already a pariah of the Arab world, and nothing that we’ve done in the last decade has changed that.
Nothing of value will be lost.
Samara Morgan
@Joey Maloney: really? i did not know that….i expect a lot of americans dont know that.
kinda like the mythology of the “only democracy in the ME” right?
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: i dont know. i think the people wont allow it, after 44 years of injustice.
consent of the governed and all that.
and actually, i think the muslims dispute Israels right to be created— an acknowledgement of that would go a long way with all the islamosphere.
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: and right to exist is more incendiary, lathers up the pretibs and the WECs and the white christian nativists (teabaggers).
Samara Morgan
@Gilles de Rais: we shall see.
the UN also might table the vote indefinitely and try to drive Bibi back to negotiations.
eemom
@Pococurante:
isn’t it true that even though the settlers are not a majority, the far right parties that support them control enough of the governing coalition that Bibi in essence has to pacify them to stay in power? Somewhat similar to the repubs and the teatards.
wilfred
Blah, blah, blah,,,
Take a position: Should the United States support the Palestinian resolution, or not? If not, how is not doing so in the interests of the United States?
Tim F.
@Joey Maloney: Neither does England.
/trivia
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: See one of the things here is that if the Palestinian leadership cannot sell this dinner of crow to the populace, telling them it is a small price to pay for finally getting our own state & the fucking IDF out of our country, then the Israeli pols say to the U.S. & other Western nations: “See, they can’t even control their own populace. How will they ever be able to keep them from trying to murder us all once we take the boot off their neck.”
Tim F.
@wilfred: Congratulations on asking a question in comprehensible English. I think that the US should vote yes. The settlement boil needs to be lanced and drained as soon as possible, for Israel’s sake more than anything else. No other move serves her own long term interests nearly as much.
However, the point is obviously moot. No American political party could countenance that vote and survive. So we will get a veto or an abstention and Netanyahu will go on acting like an idiot spoiled child precisely because we enable him.
Gilles de Rais
@wilfred: Of course we should. But we will not.
It is in no way in the interests of the United States. In fact, we will reap a bloody whirlwind from it for decades to come. But as you surely know, it is in the interests of a majority of American politicians personal and career interests to veto the proposal, and so that’s what is going to happen.
catclub
@Gilles de Rais: “you have not thought through the more prosaic issue of what would happen to Obama, and the Democratic Party, if the US were to be so rash as to even take the milquetoast step of abstaining. It would be the end for them. ”
Interesting question. It IS Conventional wisdom that this would happen. But it assumes that there are millions of well-informed voters who care about this. I don’t think there are. I think that if someone said, and refused to back down, that they were doing this for the good of the US, NOT Israel, that the message would get through. The evidence would be the non-collapse of Israel after the changed vote.
My theory does require courage not in evidence.
Bob
@catclub: We know exactly who here is conflating what with the “lebensraum” crack in the post.
Gilles de Rais
@catclub: God, I wish. Here’s the Republican response:
“Why Barack Hussein Obama has chosen to sell out our only ally in the Middle East for the benefit of his fellow Muslims cannot be known, but we owe our allies, the rightful heirs and caretakers of Christ’s birthplace who are besieged from all sides by terrorists and murderers, better than this.”
You can see how this will play out among the “millions of well-informed voters” who we both acknowledge don’t exist.
Gilles de Rais
@Gilles de Rais: Oh yeah, I forgot to add “9/11”, repeated ad nauseum, to the predictable Republican response.
Ian
@Samara Morgan:
That article did not say what you implied it did.
Cain
@Gilles de Rais:
Not necessarily. We’ve offshored everything to China and India.. those folks will require more of the oil. As the wealth moves over there they can probably pay a lot more for that oil than we would.
The arabs would be more than happy to sell the oil more to the China and India than the U.S. After all, the corps won’t complain.. their shifting their labor over there anyways.
El Cid
Republicans contribute helpfully to finding an equitable resolution.
All this is rather pointless, given that the Israeli government will simply continue to take everything that they want from the West Bank, and letting the Palestinians have a “state” with the husks remaining. At which point we’ll all celebrate the wonderful peace agreement we’ve all finally witnessed happening, yay.
But you have to admire the Republicans’ open embrace of white colonialism.
dedc79
This is a perfect example of how not to prompt a reasonable/rational discussion of the I-P conflict. You start off by comparing the jewish state to nazi germany and however valid your critique, you’ve already alienated many of the people who might disagree with you.
That plus, no matter how you feel about Israel, it has not undertaken a mass genocide.
dedc79
One other point. What’s changed between Israel and Egypt isn’t so much Israel as it is the egyptian government. The people of egypt have for the last 40 years tended to be more “alienated” from Israel than their government and now they have more of a say in their govt’s foreign policy.
HyperIon
@Paul in KY:
Um, check back in a few years.
According to wikipedia…
There are a significant number of Arab Israelis (now 20.4% of population) and they tend to have rather large families. Plus there are Arabs who are permanent residents and thus can vote.
EEMOM, you got there first!
Samara Morgan
@Ian: sure it did. you just have to be smart enough to read between the lines.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: democracies do not control their populace.
the consent of the governed.
That fucking WEC retard Bush started this by refusing to recognize the legitimately elected Hamas government. He fucked this up too.
How can the US “support” democracy if they refuse to recognize the results of free UN monitored elections?
what has changed is the Arab Spring. the status quo is dead.
the Israelis can evolve or be driven into the sea.
Pococurante
Every Arab Muslim state operates like Israel.
But without the entire democracy and civil rights state.
Only Israel is called to task.
Israel was *founded* to be the one sole Jewish state identity country in the world.
Only Israel *is* the one sole Jewish state identity country in the world.
It’s not America. But then neither is the rest of the world.
As much as I detest Bibi, his orthodox zealots, and the settlers…
I detest “anti-zionists” more. Hypocrites all, willing to destroy the only Jewish state in the world to create another Taliban.
Nitwits.
mike
Lebensraum = Manifest Destiny
Cain
@Tim F.:
How many votes needed to override? Can the U.S. secretly try to get enough votes to override their own veto? That way, it’ll be out of our hands at that point.
This whole thing with Israel is going to be the death of us.
Samara Morgan
@Pococurante: Israel is not a democracy….it has citizens that cannot vote, anti-freedom of speech laws, and anti-freedom of religion laws.
there is no defense for those who would make war on children…..certainly not “the other guys do it too” defense.
wilfred
Hm. I can see why the republican party would not survive that vote, I think. The tea party faction would probably undermine the leadership and the Becks et al. would be screaming.
But the Democratic Party? Who would undermine it? If this thread is anywhere near a fair sample than it seems as if Democrats support the vote.
Paul in KY
@HyperIon: I don’t care how many Arabs technically live within the borders of Israel, they are not going to stop being a Jewish state.
See also my response to Eemom.
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: they would stop when overwhelmed by an Arab Spring style protest when the Israeli Arabs achieved majority/minority status and demanded representation. In 2020 or so.
Then Israel would have to stop any pretense of being a “democracy” to remain jewish.
The Palis say they will have no jewish citizens in their state.
Samara Morgan
Todays the day!
place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.
i think abstinence, like for the Palin kids, is Americas best option.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Cain:
If America abstains it can pass.
Samara Morgan
@Pococurante: im willing to see Israel destroyed because they are an unjust nation, that is making war on children.
it is their choice, free will an’ all that.
like the Prophet said, a nation can exist without god, but a nation cannot survive without justice.
Samara Morgan
@dedc79: but Israel has made Gaza into a walled Warsaw-style ghetto where children go hungry every night.
Samara Morgan
@Cain: heres the terms.
the US WILL veto if the Palis have less than 7 votes.
U.S. has vowed to veto the proposal if it cannot garner a blocking majority.
cowardly, yet prolly a cya moment. we can put the blame on bosnia-herzegovina and nigeria if it fails.
:)
Samara Morgan
@Samara Morgan: lol, im wrong. fridays the day.
Paul in KY
@Samara Morgan: They will effectively stop any pretense of being a ‘democratic’ state for non-Jews. They will probably still have it for their Jewish citizens (IMO).
Samara Morgan
@Paul in KY: yup.
NOT-a-democracy.