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Is there a just solution for the Palestinian people? ..., Israel ..., Vagabond Ecotroll ..., The Wall Street Shell Game ..., Please - not another war President Obama ...
I share these thoughts.
Let’s put events in chronological sequence:-
1. During and subsequent to 1948 some 700,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from what is today Israel. Viewed through the eyes of the law, one may consider this fact conjunctively with fact 2 below.
2. Subsequent to the recognition of the 1967 borders as Israel’s territorial area, Israel has continued with a policy of settling on lands outside that territorial area.
The law might be considered in light of the factual situation at 1 and 2 above:-
The Geneva Convention on the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, known as the Fourth Geneva Convention: -
Article 49: Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive. ... The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.
The United Nations Charter, Article 51 reads:-
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.
Comment
If one were to put the matter in basic human terms, forgetting the legality for a moment, maybe in the most humane way I might ask:-
If you lived on a stretch of land for some ten generations, or more, and inherited your family home there, I assume that you would have some sense of belonging and ownership in respect of the home and the land upon which your home is built.
If someone forcibly expelled you, then in self-defence you would, I assume, retaliate.
The sense of displacement, might, I also assume, lead to a sense of grievance, which if not fairly addressed would extend to violent acts at some stage.
Some personal reflections
As a student at London University, I saw posted one day, a discussion between a Palestinian Professor and a Jewish Professor. Young man that I was then, with dreams of one day being a lawyer, I learned a lesson about civil debate. Both men impressed me with the degree of civility and intellectual clarity with which they addressed the question of the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict. In summary, both articulated two narratives of the histories of both people and their placement in Palestine/Israel.
I listened keenly, made notes, and reflected deeply on what both men said. At a later stage I read a book written by Abba Eban, and again, the clarity of thought and articulate expressions were impressive.
Having said all that, myself a lawyer, these many years later, with a multitude of cases behind me, I ask a fundamental question, noting both the
Israeli – Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day)
And
The Palestinain - Nakba Day ( "day of the catastrophe")
I ask the question – what does constitute justice for the Palestinian people if not the right of a homeland which they had before 1948?
The Palestinian intellectual, Edward Said, on a PBS interview in the US, made the observation that the only solution was a one state solution. He raised the issue of the demographics of the region. It seems that the state of Israel, based as it is on an assumption of conferred rights derived from ethnicity, must also transfer that de facto assumption into a de jure format, for the continued functioning of the Jewish state. How does one then give equal rights under the law to non-Jews, and over time maintain Jewish statehood if one does not discriminate as regards the electoral rights of those who are non-Jews in the Jewish state, if it is to be a Jewish majority that is to determine the character and nature of “the Jewish state”?
The action of extending occupation beyond the 1967 borders does not find support under international law.
I recall discussions with white South Africans, when the status quo of Apartheid was all they knew. Resistance, peaceful at first, then of a military nature was the sequence that events unfolded in response to injustice. Any people faced with injustice will over time react. At first the articulation of concern about the wrong, then maybe legal representations about the injustice, then violent responses, then an escalation of the violence if the just redress is not forthcoming. This has been the cycle in the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.
So far as the future of any likely negotiated settlement on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict is concerned, the fact of the US giving blind partisan support to all Israeli actions, does not proffer well for any honest brokerage or for any just peace anytime soon. The recent official US response to the boarding by the IDF of the ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza, is sufficiently indicative of why the problem’s intractability is made all the more intractable.
The conscience of the world does speak, when the Swedish dock workers react in protest against the Israeli actions of inflicting collective punishment against the Palestinian people.
Might does not make right and an oppressed and disenfranchised people do have a right to resist injustice.
Aluta continua.
Courtenay BarnettJust merely asking those who support the attack on the peace fotilla:-
1. Since the Allied forces did not claim any permanent territory post World War 11,it it then to be supposed that the "Chosen people" post- 1967 have some special "God given" right to claim territory post-1967? Either that, or there must exist some rational secular laws that govern the actions of the state of Israel.
2. When someone invades one's territory, under Israeli/US edict ( by some special standards of International law - it appears)and it is to be assumed, that the right to resist is somehow suspended when it comes to the actions of Israel? or,
3. In relation to 2 above Article 51 of the UN Charter:-
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security. ” remains in existence.
There, of course, might be some special text of international law, that I have yet to read, that makes it permissible to attack a vessel in international waters following upon the suspension (at 2 above) of the right to resistance.
The true "International community" should not yield on this one, and ought properly to insist that this illegal action is now properly addressed, condemned and the perpetrators brought to justice.
Courtenay Barnett
Website: globaljusticeonline.com
Hello,
France, Léonie (3 years), Aurore (5 months) and me, are a little
unfaithful to our usual Vagabond: it is on board Ecotroll that we are
heading to Greenland. Here we are test pilots of a ship with hybrid
engines! We left Lyon last month and first sailed 640 km of rivers and
canals (and 159 locks!), a pleasure to discover France, garden side, on
electric engine. Ecotroll is now at Paris-Arsenal harbour, near
Bastille, until 20th May.
In the meantime, Vagabond is waiting for us at Brest harbour, for a well deserved refit. She came back to Brittany early April, after a long stay of almost 6 years in the Arctic. Next departure planned in April 2011...
A bientôt,
Eric Brossier
Presentation on 18th May from 19:00
Blog
Pictures of Ecotroll's journey
Pictures of Vagabond's return trip to France
Once upon a time there was a man who lived on Wall Street.
He woke up one morning with a brilliant financial idea. He drove out of town to a bean farm and asked the farmer for one bean. The farmer was curious, why only one, and thought that maybe the Wall Street man was going to plant the seed and establish a farm of his own. Quite quickly the Wall Street man disabused the farmer of any such idea, and told him that he needed the bean for a financial plan he was going to effect in the city. Being of a kind nature, the farmer took the Wall Street man into the field and gave him a whole pod. “ I only need one bean, said the Wall Street man, but thanks anyway.”
He next went to the seaside and carefully chose three suitably shaped shells.
He returned to the city, and the next morning he set up a table on a busy corner on Wall Street. He laid out the three shells and opened the pod and took out one bean. Then in a loud voice he started telling all passersby that they could double their money, if after he placed one bean under a shell and shuffled the shells around, the better could guess which shell the bean was under, then he would pay double the money the better had placed. At the end of the first day he made ten times the money he had started with. The next day twenty times more money, and so his fortune grew, and his honesty in paying and playing the game fairly made him legendary.
Eventually, he expanded his operation. He developed to the point where he started taking telephone bets, and he kept the winner’s name in a book. He grew even more and started taking out of state bets. He continued to grow and bought an entire building on Wall Street. As the work grew, he decided to hire Harvard and Yale graduates, and he gave them their own table in his building and taught them the game. His first employees soon became very wealthy. They gave the Wall Street man new ideas, and convinced him to call the business an “investment house”, and call them brokers in the game. They got linked to computers and collected even more investments for each time they played the game. The entire United States started playing the game, even the Chinese and Russians, and then the whole world. But, something started to happen in the Wall Street investment house, and now an old man, the Wall Street man would not have approved, but he was unaware of what had happened to his game.
Some young recruits had calculated that there was a three in one probability that the investment broker would win on each round of play. Since no one was supervising what they were doing one day one of the brokers put five shells on the table, but the investors did not know that the odds had been increased against them, and so the investment broker made much greater profits. Some of the other brokers followed suit, and started using ten shells, and some twenty shells and others more. The profits grew, and grew, and grew, until one day someone discovered what was going on and the whole game crashed.
The old Wall Street man heard the bad news and grieved. He reflected how he had grown the business from one bean, and even bought the bean farm from his profits. The farm was by then sold to a Chinese investor who sold it to an Indian investor, who used it as the corporate headquarters for their telecommunications operations which was outsourced to India. The Chinese took their profits and invested in a bean farm in China and now supplied the entire United States all the beans it ate, and by then there were no more bean farms in the US.
So, eventually, because so much money was lost, the Wall Street investment men all went to see the President, and told him that they needed money or the economy would crash. The President said, “Gentlemen, here is this huge cheque for several trillions, but it is the taxpayers’ money I am drawing it against. Now go back and continue the game.”
And, do you know what? That was exactly what the Wall Street men did, they continued the game much as they had been doing before. And to end the story – it was evident that no investor would live happily ever after.
Story of the real world economy by Courtenay Barnett --
www.globaljusticeonline.com
Listen to the wisdom of a certain Republican named Eisenhower…as a military man…he knew war and makes sense….
“Preventive war was an invention of [Adolf] Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.”
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
And read the Nonproliferation Treaty…
“Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.”
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
….The war mongers want war. Think…don’t do it….it will be a global disaster…
Just as the Bush-Cheney administration did in order to launch a war against Iraq in 2003 by (falsely) alleging that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Obama-Biden administration, in 2010, is arguing for unilateral sanctions against Iran and even beating the drums of war against Iran, alleging that its program to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants is posing an existential threat to Israel, to Europe and to the United States.
WHOEVER STARTS THIS PRE-EMPTIVE STRIKE WOULD BE ACTING IN VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. JUST AS SADDAM WAS WRONG IN INVADING KUWAIT…DON’T DO IT!
READ ARTICLE 11 OF THE UN CHARTER AND PLEASE ABIDE BY IT…NO TO THE WAR MONGERS!!!
Article 2
The Organization and its Members, in pursuit of the Purposes stated in Article 1, shall act in accordance with the following Principles.
1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members.
2. All Members, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership, shall fulfill in good faith the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the present Charter.
3. All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
4. All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
5. All Members shall give the United Nations every assistance in any action it takes in accordance with the present Charter, and shall refrain from giving assistance to any state against which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action.
6. The Organization shall ensure that states which are not Members of the United Nations act in accordance with these Principles so far as may be necessary for the maintenance of international peace and security.
7. Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter; but this principle shall not prejudice the application of enforcement measures under Chapter ll.
AN OIL-SHOCK IN PRICES WOULD IMMEDIATELY REVERSE SUCH LITTLE RECOVERY THAT THE WORLD IS NOW SEEING…DO YOU WANT THAT? A GLOBAL DEPRESSION AND A POTENTIAL COLLAPSE OF THE WORLD ECONOMY?
INDIA, ISRAEL AND PAKISTAN ARE NUCLEAR POWERS AND NON-SIGNATORIES TO THE NPT…SO DOES THE US NOW DECIDE TO START A WAR AGAINST PAKISTAN OR INDIA…OR IS IT JUST IRAN ( A SIGNATORY TO THE NPT ) THAT THE US IS OUT TO GET?
DO NOT SUPPORT ANOTHER WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST!
Courtenay Barnett
globaljusticeonline.com
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William Markiewicz