Trump’s no-peace-peace plan green-lights unlawful Israeli annexation of settlements and other territory on stolen Palestinian land.
There’s no ambiguity about Fourth Geneva’s Article 49, stating:
“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.”
Settlements involve ethnic cleansing. You can’t have one without the other.
It’s been core Israeli policy since its June 1967 war of aggression against neighboring Arab states, along with its war by hot and other means on indigenous Palestinians — eliminating or removing them from their land to make way for exclusive Jewish development.
Security Council resolutions are binding international law. For the US they’re also constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).
SC Res. 2234 (December 2016) said the following:
Settlements have “no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”
The resolution demands “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
It recognizes no territorial changes “to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”
It “(c)alls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
It “(c)alls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in this regard…”
The US and Israel ignore Security Council resolutions and other international law that conflict with their imperial and other interests.
Israel’s new Netanyahu/Gantz regime intends annexing settlements, the northern Dead Sea, and Jordan Valley, the latter two areas constituting around 30% of the West Bank.
During Thursday’s Security Council session on Israel’s annexation plan, UN special coordinator for dead-in-the-water Middle East peace Nickolai Mladenov said the following:
The Trump regime’s supported Israeli scheme would “constitute a serious violation of international law, deal a devastating blow to the two-state solution, close the door to a renewal of negotiations, and threaten efforts to advance regional peace.”
Mladenov knows or should know that decades of Israeli theft of Palestinian land dashed hope for a two-state solution many years ago.
Saying the annexation scheme would “destroy any hope for peace” failed to explain that endless US/NATO/Israeli wars eliminated the prospect long ago.
Expressing hope for Israeli cooperation with Palestinians because of ongoing COVID-19 outbreaks ignored how the Netanyahu regime is using contagion as a tool for imposing greater misery on their people, especially besieged Gazans.
Since Israel’s 1947-48 war of aggression against Palestinians, no mutual cooperation between both sides ever existed — except with Israeli installed Palestinian puppet government, serving its interests at the expense of millions of long-suffering people.
Russian UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia addressed the Security Council on this issue Thursday, saying:
“We welcome ongoing contacts between Palestinians and Israelis to combat the coronavirus pandemic” — that do not exist except for exploitive purposes so why did Nebenzia suggest otherwise.
“We hope that these contacts become part of confidence-building measures in terms of a broader dialogue between the parties,” he added.
There’s been none of this since before Israel became a nation-state on stolen Palestinian land.
There’s surely nothing constructive ongoing now between both sides — exacerbated by the newly formed Netanyahu/Gantz regime’s scheme to annex settlements, the Northern Dead Sea and Jordan Valley — a flagrant international law breached if happens.
Nebenzia: “We are going through a difficult period of time in the Middle East peace process that is even more aggravated by the COVID-19.”
No peace process exists now, earlier, or ahead. Along with the US war OF terror, not on it, the illusory peace process is the greatest hoax in modern times. It never existed, just pretense.
Why didn’t Nebenzia explain reality with straight talk instead of double talk, especially because he’s noted for candid truth-telling on vital issues, why the exception on this one.
To his credit, he said “Russia supports a just and fair solution to the Palestinian question on the basis of relevant UN resolutions, the Madrid Principles and the Arab Peace Initiative, which provide basis for creation of an independent, sovereign, territorially contiguous Palestinian state within 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Nothing less is acceptable, he should have added, but the above statement is on the right side of this important issue.
It’ll take much more than statements to achieve this objective — notably no longer tolerating Israeli high crimes by holding its ruling regime accountable.
The misnamed “Palestinian side” is headed by Judas leadership concerned only about the self-interest of its key officials at the expense of long-suffering people they disserve in deference to their Israeli master.
Nebenzia pretends that the no-peace/peace process exists, knowing it’s a colossal hoax.
As long as the US one-sidedly supports Israel and the leadership of both countries remains unaccountable for high crimes too egregious to ignore, Middle East and world peace will be unattainable.
That’s the disturbing reality that stands in the way of achieving justice for oppressed people in Occupied Palestine and elsewhere.
