Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Israel should back a Palestinian state

Beh, ogni tanto qualcuno ha il coraggio di mostrare le cose per quello 
che sono, sfidando i pasdaran "sionisti", gli attenti guardiani della 
sola interpretazione ammessa sui media: quella del minculpop israeliano.
 
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September 15, 2011 8:14 pm
Israel should back a Palestinian state
 
By Philip Stephens
South Africa, Comment Page
 
The Palestinians are seeking affirmation of statehood at the UN. Good 
friends of Israel will support them in the endeavour. The Middle East 
has been upended by the Arab spring. Israel cannot pretend nothing has 
changed. If it wants to safeguard its security it has to adjust.
 
The prospect of a vote on Palestinian statehood at this month’s meeting 
of the UN General Assembly has thrown western governments into something 
of a panic. A procession of US officials has been despatched to Ramallah 
to persuade Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, to take a step back. 
They have been joined in recent days by Tony Blair, the representative 
of the so-called Quartet of the UN, US, European Union and Russia.
 
European governments are sympathetic, albeit to slightly varying 
degrees, with the frustrations of Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. 
Build the institutions of statehood, the Palestinian leadership was told 
by the international community a couple of years back. It has been doing 
just that. The trouble is – and you hear this said from London to Berlin 
to Washington and all points in between – Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu 
has frustrated at every turn the US-led effort to revive a peace process.
 
That said, the Europeans fear a UN vote on statehood would test their 
unity – not something they want to contemplate after the scars left by 
intervention in Libya. Some worry about a rupture with the US. 
Washington is ready to wield its veto if the Palestinian bid reaches the 
UN Security Council.
 
Important as such considerations seem to US and European diplomats, it 
is hard to see why Palestinians should be overly impressed by political 
machinations in the west. The vast majority of UN members are ready to 
swing behind the claim to statehood. Everyone knows that Barack Obama’s 
threatened veto has more to do with a hostile Congress and with the 
president’s re-election campaign than with considerations of justice or 
statecraft.
 
Mr Blair has told Mr Abbas that if the Palestinians settle for a 
statement of principles from the Quartet in place of a UN vote, Mr 
Netanyahu will open serious negotiations. Given the Israeli prime 
minister’s record in these matters, and his aggressive expansion of 
illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, the 
Palestinians cannot take such promises seriously.
 
The Arab uprisings may be redrawing the geopolitical map of the region, 
but Mr Netanyahu has kept his head firmly in the sand. He has launched a 
ferocious – I have heard one European foreign minister call it 
“menacing” – campaign against Mr Abbas’s diplomatic gambit.
 
The Israeli government is combining the threat of economic sanctions 
against West Bank Palestinians with warnings of violent unrest if Mr 
Abbas wins the UN argument. Mr Netanyahu must know he is playing with 
fire: in this part of the world incendiary language has a habit of 
becoming self-fulfilling.
 
In any event, the Palestinians’ carefully-crafted case for statehood 
asks for essentially what has been long promised by the international 
community and, incidentally, by past Israeli governments: a two-state 
solution based around 1967 borders and a shared capital in Jerusalem. 
Unless I am mistaken, this is the long-held stance of the Quartet, as 
well as of the European Union and of Mr Obama’s administration.
 
Israel, of course, has fundamental concerns – notably about security and 
about the status of Palestinian refugees. Any declaration of Palestine 
statehood must be framed in the context of absolute guarantees of 
Israel’s future. The irony is that such legitimate worries are lost to 
the anger and frustration generated by Mr Netanyahu’s intransigence.
 
For all its prime minister’s bombast, Israel has rarely looked so 
beleaguered. Mr Netanyahu’s premiership has drained Israel of what the 
American scholar Joseph Nye has called “soft power”. Israel has lost its 
capacity to carry its argument by persuasion and example. Its prime 
minister has seemed to relish his isolation.
 
The Arab uprisings have toppled important pillars of Israel’s strategic 
security. As last weekend’s violent attacks on its embassy in Cairo 
attested, Israel can no longer depend on Egypt. The turmoil in Syria 
threatens instability to the north. just as Hamas in Gaza stirs violence 
in the south.
 
Mr Netanyahu, of course, has no control over upheavals in the Arab 
world, but this is surely not the time to make enemies of friends. In 
Europe, he has broken the patience even of Germany’s Angela Merkel. 
William Hague, a lifelong friend of Israel and Britain’s foreign 
secretary, does little to hide his exasperation. Mr Netanyahu’s 
relationship with Mr Obama runs along a spectrum from sour to abysmal.
 
This week’s visit to Cairo of Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke to Mr 
Netanyahu’s reckless disregard of old alliances. Not so long ago, Turkey 
was counted a reliable friend. Bilateral co-operation spanned economics, 
diplomacy and defence. Since Israel’s attack on the Gaza flotilla, 
relations have gone from chill to freeze.
 
Mr Erdogan is not an innocent in this. He has played politics with the 
issue to assert Turkish leadership in the Middle East. His latest 
comments were ill-judged in place and timing. Mr Netanyahu has, however, 
spurned US efforts to broker a rapprochement. It was too much, it seems, 
to issue even a mild expression of Israeli regret at the death of 
Turkish citizens in the flotilla.
 
Israel’s isolation will be on uncomfortable display at the UN General 
Assembly. The diplomatic compromise now under discussion is one that 
would see the Palestinians admitted as an observer state, with a status 
comparable to that of the Vatican. There is no reason for Mr Abbas to 
accept anything less.
 
Ehud Olmert, Mr Netanyahu’s predecessor, was no soft touch. But he 
reached the intelligent conclusion that winning wars against Israel’s 
neighbours was not enough. Real security demanded peace with the 
Palestinians; and peace demanded a Palestinian state. Mr Olmert’s offer 
came too late in his premiership. The only thing to have changed since 
is that the imperative of peace has become more urgent. The pro-Israel 
position is Palestinian statehood.
 
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 che sono, sfidando i pasdaran "sionisti",
 
tra le persone che in UK hanno pubblicamente dichiarato che Israele
dovrebbe riconoscere lo Stato palestinese, si contano diversi
opinionisti del Jewish Chronicle, il cui posto di lavoro non sembra
esattamente in pericolo. E anche R. Elizabeth Tikva, che e' rabbina di
una sinagoga liberale. Della quale fa parte Julie Burchill, una
opinionista che e' stata definita "la piu' accesa voce in favore della
destra israeliana" (per intendersi, era contraria allo sgombero di
Gaza).
Come si vede, la situazione e' complessa, il dialogo ferve, e Persio
e' un pirla.