Saturday, December 1, 2012

The UN vote to recognise Palestine legitimises a racist status quo


There's bitter irony in the UN's recognition of a much-diminished Palestinian state on the anniversary of its 1947 partition plan


guardian.co.uk,
On 29 November 1947, the UN general assembly voted to partition Palestine between native Palestinians and overwhelmingly European Jewish colonists. The partition plan granted the colonists (one-third of the population) 57% of the land, and granted the native inhabitants (two-thirds of the population) 43%. On 30 November, the colonists embarked on the military conquest of Palestine, expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. They declared their state on 14 May 1948. Of the 37 Jewish signatories to the "Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel," only one was born in Palestine, the Moroccan Behor Chetrit. Palestinians rejected the plan as it dispossessed them of their lands.....

By recognising a diminished Palestinian state, the vote effectively abandons the UN understanding of the "Jewish state" as one that has no right to discriminate against or ethnically cleanse non-Jews. The new arrangement confers the blessing of this international forum on the Israeli understanding of what a "Jewish state" entails– namely, the actually existing legal discrimination and ethnic cleansing practised by Israel –as acceptable. That this occurred on 29 November, the date of the partition plan, reiterates this date as one of continuing defeats for the Palestinians who continue to suffer from Israel's colonial laws, and repeats UN guilt in denying Palestinians their rights not to suffer dispossession and racism. The Palestinians, however, whose majority is not represented by the PA, will no more heed this new partition plan than they did the last one and will continue to resist Israeli colonialism until it comes to an end and until Israel becomes a state for all its citizens with equal rights to all regardless of national, religious, or ethnic background."

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