Corporal Punishment

Israel Threatens Palestinian Authority

Under pressure from his people, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has decided to temporarily suspend cooperation with Israel and attempts to resolve their differences, and will request that the U.N. Human Rights Council approve the Goldstone Report. At the request of both the United States and Israel, he agreed to postpone the request until March 2010.

The Goldstone Report accuses both Israel and Hamas, which currently holds power in Gaza, of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The wisdom of Israel’s decision to respond to the largely ineffective Palestinian rocket attacks with a massive military invasion against the civilian population and their already primitive infrastructure is highly questionable, but it’s no reason for Israeli leadership to lose all sense of proportion.

One Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman actually threatened to punish the Palestinian Authority if it forwarded the Goldstone Report to the United Nations Security Council. That’s precisely the same tone colonial overlords liked to use whenever their orders weren’t strictly adhered to. Even the rules of international diplomacy seem to have been suspended when it comes to Israel, and that sets the tone for adherence to international law.

The world has long since become accustomed to the fact that international policy exists solely to be ignored by Israel. What’s new is how the Netanyahu government celebrates this as normal and condemns any criticism of its policies as anti-Semitic.

All this comes right at a time when the U.S. president has been honored with the Nobel Prize for his purported desire for peace. The successful conclusion of a Middle East peace agreement has always been high on Obama’s wish list. Abbas was seemingly prepared to make any concession necessary in order to achieve self-determination for the Palestinian people, had the Israelis shown any desire at all for peace. They didn’t. Obama’s request that Israel suspend its settlement expansion in the West Bank was sneeringly rejected. From Abbas, Obama had only the satisfaction of knowing he was sticking to the script he had been given.

That is, until Abbas finally realized things weren’t as bad for the Palestinians under George W. Bush as they are now with Obama in power. When it became apparent that Abbas was no longer willing to play along with American and Israeli deception, the United States responded by continuing to support the Israelis, who have thus far sabotaged every peace initiative in the Middle East. The United Nations Security Council will not be able to condemn Israeli action because the United States has already announced it will use its veto power to prevent that.

Barack Obama comes to the Middle East not as a peacemaker, but as a warlord.