As I’ve said in the past, I do not like to run around my own paper’s paywall, but the subject matter in this case is something I feel particularly strongly about, and it needs to be shared.
Palestine for the Palestinians
Rough Trade, Oct. 7
LAST week, I had the chance to sit down for a one-on-one interview with Ambassador of the State of Palestine to the Philippines Mounir Anastas, and the timing of our meeting, though coincidental, could not have been more tragically appropriate. On that day (Thursday, Oct. 2), and in fact, at the very time we were meeting, the State of Israel was engaged in a violent attack on the humanitarian aid convoy dubbed the Gaza Sumud flotilla, in flagrant violation of international law. At the same time, the so-called Trump peace formula, a 20-point plan ostensibly intended to end the two-year-old war in Gaza, was the subject of intense discussion in Middle Eastern capitals and in the media.
We have since learned that Israel’s right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has at least tacitly agreed to the proposal, apparently after being promised undisclosed considerations in a meeting with Trump in Washington on September 29, as has the Palestinian group Hamas, whose “surprise” attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 – “surprise” belongs in quotation marks here and everywhere, as there are many deeply disturbing unanswered questions about that horrific event – precipitated the vicious Israeli assault on Gaza. That counterattack very quickly shifted from what at first might have been considered an understandable defensive response – Hamas fighters did, after all, kill 1,195 people in Israel, about two-thirds of them civilians, and took 251 people hostage – to a systematic campaign of genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
That is not an opinion. On Sept. 16, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel found that “Israeli authorities and Israeli security forces committed four of the five genocidal acts defined by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” That convention, in a supreme irony, was created and adopted by the world in large part because of the atrocities carried out against the Jewish people by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Not for nothing is Netanyahu now the subject of an international arrest warrant and indictment from the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity; such that on his recent trip to attend the UN General Assembly and meet with Trump, his aircraft had to fly a careful course to remain in international airspace, lest it stray into the territory of a nation that observes international law and would force him down and arrest him.
As Ambassador Anastas pointed out during our talk, the Convention on genocide legally obliges every member-state of the UN to do what is in their power to end the genocide and punish those responsible for it. In that sense, the recent peace proposal, despite its containing a concerning number of gaps – to put it politely – could be considered a small step in that direction, if it does in fact lead to Israel stopping its relentless attacks against the civilian population in Gaza, including its aggressively blocking humanitarian aid from reaching the territory.
Obviously, the proposed peace formula was a significant part of our conversation, and I will get into more details about that in a subsequent column, but before I get to that, I would like to address something that I find particularly infuriating, and which became clear when I was doing some further research after my talk with Ambassador Anastas.
In every news report about the war in Gaza and the peace proposal floated by US president Trump – or rather, whoever prepares such things for him, as he has been famously known since his first term for having neither the attention span nor curiosity to engage in the finer details of foreign policy or geopolitics – the government of the State of Palestine is pointedly omitted. The news reports discuss at length what Hamas has to say and what it may think about it; they discuss at length what Israel’s views are; they discuss at length what Arab governments involved, such as Qatar, Egypt, and the UAE have to say about the proposal; and of course they indulge the bloviating Mr. Trump. The one party to the conflict which has the most at stake in how it ends, however, the legitimate government of Palestine, is simply ignored. This paper does it, too, although I am certain that is not intentional; in world affairs that do not directly affect the Philippines, we report what news comes to us from the international wires, as that is what our resources allow.
Be that as it may, it is wrong. Israel long ago stopped being engaged in merely a military action against a terrorist group, and has been waging war of extermination on a recognized, sovereign country, whose existence is recognized by the international community as no less valid than Israel’s own. There are three key events in history that make this indisputable: UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 1967, which demanded that Israel withdraw from the territories it occupied in the Six-Day War; the declaration of a Palestinian state by Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman Yasser Arafat, on behalf of the Palestinian government-in-exile, in 1988, which was quickly followed by the Kingdom of Jordan’s ceding the territory known as the West Bank for the purposes of establishing a proper Palestinian homeland; and UN General Assembly Resolution 67/19 in 2012, which conferred on Palestine the status of a non-member observer state – in other words, a sovereign nation, just one that happened not to be a full member of the UN.
The State of Palestine is recognized by 160 of the 193 member-states of the UN, and for that matter, by the other important non-member observer state, the Holy See. The Philippines was among the first countries to formally recognize the State of Palestine, in 1989. For it to be marginalized in discussions about the future of the Palestinian nation and its people, whether in the backrooms of the world where diplomatic bargaining takes place, or on the pages of the world’s newspapers, is both a gross injustice and a recipe for failure of any peace initiative.
Palestine’s uncertain future
Rough Trade, Oct. 9
IT has been a week since I had my conversation with His Excellency Mounir Anastas, the ambassador of the State of Palestine to the Philippines, and events have unfolded at a rapid pace. This is both a blessing and a curse for the Palestinians. For the sake of saving lives, anything that stops Israel’s campaign of genocide against the people in Gaza at the soonest possible time is needed. On the other hand, the deeply flawed peace proposal advanced by US president Trump and driven by his and Israel’s ulterior motives – but mostly his – almost certainly will result in continuing strife in the region.
Ambassador Anastas and the government he represents did not say that, of course; the official response of the State of Palestine was what was appropriate to the occasion of the peace proposal in the context Palestine finds itself in. “We highly value the sincere efforts exerted by President Donald J. Trump to end the war in Gaza,” the government’s statement shared by the ambassador said, “and the State of Palestine affirms its readiness to work constructively with him and with all relevant partners to achieve a just and comprehensive peace.”
I am not a diplomat (most people who know me would certainly agree with that), but I can understand and communicate in that language when I need to, and the careful construction of that statement was obvious. When asked to disambiguate it, Amb. Anastas explained that, from Palestine’s point of view, there was reason for optimism in this or any proposal that addressed the most important priorities, namely, an immediate cease-fire; allowing humanitarian aid to reach the people of Gaza; and the guarantees that Israel would not annex Gaza, nor would the Gazan population be otherwise displaced. Their home has been destroyed by the Israeli onslaught – according to Amb. Anastas, 76 percent of the housing and 80 percent of the infrastructure in Gaza has been wiped out – but they and their government are nevertheless eager to rebuild.
Beyond that, however, there are some nagging questions about Trump’s so-called 20-point peace formula. It proposes the formation of a “Board of Peace” to be headed up by Trump and former UK prime minister Tony Blair, which would manage Gaza as the Israelis withdraw and the recovery and rebuilding gets underway. Given that Palestine has an organized and internationally recognized government, and that Gaza is a part of the State of Palestine, the first question is, why is the “Board of Peace” even necessary?
The government and its representative here in the Philippines did not speculate on the answer to that question, although I would assume they certainly have an idea of what that answer is. Dan Steinbock’s column here in The Manila Times this past Monday (“The real estate bonanza for the post-genocide Gaza,” Oct. 6) rather starkly and in great detail explains it, and it is not good.
The other big question highlighted by Anastas is that the peace proposal lacks timelines. It calls for a phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, but does not suggestion deadlines for that to happen. Likewise, there is no schedule for the withdrawal of the proposed “International Stabilization Force,” a peacekeeping force that is supposed to be made up of contingents from the Arab countries, that will replace the Israeli forces as the latter are withdrawn. And the biggest question, of course, is that there is no timeline for the return of the Palestinian Authority, so that they may govern their own territory.
The Palestinian government’s statement on the details of the peace proposal that require “clarification and adjustment,” as Amb. Anastas put it, sums up what the solution should be in several bullet points. The key principle of this is that any actions that undermine the Palestinian Authority, the physical security and integrity of the State of Palestine (which comprises the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), and the broader “two-state solution” that would allow Palestine and Israel to coexist peacefully – a formula that is explicitly acknowledged in every country’s and the UN’s formal recognition of Palestine – must not be allowed. And to ensure that this is the case, the government’s statement said, “It is crucial that a United Nations Security Council resolution be issued, based on the consent of the State of Palestine as the legitimate sovereign, to confer international legitimacy on any transitional arrangements, including the deployment of any international mechanism or stabilization and security mission in the Gaza Strip.”
That is not all there is to it, of course, because Israel – whose indicted war criminal prime minister Netanyahu told the few UN delegates who could stomach listening to his speech at the UN General Assembly at the end of last month that, “Israelis will not commit national suicide by allowing the creation of a Palestinian state” – has been carrying out a slow pogrom against Palestine for decades before the war in Gaza erupted. As Amb. Anastas explained, Israeli security forces have erected 1,200 checkpoints in the West Bank, designed to restrict the movement of Palestinians and strangle their economy. Israel has also stolen about $3 billion in tax revenue from the Palestinian Authority.
Before I interviewed Ambassador Anastas, I asked a few people what issues and questions they would raise if they were in my shoes; I find doing that a useful practice, particularly when an upcoming discussion will be a topic on which I already have a strong opinion. The best question came from my college-age daughter, who thought about it for a moment and said, “Well, I would ask, ‘what’s next for Palestine?’”
The ambassador appreciated that question, and he had a concise answer for it. Palestine’s relationship with Israel until now, he explained, has simply been “conflict management,” something which is ultimately unsustainable. To move forward, the international framework of the two-state solution, which begins with the end of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, has to be implemented and respected.
I am ironically hopeful that the Trump peace formula will the two states involved on the right path. Not because the plan is good – it most certainly is not, beyond offering a chance for the Gazan people to receive desperately needed aid – but because its outcomes under the direction of that grifting fool Trump may very well wake the rest of the world up to demand the solution that the Palestinians, and for that matter, the majority of Israelis who just want to live their lives without always having to look over their shoulders, have known all along.
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