Al Jazeera English reports on the formal recognition by Brazil of Palestine as an independent state.
Brazil recognises Palestine
Israel expresses disappointment over Brazil’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state on the 1967 bordersIsrael has expressed disappointment at Brazil’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, saying it flew in the face of efforts to negotiate a peace deal.
In a public letter addressed to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, on Friday, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian president, recognised Palestine as an independent state within the 1967 borders.
The decision came in response to a personal request made by Abbas on November 24, according to the letter published on the foreign ministry’s website on Friday.
“Considering that the demand presented by his excellency [Abbas] is just and consistent with the principles upheld by Brazil with regard to the Palestinian issue, Brazil, through this letter, recognises a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders,” it said.
The letter refers to the “legitimate aspiration of the Palestinian people for a secure, united, democratic and economically viable state coexisting peacefully with Israel.”
Israel anger
A statement from the Israeli foreign ministry said: “The government of Israel expresses sadness and disappointment over the decision by the Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva a month before he steps down.
“Recognition of a Palestinian state is a breach of the interim agreement which was signed between Israel and the Palestinian Authority in 1995 which said that the issue of the status of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be discussed and resolved through negotiations,” it said.
Such a move also contravened the 2003 Middle East roadmap for peace, which said a Palestinian state could only be established through negotiations and not through unilateral actions, the statement said, warning that unilateral steps would harm attempts to build trust.
“Every attempt to bypass this process and to decide in advance in a unilateral manner about important issues which are disputed, only harms trust between the sides, and hurts their commitment to the agreed framework of negotiating towards peace,” the Israeli statement said.
International support
The international community backs Palestinian demands for a state in most of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, all territories occupied by Israel in the 1967 six day war.
But the United States and most Western governments have held back from recognising a Palestinian state, saying it should be brought about through a negotiated peace agreement with Israel.
In a parallel statement, the Brazilian government assured relations with Israel “have never been more robust.”
Brazil has offered to help mediate Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which were briefly revived in September before grounding to a halt over the resumption of Israeli settlement building in the occupied territories.
Abbas says he will not return to negotiations while Israel continues to build on land the Palestinians want for a future state. But Israel has so far refused to impose a new ban.
Over the last few weeks, Abbas has repeatedly said he would explore other options if peace talks with the Israelis collapse, one of which would see him seeking United Nations’ recognition of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders.
On Thursday, a Palestinian official said Washington had officially informed them that attempts to secure a new Israeli settlement freeze had failed, but US officials refused to confirm or deny the report.
Abbas visited Brazil in 2005 and 2009, and Lula made the first-ever trip by a Brazilian head of state to Palestine and Israel in March this year.
Posted by psnedmonton 
For Israel, a Reckoning
January 19, 2010A January 14 article by John Pilger written for the New Statesman.
For Israel, a reckoning
A new global movement is challenging Israel’s violations of international law with the same strategies that were used against apartheid
John Pilger
The farce of the climate summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine.
The Palestinians’ resistance to the theft of their country reached a critical moment in 2001 when a UN conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, identified Israel as an apartheid state. To Nelson Mandela, justice for the Palestinians is “the greatest moral issue of the age”. The Palestinian civil society call for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) was issued on 9 July 2005, in effect reconvening the great, non-violent movement that swept the world and brought the scaffolding of African apartheid crashing down.
“Through decades of occupation and dispossession,” wrote Mustafa Barghouti, a wise voice of Palestinian politics, “90 per cent of the Palestinian struggle has been non-violent … A new generation of Palestinian leaders [now speaks] to the world precisely as Martin Luther King did. The same world that rejects all use of Palestinian violence, even clear self-defence, surely ought not begrudge us the non-violence employed by men such as King and Gandhi.”
No more a taboo
In the United States and Europe, trade unions, mainstream churches and academic associations have brought back the strategies that were used against apartheid South Africa. In a resolution adopted by 431 votes to 62, the US Presbyterian Church voted for a process of “phased, selective disinvestment” in multinational corporations doing business with Israel. This followed the opinion of the International Court of Justice that Israel’s wall and its “settler” colonies were illegal. A similar declaration by the court in 1971, denouncing South Africa’s occupation of Namibia, ignited the international boycott.
Like the South Africa campaign, the issue of law is central. No state is allowed to flout international law as wilfully as Israel. In 1990, a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Saddam Hussein get out of Kuwait was the same, almost word for word, as the one demanding that Israel get out of the West Bank. Iraq was driven out while Israel has been repeatedly rewarded. On 11 December, Barack Obama announced $2.8bn in “aid” for Israel, part of the $30bn US taxpayers will gift from their stricken economy during this decade.
The hypocrisy is now well understood in the US. A “Stolen Beauty” campaign pursues Ahava cosmetics, which are made in illegal West Bank “settlements”; last autumn it forced the firm to drop its “ambassador” Kristin Davis, a star of Sex and the City. In Britain, Sainsbury’s and Tesco are under pressure to identify “settlement” products, whose sale contravenes human rights provisions in the European Union’s trade agreement with Israel.
In Australia, a consortium led by Veolia lost its bid for a billion-dollar desalination plant following a campaign highlighting a plan, involving the French firm, to build a light rail connecting Jerusalem to the “settlements”. In Norway, the government pension fund has withdrawn its investment in the Israeli hi-tech company Elbit Systems, which helped build the wall across Palestine. This is the first official boycott by a western country.
In 2005, Britain’s Association of University Teachers (AUT) voted to boycott Israeli academic institutions complicit in the oppression of Palestinians. The AUT was forced to retreat when the Israel lobby unleashed a blizzard of character assassination and charges of anti-Semitism. The writer and activist Omar Barghouti called this “intellectual terror”: a perversion of morality and logic that says to be against racism towards Palestinians makes one anti-Semitic. However, the Israeli assault on Gaza on 27 December 2008 changed almost everything. The US Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel was formed, with Desmond Tutu on its advisory board. In 2009, Britain’s Trade Union Congress voted for a consumer boycott. The “Israel taboo” is no more.
Crimes against humanity
Complementing this is the rapid development of international criminal law since the Pinochet case of 1998-99, when the former Chilean dictator was placed under house arrest in Britain. Israeli warmongers now face similar prosecution in countries that have “universal jurisdiction” laws. In Britain, the Geneva Conventions Act 1957 is fortified by the UN report on Gaza by Justice Richard Goldstone, which in December obliged a London magistrate to issue a warrant for the arrest of Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister wanted for crimes against humanity. And in September, only contrived diplomatic immunity rescued Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister during the assault on Gaza, from arrest by Scotland Yard.
Just over a year ago, 1,400 defenceless people in Gaza were murdered by the Israelis. On 29 December, Mohamed Jassier became the 367th Gazan to die because even those needing life-saving medical treatment are not allowed free passage out. Keep that in mind when you next watch the BBC “balance” such suffering with the weasel protestations of the oppressors.
There is a clear momentum now. To mark the first anniversary of the Gaza atrocity, a humanitarian procession from 42 countries—Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, old and young, trade unionists, writers, artists, musicians and those leading convoys of food and medicine—converged on Egypt. And even though the US-bribed dictatorship in Cairo prevented most from proceeding to Gaza, the people in that open prison knew they were not alone, and children climbed on walls and raised the Palestinian flag. And this is just a beginning.
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US. In a New Statesman survey of the 50 heroes of our time, Pilger came fourth behind Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela. “John Pilger,” wrote Harold Pinter, “unearths, with steely attention facts, the filthy truth. I salute him.”
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