The [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/gaza-and-israel-... thread-chunk[/u][/color][/url] has hit 100 posts. This is a powerful disincentive for anybody who wants to continue a serious discussion to make any more posts in that particular thread-chunk, which will soon be consigned to babble cut-out limbo by the thread-nazis.
Besides, that thread-chunk has been invaded by a particularly obnoxious anti-semite.
And so I am continuing the discussion here.
The law is very clear. July 2004, the highest judicial body in the world, the International Court of Justice, ruled Israel has no title to any of the West Bank and any of Gaza. They have no title to Jerusalem. Arab East Jerusalem, according to the highest judicial body in the world, is occupied Palestinian territory. The International Court of Justice ruled all the settlements, all the settlements in the West Bank, are illegal under international law.
What is Finkelstein referring to? Well, the ICJ was asked by the General Assembly to give an [b]advisory[/b] opinion on the legality of the construction of the "apartheid wall" in the occupied territories. The decision of the ICJ, [url=http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/icjruling.pdf][color=m... you can read for yourself[/u][/color][/url], was that construction of the wall was contrary to international law, and should be stopped. The court did not pronounce on the location of the borders of the Israeli state, nor was it asked to do so. It did not pronounce on whether Israel had "title" to any particular land, nor was it asked to do so.
Finkelstein does not claim, as you do, that the June, 1967 "borders" of Israel are mandated by international law or judicial decree. I see no reason why progressives who defend the Palestinians should proclaim Israel's borders at any particular location, because the consequences could include conferring an unwarranted legitimacy to the concept of a separate, racist Israeli state, and placing legal roadblocks in the way of a [b]single-state solution[/b]. Not to mention conceding the legitimacy of the United Nations Partition Resolution of 1947. There is no reason why we should declare these questions closed.
These are questions that are for the Palestinians to take positions on - not to be dictated to them by "world opinion" - and they should be regarded as always subject to negotiation. To go around proclaiming that "there is no controversy" over the legal borders of Israel is like saying that there is no controversy over Darwin's theory of evolution. It's wishful thinking.
Moreover, the fact that the leaders of Palestinian organizations and the Arab League may argue for a "two-state solution" is not determinative. They are taking negotiating positions that may be in their own class interests, and not necessarily in the best interests of the majority of Palestinians. I have [url=http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/31970/most_palestinians_reject_two_... linked[/u][/color][/url] to evidence that [b]most Palestinians reject the two-state "solution".[/b] There is also [url=http://rabble.ca/babble/international-news-and-politics/forget-two-state... reason for progressives to agree with the Palestinian majority.[/u][/color][/url]
Norman Finkelstein along with Uri Avnery is one of the key proponents, on our side, of the [b]bankrupt two-state solution[/b]. Many other prominent Jews on the Palestinian side, from secularists like Ilan Pappe to religious Jews like the Neturei Karta, acknowledge that [b]the two-state solution is unjust and unfeasible[/b] and point to a single-state solution where Arabs and Jews would live together in peace in a racist-free democratic state. [b]For us who identify Zionism as a racist ideology, a solution that leaves a zionist racist state in place is not a solution but a prevailing problem in need of solution[/b] - its like suggesting that rather than ending apartheid in South Africa it should have been split in to two states, one of which should be left to continue practicing racist apartheid! Imam Achmad Cassiem, a veteran of the armed struggle against apartheid in South Africa, put it more eloquently when he said "even if the Zionist State is the size of a postage stamp it has no right to exist". Racism has no right to exist. - [url=http://www.inminds.co.uk/article.php?id=10223][color=mediumblue][u]Sourc..."No controversy?" Bullshit.
