ILLINOIS — Even if Oslo had succeeded, it would have resulted in the permanent imposition of a Bantustan upon the Palestinian people. But Oslo has run its course! Therefore, it is my purpose here to sketch out a New Direction for the Palestinian people and their supporters around the world to consider as an alternative to the Oslo process.
First: We must immediately move for the de facto suspension of Israel throughout the entirety of the United Nations system, including the General Assembly and all UN subsidiary organs and bodies. We must do to Israel what the UN General Assembly has done to the genocidal rump Yugoslavia and to the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa.
Here the legal basis for the de facto suspension of Israel at the UN is quite simple:
As a condition for its admission to the United Nations Organization, Israel formally agreed, inter alia, to accept General Assembly Resolution 181 (II) (1947) (on partition and Jerusalem trusteeship) and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) (1948) (Palestinian right of return). Nevertheless, the government of Israel has expressly repudiated both Resolution 181 (II) and Resolution 194 (III). Therefore, Israel has violated the conditions for its admission to UN membership and thus must be suspended on a de facto basis from any participation throughout the entire United Nations system.
Second: Any further negotiations with Israel must be conducted on the basis of Resolution 181(II) and the borders it specifies; Resolution 194 (III); subsequent General Assembly resolutions and Security Council resolutions; the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions of 1949; the 1907 Hague Regulations; and other relevant principles of public international law.
Third: We must abandon the fiction and the fraud that the United States government is an “honest broker” in the Middle East. The United States government has never been an “honest broker” since from well before the formal outset of the Middle East peace negotiations in 1991. Rather, the United States has invariably sided with Israel against the Palestinians, as well as against the other Arab States. We need to establish some type of international framework to sponsor these negotiations where the Palestinian negotiators will not be subjected to the continual bullying, threats, intimidation, lies, bribery, and outright deceptions perpetrated by the United States working at the behest of Israel.
Fourth: We must move to have the UN General Assembly adopt comprehensive economic, diplomatic, and travel sanctions against Israel according to the terms of the Uniting for Peace Resolution (1950). Pursuant thereto, the General Assembly’s Emergency Special Session on Palestine is now in recess just waiting to be recalled.
Fifth: The Provisional Government of the State of Palestine must sue Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for inflicting acts of genocide against the Palestinian People in violation of the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Sixth: We must pressure the Member States of the UN General Assembly to found an International Criminal Tribunal for Palestine (ICTP) in order to prosecute Israeli war criminals, both military and civilian, including and especially Israeli political leaders.
The UN General Assembly can set up this ICTP by a majority vote pursuant to its powers to establish “subsidiary organs” under UN Charter article 22. This International Criminal Tribunal for Palestine should be organized by the UN General Assembly along the same lines as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that has already been established by the UN Security Council.
Seventh: Concerned citizens and governments all over the world must organize a comprehensive campaign of economic disinvestment and divestment from Israel along the same lines of what they did to the former criminal apartheid regime in South Africa. This original worldwide disinvestment/divestment campaign played a critical role in dismantling the criminal apartheid regime in South Africa. For much the same reasons, a worldwide disinvestment/divestment campaign against Israel will play a critical role in dismantling its criminal apartheid regime against the Palestinian People living in occupied Palestine as well as in Israel itself.
These seven steps taken in conjunction with each other should provide the Palestinian People with enough political and economic leverage needed to negotiate a just and comprehensive peace settlement with Israel.
(Francis Boyle is Professor of International Law at Illinois University.)
