The BBC says that the U.S. may not veto a Security Council resolution that is critical of Israel’s expansion in East Jerusalem:
During their talks, [Qatar Foreign Minister] Sheikh Hamad asked the US official whether Washington would guarantee not to veto a UN Security Council resolution that was critical of Israel’s ongoing settlement construction in East Jerusalem.
The diplomat said the US official had replied that the current feeling in Washington was that they would "seriously consider abstention".
Hoping they mean it and not just sending a message to Bibi.
This is a Security Council vote, it has a couple of teeth.
Typical.
And in return, another “fuck you” from BYahoo can be expected.
link to haaretz.com
Potsherd,
I wouldn’t pay any attention to that headline. Why? Because Aipac’s trying to distract us from the real mega crisis between Obama and Natanyahu, using the journalistic ruse of “US Spokesperson” (oh yeah, like who?!). Unless Obama himself makes that declaration, it’s just all Aipac orchestrated leaks and misinformation.
You’d better believe Israel is in the doghouse with bigger, more public clashes ahead to look forward too.
Obama will mouth some nice crap about the Israelis in the meantime, but he’s not letting it go behind closed doors, hence Aipac’s fretful media spin and the 2nd letter (in ten days!) delivered yesterday with some 2/3 Congressional signatures intact (how surprising!) asking Obama to at least not go ‘public’ with their difference.
Obama knows clearly that the I/P conflict is a security threat – it’s in the foreground of his thoughts daily, just like AlQaida is, and all his decisions on this matter will be influenced by this stark fact.
No, this crisis ain’t over till the fat lady sings. And this fat lady happens to be American, not Israeli.
Considering the US hasn’t recognised Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem this should be a no-brainer.
Not really. Look at the vote on Palestinian self-determination.
UN votes aren’t about what the resolution says, they’re about political ties and allegiences. Donahoe had to come up with “unbalanced” in order to vote against the self-determination resolution that advocates exactly what the US government advocates. But there are too many resolutions in favor of the Palestinians, so she votes against them all.
Now, though, somebody wants to send Israel a message and teach them a lesson, so this resolution has a chance.
Hey Potsherd I wrote “should be” not “is a no-brainer”! It’s a shame UN votes are used this way but there you go.
In Australia the Rudd Government recently switched it’s vote from ‘against’ to ‘abstain’ on advancing the Goldstone Report, after it broke that 3 of the faked passports were Australian. Still waiting to hear if there will be a diplomatic expulsion. Just today former PM Malcolm Fraser caled for an expulsion, and spoke on how Israel gets away with things other nations would be condemned for, and that Israel has had a deeply negative impact on the peace process. The Zionist Council of Victoria promptly accused Fraser of being a Hamas sympathiser (2nd link):
link to bit.ly
and link to bit.ly
Let’s hope that Obama’s backbone doesn’t turn to jelly on this and concrete action is taken at the SC. Passing healthcare may just strengthen his resolve.
Walt had something on Health Care.
link to walt.foreignpolicy.com
What about the unbreakable bound with Palau?
believe it when you see it
“…seriously consider abstention.”
What a joke we are. “World’s only superpower” but of course, we our government still cowers before Israel. Heaven forbid we show the world we are committed to peace in the Middle East — or hell, how about international law, or basic human decency while we’re at it — by voting for a resolution that, to the rest of the Security Council, is a slam dunk.
This is a classic piece of Israeli whining about how they fear Obama is going to impose a peace settlement on them and how unfair it all is. Because he is going against all those agreements that Israel cheated on and said they wouldn’t follow anyway. And because he is going behind their backs and talking to their allies, especially Germany, who they now won’t be able to extort anymore. link to haaretz.com
I mean really Chaos4700, do you really believe that? That we cower before Israel? No, our government just serve elites, that is the way it has always been. Of course, they have to make it look like they are really not doing that, like they disagree and just later become spineless. Views like this are getting really silly on this site, are you guys so gullible?
Perhaps many here just voice this, because the rest of the herd just cannot come to terms with it, and are unaware of what is going on. Maybe everyone thinks they will be rejected or called “radical and extreme,” etc. Frankly it matters little to me, most of you appear to be individuals that will just sound the alarm when you think there is nowhere else to go and the whole ship is going down – but it will be too late at that point. It is a sad state of affairs.
The problem, VR, is that a lot of our so-called elites are more Israeli than they are American.
Are they now Chaos4700, and the elites that were before them were consumed by their own self-interest. The only reason why anyone got a taste of anything good had absolutely nothing to do with the milk of kindness in their hearts, it was from fear of losing everything – so there are no kinder and gentler elites. It was when the people pressed them to the edge, but they stopped short and got a little pittance for a temporary period of time and now its being eaten alive again. It will only stop and not be permanent when the system is pulled up by the roots and smashed to rise no more.
I know it is hard to face, and that somehow people think that it is something else than what I am saying, but its not true. It is that same root that went from kingdoms, to feudalism, and now capitalism – the enrichment of the few. All the government is is the franchise of the few – that’s it, that is all that it is or ever will be with the current system. What a good portion here do is sit and kvetch about the symptoms, like someone not liking what a disease produces and trying to mollify the pain rather than recognize root cause. It is traumatic, I admit it, to think that everything that you thought was real is a lie and that everything you embraced was false. However people have to face it, don’t kill or ignore the messenger, swallow the pill –
GET ANGRY
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Someone ought to tell Aipac that Saudi Arabia runs the world.
They need to be reminded that Qatar is Saudi Arabia’s cousin, so is UAE, Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman. All exceptionally wealthy countries that actually invest billions of dollars in our economy instead of robbing us in broad daylight.
You cannot underestimate the depth of the insult that the ‘Dubai Hit’ is felt in the whole region and not just Dubai.
The good news is that this incident has (finally!) galvanized and motivated these influential Arab countries to rise from their silky slumber, link arms and look for effective ways to deal with the ‘intruders, murderers and thieves’ (boy do they hate thieves in that part of the world – they chop their hands off there you know!).
The status of Jerusalem provides these Arabs the perfect weapon/reason to move and shake-down the thieves and offenders on the international stage.
This is just the beginning.
From what I’ve been hearing, the Dubai assassination may have been a galvanizing moment for Europe as well.
Don’t forget Canada, Australia and Newzealand too, Chaos.
Mossad and macho Natanyahu crossed a most serious red line with the Dubai Hit, not just with ordinary decent folk around the world, but also and especially with the super-mega rich international corporations who’ve poured zillions of their investments into Dubai and cannot afford ANY security issues threatening their vastly-vaster-than-vast investments. These are the guys who are the MOST pissed as well as culturally offended, and these same guys are the guys who have powers and can actually do something about it.
The oil Arabs have done very little ‘diplomatic’ work for the Palestinians since the mid-seventies and they even abandoned them in a ditch when Arafat supported Saddam in Gulf War One.
Yet despite the thousand and one fissures in the Arab world, it is not ‘Palestine’ that really unites their voices. It is Jerusalem.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
The (oil) Arabs will NEVER let it go – come push or shove or hell or high waters.
The Arabs as a whole unfortunately can’t even get their act together without falling into internal emnity, as shown in the Arab League conference last week.
Yet Jerusalem is the exception to the rule, potsherd.
Remains to be seen. Will they do anything, and at what point? Because the provocations from the Israelis keep escalating.
link to ynetnews.com
While the article doesn’t say, you can certainly bet the extremist was released again.
Taxi,
Is Mecca and Medina just an afterthought then?
Is world conflagration a forethought yonira?
Mecca and Medina are not occupied by murderers and thieves from europe.
But Jerusalem is and it needs liberating.
That’s the fucking difference – don’t play dumb.
It’s all yonira knows how to do, unfortunately.
You think he’s playing?
No, he’s dead serious! Yonira is going to convert his girlfriend, crush the little glass under the canopy, and produce “my Jewish children” How can you say a person who will do, and knows he will do, all those things, not serious?
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Two threads here. [1] The US elites run everything (correct, and let’s hear it for the S/C which identified the elites with wealthy corporations; recalling that in the early USA, no-one could vote but white men who were property owners, it’s not such a leap); [2] Israel has “put its foot in it” — Dubai murder, Gaza, daily child-killings and other assassinations (and giving the world the chi-chi euphemism of “targeted assassinations” with all its heady suggestions of previously “untargeted assassinations”) and much else.
As to [2] (Israel has “put its foot in it”), I don’t for a moment believe that all this was a coldly calculated “cry for help” by an Israeli government which sees that the political power of the Israeli settler movement cannot be overcome without outside help and has set about getting that help by taking “outre” actions. Not for a moment do I believe this. However, the horrible actions, especially taken together, provide a reason for the US, the EU, and the UN to treat Israel as if it had cried for help. And that “help” should be compulsion to clean up its act and make a just and lasting peace with Palestinians, Syria, and Lebanon. In my view, it also means (as a pre-condition or early-imposed compulsion) removal of all or most settlers and the wall.
Israel “goes too far” for the same reason that USA corporations (and USA torturers and neocon promoters-of-war) “go too far”, namely, that the immunity and impunity which these people have sedulously acquired and have so-far enjoyed acts to select people for the seats of power who wish to do the sorts of things which immunity and impunity particularly allow; and such people actively want to “go too far” as elements of their inmost personality. A person who tortures another person for the sheer pleasure of exercising that most horrible of powers over another do it as a central element of warped personality, not for a “reason” such as punishment or gaining information or preventing ticking bombs. Hmmm. But maybe as an act of terrorism if they believe news of the torture will get “out.”
If the USA is talking to Germany, et al., perhaps the selection of Israel for the OECD can be reversed, sending yet another “signal”. Perhaps the EU’s favorable trade arrangements for “made in Israel” (but not “made in OPT”) trade-goods can be reversed. Etc. Perhaps Goldstone will go forward.
Pabelmont,
You’re so right in making the behaviorist link between the zionist settler enterprise and craven corporations.
They just don’t get it.
Israeli Minister Vows New Gaza Invasion, Likud Official Says Govt Will ‘Liquidate’ Hamas, Occupy Strip
Replace Temple Mount mosques with Jewish Temple, rightist campaign says
“The mosque on the temple mount is temporary,” Marzel continued, referring to the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa mosques, “and it’s only a matter of time before the Temple which the entire people of Israel are waiting for will be built.”
The entire people of Israel are waiting? I think this might be news to most of them.
“This government collaborates with the enemy and helps it during a time of war,” he said. “Everyone should check the Even Shushan dictionary, in an effort to understand the definition of such behavior,” Wolpe said.
Can someone with a copy of the Even-Shoshan Concordance please tell us to what Wolpe is alluding?
Malcolm Fraser calls for Israeli diplomats to be expelled over use of Australian passports in Hamas hit
I wonder if its time for Finklestein to revisit his old squirrly take on the Israel Lobby?
link to counterpunch.org
Finkelstein …
When has the United States ever projected power of any kind from Israel? Also, the US doesn’t control any nations in the Middle East. We influence and support ruling elites so that they have common interests. If those common interests vanished, the illusion of control would soon follow.
Well, as a practical matter, the US does not have to support or have any interest in the Arab Street; all the Arab countries have a totally dependent Main Street and no free Press. The USA likes it that way; the USA has the same policy in S America. Iran is notable as a country who’s Main Street actually did something about that. Hence this why Iran is painted as the major evil.
Lebanon has as much of a free press as we do here.
And the Arab ‘street’ now has the internet.
Roger Cohen, backing Obama in NYT opinion online:
link to nytimes.com
this could be a “sea change”