Bernard-Henry Levy
The Swiss are trying to revive the Geneva Initiative 8 years after its first iteration and will do so at a public conference later today.
Events in 2011 have shown that the will of the people can bring about political change. The Geneva Initiative, which is the joint-product of Israeli and Palestinian civil societies, remains a concrete and realistic proposal for a peace settlement in the Middle East.
They give the Initiative a new twist — Geneva 2.0 — and Yasser Abed Rabbo of the PLO will be there to advocate for the two-state-solution but so will a surprise speaker:
An old conflict in a new context – the Arab Spring and its impact on Israelis and Palestinians
Bernard-Henri Lévy, French philosopher and writer
I am told that B-H L is anathema to many Palestinians for his writings and comments critical of Islam. And he is beloved by the Israel lobby. But will that help the Geneva Initiative gain adherents?
Bernard-Henri Lévy will work with the PLO to short-circuit the UN application. Having lied his way into setting Libya afire and given the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood a boost with the help of French and Israeli Zionists, he now sticks his nose into the Palestinians’ conflict.
In France, being a philosopher is like being a lawyer in the US.
BHL is in Le Dershowitz category in France.
The revival has to be considered light of last year’s Abed Rabbo declaration to Haaretz that the Palestinians were willing to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and Abbas’ declaration that the appellation ” Jewish state” is an Israeli internal affair and the Palestinians have nothing to do with it.
Lieberman must really love these guys despite what he says about them as what they declared puts in question certain rights of about 5 million Palestinians including those living in Israel.
Please use your voice to encourage the Geneva Initiative.
It is a path forward.
Unless you are emphatically only for a single-state approach, then the Geneva Initiative approach represents a mutually respectful one, capable of prospective reconciliation.
If you are for a single state approach, then please adopt the language and effort that would engender a mutually respectful one, one of co-existence.
The PLO may have strands that would accept Israel, even as a “Jewish state” (and so-called by them!) IN RETURN for something, maybe in return for anything. I don’t know how desperate they are. Waiting for Israel to self-destruct may, at long last, seem a fool’s game to some. Waiting for humane Jews to awaken and act, ditto. Waiting for the UN to do something helpful (as BDS by nations), ditto.
Waiting and watching Israel become more like the European totalitarian states, killing, starving, disempowering, dispossessing, pogromizing, may finally seem “too much”.
Israel’s policy since 1948 has been take, take, take, give nothing and wait for Palestinians to give up, give in, disappear. It may well work. I’m sorry the decent people of the world have been so powerless.
The great corporations, which appear to have a sufficiency of fellow-feeling with Israel, control far more than merely the I/P. Read Naomi Klein’s NATION Article on Global Warming, a far more important problem on which (also) the world is stymied. Or, read a more succinct but less valuable treatment of the corporate power by myself