- Legal Advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization
on Creation of the State of Palestine (1987-1989)
-
- Legal Advisor to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle
East Peace Negotiations (1991-1993)
-
- Sometime Legal Advisor to the Provisional Government
of the State of Palestine
-
- * © Copyright 2002 by Francis A. Boyle. All rights
reserved. The viewpoints expressed here are solely my own. I am not Arab.
I am not Jewish. I am not Palestinian. I am not Israeli. I am Irish American.
Our People have no proverbial "horse in this race." What follows
is to the best of my immediate recollection:
-
- The Big Lie
-
- Growing up in the United States during the late 1950s
and early 1960s while strongly supporting the just struggle of African
Americans for civil rights, I was brainwashed at school as well as by
the mainstream news media and popular culture to be just as pro-Israel
as everyone else in America. Then came the 1967 Middle East War. At that
time, my assessment of the situation was that Israel had attacked these
Arab countries first, stolen their lands, and then driven out their respective
peoples from their homes. I then realized that everything I had been told
about Israel was "The Big Lie." Israel was Goliath, not David.
I resolved to study the Middle East in more detail in order to figure
out what the Truth really was.
-
- Of course by then I had already figured out that everything
I was being told about the Vietnam War also constituted The Big Lie. The
same was true for U.S. military intervention into Latin America after
the Johnson administration's gratuitous invasion of the Dominican Republic.
The same for the pie-in-the-sky "Camelot" peddled by the Kennedy
administration after the Bay of Pigs invasion/fiasco and its self-induced
Cuban Missile Crisis that was a near-miss for nuclear Armageddon. So I
just added the Middle East to the list of international subjects that
I needed to pay more attention to in my life.
-
- Chicago
-
- I entered the University of Chicago as an undergraduate
in September of 1968 after having just attended the tumultuous Chicago
Democratic Convention. Because of the heavy common-core requirements there,
I could not take a course on the Middle East until the next academic year.
Then I signed up for a course on "Middle East Politics" taught
by Professor Leonard Binder. To his great credit, Professor Binder was
most fair and balanced in his presentation of the Palestinian and other
Arab claims against Israel during the course of his classroom lectures.
In addition, his massive reading list forced me to go through everything
then written in English that was favorable to the Palestinian People,
as well as reading the standard pro-Israel sources. By the end of Professor
Binder's course in the Winter of 1970, I had become convinced of three
basic propositions: (1) that the world had inflicted a terrible injustice
upon the Palestinian People in 1947-1948; (2) that there will be no peace
in the Middle East until this injustice was somehow rectified; and (3)
that the Palestinian People were entitled to an independent nation state
of their own. I have publicly maintained these positions for the past
three decades at great cost to myself.
-
- In particular, I have been accused of being everything
but a child molester because of my public support for the Palestinian
People. I have seen every known principle of Academic Integrity and Academic
Freedom violated in order to suppress the basic rights of the Palestinian
People. In fact, there is no such thing as Academic Integrity and Academic
Freedom in the United States of America when it comes to asserting the
rights of the Palestinian People under international law.
-
- In any event, the University of Chicago has always had
a first-rate Center for Middle East Studies that I have heartily recommended
over the years to many prospective students all over the world seeking
my advice on where to study that subject. By comparison, Harvard's Center
for Middle East Studies was then basically operating as a front organization
for the C.I.A. and probably the Mossad as well. No point anyone wasting
their time studying Middle East Politics at Harvard.
-
- Nevertheless, I entered Harvard in September of 1971
in order to pursue a J.D. at the Harvard Law School and a Ph.D. in Political
Science at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Department
of Government. The latter was the same doctoral program that had produced
Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samuel Huntington, and numerous
other Machiavellian war-mongers trained by Harvard to "manage"
the U.S. global empire. In other words, Harvard trained me to be one of
these American Imperial Managers: "There but for the Grace of God
go I!"
-
- For the next seven years at Harvard I was quite vocal
in my support for the Palestinian People, including and especially their
basic human rights, their right to self-determination, and their right
to an independent nation state of their own. Although I felt like a distinct
Minority of One among the Harvard student body at the time, I did receive
the support and encouragement for my pro-Palestinian viewpoints from several
of my teachers. At the Harvard Law School were Roger Fisher (The Williston
Professor of Law), Louis Sohn (Bemis Professor), Richard Baxter (Hudson
Professor), Clyde Ferguson (Stimson Professor), and Harold Berman (Ames
Professor). At the Government Department was my doctoral dissertation
supervisor, Stanley Hoffmann, who has always been most sympathetic to the
tragic plight of the Palestinian People. He is now a University Professor-
Harvard's highest accolade, and well deserved.
-
- While in residence as an Associate at the Harvard Center
for International Affairs (CFIA) from 1976-1978, I also came into contact
with Walid Khalidi. I was present for the dramatic off-the-record confrontation
between him and Shimon Peres at the standing CFIA Seminar on "American
Foreign Policy" then conducted by Stanley Hoffmann at their old headquarters
on 6 Divinity Avenue. Peres refused to budge even one inch no matter how
flexible Khalidi was. A harbinger for the Middle East Peace Negotiations
over a decade later.
-
- As a most loyal and grateful Harvard alumnus (J.D. magna
cum laude, A.M., Ph.D.), I must nevertheless state that it is shameful
and shameless that Harvard never granted a tenured full professorship
to Walid Khalidi because he is a Palestinian despite the fact that he
is universally recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on the
Middle East. This gets back to my previous observation that there is no
point studying Middle East Politics at Harvard. Walid and I would later
meet again at the Middle East Peace Negotiations in Washington, D.C. during
the Fall of 1991
-
- Entebbe Lecture
-
- Soon after my graduation from Harvard Law School in June
of 1976, the very first public Lecture I ever gave was at the invitation
of the Harvard International Law Society. I decided to speak on the subject
of The Israeli Raid at Entebbe, during which I analyzed many of the legal
and political problems surrounding this raid that had just been so unanimously
applauded by the U.S. news media. Roger Fisher was kind and gracious enough
to show up at this my first public Lecture on anything. He also offered
some words of support when I was attacked by another professor for discussing
the political motivations behind the Entebbe hijacking by the PFLP. I
had expressed my opinion that the PFLP/PLO political claims can, must,
and should be negotiated. We even got into a little debate about who was
the real "terrorist" here. Obviously, these were not a very
popular point of view to take back in the Fall of 1976 at Harvard. Clyde
Ferguson would later inform me that my pro-Palestinian viewpoints prevented
him from reporting my dossier out of the Harvard Law School Appointments
Committee (upon which he then sat) despite his best efforts to get me
hired there.
-
- In any event, I decided to take my "Entebbe Show"
on the road and to use it as my standard job interview lecture in order
to get hired somewhere as an Assistant Professor of Law. Not surprisingly,
I was rebuffed at the very top law schools. But in December of 1977, I
received an offer to become an Assistant Professor of Law at the University
of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, which had just been semi-officially
ranked the Number Eleven law school in the country by an American Association
of Law Schools Report. So I moved back to Illinois on July 14, 1978 with
the hope and expectation that someday I would be able to make a positive
contribution to the most desperate plight of the Palestinian People.
-
- The American-Israel Society of International Law and
Power
-
- Around the same time, Clyde Ferguson was to become the
first African American President of the American Society of International
Law and would preside over their 75th Anniversary Convocation in 1981.
Clyde decided to put me on their Concluding Plenary Panel that he would
personally chair: "I want you to get up there and send those people
a message!," Clyde enjoined me. And so I did, as indicated by the
text of my Speech set forth herein, The American Society of International
Law: 75 Years and Beyond, 75 Am. Soc'y Int'l L. Proc. 270 (1981). In particular,
I publicly supported the right of the Palestinian People to self-determination
and the fact that the PLO was their sole and legitimate representative.
I also severely criticized Israel's grievous mistreatment of the Palestinian
People as a violation of international humanitarian law, and soundly condemned
Israel's criminal practices in Lebanon.
-
- After my Speech, I was thenceforth treated by the Members
of the so- called Society as the proverbial skunk at their yearly garden
party. For the next decade I would vigorously speak out in support of,
and publicly debate, the rights of the Palestinian People at American
Society of International Law Conventions against innumerable pro- Israel
supporters. But after ten years of banging my head against this wall,
I concluded that I was wasting my time. I have not returned since, and
doubt that I ever will again return to this American-Israel Society of
International Law and Power. Standing in solidarity with the Palestinian
People.
-
- The very next year, when Israel again invaded Lebanon
in1982, I immediately tried to organize what little academic opposition
there was among professors of international law. I drafted a Statement
condemning this invasion in no uncertain terms, and then proceeded to
call up about 35 professors of international law here in the United States
to see if they would sign it. Not unexpectedly, I could only "round-up
the usual suspects": Roger Fisher, Clyde Ferguson, Stanley Hoffmanm,
Richard Falk, and Tom Mallison. George Ball personally contributed $1000
out of his own pocket to help publicize our stand. But I could not even
get this Statement published anywhere in the United States. Tom Mallison
eventually got it published in Britain as Violations of International
Law, Middle East International, September 3, 1982, reprinted here. It
was a very sad and telling commentary that only a handful of American international
law professors possessed the fortitude of soul to soundly condemn Israel's
egregious invasion of Lebanon, and support the basic rights of the Palestinian
People under international law. And this by a group of professors allegedly
committed to the Rule of Law in international relations. Intellectual,
moral, and professional cowardice and hypocrisy of the worst type. Not
much has changed during the past two decades.
-
- Soon thereafter, I found myself speaking, writing, and
lecturing all over the country against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon
and in support of the basic rights of the Palestinian People under international
law. I would later sum these viewpoints up in an essay entitled Dissensus
Over Strategic Consensus, reprinted here from my Future of International
Law and American Foreign Policy (Transnational Publishers: 1989). This
essay sets forth a comprehensive critique of the Reagan administration's
foreign policy toward the Middle East from an international law perspective.
-
- Written around the same time and in similar vein was
my Preserving the Rule of Law in the War Against International Terrorism,
reprinted here from my Future of International Law and American Foreign
Policy (Transnational Publishers: 1989). This essay provided a detailed
critique of the Reagan administration's self-styled "war against
international terrorism" from an international law perspective, with
a special emphasis on the Middle East. Not much has changed two decades
later with the Bush Jr. administration's bogus "war against international
terrorism." Plus ca change, plus, ca reste la meme chose--especially
when it comes to American foreign policy towards the Middle East.
-
- Suing for Sabra and Shatilla
-
- Leading the legal charge against the Israeli invasion
of Lebanon would ultimately result in my filing a lawsuit against Israeli
General Amos Yaron, who bore personal criminal responsibility for the
massacre of about 2000 completely innocent and unarmed Palestinian women,
children and old men at the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon.
To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time ever that any Lawyer
had attempted to hold an Israeli government official accountable for perpetrating
a massacre against the Palestinian People. I lost. But for historical
purposes my key court papers are reproduced here from 5 Palestine Yearbook
of International Law (1989).
-
- Not surprisingly, when General Ehud Barak became Israeli
Prime Minister, he appointed Yaron to serve as Director-General of the
Israeli "Ministry of Defense." Truly Orwellian! But of course
only fitting for Israel to have a major war criminal and genocidaire serve
in this high-level capacity in order to inflict more heinous war crimes
against the Palestinian People during Israel's repression of the Al Aqsa
Intifada that was instigated on 28 September 2000 by General Ariel Sharon,
the architect of the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. From this demented
perspective, it made perfect sense for the genocidaire Sharon to continue
the appointment of the genocidaire Yaron when he became Prime Minister
of Israel. Needless to say, the United States government under Reagan/Bush,
Clinton, and Bush Jr. fully supported Begin/Sharon/Yaron, Barak/Yaron
and then Sharon/Yaron in perpetuating their serial massacres upon the
Palestinian People. Some things never change.
-
- Creating the Palestinian State
-
- Two decades after Israel launched the June 1967 Middle
East War that first sparked my concern for the plight of the Palestinian
People, the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of
the Palestinian People scheduled a 20th Anniversary Commemorative Session
at U.N. Headquarters in New York for June of 1987. The PLO asked former
U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and me to speak on their behalf. Seated
right next to us at the speaker's podium was Professor Ibrahim Abu-Lighoud,
while behind us sat the entire Palestinian Delegation at that time: Ambassador
Zuhdi Terzi; his Deputy, now Ambassador Nasser Al-Kidwe; and Counsellor
Riyad Mansour. The rest of the hall was occupied by Ambassadors from supposedly
pro-Palestinian U.N. member states.
-
- After Ramsey spoke, I proceeded to state quite forthrightly
that the time had now come for the Palestinian People to unilaterally
proclaim their own independent nation state under international law and
practice. I then proceeded to sketch out precisely why and how this could
be done. I argued that the Palestinians must not go to any International
Peace Conference to ask the Israelis to give them their State. Rather,
the Palestinians must unilaterally proclaim their own independent nation
state, and then attend an international peace conference where they would
simply ask Israel to evacuate from Palestine. Etc.
-
- I spoke for about half an hour along these lines. Needless
to say, Abu-Lighoud stared at me throughout this period as if I had just
descended on a spaceship from Mars. At that point in time the most the
PLO had contemplated was to declare themselves a "government-in-
exile." By contrast, I was explaining to the PLO and to the United
Nations Organization both why and how the Palestinians must unilaterally
create their own independent nation state, and then have Palestine become
internationally recognized, including by the United Nations itself. There
must be a Palestinian State first before there could be a Palestinian
government-something I had learned from Louis Sohn's final examination
in his United Nations Law course at Harvard Law School back during the
1974-75 academic year. And less than eighteen months after my U.N. speech,
the Palestine National Council would determine that the Executive Committee
of the PLO constitutes the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine--not
a so- called "government-in-exile." But that is jumping ahead
of the story.
-
- Sparring with Jordan
-
- After I had concluded my U.N. speech, the Jordanian Deputy
Ambassador immediately demanded from the President of the Conference the
so- called "right of reply." He reprimanded me that as a professor
of international law I should know better than to publicly propose the
dismemberment of a U.N. member state at U.N. Headquarters in New York.
Of course he was referring to the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which
had been illegally occupied and annexed by Jordan after the partition
of the Palestine Mandate up until the 1967 war, when the West Bank and
East Jerusalem were then illegally occupied and the latter illegally annexed
by Israel.
-
- Since I was speaking at the United Nations Headquarters
as a guest of the PLO, I had to be most diplomatic in my response to the
Jordanian Deputy Ambassador. So I chose my words quite carefully: "Jordan
has been as helpful as it can to the Palestinian People--under the circumstances.
But the entire world knows these lands are Palestinian." Abu-Lighoud
chuckled at my diplomatic formulation since he knew full well that I was
never one to mince words. There was some more diplomatic sparring back
and forth between the Jordanian Deputy Ambassador and me about the right
of the Palestinian People to unilaterally establish their own independent
nation state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as their
Capital. But eventually he gave up the ghost arguing with me--just as
his boss King Hussein later would in July of 1988.
-
- The Intifada
-
- Immediately after my U.N. speech, the members of the
Palestinian Delegation asked me a large number of questions about why
and how they could go forward and unilaterally proclaim their own independent
nation state under international law and practice. Zuhdi Terzi then asked
me to prepare a formal Memorandum of Law on this entire matter for formal
consideration by the Palestine Liberation Organization. I readily agreed
to do so--and free of charge. Standing in solidarity with the Palestinian
People.
-
- I spent the entire summer researching and drafting this
Memorandum of Law. In the Fall, I gave it to my incoming research assistant
in order to research, document, and add the footnotes for the Memorandum.
He returned the footnoted draft Memorandum to me in December of 1987-just
on time for the outbreak of the first Palestinian Intafada in Gaza.
-
- This original Intifada was a spontaneous uprising by
the Palestinian People living under the boot of Israel's racist, colonial,
and genocidal occupation. The PLO leadership then headquartered in Tunis
were taken completely unaware by the outbreak of the Intifada in occupied
Palestine. The PLO did not order the Inifada, the PLO did not direct the
Inifada, and the PLO had to constantly scramble in order to try to keep
up with the Inifada. Quickly the leaders of the Intifada living in occupied
Palestine established their own Unified Leadership of the Intifada. And
in the late Winter of 1988, the Unified Leadership of the Intifada issued
a Communiqué in which they demanded that in recognition of the
courage, bravery, and suffering of the Palestinian People living in occupied
Palestine during the Intifada, the PLO must create an independent nation
state for all Palestinians around the world. It was just about at that
time when I transmitted my revised Memorandum of Law to the PLO on this
precise subject, which was entitled "CREATE THE STATE OF PALESTINE!"
Then nothing happened on this project for several months. There was a
deafening silence from the PLO.
-
- It was clear that the creation of a Palestinian State
would generate too many internal political problems for the PLO, which
at that time operated upon the principle of consensus. Back in those days
the Palestinian Independence Movement was a genuine democracy. The creation
of a Palestinian State would have forced the PLO to make some very difficult
political decisions that could have produced a terrible division among
the different groups composing the Palestinian Independence Movement at
the very time when the Palestinian People were being massacred by the
Israeli Army. So I bided my time in silence.
-
- On July 31, 1988 I was teaching Summer School when King
Hussein of Jordan announced that he was severing all forms of legal and
administrative ties between Jordan and the West Bank. Later that afternoon
in class, my students asked me what I thought would happen as a result
of this decision: "Honestly speaking, I really do not know."
When I returned to my office at the end of teaching that very class, there
was a message sitting on my desk from Zuhdi Terzi asking me to come to
New York immediately in order to discuss my Memorandum of Law.
-
- In attendance as this meeting convened at the PLO Mission
to the United Nations in New York were Zuhdi Terzi, Nasser Al-Kidwe, and
Ramsey Clark, as well as Tom and Sally Mallison. Since I had already drafted
a comprehensive Memorandum of Law on how to create a Palestinian State,
I had to do a good deal of the talking. The Palestinians had a list of
questions from PLO Headquarters in Tunis that they wanted us to answer
for transmission back to the PLO Leadership. The first question was: "Why
should the PLO create an independent Palestinian state?" My answer
was characteristically blunt and succinct: "If you do not create
this State, you will forfeit the moral right to lead your people!"
So that there was no misunderstanding during the process of transmission,
I personally faxed that message to the highest levels of the PLO in Tunis.
At the end of this meeting, I agreed to serve as Legal Advisor to the
Palestine Liberation Organization on the creation of the state of Palestine--again
free of change. Pro bono publico in the true sense of that hallowed legal
tradition. Once again, standing in solidarity with the Palestinian People.
-
- My Memorandum of Law would serve as the PLO's position
paper for their right to create the Palestinian State. Although originally
provided to the PLO under attorney-client confidence, Ibrahim Abu- Lighoud
arranged to have my Memorandum published in American-Arab Affairs, Number
25(Summer 1988). It is reprinted here from my book The Future of International
Law and American Foreign Policy (Transnational Publishers; 1989), together
with some additional explanatory background materials.
-
- The Palestinian Declaration of Independence
-
- On November 15, 1988, the Palestine National Council
meeting in Algiers proclaimed the existence of the new independent state
of Palestine. On that same day, after the close of prayers at Al-Aqsa
Mosque in Jerusalem, the crowd came out of the Mosque into the Great Courtyard
in front of the Dome of the Rock, where Mohammed (May Peace Be Upon Him)
had ascended into heaven. Then one man got up and read the Palestinian
Declaration of Independence right there in front of the assembled multitude.
-
- It was my advice to the PLO that the Palestinian State
must also be proclaimed from their own capital in Jerusalem; that since
this State would be proclaimed "In the Name of God."(which it
was), the State must be proclaimed in the Grand Courtyard in front of
the Al-Aqsa Mosque-the third Holiest site in Islam--at the close of prayers
on Independence Day. I told the PLO that although I would very much like
to be the person to do this job, it would be inappropriate for me because
I was not a Palestinian. I likewise declined their request to write a
first draft of the Palestinian Declaration of Independence for similar
reasons. But some of my suggestions can be found there and in the attached
Political Communiqué. So much for a "government- in-exile."
We had Leadership on the ground in Palestine!
-
- As a tribute to the leading role played by Palestinian
Women during this original Intifada, the Palestinian Declaration of Independence
established full legal equality between women and men. But upon my return
to Palestine in 1997, I was told by two Palestinian feminist human rights
leaders from Gaza and the West Bank, respectively, that male-chauvinist
Palestinian judges had dis-interpreted this basic requirement of international
human rights law to be non-self- executing and thus non-enforceable in
court. We will have to countermand this patriarchal chicanery in the Constitution
for the Republic of Palestine.
-
- Moving the Mountain
-
- Immediately after 15 November 1988, Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat sought to travel to the United Nations General Assembly in
New York in order to explain these extraordinary developments to the entire
world at its Official Headquarters. But the Reagan Administration illegally
deprived President Arafat of the requisite visa. Abu-Lighoud called to
ask my advice: "If Mohammed can not come to the mountain, then bring
the mountain to Mohammed. Have the General Assembly adjourn, and then
reconvene at U.N. Headquarters in Geneva." So it was done. President
Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly meeting in a Special Session
at Geneva. This was the real start of the Middle East Peace Process--by
the Palestinian People themselves, not by the United States government,
and certainly not by Israel.
-
- As I had predicted to the PLO, the creation of Palestinian
State became an instantaneous success. Palestine would eventually achieve
de jure diplomatic recognition from about 130 states. The only regional
hold-out was Europe and this was because of massive political pressure
applied by the United States Government. Nevertheless, even the European
States would afford the Palestinian State de facto diplomatic recognition.
-
- Furthermore, following the strategy I had worked out
for the PLO, the Provisional Government of the State of Palestine would
repeatedly invoke the U.N. General Assembly's Uniting for Peace Resolution
(1950) to overcome U.S. vetoes at the Security Council in order to obtain
for Palestine all the rights of a U.N. member state except the right to
vote. In other words, Palestine eventually became a de facto, though not
yet a de jure, U.N. member state. The votes were and still are there for
Palestine's formal admission to U.N. membership. Only the illegal threat
of a veto by the United State Government at the Security Council has kept
the State of Palestine out of formal de jure U.N. membership. That latter
objective is only a question of time-and unfortunately more bloodshed
by the Palestinian People.
-
- On Their Own
-
- I summarized all of these legal, political, and diplomatic
developments in my essay The International Legal Right of the Palestinian
People to Self-Determination and an Independent State of Their Own, which
was accepted for publication by the exact same American-Arab Affairs around
the early Summer of 1990. And then Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Provisional
Government of the State of Palestine refused to join the so-called Coalition
put together by President Bush Sr. to attack Iraq, but instead did its
best working in conjunction with Libya and Jordan to produce a peaceful
resolution of this dispute. For this policy of principle and peace, the
Palestinian People were and still are unjustly but predictably vilified
by the world news media.
-
- While the crisis over Iraq was unfolding in the Fall
of 1990, I corrected the page-proofs for my essay that was then scheduled
to be the lead article in the next issue of American-Arab Affairs coming
out around the turn of the new year. Then I received a notification from
the American-Arab Affairs editorial office that the issue was at the printer
and would soon be distributed. The next thing I heard was that the executive
director of their parent organization had resigned. It was well known
that American-Arab Affairs and its parent organization were heavily subsidized
by Gulf Arab funds.
-
- The next thing I knew I was informed that this entire
issue of American-Arab Affairs with my essay as the lead article had been
suppressed, withdrawn, and would never be published. This issue never
saw the light of day. Apparently the Gulf Arab funders of American- Arab
Affairs and its parent organization did not want to see a lead article
arguing that the Palestinian People had a right to self- determination
and an independent nation state on the verge of their war against Iraq
without the support of the Palestinians. I would later get this essay
published in Volume 12 of the Scandinavian Journal of Development Alternatives
(June-September 1993), from which it is reprinted here.
-
- Of course during the past 25 years of my public advocacy
of the rights of the Palestinian People under international law, I have
lost track of the number of times when my lectures, panels, publications,
and appearances have been killed outright. But this was the first time
that my pro-Palestinian viewpoints had been suppressed by an Arab source.
It would not be the last time. This inexcusable instance of anti-Palestinian
censorship by a leading Arab-American organization should make it crystal
clear how truly desperate the plight of the Palestinian People really
is. The Palestinian People have been repeatedly abandoned and betrayed
by Arab Leaders. The Palestinians are on their own, and they know it full
well.
-
- Middle East Peace Negotiations?
-
- This suppressed essay provided an excellent snapshot
of the legal, political, and diplomatic situation that confronted the
Palestinian People just before the United States and its so-called Coalition
launched their genocidal war against Iraq. In order to get the support
of the Arab Leaders for that slaughter, U.S. Secretary of State James
Baker promised them that when the war was over the United States Government
would do something for the Palestinians. Eventually the Middle East Peace
Negotiations would open in Madrid in the Fall of 1991. At that time I
was invited by the PLO to come to Tunis in order to speak at a Conference
being held there in support of and in solidarity with the Palestinian Delegation
then in Madrid. I also conducted consultations with PLO leaders in Tunis
who had been illegally barred from the Middle East Peace Negotiations
by the United States acting in conjunction with Israel despite the fact
that the United Nations had long ago recognized the PLO as the sole and
legitimate representative of the Palestinian People.
-
- Upon my return home, I was asked to serve as Legal Advisor
to the Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations headed
by Dr. Haidar Abdul-Shaffi. He is a person of great courage, integrity,
and principle. I would fight the devil himself for Dr. Abdul-Shaffi. The
work that I did as the Lawyer for Dr. Abdul-Shaffi and the Palestinian
Delegation can be found here in my unpublished essay The Al Aqsa Intifada
and International Law (30 August 2001). A substantially revised and edited
revision of this essay was published as Law & Disorder in the Middle
East, 35 The Link, No. 1 (Jan.-Mar. 2002), by the Americans for Middle
East Understanding (AMEU). Dr. Abdul-Shaffi expressly waived all attorney-client
confidences with respect to my work as Legal Advisor to the Palestinian
Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations in the hope and expectation
that it might do some good for me to substantiate the fact that the so-
called Oslo Agreement of 13 September 1993 called for the imposition of
a Palestinian Bantustan.
-
- The Oslo Bantustan
-
- It is a matter of public record that the Oslo Agreement
was signed at the White House against the most vigorous objections by Dr.
Abdul- Shaffi acting in reliance upon my advice and counsel. Indeed, a
year prior thereto, Dr. Abdul-Shaffi had instructed me to draw up the
Palestinian counteroffer to Israel's Bantustan Proposal. This I did in
a Memorandum of Law entitled The Interim Agreement and International Law,
which was later published in 22 Arab Studies Quarterly, Number 3(Summer
2000), that is reprinted here. My Memorandum of Law was approved by the
Palestinian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Negotiations as well as
by the Leadership of the PLO then headquartered in Tunis. In other words,
my Memorandum of Law was the Palestinian alternative to Oslo, which is
now dead as a dodo bird. Nevertheless, after the Oslo Bantustan was signed,
I bided my time in silence for the next four years.
-
- Then, it was only fitting and appropriate that I had
the opportunity to return to Palestine in December of 1997 in order to
commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the original Intifada. I visited the
very street where the Intifada had commenced. I then gave a Lecture before
a Human Rights Conference convened by the Palestine Center for Human Rights
headquartered in Gaza. The title of my lecture was Palestine Must Sue
Israel for Genocide Before the International Court of Justice!, which
is reprinted here from 20 Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Number 1
(2000). My thanks to the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs for permission
to reprint this article here.
-
- I then personally met with President Arafat in his recently
bombed- out headquarters in Gaza. I discussed this proposed World Court
Lawsuit against Israel for genocide with him. I then personally placed
my written proposal for this World Court Lawsuit against Israel for genocide
into President Arafat's hands. Since our last meeting in December of 1997,
I have repeatedly asked for his authority to file this lawsuit for genocide
against Israel on behalf of Palestine and the Palestinian People before
the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Perhaps some day I shall
receive this authorization-Inshallah!
-
- Jerusalem
-
- One of the most important issues I have dealt with repeatedly
for the Palestinian People is Jerusalem. For example, I helped to launch
a campaign to prevent the United States Government from illegally moving
the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In order to head
off this abomination, I prepared Memoranda of Law on the U.S.- Israel
Land-Lease and Purchase Agreement of 1989, which I sent to Congressman
Lee Hamilton who was then Chairman of the Subcommittee on Europe and the
Middle East of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives.
These Memoranda are reprinted here from American-Arab Affairs, Number
30 (Fall 1989). The Israel Lobby and its supporters in Congress are still
attempting to pressure the United States government to move the U.S. Embassy
from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Of course this would be a political, legal,
and diplomatic disaster.
-
- To be sure, there would certainly be no problem under
international law and practice for the United States government to move
its Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as part of a comprehensive Middle
East Peace Settlement whereby the Embassy would be simultaneously accredited
to Israel and Palestine, with Jerusalem being recognized as the shared
Capital of both States. Why and how this can be done is fully explained
in my essay The Al Aqsa Intifada and International Law, which has already
been commented upon above. Years ago the PLO had approved my proposal
set forth therein on the Final Status of Jerusalem. But Israel wants this
entire Baby for itself. And the United States has never been solomonic
when it comes to Palestine and the Palestinian People.
-
- U.S. Mideast Policy v. International Law
-
- During the past two decades I have written many other
publications dealing with Palestine, Palestinians, and International Law.
For obvious reasons I do not have the space to reprint them all here.
But in order to facilitate research into these heavily censored and outrightly
suppressed subjects, I have included an incomplete Bibliography on this
and some of my other writings on the "Middle East and International
Law" in general. These other topics include Iran, Iraq, Lebanon,
Libya, and Syria, inter alia. For reasons that should be obvious by now,
it is almost impossible to get published on these subjects here in the
United States of America-".the land of the free, and the home of
the brave. ." It has been a real struggle for me just to get these
meager offerings into print somewhere.
-
- But summing them all up into a nutshell it can be fairly
said that U.S. Mideast Foreign Policy has not shown one iota of respect
for international law. Of course the same can be said for the rest of
American Imperial Policy around the world. In order to substantiate that
latter proposition, the reader will have to consult the rest of my opera
that are not listed here. But to return to Palestine, Palestinians, and
International Law.
-
- Right after General Sharon instigated the Al Aqsa Intifada
on 28 September 2000, the United Nations Human Right Commission condemned
Israel for inflicting a war crime and a crime against humanity upon the
Palestinian People. The Nuremberg crime against humanity is the historical
and legal precursor to the international crime of genocide as defined
by the 1948 Genocide Convention.
-
- Historically, Israel's criminal conduct against the Palestinians
has been financed, armed, equipped, supplied, and politically supported
by the United States. Nevertheless, the United States is a founding sponsor
of, and a contracting party to, both the Nuremberg Charter and the Genocide
Convention, as well as the United Nations Charter. But these legal facts
have never made any difference to the United States when it comes to its
criminal mistreatment of the Palestinian People.
-
- The world has not yet heard even one word uttered by
the United States and its NATO allies in favor of "humanitarian intervention"
against Israel in order to protect the Palestinian People from Israeli
war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. The United States,
its NATO allies and the Great Powers on the U.N. Security Council would
not even dispatch a U.N. Charter Chapter 6 "monitoring force"
to help protect the Palestinians, let alone even contemplate any type
of U.N. Charter Chapter 7 "enforcement action" against Israel.
Shudder the thought! The doctrine of "humanitarian intervention"
clearly proves itself to be a joke and a fraud when it comes to stopping
the ongoing Israeli campaign of genocide against the Palestinian People.
-
- As a matter of fact, in the case of Israel genocide has
paid quite handsomely to the tune of about $5 billion per year by the
United States government, the U.S. Congress, and the U.S. taxpayers, without
whose munificence this instance of genocide would not be possible. Proving
the validity of the proposition that genocide pays so long as it is done
at the behest of the United States and its de facto or de jure allies.
Dishumanitarian intervention by the United States of America against Palestine
and the Palestinians.
-
- Just before the September 13, 1993 Oslo Agreement signing
on the White House Lawn, I commented to a high-level official of the P.L.O.:
"This document is like a straight-jacket. It will be very difficult
to negotiate your way out of it!" This P.L.O. official readily agreed
with my assessment of Oslo: "Yes, you are right. It will depend upon
our negotiating skill."
-
- I have great respect for Palestinian negotiators. They
have done the very best they can negotiating in good faith with an Israeli
government that has been invariably backed up by the United States. But
there has never been any good faith on the part of the Israeli government
either before, during, or after Oslo. The same is true for the United
States.
-
- 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 U.N. subsidiary organs and bodies. We must
do to Israel what the U.N. 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 U.N.
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 U.N. 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 State 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 U.N. 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 U.N.
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 U.N. General Assembly
can set up this ICTP by a majority vote pursuant to its powers to establish
"subsidiary organs" under U.N. Charter article 22. This International
Criminal Tribunal for Palestine should be organized by the U.N. General
Assembly along the same lines as the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that has already been established by the
U.N. 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.
-
- During the course of a public lecture at Illinois State
University in Bloomington-Normal on 30 November 2000, I issued a call for
the establishment of a worldwide campaign of disinvestment/divestment
against Israel, which I later put on the internet. In response thereto,
Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California at Berkley
launched a divestment campaign against Israel there. Right now the city
of Ann Arbor Michigan is also considering divesting from Israel. And just
recently the Palestinian Students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
(whom I am privileged to advise) launched an Israeli divestment campaign
here. This movement is taking off.
-
- 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. By contrast, if the Oslo process is continued, it will inevitably
result in the permanent imposition of a Bantustan upon the Palestinian
People living in occupied Palestine, as well as the final dispossession
and disenfranchisement of all Palestinian People living in their diaspora.
Consequently, I call upon all Palestinian People living everywhere, as
well as their supporters and friends around the world, to consider and
support this New Direction that is sketched out here.
-
- FREE PALESTINE!
-
- F.A.B.
-
- Good Friday 2002
-
- Francis A. Boyle Law Building
- 504 E. Pennsylvania Ave.
- Champaign, IL 61820 USA
- 217-333-7954(voice)
- 217-244-1478(fax)
|
No comments:
Post a Comment