Feedback loop: for Israel isolation begets isolation

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/articles/middle-east/16151-feedback-loop-for-israel-isolation-begets-isolation

2015 looks like it's going to be a challenging year for Israel. While, with American and Australian support – and the help of rather cowardly abstentions by, among others, the British – Israel managed to sidestep a Palestinian/Jordanian effort at the UN Security Council that proposed a timeframe to end the occupation.

But rather than this being the end of the matter, it was out of the frying pan and potentially into the fire for Israel. In response to the failure, the PLO leadership took the long overdue step of signing the 'Rome Statute' and beginning the process of joining the International Criminal Court (ICC).

It is possible of course that entry to the ICC could have all sorts of negative consequences for the Palestinians themselves. Israel will certainly be prepared to counter any Palestinian efforts to use legal mechanisms to end the occupation by levelling charges of there own.

But none-the-less it is a move that at least shifts the conversation out of the well-worn rut where it's been stuck for 20 years. In other words, one can at least hope that – finally – this is the end of a period where 'negotiations' based on the deeply flawed Oslo process of the 1990s is talked about as the only serious way to enact change.

[Scootaloo]

1. Israel can bring all the charges it wants. Probably should.

Lance that seventy-year boil and see what all drains out.

However, the Israeli cultural foundation of "two wrongs make a right" doesn't hold up well in the legal bodies of the international community, nor the majority of nations making up that community. So Israel can bring forth all the charges it wants - doesn't make its actions against the Palestinians legal, right, or ethical.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

2. Agreed.

Perhaps if everything is put on the table the world will have to look at what it has ignored for a generation.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so let it shine on all the parties involved.