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March 31, 2002
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
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Corporate Lawyer
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Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
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J. Foley
Does
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Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
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T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
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Threat to Democracy
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Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
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March
19, 2002
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Ali
Nuke
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Pollack
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Daltrey's LA Surprise
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War-Mongering
Academics:
The New Tartuffe
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Bomber
Blair
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and Madmen
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18, 2002
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Khanbabyan
The
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Georgia Is Only the Beginning
Gabriel
Ash
Abdullah
v. Osama
Bernard
Weiner
Middle
East for Dummies
Alexander
Cockburn
Tipping
in America
March
17, 2002
David
Vest
The
Politics of Packaging
Tariq
Ali
The
Left's New Empire Loyalists
March
16, 2002
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Floyd
Ashcroft's
Secret Snatches
March 15, 2002
Doron Rosenblum
Israel's Settler Warlords
Alex Lynch
Rhetorical
Attacks On Iraq
Norman Madarasz
Neo-Con Propaganda
and the National Review
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de La Gorce
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Enemies
March
14, 2002
Dr. Susan
Block
RIP
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Francis
Boyle
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Nuke Plan Violates International Law, Again
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Saunders
Memo
to Paul McCartney:
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of Freedom, Sir
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Cover-up?
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13, 2002
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Hass
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When
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to Kill One Million People
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12, 2002
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11, 2002
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is the Way the World Ends
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Ates
Bush's
New Nuke Policy:
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Lidia Andrusenko
The Great
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Dave Marsh
10
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Footprints
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The New Crusade:
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By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
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The New Intifada:
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A Pocket Guide to
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March 31, 2002
The Big
Lie
Palestine, Palestinians and International
Law
By Francis A. Boyle
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 administrations
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 Binders
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, Harvards 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 worlds 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. Socy Intl 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
Israels grievous mistreatment of the Palestinian People as a
violation of international humanitarian law, and soundly condemned
Israels 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
Israels 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 administrations 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 administrations
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.
administrations 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 Israels 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 speakers 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 governmentsomething I had learned from
Louis Sohns 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 1987just 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
Israels 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 Communiqui
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
PLOs 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 Mosquethe 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 Communiqui.
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
Assemblys 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 Palestines 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 timeand 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 Israels 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
Arafats 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 authorizationInshallah!
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, Israels 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 Assemblys
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.
Francis Boyle
is Professor of International Law Legal at Illinois University,
an 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
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