Commentary on Haaretz 03/02/2009, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061211.html
(EU envoy: Israel must ease aid restrictions on 'hell-like' Gaza, by Reuters)
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Following the utterly immoral and illegal position taken by EU leaders, as
expressed by the monstrous Benita Ferrero-Waldner not long ago, the current
EU Middle East envoy is openly calling for using EU reconstruction money to
achieve what Israel failed to reach through its genocidal siege and
atrocious war of aggression on Gaza: (a) impose on Gaza (and indeed the West
Bank) an illegitimate PA government that represents US interests far more
than Palestinian interests (after all, the entire government was
hand-selected by an American army general!!), and (b) salvage Israel's image
abroad by making Gaza "look less like hell," which would also serve the
purpose of assuaging the mounting civil society anger and effective action
against Israel and its US-EU-Arab partners in crime.
Whenever the EU and US envoys insist on using the L word (for legitimacy) to
describe the Ramallah-based PA, the more Palestinians shrug their shoulders
in disgust and disbelief! The PA government in Ramallah by any objective
legal standards and according to Palestinian Basic Laws is anything but
legitimate! It has no democratic mandate from the Palestinian Legislative
Council, as rquired by law. The PA President had a democratic mandate which
expired on January 9th. He is no longer the legitimate president of the PA.
Hamas's government, though democartically elected, was deposed by Abbas when
he was president and had the constitutional power to depose it, regardless
of how anti-democratic and politically disastrous that "legal coup d'etat"
was.
So, legally speaking, the Palestinians in the occupied territory are left in
limbo, with no legally legitimate government to "rule" under occupation (a
contradiction in terms to me, but not to most other analysts!). But of the
two "illegitimate" governments, in Ramallah and Gaza, certainly the latter
has more claim to legitimacy as it had won a perfectly democratic and clean
vote -- something the former cannot claim. Also, the former, before Gaza but
especially during the Israeli war on Gaza, has increasingly lost any
semblance of legitimacy or representation of Palestinian national interests.
The Karzai phenomenon is live and well in Ramallah, just as in Baghdad,
Beirut, Cairo, Riyadh, Islamabad and elsewhere in the worldwide empire of
banana republics -- illegitimate, unelected governments that are kept in
power through western largesse and western-imposed, repressive security
apparatuses.
The EU's insistence on ignoring its legal obligations to end Israel's
impunity, condemn its war crimes and make it pay for the massacre and
massive destruction it caused in Gaza (and beyond) can only open the door,
wider still, to the impending collapse of the rule of international law and
to the ascension of the rule of the Bush-Bin Laden jungle, or total chaos,
which Europe, in particular, will most certainly live to regret having
contributed to.
Israel has, for all intents and purposes, completed its transformation from
a regular rogue state above the law of nations to the "mad dog" that Moshe
Dayan had advocated decades ago; it is about time to leash it before it
bites everyone in site, even the white man -- or woman -- in the smart suit.
Omar