AlterPolitics

The pressure continues to mount on the far-right Likudnik government in Israel.  Ha’aretz has just obtained a copy of a document, drafted by the European Union Presidency, which effectively backs a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood, based on the 1967 borders.  The document follows:

The world is clearly getting sick and tired of Netanyahu’s refusal to abandon his expansionist/ethnic cleansing policies.  Just last week U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Special Envoy George J. Mitchell simultaneously responded to Netanyahu’s claim that he had suspended new settlements in Judea and Sumeria, by conveying it was not enough, and then evoking the 1967 lines as the legal borders:

They did not bless the Israeli non-freeze, explaining it fell short and that they expected more, and that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. […]”

But the new language came in Secretary Clinton’s description of what American expects the outcome of negotiations to be – for an “independent and viable [Palestinian] state based on the 1967 lines”. Senator Mitchell quoted Clinton in repeating the call for a Palestinian state “based on the 67 lines.”

Every conflict and every situation has its own lingua franca. In the Israeli-Palestinian context, a state based on the 67 lines is the dog-whistle for what constitutes a real, no-B.S. two-state outcome. It is also language that the US has conspicuously avoided using – avoided that is until today.

I have to wonder if these calls — first by the U.S. and then by the E.U. — for two independent states along the 1967 borders (with East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital), wasn’t coordinated so that it would be received by the Netanyahu government as a subtle threat that the tide is turning against his Zionist vision of a greater Israel.  Let’s hope the pressure continues …