UN ENVOY CALLS FOR DETRUCTION OF ISRAEL

UN Envoy Calls for End of Israel

Although some claim Israel has scored diplomatic points with the disengagement, it doesn’t seem to have made much impression on John Dugard, the UN’s “special rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967.”

In a new report that the Jerusalem Post calls “a damning indictment of Israel’s policies in the territories,” Dugard declares that: “The construction of the wall, the expansion of settlements and the de-Palestinization of Jerusalem are incompatible with the two-state solution.”

The only option left, he writes, is to do away with Israel: “Interlocutors within both Israel and the West Bank warned the special rapporteur that with the two-state solution becoming increasingly difficult, if not impossible, consideration should be given to the establishment of a binational Palestinian state. The demography of the region increasingly points to such an outcome.”  

The fact that Dugard’s view contradicts the formal, pro-two-state position of the Quartet, of which the UN is a member, did not prevent him from transmitting his report to the General Assembly last August and publishing it last Monday. The Israeli Foreign Ministry called the document “shocking” and said it would prepare a rebuttal.

Dugard is unimpressed by the evacuation of Gaza because it “should be seen as the decolonization of Palestinian territory. This does not affect Israeli control of the territory, which will remain.” In Dugard’s eyes, Israel gains no points for dissolving communities and withdrawing every last soldier because it “intends to delay decisions on matters such as customs, air and sea traffic, and the movement of persons and goods for an indefinite period,” and this “will further distract international attention from Israel’s territorial expansion in the West Bank.”

The dire consequence is that this “will allow Israel to complete construction of the wall, the consolidation of settlement blocks, and fundamental changes to the character of Jerusalem”—by which he means—allegedly—that Israel will secure the city’s status as the undivided Jewish capital.

With some people—indeed, with many—Israel is not going to win no matter what it does, and it should come as no surprise that John Dugard is one of them.