国連投票、パレスチナを責める米国リーダー達：ジェームズ ゾグビー

A familiar fiction as US leaders blame Palestinians for UN vote

 

James Zogby

 

Nov 6, 2011 

http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/comment/a-familiar-fiction-as-us-leaders-blame-palestinians-for-un-vote

 

The hysteria in Washington over Unesco's vote to include Palestine as a member of the UN cultural body, although largely a manufactured effort, was nevertheless an irritating commentary on the dysfunctional nature of US politics.

Before the vote, Congressional members sent a letter to the White House titled "Oppose Dangerous Bid by the Palestinians to Gain Unesco Recognition". The Obama administration also warned corporate executives that their interests would be hurt if the Palestinians succeeded in "forcing the US" to defund the UN agency. After the vote, there was posturing that accompanied the "automatic cut off" of US dues and the shameful rhetoric that blamed the Palestinians for harming Unesco's work. Throughout, the entire affair bordered on the surreal.

I was in Washington in 1993 and 1994 after the Oslo Accords and the euphoria that followed the Arafat-Rabin handshake on the White House lawn. It was fully expected that Congress would rescind its long list of anti-Palestinian legislation. It would have been the right thing to do, but the hardline lobby Aipac and its pro-Likud supporters blocked the move.

And so instead of changing or cancelling anti-Palestinian laws passed in the previous decade, Congress was pushed to place even more punitive restrictions on US relations with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Instead of removing the ban on PLO operations in Washington and Palestinian diplomatic visits to the US, they were given a waiver that could be revoked and required a regular White House report to Congress to remain in effect. Aid was given to the Palestinians, but with conditions more humiliating and burdensome than any other US assistance package.

During that period, an alliance was born between Likud, which wanted the then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to fail, and Republicans in the US Congress who wanted President Bill Clinton to fail. Both saw punishing Palestinians as a safe target on which to focus their attention.

Despite Democratic control of the House of Representatives, hard-line pro-Israel politics trumped the administration's appeals to support Israeli-Palestinian peace. After Republicans gained control of Congress in 1994, it was as if Likud had moved its offices to Capitol Hill. At one point, Aipac and Congress's efforts to punish Palestinians became so troubling that Rabin came to Washington to tell Aipac to stop meddling in Congress, which was interfering with his efforts to make peace.

The legislation that has now been implemented, suspending US dues to Unesco, is a product of that era. Likud and its bipartisan allies in Washington set as many pitfalls so they could to make peace impossible; and cowardly Democrats did not stand up to support the US president.

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NOTE:

1993～94年、米国共和党とイ国リクード党支援者協働の始まり

米国議会の反パレスチナ制裁法

パレスチナのユネスコ正規加盟承認投票と米国の自業自得国際的孤立