UN report says Palestinian Authority ready for statehood

[News_Editor]

UN report says Palestinian Authority ready for statehood

2011-04-12 22:58:03 GMT+7 (ICT)

UNITED NATIONS (BNO NEWS) -- The Palestinian Authority is ready to govern a state, a United Nations report released on Tuesday said.

The report "Palestinian State-building: A Decisive Period," which focuses on the progress made by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in building institutions, said that "in six areas where the UN is most engaged, government functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state".

United Nations Special Coordinator Robert Serry, whose office UNSCO prepared the report, commended the achievements of President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. However, he said the Israeli occupation needs to end and Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations on a two-state solution must resume if the state-building process is due to be completed by September.

"This is a decisive period, as we approach the September 2011 target for the PA's institutions to be ready for statehood," he said. "It is also the target set by the parties to reach a negotiated permanent status agreement to create a Palestinian state at peace with Israel."

The report says the socio-economic situation in Gaza needs to be more fully addressed and underlines the UN's concerns about Gaza.  

"Recent escalations have been very worrying and I appeal once again for all to observe calm so that civilians are protected. Rocket fire must stop and Israel must show maximum restraint. This is also essential in moving forward to help meet the needs in Gaza," Serry said.

The report was prepared for the upcoming meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, which seeks to promote dialogue between donors, the PA and the government of Israel, in Brussels scheduled for Wednesday. The 12-member committee is chaired by Norway and co-sponsored by the European Union and the United States. In addition, the UN participates together with the World Bank's secretariat and the International Monetary Fund.

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2011-04-12

[bangkokeddy]

Good news.

If the Zionists really want legitimize themselves they have to end the occupation and let the Palestinian state take their Al-Aqsa.

[Ulysses G.]

Hamas needs to stop the violence against Israel and make peace with the PLO.

[bangkokeddy]

Hamas needs to stop the violence against Israel and make peace with the PLO.

Its a resistance movement that fights against the illegal occupation.

[Steely Dan]

Hamas needs to stop the violence against Israel and make peace with the PLO.

Its a resistance movement that fights against the illegal occupation.

Hamas are terrorists whose explicit aim is to bring an end to Israel. Their terror activities are suffered not only by Israeli citizens but also any Palestinians who don't follow their absolutist jihadi aims.

[bangkokeddy]

Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.

We shall never recognise the right of any power to rob us of our land and deny us our national rights. We shall never recognise the legitimacy of a Zionist state created on our soil in order to atone for somebody else's sins or solve somebody else's problem. But if you are willing to accept the principle of a long-term truce, we are prepared to negotiate the terms. Hamas is extending a hand of peace to those who are truly interested in a peace based on justice.

· Khalid Mish'al is head of the political bureau of Hamas

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/jan/31/comment.israelandthepalestinians

[bangkokeddy]

Hamas needs to stop the violence against Israel and make peace with the PLO.

Its a resistance movement that fights against the illegal occupation.

Hamas are terrorists whose explicit aim is to bring an end to Israel. Their terror activities are suffered not only by Israeli citizens but also any Palestinians who don't follow their absolutist jihadi aims.

Israel is an aggressor, a occupation force, a war criminal and violates various international laws and human rights.

Israeli-occupied territories

The Israeli-occupied territories are the territories which have been designated as occupied territory by the United Nations and many other international organizations, governments and others to refer to the territory occupied by Israel from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria after the Six-Day War of 1967. They consist of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and much of the Golan Heights and, until 1982, the Sinai Peninsula. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are also referred to as Palestinian territories or Occupied Palestinian Territory. The Palestinian Authority, the EU,[1] and the UN Security Council[2] consider East Jerusalem to be part of the West Bank, a position disputed by Israel. Israel has annexed East Jerusalem by the Jerusalem Law.

...

International views

The official term used by the United Nations Security Council to describe Israeli-occupied territories is "the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem", which is used, for example, in Resolutions 446 (1979), 452 (1979), 465 (1980) and 484. A conference of the parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention,[65] and the International Committee of the Red Cross,[66] have also resolved that these territories are occupied and that the Fourth Geneva Convention provisions regarding occupied territories apply.

The international community has formally entrusted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with the role of guardian of international humanitarian law. That includes a watchdog function by which it takes direct action to encourage parties to armed conflict to comply with international humanitarian law.[67] The head of the International Red Cross delegation to Israel and the Occupied Territories stated that the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions that constitute war crime.[68]

...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-occupied_territories

[Ulysses G.]

Hamas needs to stop the violence against Israel and make peace with the PLO.

Its a resistance movement that fights against the illegal occupation.

These terrorists and their masters should have thought of this before declaring war on Israel multiple times over decades and losing every one.

[Ulysses G.]

Israeli-occupied territories

Payback for:

The 1948-49 War

The 1956 War

The 1967 War (The Six-Day War)

The 1973-74 War (The Yom Kippur War)

The 1982 War

Edited April 13, 2011 by Ulysses G.

[Steely Dan]

Which Palestinians, what state?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK_lrqg2dko

[Ulysses G.]

There was never a country called Palestine or a people called Palestinian or a Palestinian language and their first leader - Arafat - was Egyptian.

"The concept of "Palestinians" is one that did not exist until about 1948, when the Arab inhabitants, of what until then was Palestine, wished to differentiate themselves from the Jews. Until then, the Jews were the Palestinians. There was the Palestinian Brigade of Jewish volunteers in the British World War II Army (at a time when the Palestinian Arabs were in Berlin hatching plans with Adolf Hitler for world conquest and how to kill all the Jews); there was the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra (all Jews, of course); there was The Palestine Post; and so much more. The Arabs who now call themselves "Palestinians" do so in order to persuade a misinformed world that they are a distinct nationality and that "Palestine" is their ancestral homeland. But they are no distinct nationality at all. They are the same - in language, custom, and tribal and family ties - as the Arabs of Syria, Jordan, and beyond. There is no more difference between the "Palestinians" and the other Arabs of those countries than there is between, say, the citizens of Minnesota and those of Wisconsin.

What's more, many of the "Palestinians", or their immediate ancestors, came to the area attracted by the prosperity created by the Jews, in what previously had been pretty much of a wasteland.

- New York Times, June 12, 2000

"There is no such country [as Palestine]! 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." - Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader, to the Peel Commission, 1937

"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria." - Ahmed Shuqeiri, later the chairman of the PLO, to the UN Security Council

Source? Please provide always a link when you copy content from some other websites. Thank you.

They are quotes from a book - The Middle East by Craig S. Davis - but are on plenty of historical websites as well.

[bangkokeddy]

Its also time to get a small update of reality. try to read the OP for example.

There will be a so called Palestinian State soon, later in the future maybe even a Greater Palestine

A place where everyone can live in peace, without any segregation and no discrimination by an ethnic or religious group.

[Ulysses G.]

:lol: Yeah, sure. They can't even get along with each other. Edited April 13, 2011 by Ulysses G.

[Steely Dan]

Its also time to get a small update of reality. try to read the OP for example.

There will be a so called Palestinian State soon, later in the future maybe even a Greater Palestine

A place where everyone can live in peace, without any segregation and no discrimination by an ethnic or religious group.

No discrimination? Yes, such a place exists, it's called Israel. You won't find it anywhere else in the Arab world. Palestinian cancer patients are not treated in Jordanian hospitals and are deliberately kept in refugee camps by Arab governments as a cynical propaganda tool.

If somehow a Hamas-Fatah coalition is formed it would soon descend into Palestinian versus Palestinian violence and you would have a situation more akin to Somalia than Israel.

[bangkokeddy]

Source? Please provide always a link when you copy content from some other websites. Thank you.

They are quotes from a book - The Middle East by Craig S. Davis - but are on plenty of historical websites as well.

Are you sure that the quotes are authentic?

I checked the New York Times, they have an excellent online search for their archive. couldn't find the article.

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch?srchst=cse

I found references only on some right wing Christian and Zionist propaganda websites and the usual hater blogs. I wouldn't call these websites "historical websites" at least not for 'historical' as in to be academic or scientific.

And what you wanna prove with this old meme There was never a country called Palestine anyway?

Their first leader - Arafat - was Egyptian? hmm, okay.

Zionism - a movement that started with a german book "Der Judenstaat" written by an Austro-Hungarian playwright living in Vienna.

And now? Go home?

[bangkokeddy]

Its also time to get a small update of reality. try to read the OP for example.

There will be a so called Palestinian State soon, later in the future maybe even a Greater Palestine

A place where everyone can live in peace, without any segregation and no discrimination by an ethnic or religious group.

No discrimination? Yes, such a place exists, it's called Israel. You won't find it anywhere else in the Arab world. Palestinian cancer patients are not treated in Jordanian hospitals and are deliberately kept in refugee camps by Arab governments as a cynical propaganda tool.

If somehow a Hamas-Fatah coalition is formed it would soon descend into Palestinian versus Palestinian violence and you would have a situation more akin to Somalia than Israel.

Tutu condemns Israeli 'apartheid'

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused Israel of practising apartheid in its policies towards the Palestinians.

The Nobel peace laureate said he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa".

...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1957644.stm

He is not the only one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy

[Ulysses G.]

And what you wanna prove with this old meme There was never a country called Palestine anyway?

That there was never a country called Palestine and that the Arabs - most of who had very recently immigrated from surrounding countries - had no more right to the land than the Jews.

As far as the New York Times article, you could not find it because you did use a title which is necessary to get results.

[Wallaby]

Palestine may well have its own country soon. Whether Israel likes it or not.

[Ulysses G.]

If Hamas and the PLO stop fighting with each other, you might be right, but if they do not make peace with Israel, it will not really matter.

[Ulysses G.]

How can you search by date? I tried it and only 5 articles came up. You can be sure that The New York Times had a lot more articles than that on that day.

The article is historically accurate according to about a million main-stream history books. Maybe it is not them that "argues that dumb"?

Edited April 13, 2011 by Ulysses G.

[bangkokeddy]

Tony Blair to endorse Palestinian state in Brussels report

Sheera Frenkel From:The Times April 13, 2011 9:10AM

THE prospect of a Palestinian state will come a step closer tonight after Tony Blair gives his endorsement for the proposal and argues that Palestinians are well positioned to establish their own nation.

The Middle East peace envoy and former British prime minister will present a report in Brussels that examines various Palestinian institutions of government.

A copy seen by The Times concludes: "It is clear that since 2007 the PA [Palestinian Authority] has greatly enhanced its capability to govern and to deliver services ... if the PA maintains its performance in institution-building and delivery of public services, it is wellpositioned for the establishment of a state in the near future."

...

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/tony-blair-to-endorse-palestinian-state-in-brussels-report/story-fn7ycml4-1226038287204

[Ulysses G.]

What authority does Tony Blair have? England got rid of him.

[Wallaby]

He must be anti Israel.

[Ulysses G.]

Actually, he seems to be pro-Israeli, but still just an opinion from someone who is not in power.

Edited April 13, 2011 by Ulysses G.

[Wallaby]

No, his is not just an opinion. Mandela is an ex as well, I'm sure his opinions are highly regarded.

Blair is an ex PM and is giving his 'endorsement' to a proposal. His endorsement holds a lot more weight than someone like you or me. Some proposals are better endorsed and presented by ex PM's or Heads of State simply because a current leader would find it too 'politically challenging'.

[metisdead]

Posts containing personal attacks have been removed.

Using the tactic that people are paid to post is a lame debating tactic. If you have actual proof that somebody is paid to post, forward it to support. Any further allegations of this nature will earn you a posting suspension.

[bangkokeddy]

What authority does Tony Blair have? England got rid of him.

He is the special Envoy of the so called Quartet on the Middle East.

[Wallaby]

Somehow I think anyone less than the Israeli PM submitting a proposal that Palestine be blown off the planet will not be acceptable to some.

[Steely Dan]

Tutu condemns Israeli 'apartheid'

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has accused Israel of practising apartheid in its policies towards the Palestinians.

The Nobel peace laureate said he was "very deeply distressed" by a visit to the Holy Land, adding that "it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa".

...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1957644.stm

He is not the only one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_and_the_apartheid_analogy

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1953/arab-apartheid

You never hear about the Arab apartheid towards Palestinians, nor for that matter the massacre of an estimated 15-25,000 Palestinians killed in Jordan when the PLO were kicked out do you?

[pkspeaker]

I was here a few months ago i was posting on one of these palestine threads.. ulysses always makes the same defunct arguments again and again.

There was never a state called Palestine..

The country was called British Palestine before 1948, before the British ruled it, it was called Palestine under the Ottoman empire, specifically the Governorship of Palestine, I have seen the old law books from that era in a museum. If an empire has acquired a country, like Vietnam or Cambodia, it doesn't mean that Cambodia didn't exist prior to the French leaving.. if you were to say there was never a Palestine it's the same as saying there was never a Syria or an Egypt.

What is a country or state?

The people are a country or state, so if there are people living in a country that call themselves Palestinian, and they represent more than 30% of the overall population, a nationality or state exists..the international standard is 30% so for example in the old Czech-Slovakia, the slovaks were more than 30% of the overall population, hence the name; if they had been only 20% then they would have been considered a czech minority.. So if anything Israel is a bi-national state that simply refuses to treat everyone equally or recognize that the other people exist-like ulyses , pushing millions of people into segregated areas is no escape from this reality..

At the time of 1947 Palestinians or should we say indigenous Christians and Muslims (because prior to 1948 the Jews in British Palestine were Palestinians also, if they were born there, their birthplace would be listed as 'Palestine" not 'Britain') were the majority, prior to 750,000 Palestinians being expelled, despite waves of Jewish refugees arriving from europe. today Palestinians makup about 1/2 the population of the combined territories, israel, wb, and gaza . .