PALESTINIANS are considering engaging in a fight to change Palestine’s status to that of a ‘non-member state’ as a step forward towards the realisation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.
Permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations Riyad Mansour said last Tuesday that the option of changing Palestine’s status from ‘observer entity’ to a ‘non-member state’ is still being studied.
Mansour told the Italian news agency AKI that becoming a non-member state ‘does not invalidate the right to become a member state as recommended by several UN resolutions such as resolution 181 in 1947’.
The ultimate goal would be to obtain full UN membership like South Sudan, he said, however if that objective is not met then Palestine would seek a status similar to that of the Vatican.
UN membership would benefit the Palestinians by putting pressure on Israel to end its occupation and finally implementing Palestinian ownership of its territories, Mansour said.
It will also represent the historical achievement of creating the first Palestinian state.
The predictable US veto of the Palestinian bid will not end the process, Mansour added, as the Palestinians can go back to the UN Security Council at an appropriate time.
Israel and the US openly oppose the Palestinian bid for UN membership.
• A Palestinian prisoners’ rights group on Tuesday called for the release of Bushra Al-Tawil, the daughter of the mayor of Al-Bireh, who has been held by Israeli authorities for a month without charge.
Israeli forces arrested Al-Tawil, 18, on July 6, 2011 after a raid on her family home in Al-Bireh.
No explanation was given for her arrest, and more than a month later she has not been charged with any crime, human rights network for Palestinian prisoners UFree said.
‘UFree believes that she was targeted for arrest by Israeli occupation forces because her father, Mr Jamal Al-Tawil is an elected mayor for Al-Bireh city in the West Bank.
‘Family members of elected officials have been vulnerable to arrest due to the Israeli occupation policy of targeting families of elected Palestinian politicians as a means of applying political pressure’, a statement said.
Bushra’s mother, Muthanna Al-Tawil, was previously held in administrative detention for a full year, Ufree said.
Jamal Al-Tawil, the mayor of Al-Bireh, was detained by Israeli forces for several months under administrative detention during the first Intifada without being charged.
‘UFree calls for the immediate expedition of Ms Al-Tawil’s case and compensation for the psychological trauma they have been subject to throughout the ordeal.’
Israeli courts have been delaying her case from being heard, Ufree added.
Administrative detention entails being detained without a trial or any charge.
Israel has held thousands of Palestinians in administrative detention in the past and the practice has been widely condemned by human rights groups.
• Demonstrations of tens of thousands have rocked Tel Aviv in occupied Palestine (Israel) during recent weeks as the cost of living soars through the roof.
The world economic collapse has impacted on the Zionist economy, as has the enormous costs of the continuous occupation of Palestine, deployment of Zionist troops, bombs, tanks and bulldozers, driving up the cost of basic goods, food and rents.
The demonstrations have been growing steadily since mid-July when activists, furious at the fact that they cannot afford to live, began setting up a tent city in Tel Aviv.
The Zionist Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has faced intense pressure from protesters forcing him to say that he is ready to shift his economic ideology.
Last Monday in a conversation with Manuel Trajtenberg, the economist he has charged with examining the protesters’ demands, the Zionist prime minister was forced to bend.
Netanyahu said on Monday: ‘I understand my views need to change,’ after Trajtenberg warned him he could not keep his old positions.
Netanyahu favours privatisation and lower taxes for the wealthy.
Trajtenberg said two of his own daughters had taken part in the mass demonstrations.
Trajtenberg has publicly expressed fear about taking on the role at the head of the committee, saying it came with ‘enormous’ risks.
He warned Netanyahu that he would not allow the panel to be used as a tool to ‘kill the issue’.
The protesters have laid out their demands in a new document last Tuesday.
The document contains six broad demands:
•Reduction of ‘social inequalities’ and greater ‘social cohesion’
•‘Altering the main principles of the economic system’
•Lower living costs, full employment and price controls on staple goods, giving priority to city outskirts
• Helping the most vulnerable in society and solving the housing crisis.
Meanwhile the impact of the cost of imperialist war and the world collapse of capitalism has brought the US economy and the UK economy to the brink of bankruptcy.
The economic crisis throws the future of Zionism into doubt because there is no way that the US and the UK can keep bankrolling the Zionist state, which would not be able to survive for a single day without the billions of dollars and pounds donated by US and UK imperialism.
• The working class in the UK is being made to pay for the UK government’s imperialist adventure in Libya to the tune of millions of pounds for service personnel accommodation, let alone the costs of the deployment of planes and weapons.
Britain is spending £1.3 million ($2.1 million, 1.5 million euros) a month on accommodation alone for 1,000 service personnel in Italy while they conduct air strikes on Libya, official figures showed on Sunday.
The Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots and their support crews are deployed in four different parts of Italy as part of the NATO campaign against Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi’s forces.
Accommodation costs have averaged £1,315,000 a month since the bombing raids began in March, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) admitted.
Some £1.1 million a month is going on accommodation for personnel at the Gioia del Colle airbase in southeast Italy, where the RAF Tornado and Typhoon fighter jets are stationed.
The MoD said: ‘The RAF is operating from Gioia del Colle in southern Italy where military accommodation is limited and therefore hotel accommodation must be used.’
