YouSaid · the spoken record

Khalil Shikaki

lines on the record
8
first
2020-07-21
most recent
2020-07-21
sittings or episodes
1
sources
un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “It is definitely the responsibility of our own leadership to address our shortcomings, division and lack of reconciliation, our inability to find our way back to democracy, good governance and elections, and our inability to work jointly with our Arab partners and the international community to put forward a detailed counterplan for a vision for peace. Nonetheless, the Security Council and its members who are still committed to international law — the defenders of international legitimacy — should not hide behind our shortcomings to evade their own responsibility to stand up to the Trump and Netanyahu Administrations and protect the norms and rules of the international system. After all, protecting that system is the Council’s raison d’être.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  2. “Because of the despair and pessimism about the future, our joint Palestinian- Israeli surveys show that public opinion on both sides is not a force for peace. At the same time, however, our findings clearly show that the two publics are not an impediment to peace. With the right leadership and the right incentives, the two publics could be brought to support a detailed identical vision of peace based on a real — not make-believe — two-State solution. In conclusion, replacing a rules-based international system with one based on greed and Evangelical Christian religious myths is a threat not only to us, the Palestinians, but also to all members of the Security Council.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  3. “If implemented, it will create a one-State solution in which Palestinians are denied their basic right to elect those who set the important rules by which they are governed. It is an invitation to greater discrimination, transfer and violence in the Palestinian-Israeli future. The Trump plan and its annexationist corollary send the message to Palestinians and Israelis that the two-State solution is out of reach, perhaps dead and buried. According to our surveys, the Palestinian consensus is not only to reject that plan but to also see it as the means by which to take the conflict back to where it started — to its existential roots. Annexation and the Trump plan are not at all about national self-preservation for the Jewish people; it is not surprising that at least half of the Israeli public is not rushing to embrace it.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  4. “But this legitimacy is now under attack, not only from Israel but, most important, from one of the main architects of the modern international system. The designers of the Trump plan do not hide their disdain for international legitimacy: their own point of departure is to embrace the views of the most extreme and fundamentalist segment of Israeli society — those who represent less than a third of the Israeli public, according to the joint Palestinian- Israeli surveys that we have been conducting with colleagues at Tel Aviv University since 2016. With a lethal combination of political expediency and national-religious messianism, the Trump plan destroys much of the progress made over the past 50 years in resolving the conflict.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  5. “They conclude that such an outcome means greater violence in the future of the two peoples, as well as greater questioning of their State’s identity as Jewish and democratic. However, a main difference between the two societies lies in the fact that Palestinians feel too weak and abandoned, not only by the international community but also by their own Arab brothers, and the Israelis, who are much more comfortable with the status quo, feel they can get away with doing what they want with few consequences because the United States and recent history shield them from sanctions. Unlike in the past, when they demanded full justice, Palestinians today are content with what international legitimacy provides.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  6. “In their search for the means to regain freedom and dignity, Palestinians are also torn between the desire to fight by all means, including armed struggle, to end the Israeli military occupation, on the one hand, and their own responsibility, on the other, to put food on the table for their own families, particularly under the current conditions created by the coronavirus crisis, especially in the Gaza Strip. Support for violence, which declined to less than a fifth during the early days of Oslo, began to rise five years ago and has now reached almost half the population. The most recent spike was triggered over the past six months by the release of the Trump plan and the annexation dynamics it triggered. Most Israelis have come to the same conclusion: that settlement expansion is making the two-State solution less and less practical.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  7. “Many Palestinians, particularly youth — driven not only by this reality, but admittedly also by a high degree of discouragement given our own domestic shortcomings — have come to embrace a one-State solution, one in which democracy rules — a one person, one vote system for all Jews and all Palestinians — indeed, a struggle for equality. The trend over the past decade is unquestionable: support is gradually tilting in favour of one State.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source

  8. “My daily job for the past 27 years has been to measure the pulse of the Palestinian and Israeli streets. This is one of those confusing and depressing moments for the two societies. Palestinians are witnessing the crushing of their dream of one day seeing the end of the Israeli occupation of their land and the building of their own independent and sovereign State. Last month more than three quarters did not believe that a Palestinian State would be created in the next five years. Most are torn between insisting on their national aspiration for decolonization and building a State of their own, on the one hand, and their recognition, on the other, that that aspiration is no longer feasible because of the grim reality on the ground, where Israeli settlement expansion is destroying, day by day, the chance for peace based on partition.”

    2020-07-21 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/2020/736 (2020) · source