On November 29, 2012, the United Nations voted to approve what is being called the de facto recognition of a new state, Palestine. The vote was 138-9, with 41 abstentions.
The Arab world celebrates this vote as a victory. It doesn’t matter that their new Palestine may have no legitimate international borders. It doesn’t matter that this vote does not make them a member-state in the UN, but only a non-member with observer status, similar to the Vatican.
What matters is, Arabs believe they have changed the ‘game’.
To understand what has changed, here are five predictions for the next 48 months:
Prediction One: this UN resolution in favour of Palestine will not lead to peace. It will lead to war.
Prediction Two: there will be two wars. The first war will be more Arab-Israel fighting. The second war will be a world war against Israel.
Prediction Three: the world war against Israel will unfold through multiple pathways. They will be aimed at criminalizing Israel. Every international human rights code written since 1949 will be used to accuse Israel of crimes against humanity. We have seen this before. But it will now be more formal because UN recognition upgrades Palestine’s importance; it opens legal doors once closed.
One pathway will be the International Criminal Court. There, Arabs will seek the right to ask for criminal indictments against individual Israelis—specifically, every Israeli who signed any document relating to Gaza or the Palestinian territories (for details, see the 2009 UN ‘Goldstone Report’).
Another pathway could allow the new Palestine the legal right to establish its own courts, so as to indict Israel and Israelis for human rights violations committed with every arrest of every Palestinian since 1948 (Goldstone suggests a potential for 700,000 lawsuits).
A third pathway will be sanctions against Israel.
A fourth pathway is called, the principle of universal jurisdiction, which states that international crimes (such as those allegedly committed by Israel) that violate fundamental human values are such a concern for us all, that they can be prosecuted anywhere in the world, regardless of the place of commission, the nationality of the perpetrator or the nationality of the victims (Goldstone).
A fifth pathway could be demands for reparations. Goldstone tells us that a State is responsible for full reparations when that State commits internationally unlawful acts, including crimes codified in international humanitarian conventions and human rights codes. Goldstone suggests that reparation is a realistic threat because it has been ‘enshrined’ in at least five international codes.
Still other pathways—including international law surrounding ‘responsibility to protect’ and ‘collective punishment’-- will be built as opportunity presents itself.
This world war should not be confused with on-going Arab-Israel fighting. This war is distinct. It will be based partly on ‘human rights’ and partly on the premise that the greatest threat to world peace is terrorism, with Israel the cause of that terrorism.
Israel will be called to justice. She will be formally accused. She will be investigated. She will be found guilty of crimes against all humanity, not just Palestinians. We have already been told that Israel’s immorality against the Palestinians is so great, it will challenge our world (Richard Falk); and, any hope for freedom and peace for us all depends upon the UN acting against Israel (Mahmoud Abbas).
These concepts can now be translated into ‘lawfare’, where law itself—what is supposed to protect us-- will become instead a weapon of destruction.
Prediction Four: the UN will become sorely troubled by Israel’s immorality. Her brutality will be called worse than Nazi Germany. International law will be used to accuse Israel of attempting her own holocaust—against the Arab.
The UN –the world’s ‘Temple of peace’ --will be horrified. UN officials will wonder aloud if Israel-the-ZioNazi should be expelled.
We have seen these tactics and accusations. But what we have seen was only rehearsal. Mahmoud Abbas wants more. As he wrote in the New York Time in May, 2011, he wants to ‘internationalize’ his war against Israel by turning that war into a ‘legal matter;’ and that, he said, was why he wanted statehood. His goal for statehood was not peace, but to transform his war effort.
UN recognition was the key that would unlock the door for that transformation.
He now has that recognition. His war can now become global, not just local.
Prediction Five: as we watch Israel become isolated and Nazified in the name of world peace, many Jews around the world will realize that these changes belong to the Jewish Redemption, not the Arab dream of a Judenein(Jew-free) Middle East. Increasingly, Jews will understand that this war has been foretold. Look, Jews will say, prophesies of old come true.
Finally, Jews will agree that the Arabs are right. The ‘game’ has changed. It is no longer political. It is religious—for both sides.
There will be a Jewish religious revival. There will be a surge in aliyah.
Congratulations, Israel: during these next four years, you will begin to feel the threshold of your Destiny beneath your feet.
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