Trump can end Israel-PLO impasse using India’s Vedanta Solution

[Published 10 July 2017]


The first state visit ever to Israel by an Indian prime minister — Narendra Modi— could generate the impetus President Trump needs to end the diplomatic void caused by the breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the PLO since 2014.

The obvious warmth, mutual admiration and friendship shared by Modi and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly evident — contrasting with the hostility, acrimony and venom shown to Israel that has become the norm at the United Nations, UNESCO and UNHCR.

Israel has historically had a long love affair with India’s Vedanta Movement (also known as the Ramakrishna movement) — a worldwide spiritual movement headquartered near Kolkota in West Bengal.

Vedanta wishes and prays for the well-being, happiness and enlightenment of all the people of the world.

Writing on Modi’s visit - Khinvraj Jangid pointed out that Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion:

”... wrote, in September 1957, to Dr. Indra Sen (of the Aurobindo Ashram) praising the distinctive Indian approach to religion: “From Buddhism I have learned much about the history of religion and philosophy in India in general—and after I was enchanted by the Vedanta I began the study of the schools of Sankhya and Yoga.” In his bedroom in the Negev kibbutz of Sde Boker, there was only one leader’s portrait: Gandhi’s.”

Modi himself reportedly attended a comprehensive course studying Vedanta.

Vedanta’s views on peace in the Middle East (“the Vedanta Solution”) were published in the Times of London on 16 March 1982 by Vedanta’s British Chairman Swami Avyaktananda:

“It is generally not known that the East Bank [of the Jordan River — ed] was a part of ancient Palestine and when Britain obtained the Mandate for Palestine, the League of Nations included it in Palestine”

Swami Avyaktananda quoted as his sources:

1. Two maps in the 14th edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica (1929)

2. J.F. Horrabin’s map on page 64 of “The Life of Jesus” by Conrad Noel (1937)

3. The map of Palestine on page 18 of “A Short History of the Hebrews” by B.K. Rattey (1931)

4. 2 Sam ii

The Swami continued:

“The major portion of Jordan today is really East Palestine, the country on the other side of the Jordan being West Palestine. The handing-over of the territory east of the Jordan River to the Emir Abdullah was, to all intents and purposes, the first partition of Palestine [in 1946 — ed.]through which a large portion of Palestine [78% - ed.] went to Arab hands. This partition was not considered when the United Nations framed the Plan of partition of Palestine into Jewish Palestine and Arab Palestine [in 1947 — ed.].

If the Palestine Liberation Organisation accepts the historical facts presented here, considers sympathetically the Jewish aspirations and struggle for the National Home, National Language and National Culture for about 2000 years, and agrees to rethink the problems of the Middle East with goodwill and understanding then the problem of the Middle East will be solved without difficulty. The whole of ancient Palestine will be shared by Jews and Arabs through an amicable settlement if the Palestinian National Home is established in the East Bank of the Jordan. It can be called “New Palestine” and this naming will be quite correct.”

The PLO, Jordan and Israel can cooperatively implement the Vedanta Solution - extended to incorporate the allocation of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) between Jordan and Israel — or Jordan and Israel can so act jointly if the PLO refuses to participate.

Embracing the two-State Vedanta Solution — with Modi as a possible interlocutor — could be the Trojan Horse President Trump needs to broker a deal to end the Arab-Jewish conflict.

Israel Over The Moon With Ban-Ki

[Published 3 August 2010]


Israel is to be applauded for its agreement to participate in the Inquiry announced yesterday by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki moon into the aborted attempt on 31 May by a flotilla of six ships to break the naval blockade imposed by Israel on the entry of goods and supplies into Gaza.

This Inquiry - first mooted in a statement by the UN Security Council on 1 June - called for :

” a prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation conforming to international standards"

The attempt by another United Nations organ - the Human Rights Council (UNHRC) - to hijack such an investigation and inflict as much political damage as it could on Israel has now been effectively terminated by the Secretary-General’s announcement.

The UNHRC on 23 June had indicated it would be initiating an investigation - which promised to be biased and far from independent - one that Israel could not possibly co-operate with.

The UNHRC had already prejudged the issues as was clearly evident in the terms of the resolution that it passed:

“to dispatch an independent, international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance;"

Any idea that there might not have been any violations of international law or that the ships might not have been carrying only humanitarian assistance had already been predetermined by the UNHRC in this blatantly worded resolution.

Israel had been effectively hung drawn and quartered by the UNHRC before the members of its Inquiry had even been named.

So far as the UNHRC was concerned it had:

(i) Condemned in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla of ships, which resulted in the killing and injuring of many innocent civilians from different countries;
(ii) Deeply deplored the loss of life of innocent civilians, and expresses its deepest sympathy and condolences to the victims and their families;
(iii) Called upon the occupying Power, Israel, to immediately lift the siege on occupied Gaza and other occupied territories;

without hearing one word from Israel.

This identical pattern of prejudging Israel had been established by the UNHRC when appointing the Goldstone Inquiry into Israel’s invasion of Gaza in December 2008. Israel had no option but to then refuse becoming a sacrificial lamb in such an Inquiry whose outcome had been pre-determined before the Commission had even begun its work and whose Commissioners were totally conflicted by statements they had made before their appointment. Any hope of Israel getting a fair hearing were doomed from the outset.

The UN has proved far more circumspect on this latest occasion and the UNHRC has been sent packing.

Israel’s agreement to now participate in the Secretary-General’s Inquiry - to be co-chaired by New Zealand’s Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Columbia’s Alvaro Uriba with the addition of one representative from Israel and one from Turkey - promises to provide a fair and transparent setting for the determination of the events that lead to the blockade being instituted, the attempts to undermine it and the tragic consequences that followed.

Issues such as the legality of the blockade and its enforcement, provocation, the use of force, disproportionate use of force and acting in self defence will be examined and appropriate judgements made.

The terms of reference are still to be finalised but Sir Jeffrey Palmer has charted an optimistic course stating:

“I can’t say anything of substance on the details of this inquiry or indeed its procedures until I’ve been to New York and discussed the issues with both the Secretary General [Ban Ki-moon] and my colleagues on the inquiry… This is a very sensitive matter. It’s a quasi-judicial inquiry, so it is really very important to maintain a sense of detachment”

Hopefully the details and procedures when released will prove to be fair and balanced and enable Israel and Turkey to appoint representatives to the Committee and allow its deliberations to proceed in an atmosphere of calm. The Inquiry should certainly serve to ease tensions between Israel and Turkey.

Hopes are high that the UN might at last have hit on a path to reducing conflict that will see the last of any flawed and unreliable inquiries such as that conducted by Goldstone.

Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has said - following the announcement of the Inquiry:

“Israel has nothing to hide. Quite the opposite: The State of Israel’s national interest is to ensure that the factual truth on the entire raid incident will be known to the world”

Israel’s President - Shimon Peres - is confident Israel will be exonerated.

In an interview with Benny Morris published on 26 July Peres was asked and responded to the following questions:

“Q: About the Turkish flotilla, do you think we acted correctly?

A: We acted correctly, except in terms of explaining what happened.

Q: We killed nine Turks, they killed no Israelis.

A: There were six boats. Only on one — where they came prepared for violence — was there a clash. There was a long delay in broadcasting our explanation. There is no starvation in Gaza and no siege. If Gaza would agree not to rocket us, we would leave the entry points open.

Q: But we prevented items like cardamom from reaching Gaza.

A: OK, we made some mistakes. [But] we made another mistake—we restrained ourselves for eight years and allowed them to shoot thousands of rockets at us until the rage came out at one go [in the IDF assault on Hamas in Gaza in 2008-2009]. Had we done then what we do now, retaliate each time they fire a rocket — there would have been no problem. In the end, it turned out that restraint was a mistake"

Israel will now be given the chance of fully explaining what happened in a forum that will hopefully act responsibly and carefully without resort to reliance on innuendo and unsubstantiated allegations.

The precedent created by this Inquiry could lead to the UN undertaking similar inquiries into future international incidents between conflicting antagonists.

It serves to end the political grandstanding and double standards of organizations such as the UNHRC and the Arab League - whose member countries include some of the worst abusers of human rights and violators of international law among the international community.

Paulson's Prognosis Pinpoints Palestine's Panacea

[Published September 2008]

“This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get at the heart of the problem” US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson [Times Online 20 September 2008] - The Paulson Prognosis

The threat of a world economic meltdown does wonders in helping concentrate the mind on how to resolve the intractable 130 years old conflict between Arabs and Jews over a piece of land once called Palestine that today comprises two sovereign States - Jordan and Israel - and two tiny slivers of land that currently belong to no one - the West Bank and Gaza.

It has taken a roller coaster week of unprecedented turmoil, crises and upheaval for Governments, their central banks and stock exchanges to realise that unquantified wads of money - not just pocket money - had to be thrown at resolving - and thereby avoiding - a world financial crisis that threatened outcomes last experienced in the Great Depression 80 years ago.

Finding the vast amount required - estimated to eventually exceed US$ 1 trillion - was not seen as being an option or even negotiable but as an absolute essential to ending the crisis for one simple reason - the alternative of risking a world recession and global shutdown could simply not be countenanced.

United States Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was the one to successfully deliver this unpleasant - but totally necessary - prognosis.

The unresolved Arab-Jewish conflict with its sinister overtones of possible nuclear war and surging oil prices threatens the health of the very world economies and societies that today only continue to survive because of the Paulson Prognosis.

Billions of dollars have already been spent over the last 60 years - as a consequence of the war in 1948 between Israel and six invading Arab armies - in perpetuating the only refugee crisis in the world that apparently appears incapable of resolution by resettlement and rehabilitation.

The cash budget for 2008 approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is a staggering US$ 541.8 million. Preservation of refugee status - not its elimination - remains a cardinal tenet of its continued and privileged existence.

Since October 2000, UNRWA has launched Emergency Appeals to the donor community to fund the Agency’s Emergency Programmes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. From October 2000 until December 2007, the Agency received a total of US$826.6 million in pledges, which was less than two-thirds of the amount requested. In December 2007, UNRWA launched an appeal for US$ 237.7 million to cover the cost of its emergency activities in 2008. In May 2008 the requirement was revised and increased to US$ 263.4 million. Against 2008 Appeal UNRWA received US$ 128.3 million in pledges as of 31 May 2008. [http://www.un.org/unrwa/finances/index.html]

Additionally billions of dollars - US$7 billion pledged in Paris alone in December 2007 - have been spent by the international community since 1993 in a concerted effort to create conditions for a new Arab state to be established between Israel and Jordan, to resettle and rehabilitate there those Arabs made refugees in 1948 and their descendants and to end the state of war between Israel and its Arab adversaries.

This money has been misappropriated, badly spent, poorly directed, irresponsibly controlled and has not had the slightest impact in achieving any of these objectives - which remain as unattainable now as they have for the last 60 years.

The uncertain nature of Iran’s current nuclear program, its threats to eliminate Israel and Israel’s refusal to become a sacrificial lamb constitute a potent cocktail that could well risk a world nuclear meltdown on a scale that would make this past week’s threatened economic meltdown pale into insignificance.

Can the international community continue to stand by and take the risk that this will not happen - possibly as early as within the next six months?

As we have seen this past week, events can take a very sudden turn for the worse after a slow period of gestation - which in hindsight probably justified action being taken far earlier, with less fallout and at possibly much less cost than had to be found this week to ensure the world’s economic survival.

President Bush’s Road Map was a sincere and well intended attempt to resolve the Arab-Jewish conflict. Its failure to get to first base after six years of trying has proved it to be totally ineffective as a cure. The writing has been on the wall for at least four years but the international community has closed its eyes, allowed the conflict to deteriorate and the rhetoric to increase.

It is abundantly clear that a huge amount of money needs to be strategically targeted and urgently spent to make a real difference by getting at the heart of the problem before it once again suddenly degenerates into outright war with possible nuclear as well as economic consequences world wide as its legacies.

The Security Council of the United Nations needs to unanimously resolve taking the following steps to resolve the conflict as a matter of grave urgency:

1. Setting up an international claims tribunal with sufficient funds to process and pay all claims made by

(a) Arabs from Palestine and Jews from Arab countries who became refugees as a result of the Arab - Israeli War in 1948 - and their descendants.

(b) Current host countries in resettling and rehabilitating those refugees now living within their national boundaries and closing down and demolishing any existing refugee camps.

2. Declaring that any claimed right of return by any refugee or his descendants to his original country of origin is deemed abandoned on settlement of his claim.

3. Immediately dissolving UNWRA and transferring its budget and responsibilities to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)

4. Establishing an International Boundaries Commission to redraw the international boundaries between Jordan, Israel and Egypt with the participation and joint consent and approval of all three countries to such new boundaries.

The old saying - “when life gives you lemons - make lemonade” - is surely one that the international community should heed at this point of time. It is going to be a very expensive drink indeed but its cost pales into insignificance compared to the medicine that awaits us if we don’t.