Dear Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius

About the French proposal for a UN Security Council Resolution …. Please stop and think. Before doing anything else about “The Conflict”, please look into your own motives and knowledge – as suggested here. And if you still feel that France absolutely must engage, please read on.

From what I’ve read about it, your draft proposal is certainly not among the worst, but it can’t end up being particularly good.

You say that the proposal is balanced, but there is no evidence of any demands being put on the Palestinians. So proposing a deadline for fully recognizing Palestine as a state means that the Palestinians don’t really have to do anything except wait for 18 months.

Over the past 20 years the Palestinian elites have been supported lavishly to build up the institutions needed for a democratic state – but you are not demanding any appreciable signs of progress.

You put Israeli security at the center of the peace talks. And you are aware of the importance of borders and troops. However, you don’t mention the huge security risk posed if a “Fair Solution” for the descendants of Palestine Arab refugees is not coupled to recognition of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. So not surprisingly, you put no demands on Arab states – including the State of Palestine – to integrate and give citizenship to the descendants of Palestine Arab refugees.

You are not demanding any investigation and control of the tsunami of incitement to hatred and violence that gushes daily from Palestinian media, including official media of the PA and of the ruling Fatah party. They can match and even out-perform Hamas any day.

In sum: Your initiative just adds to the piles of proclamations and actions that treat the Palestinian Arabs as helpless victims, encouraging their leaders to gorge themselves at the trough of international sympathy. Israel gets demonized, Israelis get demoralized, and resources are drained from much more important international issues. And there is nothing to indicate that the Palestinian people gain any benefit.

So – forget the resolutions!

If you really do want to help Israel and the Palestinians I hope you will study the suggestions here (Dear “International Community” – so you want to help?) and here (Dear “World”: So you want to help set rules for conflict resolution?).

There is one specific project that I fervently hope you will consider as top priority: dealing with the question of boycott in the EU.

You said in connection with the “Orange scandal” that you are strongly against boycotts of Israel. In the same breath you said that “France and the European Union have a consistent policy on settlement-building that is known to all.”

Indeed. The minor sanctions already in place – and the more serious ones being planned – supposedly target only activities that could benefit Israeli enterprise  in the West Bank, the eastern parts of Jerusalem, and the Golan. But these fine distinctions are impossible to maintain in practice. And there are no operational criteria for ending boycotts and sanctions.

Furthermore, leading activists in the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement (BDS) use EU and UN policy about the settlements to legitimate their efforts to boycott anything that in any way might contribute to the survival of settlements and to the functioning of the IDF. To top it all off, there are alliances between BDS and a wide range of organizations hostile to Israel, for example Hamas (Alert!).

If you really want to help, use your position as a major nation among the 28 EU members to get the EU’s relationships with Israel firmly on the track of partnership and mutual respect. And insist that any pressure on Israel be matched with pressure on the Palestinians.