A NEW ‘PEACE ARCHITECTURE’
Special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Robert Serry’s final briefing to the Security Council revealed the deep frustration of a man who’s spent seven years on the frontline of ‘one of the most spectacular deceptions in modern diplomatic history‘.
‘Upon leaving this position’, Serry explained, ‘I cannot but express an overriding feeling that I have been part of a peace process in which a can is kicked down an endless road’. ‘Gaza is our collective failure, and the people of Gaza continue to suffer the consequences’, while in the West Bank, ‘[n]umbers’ – of settlement units constructed, of house demolitions – ‘hide the grim reality of entrenched occupation leading to growing despair’.
Diplomatically, we now face ‘the biggest crisis to date to our joint efforts to achieve a two-state solution’.
Serry urged the Security Council to break the deadlock by setting out its own parameters for resolving the conflict. Worryingly, he appeared to call for replacing UN Resolutions 242 & 338 with a ‘new peace architecture’ for resolving the conflict:
in full: http://jamiesternweiner.com/2015/03/27/a-new-peace-architecture/
Bio*Jamie Stern-Weiner was born in Israel and grew up in London, where he now lives.
He studied politics (undergraduate) and intellectual history (M.Phil) at the University of Cambridge.
He co-founded and co-edits New Left Project, one of the UK’s leading left-wing websites, and works as a researcher and editor for Spinwatch and OR Books, respectively.
His writing has been published by, among others, Le Monde diplomatique, Truthout, VICE, openDemocracy, Jadaliyya, CounterPunch, ZNet, Mondoweiss and Middle East Report Online (MERIP).