Israel's "Black September"...

Friday-Lunch-Club

Eli Lake in the Wash-Times, ominous : Goldstone=Israel tarnished= endangered 'Peace'... :

"... One Israeli diplomat called next month "Black September," the same name Palestinians used to describe the bloody crackdown against them by Jordan's King Hussein in 1970, ... The diplomatic calendar from an Israeli perspective for September is filled with political land mines.

To start, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is expected to release a report on the Memorial Day flotilla incident in which nine pro-Palestinian activists aboard a Turkish aid ship seeking to break a blockade of Gaza were killed ...

On top of all of this, Turkey — whose foreign minister said Israel's raid on the aid flotilla last spring was his country's Sept. 11 — takes its spot as the rotating chairman of the United Nations Security Council.

Then the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council is expected to issue a follow-up on a report issued in 2009 by Judge Richard Goldstone regarding the Gaza war in late 2008 and early 2009. This report is expected to challenge the credibility of Israel's investigation of its internal affairs, thus potentially opening up Israel to more formal lawsuits in the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

This official noted that he does not expect Turkey to target Israel in the U.N. Security Council. "Turkey has taken some heat for its vote on Iran sanctions. I don't think Turkey wants to make that hole any deeper," the official said...."

P.J. Crowley, State Department spokesman, said in an interview Monday that "it has been extremely difficult to get the parties for a variety of reasons to where we are this week. But now that we are entering direct negotiations, something that we want, the Israelis want, the Palestinians want and other countries in the region want, everyone assumes a responsibility to avoid any actions that can create obstacles to progress. That is something we are telling the parties directly, everyone with a stake in this process has a responsibility to prevent obstacles to progress. The last thing we need right now is another Goldstone-like controversy."

A senior U.S. official said the Goldstone report issued by the U.N. Human Rights Council "set back the peace process by six to nine months."

At the International Atomic Energy Agency later in September, Arab states are expected to press their case for Israel to publicly acknowledge its undeclared nuclear arsenal.

The diplomatic situation for Israel coincides with the renewal of the peace process that ended in December 2008 when Israel launched Operation Cast Lead against Hamas rocket positions in Gaza.....

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said one Israeli goal in the talks is to make sure Israel is diplomatically protected from efforts he said would be aimed at delegitimizing Israel's defense of its territory. Mr. Gold also served as a foreign policy adviser to Mr. Netanyahu in his first term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. "Israel must be certain that should it withdraw and then find the security situation deteriorating, requiring Israeli military action, that the U.N. does not bring Justice Goldstone out of retirement and launch a whole new series of investigations into how Israel defended itself," Mr. Gold said. "Hopefully, any new peace arrangements will include a parallel set of understandings to avert this situation."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 6:57 AM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian