"Israel bars delegates to West Bank; Summit meant to draft UN plan" by Jodi Rudoren | New York Times, August 06, 2012
JERUSALEM — Israel barred the delegations of five countries on Sunday from attending a diplomatic conference in Ramallah in the West Bank, upending plans by the Palestinian president to announce plans to renew the Palestinians’ bid next month for enhanced status in the United Nations.
Not even asking for statehood and Israel is apoplectic.
A senior Israeli official said the delegations — from Algeria, Bangladesh, Cuba, Indonesia, and Malaysia — were denied permission to use Israeli border crossings because their governments do not recognize the state of Israel.
Palestinian officials said the delegations had planned to enter on a helicopter from Jordan and called the decision childish, crude, irresponsible, and blackmail, saying it symbolized the larger problem with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank territories it seized in 1967.
‘‘Israel is really trying to not just lay a physical siege but also a political siege,’’ said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization. ‘‘We need to be able to move, to breathe, to act as a member of the community of nations. We cannot constantly be under the boot.’’
The five nations were among 12 so-called nonaligned nations sending delegations to Ramallah for an emergency conference on Palestine. The other seven — Colombia, Egypt, India, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe — declined to attend without the other nations. The 12 countries were expected to approve a ‘‘Ramallah Declaration,’’ which condemns Jewish settlement in the West Bank and supports the Palestinians’ bid to raise their status at the United Nations....
I'm really liking all those countries right now. It's EUSrael against the world down at the old U.N.
Israel and the United States have both denounced the Palestinians’ decision to choose a UN path, saying that only direct negotiations can resolve the long-running conflict.
Not exactly the South China Sea, is it?
--more--"
No hue or cry down at the U.N., either.
How you going to get a two-state solution out of that now anyway -- especially when there is even less green on the West Bank seven years later?
Related: Memory Hole: Future Vision of Israel
I can't see any other at this point.
