According to columnist Marcelo Zero and federal representative Lindbergh Farias (PTRJ), the Joe Biden administration will “bear the burden of the shameful veto” of a resolution from the Lula government
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (left), Joe Biden and the Gaza Strip
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By Marcelo Zero and Lindbergh Farias If we could identify the main current guiding principle of the Lula government’s diplomacy, we would say it is this: the defense of life.
Defending the lives of our nationals residing in Gaza and Israel, and defending the lives of all: Palestinians, Israelis and every other nationality.
In the case of the Brazilian women and men, our country has carried out a complex and delicate rescue operation. Successful and futureoriented work in the global area. However, there are still people in Gaza who suffer inhumane conditions and are unable to leave the Strip.
At the same time, President Lula and the Brazilian government, which currently holds the presidency of the UN Security Council, have worked hard for negotiations, for peace, for the creation of a humanitarian corridor in Gaza and the prevention of further deaths and suffering, especially among children and innocents Civilians.
Unfortunately, whenever Brazil gains global prominence in the search for peace, the United States is opposed.
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In the case of our country’s agreement with Iran and Turkey, the aim was to resolve the confusion surrounding Iran’s nuclear program. It was a historic agreement that the major powers had long sought. But the USA put in its “veto”.
Now the US has vetoed our UN resolution, which was consistent with the international community, with civilizational values and with the UN’s own decisions.
Our balanced and hardnegotiated resolution was defeated largely because the US wanted Biden to announce something along these lines during his failed tour of the Middle East. They do not allow for alternative roles. They rely on the old and warlike unilateralism.
Worse for the USA. They were isolated and will bear the burden of the shameful veto.
Arab countries refused to meet with Biden and the US only managed to announce the possible entry of 20 trucks carrying humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. A nothing. However, Biden intends to send around $10 billion in aid to Israel, including weapons, and another $60 billion to Ukraine. There will be no shortage of money for wars.
Meanwhile, the UN continues to weaken.
Protecting life means engaging in negotiations and seeking peace. This in turn requires balance and neutrality.
Brazil is a historic advocate for the creation of a sovereign, geographically contiguous and economically viable Palestinian state in the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
On the other hand, Brazil played a historic role in recognizing the State of Israel.
In fact, through the decisive action of Osvaldo Aranha, President of the Second UN General Assembly, Brazil played a central role in the adoption of UN General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947.
This resolution, which established the State of Israel, simultaneously guaranteed the Palestinian people the right to establish a state that would peacefully coexist with Israel, thereby defining a socalled “twostate solution” to this conflict in the East. Average.
Therefore, Brazil has traditionally occupied a position of cultivated balance in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
We give an example.
In 2010, Lula made the first visit by a Brazilian head of state to Israel. It was a historic milestone in bilateral relations. There he gave a speech to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in which he defended the peaceful coexistence between an Israeli and a Palestinian state, as advocated by the United Nations and the majority of the international community. He recalled the peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in Brazil. He received a standing ovation.
We highlight some excerpts from this historic speech:
“We urgently need to see Israelis and Palestinians living together in harmony. The stability of this region will ease the suffering of those who have lost their loved ones in decades of confrontation. With some of them; family members of the victims on both sides; I need to meet to listen to your feelings and desires.
But this desired stability will above all be a guarantee that a regional conflict does not spread to the rest of the planet and endanger world peace. So this is not just about the future of peace in this region, but about the stability of the entire world.
It is time to open a virtuous circle of negotiations in this region of the world and overcome distrust and disagreement in the name of higher values. History will reward those who follow this path.”
This speech by Lula is still very relevant.
Furthermore, Lula was clearly keen to visit Palestine on the same trip.
Contrary to this entire Brazilian diplomatic tradition, patiently built over decades, and the UN resolutions on the issue, the Bolsonaro administration decided to support the aggressive stance of Israel’s far right and the antiPalestinian geopolitics of the Trump administration.
This counterproductive and unnecessary rapprochement by the Bolsonaro government with Trump and the belligerent positions of Israel’s far right have led to tensions with the Palestinian Authority and other Arab countries. They also motivated condemnatory motions by the League of Arab States (LEA) and Egypt’s cancellation of a visit by thenChancellor Aloysio Nunes to Cairo shortly after the 2018 elections. The exclusion of Palestine from the travel route The president’s two trips to the Middle East also caused great unease among the Palestinians.
Now the same political sectors are demanding that the new Lula government abandon its neutral position regarding the war between Hamas and Israel. As in the case of Ukraine, they demand direct or indirect involvement in conflicts that cause deaths and humanitarian tragedies.
They even seem willing to risk the lives of Brazilians in Gaza.
It should be noted that the majority of Israeli society wants peace and criticizes the aggressive and warlike policies of Israel’s current farright government.
It is impossible not to mention that the newspaper Haaretz, the most important and representative newspaper in Israel, recently declared in an editorial that the Netanyahu government is a “government of annexation and expropriation” that “seizes the existence and rights of Israel openly ignored.” “The Palestinians” are the main culprit for the war.
According to a recent opinion poll by the Maariv newspaper, only 29% of people believe Netanyahu is still fit to be prime minister. And only a fifth of those surveyed wanted him to still be prime minister after the war ended.
Most Israelis know that the price of Israel’s true security is full respect for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. This is the only viable path to lasting peace in the region.
A thorny, difficult and often misunderstood path. The path taken by Yitzhak Rabin, among others, when he signed the Oslo Accords and said in the Knesset:
We are meant to live together, on the same soil, on the same land. We, the soldiers who returned from battle covered in blood, we who saw our family and friends killed before our eyes, we who attended their funerals and couldn’t look their parents in the eyes, we who came from a country where parents bury their children, we who fight against you, the Palestinians. Today we tell you loud and clear: No more blood and tears. He arrives!
We have no desire for revenge. We have no hatred towards you. We are people like you who want to build a house, plant a tree, love and live side by side with you, with dignity, with empathy, as human beings, as free men. Today we give peace a chance and tell you once again with a clear voice: enough is enough!
This path, the path of forgiveness, tolerance, peace and defense of life, is a path that requires utmost courage and firmness. Barbarism is the way of cowards. The path of shame.
Rabin paid the ultimate price for this courage. He was murdered by an Israeli extremist, the same type as those calling for blood and revenge in Gaza today.
Ironically, according to an article published in the Haaretz newspaper, Itamar BenGvir, the current minister of national security in the Netanyahu government, appeared on Israeli television weeks before the assassination, brandishing a Cadillac brand emblem, and allegedly stated that it had been stolen from the Rabin’s car : “We have reached your car and will reach it too.”
At the time, BenGvir was a young member of the ultraradical Kach and Kahane Chai party, which was eventually classified as a terrorist organization and banned by the Israeli government itself.
But he doesn’t seem to have developed much as he matured. According to the Jerusalem Post, BenGvir had already been convicted of inciting racism. He is the leader of the farright Israeli party Otzma Yehudi, which advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israeli territory.
A government that places people with this extremist mentality in high positions cannot produce good results. Such farright governments generally result in authoritarianism, a weakening of democratic institutions, attacks on the judiciary and disregard for human rights and life. Furthermore, they increase insecurity, as the Hamas attack demonstrated. We Brazilians know how this story ends.
Brazil will not bow to pressure for war; the pressure of compulsion to death and confrontation that animates Bolsonarism and the global far right.
To paraphrase Rabin: We will build the house of peace and plant the tree of life.
We will not allow the olive branch, the symbol of peace that Arafat spoke of in his first speech to the United Nations plenary, to fall from our hands.
History will reward us, as Lula declared in the Knesset.