Will Turkey veto Israel's OECD membership?

Maan - Alaa Tarti

Israel starts its countdown to join the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and to prove to the international community that it is a "civilized" country that respects human rights and democracy, that it deserves to be in the most developed countries' club, and it deserve to be the 31st member of the OECD.

This might be great news and a dream to be fulfilled for the "admission engineer," Stanley Fischer, the governor of the Bank of Israel. However, is it good news for the OECD itself to accept the membership of a country that violates the fundamental values of the OECD......

After his visit to Israel in January 2010, the OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria stated that, "We are probably going to complete (the membership process) in 2010, that’s when it was scheduled for." This statement was declared after three years of the issuance of the Road Map for the Accession of Israel to the OECD Convention . However, such a statement arguably ignores the fundamental values of the OECD, ignores the facts on the ground, and only adds more darkness and disappointment to the peace process.

As the Road Map document itself stated on its second page, these fundamental values that Israel must comply with include "a commitment to pluralist democracy based on the rule of law and the respect of human rights, adherence to open and transparent market economy principles and a shared goal of sustainable development." Well, indeed no one can deny the fact that Israel has a well-structured economy, advanced hi-tech industry leads it toward a knowledge economy, and the per capita income of its Jewish citizens are higher than few of the OECD existing members' per capita income. However, this has almost nothing to do with the OECD’s fundamental values.

Israel, in the statistical information it supplied to the OECD, count Israeli settlers in the West Bank as part of its populations, as well as their economic activities. However, the OECD asked Israel either to exclude them or include the Palestinians in its statistics, while offering Israel a waiver for one year to provide new statistics and to decide upon this after it join the OECD. This means that Israel will continue in violation of international law with the collusion of OECD members, and again such facilitation will relieve Israel as an occupying power from its responsibilities according to the fourth Geneva Convention and other international treaties.
Moreover, it is clearly evident how Israel, through its closure regime and apartheid polices, does not commit at all to the adherence to open and transparent market economy principles and a shared goal of sustainable development as stated above. Hence, in addition to the recent real estate scandal, it contributes to a sustainable de-development and lays numerous discriminating market mechanisms, and does not promote any fair or free trade or movement of labor forces.

The examples of violations of those fundamental OECD values are countless, however, with the OECD itself providing evidence to such contraventions. A report in January 2010 to review the Israeli labor market and social polices stated that “Israel has enjoyed strong economic growth over the last decade, but the benefits of this are being distributed unevenly. Poverty rates are higher than in any OECD country, which reflects the deep social and economic divides in Israeli society.

On one side, there is the general Jewish population with poverty and employment rates similar to those of OECD countries. On the other, there are Arabs and ultra-Orthodox Jews, or Haredim, who have large families, poor educational outcomes and low employment rates. As a result, just over half of Arab and Haredi families live in poverty."

This conclusion by the OECD itself may be worth analyzing to examine the roots of such conclusion before going further in accepting an apartheid state into its "elite club."

However, what if the OECD secretariat ignores all of the calls to rethink their decision? Is there an alternative option to accepting the de facto situation? Probably it will be an impossible mission, but there might be two options. Firstly, there might be space for maneuvering, in accordance with both articles 6 and 16 of the OECD Convention. The player in this maneuvering space could be Turkey and Erdogan. In the Road Map document, mentioned previously, in page 8, paragraph B.33, it stated that "…the Council will then, decide by unanimity, in accordance with Article 16 of the Convention, whether to invite Israel to accede to the Convention.

In turn Article 16 of the OECD Convention stated that: "The Council may decide to invite any Government prepared to assume the obligations of membership to accede to this Convention. Such decisions shall be unanimous, provided that for any particular case the Council may unanimously decide to permit abstention, in which case, notwithstanding the provisions of Article 6, the decision shall be applicable to all the Members. Accession shall take effect upon the deposit of an instrument of accession with the depositary Government." While article 6 stated that:

"1) Unless the Organization otherwise agrees unanimously for special cases, decisions shall be taken and recommendations shall be made by mutual agreement of all the Members, 2) Each Member shall have one vote. If a Member abstains from voting on a decision or recommendation, such abstention shall not invalidate the decision or recommendation, which shall be applicable to the other Members but not to the abstaining Member, 3) No decision shall be binding on any Member until it has complied with the requirements of its own constitutional procedures. The other Members may agree that such a decision shall apply provisionally to them."

Thus, the challenge will be if Turkey will utilize the secret words ‘unanimous/ unanimously/ unanimity’. Will Turkey use this opportunity to show again its commitment toward the people living under the occupation, or is the economic game differs from the political game? These questions will be answered this month, and the international community will witness either a victory for the international law or a victory for the power of the oppressors.

The second option, which indeed can complement the first option, is to exercise a "popular" and official power on the thirty governments in the OECD. This can be done by the Palestinian Authority by circulating governmental letters and actions can be taken, or it can be through civil society and global movements for boycotting Israel. Indeed, few popular movements start to emerge and being active, however, for the PA it seems that such a story is relatively small.

It seems that the PA is not aware of the consequences of Israel's admission to the OECD club and its harsh impact on the venture of establishing the Palestinian independent state next year. Moreover, any rhetoric without real actions from the Palestinian Authority is indeed not welcome; since it will end by only hitting harshly the global boycott movement and bring more disappointment to the global pro-Palestine camp as the PA caused with the decisions regarding Judge Richard Goldstone’s and Falk’s reports.

Lastly, many actors are on the screen now and this month will witness either a new victory of power over international law or a revival of the international law approach as a plausible option to solve conflicts between nations. And also this month will reveal to what extent the OECD's current members respect their convention and to what extent they are serious about promoting a real peace process in the Middle East.

Alaa Tartir is PHD candidate at the London School of Economics  Full story