Obama’s Flawed Approach to the Israel/Palestine Conflict

Richard Falk

Richard Falk, 22 May 2011

There is no world leader that is more skilled at speechmaking than Barack Obama, especially when it comes to inspiring rhetoric that resonates with deep and widely held human aspirations. And his speech on Middle East policy, symbolically delivered to a Washington audience gathered at the State Department, was no exception, and it contained certain welcome reassurances about American intentions in the region.  I would point to his overall endorsement of the Arab Spring as a demonstration that the shaping of political order ultimately is a prerogative of the people. Further that populist outrage if mobilized is capable of liberating an oppressed people from the yoke of brutal and corrupt dictatorships, and amazingly to do so without recourse to violence. Obama also was honest enough to acknowledge that the national strategic interests of the United States sometimes take precedence over this preferential option for democracy and respect for human rights. Finally, his proposed $1 billion in debt relief for Egypt was a concrete expression of support for the completion of its revolutionary process, although the further $1 billion tied to an opening to outside investment and a free trade framework was far more ambiguous, threatening the enfeebled Egyptian economy with the sort of competitive intrusions that have been so devastating for indigenous agriculture and industry throughout the African continent.

 

But let’s face it, when the soaring language is taken away, we should not be surprised that Obama continues to seek approval, as he has throughout his presidency, from the hawks in the State Department, the militarists in the Pentagon, and capitalist true believers on Wall Street. Such are the fixed parameters of his presidency with respect to foreign policy and explain why there is so much disappointment among his former most ardent followers during his uphill campaign for the presidency, who were once energized and excited by the slogan “change, yes we can!”  Succumbing to Washington ‘realism’ (actually a recipe for imperial implosion), the unacknowledged operational slogan of the Obama presidency has become “change, no we won’t!”

Obama’s Pro-Israeli Partisanship

With these considerations in mind, it is not at all surprising that Obama’s approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict remains one-sided, deeply flawed, and a barrier rather than a gateway to a just and sustainable peace. The underlying pressures that produce the distortion is the one-sided allegiance to Israel (“Our commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. And we will stand against attempt to single it out for criticism in international forums.”). This leads to the totally unwarranted assessment that failure to achieve peace in recent years is equally attributable to Israelis and the Palestinians, thereby equating what is certainly not equivalent. Consider Obama’s words of comparison: “Israeli settlement activity continues, Palestinians have walked away from the talks.” How many times is it necessary to point out that Israeli settlement activity is unlawful, and used to be viewed as such even by the United States Government, and that the Palestinian refusal to negotiate while their promised homeland is being despoiled not only by settlement expansion and settler violence, but by the continued construction of an unlawful barrier wall well beyond the 1967 borders. Obama never finds it appropriate to mention Israel’s reliance on excessive and lethal force, most recently in its response to the Nakba demonstrations along its borders, or its blatant disregard of international law, whether by continuing to blockade the entrapped 1.5 million Palestinians locked inside Gaza or by violently attacking the Freedom Flotilla a year ago on international waters while it was carrying much needed humanitarian aid to the Gazans or the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.

 

At least in Obama’s Cairo speech of June 2009 there was a strong recognition of Palestinian suffering through dispossession, occupation, and refugee status: “..it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people—Muslims and Christians—have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West  Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations—large and small—that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.” Of course, this formulation prejudges the most fundamental of Palestinian entitlements by confining any exercise of their right of self-determination as a people to a two-state straight jacket that may no longer be viable or desirable, if it ever was. And throughout the speech in Cairo there was never a sense that the Palestinians have rights under international law that must be taken into account in any legitimate peace process, taking precedence over ‘facts on the ground.’

But at least in Cairo Obama was clear on the Israeli settlements, or reasonably so: “The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for the settlements to stop.” Even here Obama is only pleading for a freeze (rather than dismantling what was unlawful). In the new speech settlement activity is blandly referred to as making it difficult to get new negotiations started, but nothing critical is said, despite resumed and intensified settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This unwillingness to confront Israel on such a litmus test of a commitment to a negotiated peace is indicative of Obama’s further retreat from even the pretense of balanced diplomacy as measured against Cairo.

And there were other demonstrations of pro-Israeli partisanship in the speech. On the somewhat hopeful moves toward Palestinian Authority/Hamas reconciliation as a necessary basis for effective representation of the Palestinian people at the international level, Obama confines his comments to reiterating Israeli complaints about the refusal of Hamas to recognize Israel’s right to exist. What was left unsaid by Obama is that progress toward peace might be made by at last treating Hamas as a political actor, appreciating its efforts to establish ceasefires and suppress rocket attacks from Gaza, acknowledging its repeated acceptance of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders buttressed by a long-term proposal for peaceful co-existence with Israel, and lifting a punitive and unlawful blockade on Gaza that has lasted for almost four years. It is possible that such an approach might fail, but if the terminology of taking risks for peace is to have any meaning it must include an altered orientation toward the participation of Hamas in any future peace process.

A Disturbing Innovation

Perhaps, the most serious flaw in the Obama conception of resumed negotiations, is the separation of the territorial issues from the wider agenda of fundamental questions. This unfortunate feature of his approach has been obscured by Israel’s evident anger about the passage in the speech that affirms what was already generally accepted in the international community: “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.” If anything this is a step back from the 1967 canonical and unanimous Security Council Resolution 242 that looked unconditionally toward “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territory occupied in the recent conflict.”

Obama’s innovation involves deferring consideration of what he calls “[t]wo wrenching and emotional issues..the future of Jerusalem, and the fate of Palestinian refugees.” Leaving Jerusalem out of the negotiating process is in effect an uncritical acceptance of the Israel’s insistence that the city as a whole belongs exclusively to Israel. What is worse, it allows Israel to continue the gradual process of ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem: settlement expansion, house demolitions, withdrawal of residency permits and deportations, and overall policies designed to discourage a continued Palestinian presence.  It must be understood, I believe, as an unscrupulous American acceptance of Israel’s position on Jerusalem, which is not only a betrayal of legitimate Palestinian expectations of situating their capital in East Jerusalem but also a move that will be received with bitter resentment throughout the Arab world.

Similarly, the deferral of the refugee issue is quite unforgivable. As of 2010 4.7 million Palestinians are registered with the UN as refugees, either living within refugee camps under conditions of occupation or in precarious circumstances in neighboring countries within camps or as vulnerable members of the host country. This refugee status has persisted for more that 60 years despite the clear assertion of Palestinian refugee rights contained in General Assembly Resolution 194 adopted in 1948 and annually reaffirmed: “The refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” This persistence of the Palestinian refugee status six decades later is one of the most notorious denials of human rights that exist in the world today. To remove it from the peace process, as Obama purports to do, is to consign the refugees to an outer darkness of despair, and as such, is a telling disclosure of the bad faith embedded in the most recent Obama rendering of his approach to peace. Those who are dedicated to achieving a just peace for the two peoples—Israelis and Palestinians—are doomed to fail unless the refugees are treated as a core issue that can neither be postponed nor evaded without a grave betrayal of justice.

Legitimacy Confusions

And finally, Obama does his best to dash Palestinian hopes about their one effort to move their struggle a step forward, gaining their acceptance as a state by the United Nations in September of this year. In a perverse formulation of this reasonable, even belated, Palestinian effort to enlist international support for their claims of self-determination and statehood, Obama resorts to deflating and condescending language: “..efforts to delegitimize Israel will end in failure. Symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations in September won’t create an independent state.” This language is perverse because the Palestinian diplomatic initiative is meant to legitimize itself, not delegitimize Israel. And the BDS campaign and other international civil society initiatives carrying on the ‘legitimacy war’ being waged against Israel by way of the Palestinian solidarity movement are not aimed at delegitimizing Israel, but rather seek to overcome the illegitimacy of such Israeli unlawful policies and practices as the Gaza blockade, ethnic cleansing, wall building in defiance of the World Court, settlement expansion and settler violence, excessive violence in the name of security.

In many respects, Obama’s speech, aside from the soaring rhetoric, might have been crafted in Tel Aviv rather than the White House. It is a tribute to Israel’s extraordinary influence upon the American media that has been able to shift the focus of assessment to the supposed Israeli anger about affirming Palestinian statehood within 1967 borders. It is hardly a secret that the Netanyahu leadership, aside from its shrewd propaganda, is opposed to the establishment of any Palestinian state, whether symbolic or substantive. This was much was confirmed by the release of the Palestinian Papers that showed that behind closed doors even when the Palestinian Authority made concession after concession in response to Israeli demands, the Israeli negotiating partners seemed totally unresponsive, and appeared disinterested in negotiating a genuine solution to the conflict.

Underneath the Israeli demand for recognition of it character as a Jewish state is the hidden reality of a Palestinian minority of more than 1.5 million living as second class citizens within Israel. The Obama conception of “a Jewish state and the homeland for the Jewish people, and the state of Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people; each state enjoying self-determination, mutual recognition, and peace” seems completely oblivious to the rights of minority peoples and religions. Such ethnic and religious states seem incompatible with the promise of human dignity for all persons living within a political community. Homeland for peoples is fine, and the Jewish claim in this regard has the force of history behind it, but to consign the Palestinians to a homeland behind the 1967 borders is a covert way to invalidate the claims of refugees expelled in 1948 from historic Palestine, as well as the Palestinian minority living within Israel at present.

 

American Irrelevance and Palestinian Populism

In a profound sense, whatever Obama says at this point is just more words, beside the point. He has neither the will nor the capacity to exert any material leverage on Israel that might make it more amenable to respecting Palestinian rights under international law or to strike a genuine compromise based on mutuality of claims. Palestinians should not look to sovereign states, or even the United Nations, and certainly not the United States, in their long and tormented journey to realize a just and sustainable destiny for themselves. Their future will depend on the outcome of their struggle, abetted and supported by people of good will around the world, and increasingly assuming the character of a nonviolent legitimacy war that mobilizes moral and political pressures that assert Palestinian rights from below. In this regard, it remains politically significant to make use of the UN and friendly governments to gain visibility and legitimacy for their claims of right. It is Palestinian populism not great power diplomacy that offers the best current hope of achieving a sustainable and just peace on behalf of the Palestinian people. Obama’s State Department speech should be understood as merely the latest in a long series of disguised confessions of geopolitical impotence, but of one thing we can be sure, it will not be the last.

Richard Falk

Richard Falk

 

Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Visit his blog at https://richardfalk.wordpress.com/ for more articles. This article was posted with permission from the author.

Who is Embarrassing the United Nations?

Jerusalem Entrance (Photo: Nick Marouf)
Jerusalem Entrance (Photo: Nick Marouf)

Jerusalem Entrance (Photo: Nick Marouf)

Dr. Lawrence Davidson, 27 March 2011

On 23 March 2011 the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the United Nations Rapporteur Richard Falk (Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University) told the world organization’s Human Rights Council that the “continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians are creating an intolerable situation..” In fact, he continued, the present process “can only be described in its cumulative impact as ethnic cleansing.” Falk concluded by asking the UN Human Rights Council to request an investigation by the International Criminal Court into whether Israeli actions in the West Bank amount to “colonialism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing inconsistent with international humanitarian law.”

This is not a particularly startling or rare point of view. There are many well versed Israelis, including several reporters for Haaretz (such as Amira Hass and Gideon Levy), who would probably agree with Falk’s position. There are millions of people around the world who are willing to actively boycott Israel due to, in part, its illegal settlement policies. And, the UN Human Rights Council itself has, in the past, repeatedly condemned Israeli settlement policies in the West Bank of Palestine.

Nonetheless, Israeli officials found Falk’s statement highly insulting. Soon after the Rapporteur made his presentation to the Human Rights Council, Israel’s envoy to the UN mission in Geneva, Aharon LeshnoYaar, labeled Falk an “embarrassment to the United Nations.” He went on to explain that “Israel doesn’t participate (sic) with Falk” and that when Falk speaks in a UN venue he, Yarr, “leaves the room.” (As an aside, Ambassador Yaar does not like a number of Americans. For instance, he does not like the documentary film maker Michael Moore because the man makes his money in a capitalist society while being critical of aspects of capitalism. According to Yaar, that makes Moore a hypocrite).

It would seem that in order to be a good diplomat, a reliable representative of your government, you have to be able to twist facts in a juvenile way. You know, in the way kids manipulate information to excuse some bad act, even when they have been caught at it in real time. Ambassador Yaar’s behavior is a good example of this. The United Nations Human Rights Council has passed resolutions condemning Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians over 20 times. Given that record you can safely apply the old saying, “where there is smoke there is likely to be fire.” Yet, how do loyal diplomats like Yaar react? They often: 1. Yell loudly and repeatedly that the fellow pointing out their sins is bias. So, he is anti-Semitic (alas, Dr. Falk is Jewish), and that is why he keeps pointing fingers in our direction, Or, 2. The other guy made me do it. Those Palestinians (allegedly) hit me first. How come you never yell at them? Or, 3. (Particularly in the case of Israel) God made us do it and so, if you don’t like it, go argue with God. And, finally, when the fellow who has seen you commit the nasty deed over and again insists that you are the culprit, you get up and run out of the room with your hands over your ears.

While Yaar and the rest of the Israeli establishment engage in these practices and complain about the bias of their critics, the consequences of their governmental policies is to institute bias against the Palestinians wherever they exercise authority. In the recent past there has been a spate of such actions . Thus, the Israeli Knesset has recently passed two bills along these lines. One, known as the “Nakba Bill,” institutes a fine on “local authorities and other state-funded bodies for holding events marking the Palestinian Nakba Day….” Nakba is the term the Palestinians, who constitute more than 20% of Israel’s citizens, use for the catastrophe that led to there loss of a homeland as a consequence of the creation of Israel. The other bill “formalizes the establishment of admission committees to review potential residents of Negev and Galilee towns that have fewer than 400 families.” The bill is designed to keep such towns wholly Jewish by preventing Palestinians from taking up residence. As one Arab Israeli noted, “this is a racist law, a law against Arabs.”

Yaar makes no reference to this sort of bias, but only to the alleged bias of those who point out Israeli bias. No doubt, over time, diplomats and politicians come to believe their own excuses. Like naughty children, they don’t know what double standards mean, and end up creating an alternate world of fabrications. Unlike most children who eventually grow up, professionals like Yaar come to dwell in this alternate world more or less at will. In fact, the ability to do so has been part of the standard job description for a career in diplomacy and politics for a very long time. Back in 1909 the Austrian satirist Karl Kraus asked “How is the world ruled and how do wars start?” His answer was, “Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read” (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2001, p. 445, #18).

Almost at the same time as Ambassador Yaar was describing Richard Falk as an “embarrassment to the United Nations,” Ahmed Tibi, an Arab Israeli member of the Knesset, debating the racist laws cited above, told his Jewish colleagues the following, “You must read Jewish history well and learn which laws you suffered from…Do you need an Arab on the stand to remind you of your history?” The Knesset’s reaction? Loud and repeated yelling about how bias and insulting Tibi was. “Go back to Ramallah” they told him.

Now, just who is an embarrassment to the United Nations, an organization which began its life back in the late 1940s by, among other things, the issuance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Is it Richard Falk, a man who has dedicated his entire professional life to the fight for a better world, governed by humane laws? Or is it Aharon LeshnoYaar and the political establishment he represents? For anyone beyond childhood, and with accurate information, the answer ought to be obvious.

Can the OECD Stand up to Israel?

Sam Bahour

Sam Bahour and Charles Shamas

What can be said for the state of international law when international organisations such as the OECD find themselves unable to prevent a member country from bringing its unlawful practice into the life of the organisation itself? In such situations, how can law-abiding member countries avoid being drawn into acquiescence? Later this month, these questions may find answers when Israel hosts an OECD gathering in Jerusalem to discuss global tourism.

The OECD is an international economic organisation of 33 countries, with the latest controversial addition to this club being Israel. The OECD explains its mission as providing “a setting where governments compare policy experiences, seek answers to common problems, identify good practice and co-ordinate domestic and international policies”. At minimum, one would expect the co-ordination of these “international policies” to remain within the bounds of international law.

At Israel’s invitation, the 86th session of the OECD tourism committee will take place in Jerusalem on 20 and 21 October to discuss supporting a sustainable and competitive tourism industry for the benefit of the members’ economies. The session will be attended by senior government officials from OECD member countries and key emerging economies. This is only the second time that the meeting has been held outside Paris.

Israel will conduct itself as the host and as an OECD member based on the Israeli ministry of tourism’s unlawful unilateral extension of its jurisdiction to include occupied East Jerusalem, the Syrian Golan Heights and touristic sites and businesses in those parts of the West Bank reserved for Israeli settlement.

Israel’s ministry of tourism website clearly lists tourist sites in occupied territory, such as the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as Israeli sites. The ministry’s websites also publicise settlement-based tourist services licensed by the ministry and receiving Israeli state financial support under the ministry’s auspices. They present maps that depict the entire territory of historic Palestine west of the Jordan river, as well as the Syrian Golan, as territory of Israel that falls under Israel’s national tourism-related and cultural heritage-related responsibility.

Despite OECD efforts to the contrary, photographs of touristic sites in occupied territory have been incorporated in a website that Israel has constructed under OECD auspices.

Last month, the Right to Enter campaign – a grassroots campaign for the freedom of movement to/from and within the occupied Palestinian territories, for which we volunteer – wrote to each OECD member to explain the situation and the harm that will be done by allowing such Israeli practice under OECD auspices, and by acquiescing to Israel’s insistence on basing its participation in the OECD on its illegal acts of annexation and settlement in occupied territory.

All OECD member countries refuse to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem and have therefore insisted in keeping their embassies in Tel Aviv instead of Israel’s self-proclaimed “unified” capital. They presumably would not want to be drawn into acts or omissions that would imply that Israeli practice resulting from the very acts of annexation and settlement they condemn as internationally unlawful can be considered legitimate under the OECD’s auspices.

It remains to be seen how they will manage to avoid such missteps. It is hardly encouraging that during the runup to the tourism meeting web pages bearing the OECD emblem continue to advertise touristic and cultural heritage sites in the occupied Palestinian territories as Israeli.

It is difficult to overlook the fact that Israel has been permitted to base its performance of its obligations and conduct its participation in OECD activities on its own policies of settlement and annexation, notwithstanding the duty of the OECD and its member countries not to recognise these Israeli practices as lawful or give them effect within the OECD.

Countries planning to attend include Spain, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

For those countries that decide to attend, the devil will be in the details. The proficiency of their delegates at identifying and preventing the importation of Israel’s violations of international law into the proceedings and surrounding events will be sorely tested.

It can make no sense for world leaders to allow themselves to be drawn progressively into acquiescing to Israel’s serious and persistent violations of international law while continuing to demand that Palestinians respect and place their confidence in international law after 62 years of dispossession and 43 years of military occupation.

Yet Israel has become a habitual violator and has also become highly proficient at dragging other states along with it. If the OECD and its member countries cannot be expected to effectively resist this pull, who can be expected to hold the line? Who is left to defend the normative foundations of the just and peaceful world order that states and international organisations like the OECD regularly proclaim their resolve to promote?

Sam Bahour

Sam Bahour

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American freelance business consultant and serves as a Board of Trustees member at Birzeit University. He is also a Director at the Arab Islamic Bank and the community foundation Dalia Association. www.epalestine.com. And Charles Shamas is a senior partner with the Mattin Group. His human rights practice is specialised in problems of international humanitarian law and human rights enforcement and state responsibility. (This article was first published at the Guardian Online: guardian.co.uk.)

Children of the gravel

Gisha Logo

GISHA, 16 Sept 2010

On Saturday, May 22, 2010, Hasan, 17, was shot in the leg in the now-defunct Erez industrial area in the northern Gaza Strip: “I was collecting gravel with the other workers, when one of the Israeli soldiers in the watchtower fired a shot which hit me in the right leg. I immediately fell to the ground in great pain. Everyone started running away, except for one youngster who I didn’t know, who came and tried to help me, but he couldn’t lift me”. In the meantime, the soldiers kept firing and the boy who came to help Hasan also had to run away. Finally, Hasan was rushed to hospital. “My leg was in a cast for two months, and now I still can’t walk properly and feel pain whenever I move it. I don’t know when I will be able to walk again, even though my family needs the money, and there are no other alternatives”.

One month later, on June 7, 17-year-old Awad was shot in the same place: “At around 9:30 A.M., I bent over to pick up some gravel when I heard a shot being fired. The bullet hit me in the right knee and I fell over in great pain. Youngsters around me started running in all directions and I saw my brothers running towards me”. Awad fainted, waking up later in hospital. “Since that day, I’ve been feeling numbness in my right leg and I can’t walk on it like I used to”.

About two weeks later, on June 22, 16-year-old Abdullah was shot while working in the evacuated Israeli settlement of Elei Sinai: “It was around 6:00 A.M. I heard a shot being fired from the Israeli watchtower and I immediately fell to the ground in great pain. My brothers and cousins rushed towards me and put me on the cart and rushed me to the main road. My ankle was bleeding and I felt it going numb”. Abdullah was rushed to hospital, where he underwent an urgent operation. “I still feel pain in my right leg and I don’t know whether I will be able to walk normally again or not”.

These disturbing testimonies were recently published on the website of the Palestinian branch of Defense for Children International (DCI), which defends children’s rights worldwide. The three boys’ stories point towards the difficult economic situation in the Gaza Strip, where young people put themselves at risk and work as gravel collectors along the border fence with Israel in order to support their families. Furthermore, the testimonies illustrate how despite the “disengagement”, Israel continues to restrict movement inside Gaza. According to international organizations the restrictions are enforced in 17% of the total area of the Strip, however, the boundaries of the restricted areas are not clearly marked for the population and the terms of access to them have not been explained. (A U.N. Report on the subject shows that in the first seven months of 2010, seven residents were killed and 94 were wounded in the buffer zones). Just this week it was reported that four people were killed and several more injured by military fire near the border fence.

The testimonies show that many young people work daily collecting gravel in the Erez industrial park and the evacuated Israeli settlements in the area. Furthermore, according to their testimonies, at the moment the boys were shot they were not doing anything that could have been perceived as dangerous. Why, then, did the soldiers shoot the boys? Was everyone who was shot really suspected of being a terrorist or trying to infiltrate Israel? What rules of engagement were the soldiers following? We requested a response to the testimonies from the IDF spokesperson, but by the time of publication it had not yet been received.

Since the declaration of the easing of the closure of Gaza in July 2010, Israel has allowed about 600 trucks of construction materials into the Gaza Strip, or in other words, about 4% of need. As long as Israel continues to forbid the entry of building materials into the Gaza Strip, the informal gravel industry will continue to flourish and young people will continue to risk this dangerous option to support their families.

Goods Needs Vs. Supply 15/8/10 - 11/9/10

Goods Needs Vs. Supply 15/8/10 - 11/9/10

Industrial Fuel Needs Vs. Supply 15/8/10 - 11/9/10