Historic bid

West Asia: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hands over a formal letter requesting full membership of the United Nations.

IT was a move the international community was waiting for with bated breath. On September 23, Palestinian Authority (P.A.) President Mahmoud Abbas finally went to the United Nations headquarters in New York and handed over a formal letter requesting full membership in the organisation for the state of Palestine. The Palestinians were taking a leaf out of the Israeli book. Israel had used the same diplomatic tactic in 1947 to gain international recognition. Though the consequences of that decision have been horrendous for the Palestinians and the Arab world, the legality of the move has never been questioned.

But in today's world, different yardsticks are applied to different countries. In the months preceding the U.N. General Assembly meet, the Barack Obama administration had put tremendous diplomatic pressure on Palestinian leaders in an effort to dissuade them from seeking full-fledged membership of the world organisation. It threatened to withhold aid. The government of Israel had also issued diplomatic and military threats to the P.A., including a warning that it would withhold the tax money it collected on behalf of the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

But this time, Abbas and the P.A. leadership did not buckle under U.S. pressure. Abbas' speech on September 23 in which he dramatically detailed the pain and suffering of Palestinians in the past 63 years was the highlight of this year's General Assembly meeting. I do not believe that anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our application for a full membership in the United Nations and our admission as an independent state, he said.

His speech to the assembled heads of state was reminiscent of the speeches of his charismatic predecessor, Yasser Arafat. Many observers, in fact, compared Abbas' speech to Arafat's landmark speech at the U.N. General Assembly in 1974. Brandishing a holster in one hand and an olive branch in the other, Arafat, in an emotional address, said, Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. Abbas also spoke in a similar vein but was careful to omit any references to the gun, while still offering the olive branch.

Abbas is usually not given to rhetorical flourishes, but his emotion-laden speech was also a powerful message to the international community. This time, he did not shy away from mentioning issues such as the right of return and the plight of the millions of Palestinians living as refugees in other countries. Palestinians in Ramallah and refugee camps all over the Arab world cheered for Abbas after a long time.

Abbas' popularity ratings had plummeted, with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations going nowhere. Moreover, there were exposes about Palestinian negotiators kowtowing before the Americans and the Israelis. The U.N. initiative has not only restored his popularity but taken it to an all-time high. Abbas, who has said on several occasions that he will not run for elections again, seems intent to bow out with his head held high.

A recent poll showed that more than 80 per cent of the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem supported the P.A.'s bid for full U.N. membership. Hamas and other influential groups among the Palestinians had opposed the move by Abbas to go to the U.N. at this juncture, fearing that it would compromise the historical rights of Palestinians relating to issues such as the right of return and borders.

Waving a copy of the application for full statehood which he had earlier submitted to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, he called for the statehood request to be expedited in the Security Council. According to reports, the majority of countries who are currently on the Security Council have pledged support for full Palestinian statehood.

The number of votes needed for statehood to be recognised is nine. Among the non-permanent members currently in the Security Council, Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia-Herzegovina are not yet fully committed to voting for Palestine. But Palestinian diplomats are confident that these countries will come on board. It was clear from the standing ovation that Abbas got after his speech that the overwhelming majority of U.N. members wanted Palestine to take a seat beside them.

But a veto by one of the five permanent members is sufficient to derail the Palestinian bid temporarily even if a symbolic political victory is achieved in the Security Council. In his speech at the General Assembly, Obama pledged to veto the Palestinian bid for statehood. With a U.S. veto almost inevitable, except for some miraculous eleventh-hour development, the Palestinians will have no option but to approach the General Assembly and ask for Palestine's membership to be upgraded to a non-member observer status. Such a status, according to experts in international legal law, will allow Palestine to join organisations such as the International Criminal Court (ICC). The P.A. has indicated that it wants the Security Council to take up the issue of full membership expeditiously and vote on it in early October.

Obama's position

With the presidential election next year, Obama has once again abjectly caved in to the influential Jewish lobby in U.S. politics. The Nobel Peace laureate, in his speech, seemed to be totally oblivious to the plight of Palestinians. Hannan Ashrawi, the articulate voice of the Fatah, who accompanied Abbas to New York, told the Israeli daily Haaretz that she did not believe what she had heard in Obama's speech. It sounded as though it was the Palestinians who were occupying Israel. There wasn't one word of empathy for the Palestinians, she said.

In his speech at the General Assembly last year, Obama had waxed eloquent about the possibility of the sovereign state of Palestine soon becoming the 194th member of the U.N. In his famous Cairo speech in 2009, Obama had emphasised the importance of dismantling the illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank. But Obama's performance this time was yet another glaring evidence of the Israeli tail wagging the American dog. His views did not even reflect the views of most Americans. A recent opinion survey showed that a large number of American Jews wanted Palestinians to have a state of their own. Obama has now ended up by embracing the Zionist position on Palestine.

The American administration did everything in its power to disrupt our project, but we are going through with it despite the obstacles and the pressure because we are asking for our rights, Abbas said in a speech to the Palestinian community in New York. Palestinians and their supporters fear that the U.S. will use its influence in the Security Council to delay a vote on the membership issue. A U.S. veto is bound to cause a political backlash in the Muslim, particularly Arab, world. Obama does not want to be distracted by another international crisis as he prepares to campaign for re-election.

Abbas held out the olive branch by reiterating that the Palestinians still remained committed to peace talks. But he said that for talks to resume Israel had to cease the settlement activity and adhere to the 1967 borders. The Palestinian leader said that previous peace talks had collapsed because of the intransigence of the Israeli government. When talks had briefly resumed in September last year, the right-wing government in Israel torpedoed it by accelerating settlement building in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank.

After the P.A. formally sought statehood, the U.S., the European Union (E.U.) and Russia announced that they had reached an agreement for the resumption of talks between Israel and Palestine. Abbas, however, is not ready to be diverted from the goal of statehood. He has said that he will go back to the table only if the Palestinian conditions for the resumption of talks are accepted. In the past couple of months, Israel has been accelerating its illegal settlement activities. One of the key reasons that Abbas and his advisers decided to go to the U.N. was to clear the path for the prosecution of Israeli government officials for war crimes and transgression of international law in the ICC and other U.N.-mandated institutions. Even if the Palestinians at this juncture succeed only in getting non-member observer status, it will enable their state at least to join treaties such as the Law of the Sea. Such a development will help Palestine to challenge the illegal Israeli sea blockade of Gaza.

European Union position

The Palestinian leadership hopes that U.N. membership will force groups such as the E.U. to take a position on Israel's continuing trampling of international law. The signing of the 1993 Oslo Peace agreement was supposed to lead to full statehood for Palestine, but the Israelis instead pockmarked the West Bank with settlements, pushing in 600,000 more settlers.

In December last year, 26 former E.U. leaders called for sanctions to be imposed on Israel for the illegal settlement activity on the West Bank and in Jerusalem. E.U. headquarters in Brussels remained unmoved. However, the forthcoming vote in the U.N. on Palestinian statehood is sure to divide the E.U. France has already indicated that it is sympathetic to the Palestinian move, while Germany has announced its decision to go along with Israel and the U.S.

American hypocrisy over the Palestine issue will be further highlighted in the context of the Obama administration's zeal to institute a regime change in Arab countries opposed to Israel. In the Arab world, the U.S. will find it difficult to retain its traditional allies. The former Saudi Arabian Ambassador to Washington, Turki al-Faisal, writing in influential U.S. publications, warned that relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S. could be irreparably harmed if the Obama administration vetoed the Palestinian statehood bid in the Security Council. Faisal, a senior prince of the ruling al-Saud family, is an influential figure in the kingdom. Besides supplying oil to the U.S., Saudi Arabia is a firm backer of the U.S. in the region.

Critics of the initiative

The many Palestinian critics of the statehood bid have not softened their stance after Abbas' spirited performance at the U.N. A spokesperson of Hamas said the bid would undercut Palestinians' right to return. I don't believe that the Palestinians want a seat in the U.N., but rather they want freedom and self-determination in their own land, he said.

Dawood Shehab, the spokesman for the Islamic Jihad, another Palestinian faction, observed that 120 countries had recognised Palestine as a state after the famous speech by Arafat in Algiers in 1988 announcing the arrival of the state of Palestine. Shehab said that no tangible benefits followed for Palestinians despite the de facto recognition of their statehood by the majority of the U.N. members. All factions within the Palestine Liberation Organisation [PLO] have aimed at liberating Palestine, not establishing a state. A state comes after liberating Palestine, said Shehab.

Critics of the new initiative also debunk the notion that U.N. membership will help Palestinians in making Israel accountable for the many war crimes and other infringements on international law. Those opposed to Abbas point out that the P.A. did not seriously pursue international legal channels to hold Israel accountable after the International Court of Justice ruling in 2004 that deemed the construction of the Separation Wall and settlements on occupied territories illegal.

Another serious allegation against the P.A. is that under pressure from Washington and Tel Aviv, it first tried to bury the Richard Goldstone Report on Israel's assault on Gaza. It was alleged that when there was an international outcry, the P.A. reverted course but did nothing to get the recommendations adopted by the U.N.

The fear among Palestinians, especially those in the diaspora, is that the recognition of the 1967 borders will close the doors for the Palestinian refugees holed up in camps in Syria and other neighbouring countries. A Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders would comprise only 22 per cent of historical Palestine. Even in the part of Palestine they could inherit, Israeli settlements have monopolised the best land and most of the natural and scarce water resources. The U.N. anyway has consistently recognised the Palestinian people, regardless of their place of residence, as the principal party in the question of Palestine.

Leftist groups in the PLO, such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), have been generally supportive of the statehood bid. A PFLP leader, Rabah Mhanna, said that his group considered the U.N. bid as part of the ongoing struggle against Israeli occupation. But he cautioned that going to the U.N. should not end up with improving the bilateral peace negotiations under U.S. patronage. Mhanna admitted that the P.A.'s move to apply for statehood had not been backed by a Palestinian consensus.

In a thought-provoking article on the latest diplomatic initiative, Joseph Massad, who lectures on modern Arab history and intellectual history at Colombia University, wrote that the U.N. would not be able to resolve issues relating to the borders or the violation of human rights. Palestine, he observed, is a mini-state with a disfigured geography and no sovereignty.

Massad is of the opinion that it is Washington's unblinking support to Israel and the methods it has used to stonewall the legitimate demands of the Palestinians that lie at the root of the problem. In the Security Council, the U.S. has used its veto 40 times on behalf of its ally, Israel, on resolutions pertaining to the occupation.

The unending peace process' will continue with more stringent conditions and an angry U.S., upset at the P.A. challenge will go back exactly to where the P.A. is today, if not to a weaker position. President Obama and future U.S. administrations will continue to push for P.A. and Arab recognition for Israel as a Jewish state' that has the right to discriminate by law against non-Jews in exchange for an ever-deferred recognition of a Palestinian state a place where Palestinian neoliberal businessmen can make profits off international aid and investment, Massad observed.

Abu Abunimah, a Palestinian activist who started the widely read on-line journal Electronic Intifada and the author of the book One Country: A bold proposal to end the Arab-Israeli conflict, has said that the P.A. does not have the democratic mandate from the Palestinian people to go to the U.N. or to gamble with their rights and future.