Informed Comment

Palestine Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gave a major speech Friday making it clear to the Palestinians that the PA will seek membership in the United Nations at this year’s General Assembly meeting.

The Palestinians (or more precisely the Fateh faction that controls the ever-shrinking Palestinian parts of the West Bank) are not going to the UN, as is often charged, to make an end run around negotiations with Israel. Abbas knows very well, and acknowledged in his speech, that only through negotiations with Israel can there ultimately be a change in the status of the Palestinians as largely stateless persons, a significant proportion of them descended from refugees created by Israel ethnic cleansing campaigns in 1947-48.

The reason for seeking recognition as a member nation of the UN is simply to gain moxie in those negotiations.

The big problem of the Palestinians is that, being stateless, they lack moxie. Even Americans can go tomorrow to the West Bank and steal Palestinian land and resources, aided by an enormous US aid package for Israel and by unthinking, knee-jerk approval by the US government of virtually anything Israel’s rightwing government does, no matter how illegal in international law.

If Israeli squatters move in, claim Palestinian fields, and dig deep wells that cause the Palestinian’s wells to dry up, what recourse do Palestinians have? They mostly can’t sue in Israeli courts because those courts are premised on Zionist principles of appropriating Palestinian land and denying Palestinians statehood.

Since Israel has the strongest military in the region and several hundred nuclear warheads, and since it has the absolute backing for almost anything it wants to do to the Palestinians of among the most powerful countries in the world (the US, Germany, the Netherlands, most often Britain and France, etc.), the Palestinians are helpless.

Israel can conduct the Oslo accords with the Palestinians, and can promise to withdraw almost completely from the West Bank by 1999, but then can double the number of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land instead. And PM Binyamin Netanyahu can actually boast on camera about having destroyed the Oslo peace process. All this with impunity. Nothing the Palestinians can do about it.

Former Congressman Alan Grayson said during the health care debate that the Republican plan was “Don’t get sick; and if you get sick, die quickly.”

The Likud Party’s (and worse, the Yisrael Beitenu Party’s) plan for the Palestinians is, “If you have your land or resources taken by Israeli squatters, drop dead or become a refugee once more.” That is what the slogan that Palestine is Jordan really means — it is a call for massive ethnic cleansing of 4 million people and relocating them to the barren Eastern desert of the Hashemite Kingdom. It is a war crime in the hopeful stages.

So the Palestinians have no moxie. They don’t have a state, don’t have anyone they can depend on to do justice to them or effectively to get them justice. They are, and have been since the Balfour Declaration, royally screwed.

But if 126 out of 190 countries in the UN vote to make Palestine within 1967 borders a member state, then at least the Palestinians have some international recognition of their claims on statehood and on specific territory. (They often say that they were kicked out of 78% of their land, and are now willing to settle for 22%, but the Israelis aren’t even willing to let them have the 22%).

Then when the Israelis annex ever more of the West Bank and flood the territory with Israeli squatters (who often receive cheap prefab housing from the Israeli government if only they will move there), then the Palestinians can have their new friends call the Israel ambassador on the mat.

Ultimately they might even gain the standing and respect to bring suit against Israel concerns that are benefitting economically from the theft of Palestinian land and resources.

That’s the hope.

It should be remembered that the Palestinian leadership was ambivalent about this step, and felt forced into it by the absolute intransigence of the Netanyahu government, which refuses to freeze Israeli settlements while negotiations are being held concerning the land the Israelis are squatting on. It would be like negotiating with someone about a piece of pie when they have a fork and are eating away at the pie, of which there is less and less left even as you negotiate for a piece of it. The Palestinians are afraid that if the negotiations go on like this, at the end of them they will only get some crumbs of a stale pie crust, because the other party in the negotiations has gobbled up the very thing over which there were negotiations.

Going to the UN General Assembly may or may not have any practical implications. But it is the least the elected leadership of the Palestinians could do. In all likelihood, the step comes as too little and too late, and the Israelis have probably already made a two-state solution impossible. If so, then the Palestinians face decades as stateless flotsam, open to being expropriated at any moment.

It is an unstable situation, for the Palestinians and for the world. If going to the UN contributes to a strengthening of the Palestinian hand and some sort of citizenship for Palestinians in something, then it will make the region and the world less unstable.

It is that move to more stability that President Obama has pledged to veto. So the American veto will be a vote for instability and violence in the region, which in turn will spill again over onto the European and the American publics.

Posted in Israel/ Palestine | 25 Comments

Ambassador Gerald B. Helman writes in a guest column for Informed Comment:

The Palestinian Authority has stated its intention this Fall to seek some action at the United Nations to advance its claim to statehood now. According to press reports, the PA’s initiative at least in part would be a reaction to what it sees as Israel’s unwillingness to advance a peace process that would lead to Palestinian statehood under a “two state” solution, and Israel’s continued construction of settlements in violation of its obligations under the Geneva Conventions and unwillingness to recognize the 1967 frontier as the starting point for negotiations. The PA has not revealed how it hopes to achieve statehood status at the UN. Reports in the press and among commentators suggest confusion on the part of the media and misinformation about the possible options available to the PA and what significance they might have. The purpose of this note is to address some of the options available, their political and procedural significance for the PA and for the opponents of a Palestinian initiative.

Membership in the UN, according to its Charter, is open to all “peace-loving states which accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations.” Membership is accorded by the General Assembly upon recommendation of the Security Council (where the veto would apply). Nowhere does the Charter define what is a state. Generally, a political entity is considered a state if it controls its own defined territory and can meet its obligations to other states, presumably including those obligations contained in the Charter. But then what is to be done with the Somalias of this world, and with some of the other UN members that many consider “failed” states? No one challenges or is likely to challenge their statehood or their membership as states in the UN. (A more sceptical or maybe practical definition of a “state” would be a political entity that existing states consider a state and deal with them as such.) In the case of the PA and actual membership in the UN, such issues are beside the point. The US has already said it would veto an application, and thus PA membership, reportedly on the grounds that such membership would impede the prospects for negotiations leading to a “two-state” solution. The US has said nothing about the PA’s “statehood” or its ability to carry out the obligations of UN membership, tests of membership specified in the Charter. If the PA nevertheless pursues this course, the best it can do is achieve a moral victory if all other Security Council members vote for membership, or, more likely, if the application receives at least the nine votes needed to pass but fails because of a US veto. No other Permanent Member has said it would veto.

The General Assembly provides a number of other options, any of which can be successful because of the strong majority other Arab states can rally in support of the PA. As a practical political matter, the General Assembly can adopt whatever political resolution it wants, unless specifically limited by the Charter because of powers given to or shared with the Security Council. Thus, the Assembly can simply adopt a resolution, citing any number of prior Assembly or Security Council resolutions, including those defining frontiers and conditions for settlement (such as those proposing swaps of land for peace), and declare the PA to be a state, peace-loving and willing and able to carry out the obligations of UN membership. Such a resolution could be accompanied by an additional action changing the current special observer status of the PA to that of an Observer State, with rights of participation in UN meetings and activities. While this changes very little in the current de facto status of the PA as an “entity” with UN Observer status, the change to Observer State would put it in the same category as that of such states as Switzerland, Korea, Finland and the (then) Federal Republic of Germany, all of which were at one time, for differing reasons, Observer States before they became members. (Today, the only remaining Observer State is the Holy See.) Such designation of the PA would gain in value if most democracies join in support and take follow-on action, such as establishing a diplomatic relations, supporting PA membership in various UN specialized agencies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Health Organization (WHO), The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNESCO (the UN Economic, Social and Cultural Organization). These and some others operate under Treaties separate from the UN Charter, and do not allow for a veto of membership.

By itself, Israel can do little effective to counter or modify any potential PA recourse to the UN. As a deterrent, Israel has said that such a move would set back the peace process perhaps by years (although the press fails to report why Israel believes this need be so). The US has undertaken to persuade both sides to resume peace talks as an alternative to UN action, thus far without success. Moreover, the US is committed to veto any Security Council resolution recommending PLO membership. Beyond that, the US is unlikely to be able to influence many votes either in the Security Council or the General Assembly. The UN remains largely an environment hostile to Israel, worse now than it has been for a while when Israel could rely on the quiet support of countries such as Egypt and Turkey to deflect or moderate hostile proposals. While Israel’s governmental relations with Egypt and Turkey remain correct, they have deteriorated, especially on a popular level. As the sacking of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and the defense of Israel in the UN reveal, Israel after over sixty years remains almost uniquely dependent on the US (whose President they freely revile, even as they ask him to intercede on their behalf with Egypt).

In contrast, the UN might seem to the PA to be its sandbox. With the help of Islamic countries, it can engineer resolutions that support its cause, and operate in a forum in which it can vent its grievances. But its freedom to operate in the UN can be deceptive. Absent membership, the initiatives it undertakes will result in little more than the PA can today obtain in the UN system. At the end of the day, new initiatives involving statehood or membership may provide a political thrill for its constituencies, but will not have advanced the prospects for a two-state solution, or in any way improved the lot of Palestinians. For that, Israel’s participation will still be needed.

Each side might best use the inevitability of UN attention to the subject to present their larger vision of their future in a changing Middle East, all as a prelude to returning to negotiations under terms last offered by President Obama. As an alternative to threats, what Israel might consider today is something in the nature of a white paper explaining exactly why UN action at this time would be harmful to the peace process, or injurious to the further success of the Arab Spring and state that nevertheless it is prepared to resume negotiations. What Israel should avoid are threats based on assertions that such a move would be harmful because Israel says it would be harmful or unilateral actions, especially those involving disputed territory. No one any longer doubts Israel’s military strength, economic and technological capabilities, or the vigor of its political system. For its part, the PA should acknowledge the necessity of a two-state solution that can be achieved only with Israel’s willing participation and its own willingness to proceed on the basis of the President’s proposal.

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Helman “was United States Ambassador to the European Office of the United Nations from 1979 through 1981.” He was among the originators of the concept and among the first to see the challenges of the “failed state.”

Posted in Israel/ Palestine | 28 Comments