Palestine's Chair In the UN General Assembly

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Palestine's Chair In the UN General Assembly

Palestinians rebuff Obama’s speech on Wednesday before the United Nations General Assembly, where he said that the peace process knows no shortcuts, and that peace cannot come from UN resolutions. The Jerusalem Post reports in its online edition that the Palestinian officials have instructed the people in the West Bank to hold demonstrations against the American president and that they are cracking jokes on him, saying that he has joined the Zionist movement.

Furthermore, Palestinian authorities are mounting pressure on the American president by charging on Thursday that he is about to be held responsible for the failure of the statehood bid.

The speech Obama delivered on Wednesday is said to have come as a shock for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, who was not expecting Obama to fully endorse Israeli government policies. For that matter, they called it “biased” and “pro-Israel.”

Some of the Palestinian leaders said that Abbas was disappointed and angry with Obama’s speech. His anger is said to have grown even further when Obama met with him and repeated the threat to use the veto against the Palestinian bid for statehood. The meeting was considered “tense,” and its conclusion was synthesized by the joke about Obama joining the Zionist movement.

A senior Palestinian Liberation Organization leader accused Obama of using double standards, while a PA leader said that his stance was “immoral.” Even so, Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat mentioned that the Palestinian-American relations have not reached the lowest level.

In his 20-minute address to the Security Council, Obama told the audience that a year ago he had hoped that within a year the two countries would have agreed to a solution and that the solution would lead to a state of Palestinians. He said he still hoped the solution could be reached.

He reiterated that he still believed that the Palestinians deserved a state, but that the state could only come from the discussions between Palestinians and Israelis.

Obama Meets Abbas

A year ago, by the time he was addressing the UN, the Palestinians and the Israelis were negotiating, and Obama was very hopeful that his administration would broker an historical agreement that would lead to a state of Palestinians.

But on September 26, Israel resumed the settlement building in the West Bank, which led immediately to the collapse of the talks.

When asked on Wednesday evening about his government’s stance on the settlements, Netanyahu reminded that he did what no other Israeli PM had done: he stopped any construction for ten months.

He accused the Palestinians that they came after nine months and a week and demanded that the direct talks be resumed only if the freeze on settlements was prolonged.

Speaking about the negotiations themselves, Netanyahu pointed out that the two sides should actually engage in negotiating the issues that matter in stead of “negotiating about negotiations.”

In spite of the political opposition of the American president, whom the Israeli media called “a true ally,” Mahmoud Abbas still wants to go ahead with proposing the UN to recognize Palestinian state.

The Palestinians are about to introduce on Friday their plea for statehood, which would be presented by president Mahmoud Abbas, after which the Security Council will be given some times to study it, Nabil Shaath, a chief Palestinian negotiator said.

United Nations diplomats appreciate that the time given to the Security Council to review the bid of the Palestinian could be used by the United States and the Quartet to attempt to bring the Palestinians and the Israelis to the negotiation table.

The diplomats say that between the address to the Security Council and the resolution this body must give in order for such proposal to be voted in the General Assembly could go months, maybe years, which could give the Americans enough time to broker some sort of agreement.

But if it takes years, the composition of the Security Council could be changed by then and countries could be members of it that support the claim of the Palestinians, such as Brazil, whose president Dilma Rousseff pointed out that the Security Council should keep up with the new realities of the world. Brazil wants a place in the Security Council.

These new realities could demand that the American veto be lifted, or any sort of veto for that matter, which would not be in the interest of those who procrastinate.

The Flag of Palestine

More than that, as the Americans are decided to defend Israel at any cost, they are also forced to see their influence waning in the Middle East, especially after the Arab spring that reconfigured completely the region, placing both Israel and the United States in a very delicate position.

Egypt and Turkey, key players in the region have turned against Israel and furthermore are planning to create an “axis of democracy” that would foster moderate Islam in the region and the Turkish vision of democracy, but would also stir the hatred against Israel.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has toured the Middle East scoring important points in the Arab nations by posing as the victim of Israel and as the fighter against it on the side of Palestinians.

Egyptians have burnt the flag of Israel in Cairo after a raid of the Israeli Defense Forces killed five Egyptians a few weeks ago. Both Turkey and Egypt demanded an apology, which they never got from Israel.

Even Jordan has stated, through its King, that the Palestinians and the Jordanians are stronger than Israel. Jordan is contemplating a “three-state solution” to the Palestinian problem, that is in stead of creating a state by the side of Israel, the West Bank should be given to Jordan, and the Gaza strip would become part of Egypt, as it used to be between 1949 and 1967.

This solution gains many adherents as the two-state solution has been delayed for decades, during which time the Israeli fragmenting of the West Bank by means of settlement constructing has ceaselessly continued.

The United States doesn’t even know for sure how many of the members of the Quartet favor their vision of road map for the negotiations between Palestinians and Israel.

David Cameron, the British Prime Minister was unclear as to which form of state Britain fancies for the Palestinians. He made comments in which he said that Britain supported a state of Palestinians next to a state of Israel but he made no comment on the move to put forward a resolution draft by the Palestinians.

From the words of the PM it would seem that he favors a solution negotiated by the two sides, but he was not as quick to dismiss the Palestinian bid as Barack Obama was. “We don’t know what resolution is going to be put forward, what is it going to say, what its terms are,” he said.

Sarkozy, whose country is attempting to assert itself as a major player in the Middle East after the role in the Libyan revolution, proposed another approach on the matter, stating that “the [American] way is not working.”

He proposed an initiative that would assure the resolution of all issues in debate and the creation of a Palestinian state within six months.

Sarkozy went on to say that the use of the American veto in the Security Council would spark violence in the Middle East, and proposed that the Palestinians skip the council and demand a position of observer state to the General Assembly. By this proposal, he reiterates the European initiative put forward by the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton a few weeks ago.

As he is being given a “kosher seal of approval” by the Israelis, as Haaretz says in its online edition today, for his almost faultless position on the side of Israel, which is thought to give him the support he needs to be reelected president, Obama prays that the Palestinian president does not get the nine votes he needs in the Security Council, so that he may not take it to the General Assembly, where he is guaranteed to win, and the American delegation may not be in the unpleasant position to use the veto, which would complicate very much the situation and the perspectives for further negotiations in the framework proposed by the United States.

Meanwhile, by ascribing the blame to Obama for the failure of the bid for statehood, the Palestinian leaders are making sure that this does not backfire on them. It may also be a sign that they think the battle is lost before it began.

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