According to the current schedule, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, will present the request right after he addresses the General Assembly this Friday. Until that moment, be prepared for a couple of hectic days in which all kinds of efforts will be made to have the Palestinians change their plans. For instance, promising them an immediate start to new negotiations with Israel for a comprehensive solution or, as a fallback position, convincing them not to apply to the Security Council for full membership (an attempt that would definitively be blocked by an American veto) but to go to the General Assembly in which no one has a veto and a comfortable majority would support the upgrading of Palestine’s position from observer to that of a non-state member of the UN.
For the moment, it seems as though Abbas is not going to give in to the mounting pressure from the US, Israel and some European countries. Understandably, the Palestinians are fed up with all sorts of promises that have led them nowhere in the past. They consider the membership application a desperate attempt to force the uncompromising and reluctant Israel back to the table and get meaningful and substantial negotiations back on track.
Personally, I hope that Abbas will stick to his original intentions. After two decades of failed talks with Israel, during which settlements in the West Bank doubled and Gaza was isolated, the Palestinians need a moral boost. Success in New York, in one way or the other, will strengthen their position vis-à-vis the Israelis. Abbas knows very well that a vote at the UN alone will not bring the Palestinians the state they are entitled to. In order to get there, difficult negotiations are necessary in which both Israel and the Palestinians will have to be pushed to make substantial concessions that hurt. But it does help if all players involved know that a large majority of UN member states want an outcome that guarantees the viability of two states, not just one.
One interesting aspect of this week’s diplomatic struggles in New York is the makeup of the opposition to Palestinian statehood. Of course, I am not talking about the Israeli government or the Obama administration, although the latter’s backpedaling on earlier promises is both disappointing and self-defeating. One of the prominent opponents is Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules Gaza.
Over the last few days, Hamas leaders have made it clear that, according to them, the UN move will lead nowhere. A lot of their rhetoric consists of the same old mix of maximalist demands and the unwillingness to think strategically that we have heard before. The crucial part is the rejection of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, meaning the territorial lines as they stood before the Arab-Israeli war in that year. This is what Abbas is asking for in New York, and that constitutes indeed the explicit recognition of Israel on the other side of these borders. In the past, several Hamas spokespersons have implicitly acknowledged the 1967 borders as the basis for a deal with Israel, including some adjustments and an acceptable solution for Palestinian refugees. This moderate approach has clearly been shelved. The last statement from Hamas again used the old-style rhetoric of “not giving up any inch of the land of Palestine or the rights of the Palestinians, including the right of return.” Everybody knows this is a non-starter, but apparently Hamas has decided to use this opportunity to underline the internal Palestinian differences. It does not bode well for the near future. Without Palestinian unity and some sort of involvement of Hamas, nothing sustainable will come out of new talks.
Maybe Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu can call the leadership of Hamas he knows so well and tell them that wasting historic opportunities is a thing the Palestinians cannot afford.
