Editorial Daily Times Sept 23, 2011

Palestinian statehood bid

US President Barack Obama’s rejection of the Palestinians’ statehood bid at the UN was hardly a surprise. Long before he took the podium to address the UN General Assembly (UNGA), it had become obvious from guarded official and not so guarded unofficial comments that the US, as usual, was going to stand by its ally Israel, right or wrong. To stave off a looming diplomatic disaster, since the Palestinian bid has evoked a great deal of sympathy and support from the UNGA, Obama and the Israeli government coordinated wonderfully in suggesting bilateral talks were the only path to a solution that offered the Palestinians a state in return for security for Israel. Have bilateral, trilateral or even multilateral talks yielded anything in the last two decades? Not for the Palestinians, although Israel has used stalling tactics to buy time and create new ‘facts on the ground’ (e.g. expanding Israeli settlements on the West Bank). Arguably, Israeli intransigence and repression have rendered the Oslo Accords dead in the water. Since these were premised on a ‘two state solution’, that has left Israel holding all the cards, occupied and expanding territory, a US-supplied arsenal that would be the envy of any great power, and a blank cheque from Washington for all other, economic, etc, needs.
Obama has predictably disappointed his liberal supporters the world over. The Cairo speech attempting to build bridges with an alienated Muslim world is a distant memory, while the Israeli lobby and the foreign and security policy establishment has encircled Obama and forced him to relinquish any notions of ‘change’ he may have carried initially into office. Between Washington and Tel Aviv, therefore, it has been business as usual, with nary a hiccup, the mild but quickly quelled disagreement over new settlements being drowned in the roaring reception Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was accorded in the US Congress on his last visit.
The Palestinian side was expected to submit its statehood recognition request to the UN Security Council (UNSC) today, although reports were swirling that the US might conjure a last minute reprieve for itself and its satrap. This could only mean some carrot (and perhaps stick) to cajole the Palestinians to retreat, even though threatening noises from the US Congress to cut off US aid to the Palestinian Authority seem to have had the opposite effect of what was intended. If the Palestinian bid proceeds as planned, and the US vetoes it in the UNSC, the Palestinians can still salvage “observer state” status by approaching the UNGA. That too would amount to a diplomatic and political advance for the Palestinian cause. Whether the bid succeeds or not, it has already put the US and its cat’s paw Israel on the diplomatic mat. Ironically, while the Palestinians suffer daily repression, evictions and humiliation at the hands of the Israeli state, the oppressor seeks ‘security’ for itself! To equate the pin pricks of the occasional crude rocket attack from Gaza with the bloody track record of the Zionist entity would be laughable were it not such a grave and continuing tragedy. The Arab world’s repeated betrayals of the Palestinian cause have left Israel sitting pretty and the Palestinians having perforce to rely on themselves. Unfortunately, the split between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority under President Mahmoud Abbas has weakened the voice of the Palestinians. It would be in their own interest to subsume their internal differences to the greater good of their common cause, although that seems unlikely at present.
Pakistan must support the Palestinian statehood recognition bid to the fullest extent. If the Muslim world and other countries that adhere to international norms of justice add their voices to the growing chorus demanding an end to Israel’s depredations and occupier logic, perhaps the Palestinians may still have their day in the court of the world’s peoples.