President Barack Obama, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu all played mainly to their domestic political bases at the United Nations General Assembly meeting last week. Despite the drama, nothing in the basic discourse has changed, no party shifted its bottom-line positions, and none of it brought us any closer to peace or improved the situation on the ground.
Abbas gave a rousing speech articulating the Palestinian narrative and case for independence, but didn't offer any outreach to the Israeli public. Netanyahu gave a defiant speech, including denouncing the UN as a "house of lies" aimed mainly at securing his leadership of the Israeli right. And Obama -- who offered empathy to Israel and the Jewish narrative but none to the Palestinians -- was essentially defending himself from a relentless attack from the Republican right on his Israel policies.
All three leaders emerged from the UN meeting politically strengthened, but the prospects for peace were not. Netanyahu marshaled Israel's international assets to nip the Palestinian bid for full UN membership in the bud. The application will no doubt be referred to the 15-member Membership Committee, which meets and votes in secret and which requires unanimity to refer the application back to the Security Council for a possible vote. Past precedent shows this process can take years. Even if Palestinians decide to push for a vote in the Security Council, and can secure an at-present uncertain nine-vote majority, the Obama administration is publicly committed to vetoing their membership.
Caught between the rock of Israeli occupation and the hard place of (at least thus far) failed diplomacy, the Palestinian leadership sought recourse at the UN, knowing full well they were risking a damaging confrontation with the United States over a potential veto. By submitting a formal application for full UN membership, Abbas may appear to have taken a confrontational approach, but in fact the Palestinians have left an important opportunity for compromise open by not demanding any immediate vote or action.
That opportunity is best represented by the statement of the Middle East Quartet issued to coincide with the Abbas and Netanyahu speeches. It is clear that the Quartet has not resolved its differences which have emerged over the past year, particularly the question of Palestinian recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state," but this body remains the most promising venue for creating a new framework, and even terms of reference, for future negotiations when political realities adjust to allow for their resumption with a reasonable prospect of success.
While the resumption of such negotiations will depend a great deal on improvements in internal Palestinian and Israeli political conditions, and especially on the resolution and outcome of the US presidential election, it is imperative that the prospects for a genuine two-state solution are preserved, and even enhanced. To achieve peace, Israelis and Palestinians must move beyond binary worldviews that cast each other simply as enemies in order to appreciate the complexity and interdependence of their relationship, not only now but into the future.
This means, first and foremost, preserving, protecting and enhancing the gains made on the ground in the occupied West Bank by the Palestinian institution-building program led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Many members of Congress from both parties and Republican presidential candidates have been irresponsibly calling for a cut in US funding to the Palestinian Authority and any international organizations that accord upgraded status to the Palestinians.
Nothing could be more shortsighted than threats by grandstanding members of Congress to cut US aid to the PA, the single biggest source of external funding for the Palestinians, which would undermine the legitimacy of the moderate, secular, nationalist leadership in Ramallah and ultimately threaten the viability of both negotiations and negotiators.
It would jeopardize the important cooperation between Israeli and Palestinian security forces that has greatly reduced violence and restore law and order in some key areas of the West Bank. It could undermine, perhaps fatally, the credibility not just of individual political leaders but the whole Palestinian national strategy that seeks the establishment of an independent state living alongside Israel in peace, security and mutual dignity. And it would play directly into the hands of rejectionists forces like Hamas and the extreme settler movement that cling to a zero-sum mentality that seek a total victory of one party at the expense of the other.
It is evident that the status quo is untenable, the conflict has no military solution, and a negotiated agreement is the only alternative to continued conflict. The Israeli occupation must end and, in turn, Israel must become an accepted member of the community of nations in the Middle East. No Israeli, we hope, wants to occupy another people and no Palestinian, we believe, wants to be occupied. The few benefits the Israelis accrue from occupation (e.g., arable land, settlements, water resources) can be better secured through long-term arrangements with friendly neighboring countries, including a State of Palestine. Real "strategic depth" doesn't come from belligerent occupation. It comes from an end of conflict.
Even though the presidential campaign is underway, Obama and his team should not shrink from urging Israeli and Palestinian leaders to do the right thing and resume negotiations within a specific time frame and with clear terms of reference, which becomes the basis of a just and lasting peace. The Quartet statement was a welcome indication that serious diplomacy continues and a reasonable framework for resumed negotiations can be developed in the coming weeks, even if the actual resumption of talks may have to wait for a more propitious political environment on all sides.
Abbas and Netanyahu have returned to their countries with stronger political positions and therefore more leverage and leeway to take bold moves that help lay the political groundwork for the resumption of talks aimed at a fair compromise.
Regardless of what transpires at the UN with respect to Palestine's membership, it must become the impetus towards increased commitment on the part of the international community to finally fulfill the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people and the yearning of Israelis for peace and security. The parties cannot accomplish this on their own.
Now is the time for leaders on all sides to rise above politics and use their strengthened positions to begin the difficult, and probably prolonged, process for creating a more positive political environment that can eventually produce successful negotiations. Above all, the gains that have been secured on the ground through the Palestinian institution-building program and Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation -- which are real and not theoretical -- must not be squandered, but protected and enhanced.
Saliba Sarsar, Ph.D., is professor of political science and associate vice president for global initiatives at Monmouth University, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the American Task Force on Palestine. Hussein Ibish, Ph.D., is a senior research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine and blogs at www.ibishblog.com.
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Let me make this clear for you if you didnt get it the first 500 times: Israel;s idea of "negotiation" is telling the arabs what to do and them agreeing no questions asked. Like a colonial power that imposes its will on the conquered nation and kills everyone who opposes as disturber of peace.
Israel unlike the vast majority of arab countires is one of the most noble countries in the world but againa, just keep spreading the lies because the world has no demand for facts...most countires on this list who are human right violaters are arab muslim countires and israel isn't on it http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/top-ten-human-rights-violators.html
get over it, the arabs attacked the Jews and the jews won and Arabs lost..... get used to Israel being a Sovereign Jewish State in the Mideast, regardless of your rage and hatred
The Muslims don't hate the Jews because of Israel, the muslims hate Israel because of the Jews
I certainly agree with the above. I am a strong opponent of the President and hope he loses the election. But he is still the President. While Congress is within its rights to control the purse strings, the fact remains that foreign policy is in the hands of the President, and the Congress should be very careful not to act so as to gratuitously foul up the President's diplomacy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebOsg9CCj6c
More than half who choose to reside outside israel and have no intention living there. Ever.
Are the authors saying pay protection or the PA will unleash Hamas?
But, three full years before Israel captured these territories in the defensive June 1967 Six-Day War, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), now headed by Mr. Mahmoud Abbas, was set up, 1964. Which part of "Palestine" was the PLO to "liberate"? And, is that the same part of "Palestine" it is eager to "liberate" in the future?
The answer of course is found in the PLO's Charter, etched deeply in the hearts and minds of its leaders and followers...!!
I suggest to anyone expressing an opinion about the conflict at hand to read that Charter...!!
Wait... there were TWO June 1967 Six-Day Wars? The one where Israel launched surprise attacks and a "defensive" one that no one had ever heard of?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Mihai_Pacepa#Alleged_Soviet_role_in_Palestinian_and_Islamic_terrorism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Said_Aburish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
The Israelis have moved on to the US election. They want Obama out and a militant republican in. Why? So AIPAC and the Israeli's can pressure the US to go to war with Iran. Same old talking points...regime change and WMD's. Here we go again!
For lords of the flies. Authoritarian regimes, whilst claiming to be free societies, prevent their peoples from expressing their views on this and other issues. Would Ben and Barack ban an Interweb referendum on this matter? If so, then the rhetoric regarding their credentials as democracies can finally be laid to rest. Next to their phoney protestations about being peace-seekers.
We should ask ourselves the question, how did this situation develope in the first place, where it seems one and all fully expect the US to sustain financially the nation-building of the Palestinians.
Why can't the rich Arab States in the region financially support the Palestinians?
Well, I seriously doubt it would shock Americans, and far, far less Europeans, to know there's no love lost between the Palestinians and Arab states in the Middle East. The fact is, as ethnic group, the Palestinians are universally loathed by their Arab neighbors, and the only peoples they hate more than the Palestinians, are the Jews.
This will give you an insight why Arab states cooperate at all with the Palestinians: its only because of their efforts to drive the Jews out of their territory. And that's the one thing that they have in common with Europeans, who don't much like Palestinians either. And they too have historically harbored deep hatred for Jews.
Thus we have this ghastly existential drama, where no one likes the Palestinians, but in which all of the players, whether in the West or the Middle East, are bound together and united by their hatred of the Jews.
If this is true, then the financial support the US gives to the Palestinians, is blood money.
.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_and_the_Soviet_Union
Because they won't. The arabs like to use the palestinians as a political tool, but the reality is, there is not one arab state that actually wants to see a palestinian state established, as it would be more competition and one more fragile state that the stronger powers would have to vie over who will control it and it's foreign policy.
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"There is no such thing as Palestine in history, absolutely not". - Philip K. Hitti, an Arab, a professor at Princeton University, and author of the authoritative "The Arabs", testifying at the 1946 Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry.
"It is common knowledge that Palestine is nothing but southern Syria". - said to the UN Security Council in 1956 by Ahmed Shukeiry, who later founded the PLO - the Palestine Liberation Organization.
"There is no such country (as Palestine)! Palestine is a term the Zionists invented! There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria." - told to the peel Commission in 1937 by Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, a local Arab leader.
Don't blame me.
It sounds wonderful, yet one wonders: have the authors ever read fully and understood the documents in which those aspirations are spelled out?
I suggest all of us do, either in Arabic or in the English translation: The Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the organization that set up the Palestinian Authority and leads it;
The Charter of the Fatah, the largest grouping within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO); The Charter of the Hamas, the Islamist Resistance Movement.
Sadly, the elimination of the independent nation-state of the Jewish people, Israel, is not, repeat, not a legitimate aspiration that humanity should support!!
Please read the statement on the PLO’s official web site http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=11&id=120
The site clearly states that …” no redrafted Charter has yet emerged, and the PLO executive committee meeting did not ratify the letter from Arafat to Clinton, which specified the amendments to the Charter.”
Article 33 of the charter specifies how the charter is to be amended. It says nothing about Arafat amending the charter by sending a letter to President Clinton.
"Article 33:This Charter shall not be amended save by [vote of] a majority of two-thirds of the total membership of the National Congress of the Palestine Liberation Organization [taken] at a special session convened for that purpose."
The charter in place since 1968, with all of its articles intact and unchanged. There isn’t even a draft of a new charter.”