Palestinians watch a public screening of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' speech at the United Nations, in the West Bank city of Hebron, September 23, (Reuters).
“The process is moving forward step by step and we hope that the Security Council will shoulder its responsibility and approve our application.”
The comment, made this week by the Palestinian Permanent Observer to the UN, Riyad Mansour, summarises the current situation at the United Nations regarding Palestine’s application for statehood.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council, presently deliberating the prospect of admitting Palestine as a full member of the international body, decided to refer the case to the Security Council’s admissions committee, meeting on Friday.
Although Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expects talks at the Security Council to take two weeks, it is possible that this will stretch further. In the meantime, the US lobbies aggressively against the bid.
Israel, the US and other states and entities (such as the Quartet on the Middle East consisting of the US, Russia, the EU and the UN) are attempting to push Palestinians back to direct negotiations with Israel - which broke down last year over Israel’s refusal to extend a moratorium on settlement construction – but it is doubtful the Palestinians will back down.
The Arab uprisings - where two countries have ousted their dictators so far - are in the process of changing the regional system, and it seems the Palestinian Authority has been influenced by them, attempting new alternatives after two decades of fruitless negotiations.
Palestinian activist and long time PA critic, Mustafa Barghouti, secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI), sees the UN bid as part of the Arab uprisings, calling it the “Palestinian Spring” or a “revolution against occupation.”
In a phone interview with Ahram Online, Barghouti said he was pleased with the move. “We [the PNI] support the bid since negotiations are now sterile,” and stressed his complete rejection of Palestinians taking part in talks with Israel, an option Abbas hasn’t completely taken off the table.
Barghouti puts the move in the framework of resistance. “Since Palestine is now in a state of conflict and struggle, the bid is a form of diplomatic resistance, we are happy it happened and are hoping it is not a tactical move by the PA to improve its negotiating position,” Barghouti said.
This speculation is echoed more radically by Palestinian Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, Joseph Massad.
Writing for Al-Jazeera, Massad acknowledges the effect of the Arab uprisings on the Palestinian struggle, saying that “the ongoing Arab uprisings have raised Palestinian expectations about the necessity of ending the occupation and have challenged the modus vivendi the PA has with Israel.”
Yet, the use of diplomatic means instead of negotiations, a change Barghouti was pleased with, takes on a different significance in Massad’s view.
Massad believes that the PA is using this method to be able to control the fallout of Arab dissent onto the Palestinians, hoping that a “shift from the popular to the juridical will demobilise Palestinian political energies and displace them onto an arena that is less threatening to the survival of the PA itself.”
Hopes and speculations aside, other observers view things in a different light. Many see the UN bid simply as the only remaining means of exerting pressure on Israel after negotiations have failed.
Former assistant Secretary General of Arab League for Palestinian Affairs and board member of the Institute for Palestine Studies, Gamil Mattar, believes Abbas was forced into taking this measure due to his increasing isolation by the international community, particularly the US, in favour of Israel.
“The international community abandoned Abbas and failed to fulfil its promises regarding the Palestinians,” said Mattar, citing Obama’s talk in Cairo in 2009 where he spoke of halting Israeli settlement activity and going forth towards creating a Palestinian state.
Adding to this the Netanyahu government’s increasingly hostile practices towards the Palestinians, including building more settlements and continuing the Gaza blockade, Abbas was faced by unending Israeli occupation policies, said Mattar, prompting him to embark upon the UN application for statehood.
Close in line with Mattar is Egyptian Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, Mustafa Kamil El-Sayyed.
El-Sayyed sees the move as a public relations exercise, highlighting internationally the importance of the Palestinian issue and stressing the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.
El-Sayyed rejects the view that the move is a final attempt for the PA to gain popular support. “This is not a last gasp for legitimacy,” said El-Sayyed, “but rather an outcome of an effort in consideration for maybe two years now, after all others have failed.”
Even if the application surpasses a US veto at the Security Council, by resorting to the rarely used Uniting for Peace resolution, which may circumvent the Security Council and lead to recognition of Palestine through the General Assembly, the consequences of the recognition itself are debatable.
A former legal consultant for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Mazen Al-Masri, writing in the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar in June, pointed to some of the dangers following recognition of a state of Palestine.
Al-Masri wrote that the danger lies in “redefining the struggle on the international level, from a struggle between an occupying state and a people - half of which are under occupation and the rest in a diaspora - to a conventional border struggle between two states.”
Al-Masri believes the picture will be more distorted as a result, where Palestine would be a state with no sovereignty and the reality of occupation would be reinvented accordingly.
Others argue that the admission of Palestine as a member-state would make it eligible to join an array of UN organizations and give it the power to ratify treaties, such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which would enable them to hold Israel legally accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Massad, sharing a similar view to Al-Masri, concedes this point, saying that “this would render Israel's international relations more difficult,” but then challenges the effective outcome of this, asking “how would this ultimately weaken an Israel that the US would shield completely from such effects as it has always done?”
El-Sayyed believes otherwise, saying that while it [the bid] will not change the Israeli attitude in the struggle, it may pressure the US in the future to pressure Israel into stopping its practices against the Palestinians.”
It is yet to be seen whether the Security Council will be in favour of recognition or not, and if so, whether the US would act upon its threat to veto - a move the US does not want to resort to given its efforts to bring the Palestinians to negotiate and its lobbying to prevent sufficient members of the Security Council to vote positively.
Gamil Mattar believes the decision to veto the bid would be “the most dangerous decision the US would have taken in the 60 years since the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, since it would be acting against the desires of the majority of states.”
“This would definitely harm the entirety of its interests in the Arab region,” stated Mattar.
Still, Mattar believes that while US elections approach, it is virtually impossible for Obama to contest the wishes of his Jewish voting bloc, which supports Israel in its opposition to the bid, making it difficult not to veto the decision if it becomes necessary.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki announced on Thursday that 8 out of the 15 Security Council members have given their support for the Palestinian application, leaving the necessary ninth vote dependent upon either Columbia or Bosnia.
Russia, China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Lebanon, Nigeria and Gabon have pledged their support.
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