Simon Hardy
This article is also available in Spanish
September will see a show down at the UN over the question of Palestinian statehood – which could have serious international ramifications, writes Simon Hardy
There is a looming political crisis for the US, Israel and perhaps also the Palestinian leadership, as the UN General Assembly is due to discuss a proposal in late September to allow Palestine membership.
Palestine needs 135 votes to get the necessary two-thirds majority at the General Assembly. Currently it has 112, but more are likely to sign up in the next few weeks. However, both American and Israeli politicians have rubbished the proposal for membership and launched. Both the US and Israel have made it abundantly clear that any vote to recognise Palestine at the UN will not be endorsed by the Security Council, where the US will veto it.
The president of the UN, Joseph Deiss, was asked if the Assembly could legally recognise and therefore create a state without the Security Council, he replied emphatically: “No. No.”
The reason for the opposition from Tel Aviv is clear. “Frankly, the 1967 lines are not defensible,” said Doer Gold, an ex Israeli ambassador to the UN. “Israel today is 45 miles wide. You put us back to the ’67 lines, we are eight miles wide.” Pressures of demographic and territorial space are recurrent themes in Israeli politics these days. Israel has to expand into new territories to survive – losing so much to a Palestinian state would be a disaster for the Israeli political class.
There is a near hysterical campaign from the Israeli right and the media against the vote. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared that Mahmoud Abbas is planning “violence and bloodletting of the sort not yet seen before” on the day of the vote as a scare tactic designed to terrify Israelis. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dispatched top diplomats to deliver personally signed letters to over 40 heads of state explaining why they should vote against the proposal.
The US – the Zionist settler state’s chief paymaster sending $3 billion per annum – has threatened to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority should they pursue the vote in the UN. Currently the PA receives $550m every year from the US. It is useful to compare this threat against the Palestinians with the US’s total refusal to in any way condemn Israel’s atrocities in Gaza in 2008-09 or to use Israel’s economic dependence on them to get them to stop the slaughter.
Obama and Congress are hoping that the PA will be so afraid of bankrupting itself they will pull back from raising the issue at the UN.
Obama was clear why the US has this strategy, “Hamas still hasn’t recognised Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence, and recognise that negotiations are the right path for solving this problem.” In effect he is saying you can only negotiate if you give prior acceptance to Israel’s seizure of Palestinian land before 1967. He repeats the standard US line that Hamas is an organisation which is intransigent on non–recognition of Israel.
But Hamas does not live up to its hard-line reputation. In 2009 Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad said, “We accept a state in the ’67 borders… We are not talking about the destruction of Israel.” Hamas has repeatedly said it is willing to talk to the US or even Israel and make compromises including ‘long term’ ceasefires – which would mean abandoning the armed struggle.
The US also refuses to negotiate because it claims it is not willing to talk to terrorists. But this ‘principle’ is undermined by recent revelations that the occupation forces led by the US in Afghanistan have been seeking peace talks with the Taliban, who the US also considers terroritsts.
A new Intifada?
Why are they so concerned about this vote? The ex-Middle East envoy George Mitchell described the forthcoming vote as a “train wreck”, and it is easy to see why.
Simply put, the move by the Palestinians will expose all the hypocrisy of the West concerning the question of ‘two states’. The promise of statehood is constantly dangled in front of the Palestinians like a carrot as a lure to more rounds of peace talks which deliver nothing and simply gain Israel more time to expand its settlements in the West Bank. All the talk of a viable Palestinian state is just so much white noise to cover the thunder of the bulldozers and construction equipment as more and more Palestinians are driven from their homes and their land is stolen.
The vote will cause a serious breach between the West and third world countries, many of which support Palestine (at least on paper) and are angered by the arm-twisting to get them to vote against or abstain.
So far the Palestinians proposal has succeeded in exposing and isolating US and Israel. If it passes and Israel still refuses negotiations or actually attacks the Palestinian state this isolation will be increased.
But the Palestinian leadership itself faces a potential crisis. If the vote fails, or is passed and Israel responds with either a new military provocation or a blockade of PA areas in West Bank and Well as Gaza, there is the potential for a third Intifada to erupt.
Already Palestinian politics has been shaken by the Arab revolutions and new organisations like Gaza Youth Break Out could play a similar role to the April 6 youth movement in Egypt, a group led the initial pro democracy demonstrations in January 2011.
A third Intifada will probably not be endorsed by the official Palestinian leaderships. Fatah has long pursued a strategy of co-operation with Zionism. Even now their security forces spend far more time policing Palestinian resistance organisations than confronting the occupation. In Gaza Hamas acted swiftly to disperse pro democracy demonstrations which developed as part of the ‘Arab spring’. A mass movement of resistance to Israeli occupation would not doubt see both Hamas and Fatah move to try and co-opt and contain it, whilst they passed themselves off as the natural leaders of it, but such a move is fraught with dangers and threats of new political organisations emerging to lead the Palestinian national resistance struggle.
Clearly if the resolution passes then that would strengthen the Palestinians position and give them more leverage on the international arena to pursue their demands for justice against the aggressive Israeli colonialist occupation force. But on its own it is unlikely to fundamentally change the power relations at work. More importantly, the UN cannot deliver Palestinian freedom, it not only created Israel in 1947 but it has failed to prevent countless atrocities and slaughter of Palestinians since then, despite countless resolutions.
What is needed is a mass pro Palestine movement on the streets right across the Middle East which would weaken the Zionists position and strengthen the Arab revolution as whole. Internationally we must win the labour movement world wide to support the Palestinian struggle and boycott and isolate the Zionist state.