Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has formally submitted an application to the United Nations for that international body to recognize Palestinian statehood regardless of ongoing territorial disputes with Israel.
While the press will focus on the immediate aftermath—violence in the West Bank and Gaza, the Israeli reaction, and who voted for or against—the move is a game-changer in a number of ways.
• Goodbye, Land for Peace. Since the Camp David Accords in 1978, the basis of the Middle East peace process has been land for peace: Israel would offer land, and Arab partners would outline the degree of peace which they would provide. What Abbas is now doing—with majority international support—is demanding territory unilaterally without offering any peace. Add to this reversal of past diplomacy the possibility that Egypt will “revise” its peace agreement with Israel to remove the peace component, and all bets are off.
• Is Foreign Aid an Entitlement? The Palestinian Authority has received billions of dollars since agreeing to the Oslo Accords, but this aid was predicated on acceptance of Israel and acceptance of the peace process. If the Palestinians have violated this quid pro quo, then Congress should not approach the cut-off of aid as punishment, but rather as necessary to shore up the very foundations of diplomacy. Agreements must mean something, not simply provide an a la carte menu of optional clauses.
• Right of Return? Abbas, in his speech, has cited the “catastrophe” that befell Palestinians and led to the creation of a Palestinian refugee problem. Never mind that many of the Palestinians who claim to be refugees aren’t refugees according to the definition of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza—part of historical Palestine—are not technically refugees since they never left their “country.” The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) has its own special definition for Palestinian refugees. If the UNRWA definition of multigenerational refugees were applied to the disruption that accompanied the partition of India, then today India and Pakistan would host 140 million refugees. If the Palestinians now have a state, however, then they will have in effect undermined one of their key demands: The right of return to Israel proper. That will force Abbas to either welcome the many Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, and other Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza, or be in the hypocritical position of informing them that Palestinian Arabs are not welcome in Palestine.
• Retroactive Occupation. Until now, the West Bank has technically been a disputed territory rather than an occupied territory. This is because there never was a state of Palestine, the Palestinians had rejected the original partition of Palestine and therefore the territories assigned to them, and the international community never formally recognized the pre-1967 Jordanian occupation of the West Bank and the Egyptian occupation of Gaza. But if the international community, with a show of hands, recognizes the disputed West Bank territories as part of Palestine, then it changes the legal framework of the dispute. This gets complicated even further by the fact that the United Nations Human Rights Commission, back in 2002, legitimized terrorism against civilians to resist occupation. Many human rights advocates in the United States believe that international law keeps peace. Unfortunately, thanks to Mary Robinson’s stewardship at the Commission, in this case humanitarian law actually encourages murder.
• The Palestine Model, Exported. What happens in Palestine doesn’t stay in Palestine. The Palestinians are not the only people who lament their lack of statehood. The Kurds, especially in Turkey, lament the fact that they are the largest people without a state. The Baluch in Pakistan and Iran have waged a violent separatist campaign for decades. Republika Srbska would like to secede from Bosnia. Basque terrorists demand freedom from Spain. In the Western Sahara, the Algerian-backed Polisario Front has conducted a decades-long terrorist campaign against Morocco. The terrorists whom Pakistan supports in Kashmir make the violence wrought by Palestinians appear the stuff of amateurs. Now, the Turks, for example, can claim that there has never been a Kurdish state and so they are not guilty of occupation. But certainly the Kurds want their freedom and should they be able to rally the international community to retroactively recognize their occupation, then all bets are off.
The 1815 Congress of Vienna helped establish the modern system of diplomacy. Diplomats may believe they are voting for Palestinian aspiration or, perhaps, for an opportunity to embarrass the United States. They are wrong, however: For a number of reasons, they are voting for precedents which undercut the very basis of international diplomacy and promise to usher in a period of conflict not only in Israel and the Middle East, but much more broadly across the globe.
Dear Mr Rubin,
you cannot really mean what you are saying, can you? I wish you something emotional in your life that makes you struggle. You need to seek for more logic, humanity, empathy, and truth.
Anyways, the world knows what’s really going on in Palestine – and why they have become terroristic. We won’t be silent anymore!
Yours faithfully,
Samira Manthey
A zionist article attempting to control our free mind. you fail!!!
You’re an idiot, period
i just wasted 5 min of my life reading your insane article people like you reminde me of the evil that exists in the world , anyhow the Palestinians have every right to establish a country for them any where the want in any part of historical Palestine .As for the refuges they should go back to where their grandfathers were ethnically cleansed from for instance i was bon in NY and then forced to leave why should i settle in oklahoma that would be absurd. You have mentioned other conflicts in this world what does that have to do with the Palestinians that they should not speak for thier freedom or self determanation , excuse my french but how the F@#$ did you become an author your argument is extreamly irrational and full of hypocrisy !!!!!!!
Dear Sir,
Your arguments are uniformly and almost inexpressibly incoherent.
However, here is my attempt to try to decipher your arguments and offer a response.
1) The idea that Israel has been giving land so that the nasty Arabs stop attacking them is a facetious argument. I don’t suppose you care to know what Nakba is, but even you must admit the historically documented fact that there was a Palestine. That refugees were driven from the land. That various “peace accords” have been made, requiring compromise from both sides. You must also know the fact that Israel has settlers in territory that Israel, Palestine and the US have agreed is for the Palestinians. Israelis are flouting these international agreements, including the Oslo Accords. The idea that Palestinians are violent while Israel gives them land to stop them is an utter fallacy, and a grotesque misrepresentation of the truth.
I don’t think you made a mistake. These are deliberate manipulations.
2) Israel has flouted the Oslo Accords. Palestinians asking for their state to be recognized, as most international scholars (including Americans), people in the UN and other have recognized for over a decade at least. Palestine was a state and it will be again.
Bottom line is that if Israel and US cut of aid to Palestine (by the way, USA gives billions of tax money to Israel each year, yet you have no problem with that?) that will cause a catastrophe that Israel is not prepared to deal with. You’re proposing cutting off your nose to spite your face.
3) That Right of Return argument is completely and utterly bogus. Many Palestinians are refugees from the land where Israel is, but Palestine is not asking for that. It is asking for the 1967 borders, 22% of their land. They are also asking for the lifting of Israeli MILITARY RULE in that land. Abbas did not mention that right of return twisted argument in his speech.
4) That “retroactive occupation” argument is complete nonsense and ugly insinuation. If a man could go to hell for lying, that paragraph just bought you a one way ticket.
5) And finally, the bigot’s major argument (from homosexuality to human rights to Palestinian statehood, this argument is always used) the landslide argument! If give them this, other people will ask for things too! This will lead to the end of the world!
In conclusion, thank you! I am a law student who has to do a presentation. I have been looking for the US right wing position against Palestine and here it is! Blatant lies and manipulations of fact, with ugly insinuations comparing the rights of Palestinians with terrorism. Thank you! This sheds a great deal of light on the way people lie to their own countrymen for profit.
Very good post here. The fact is that Isreal and US do not care about justice and peace in that region. That was the ture reason why so many negotiations and accords failed. Had US been slightly thought of human rights and justice in this case and for the majority of poeple in that region, the peace would have been there long time ago.
Land for peace was a scam. Israel continues to expand in Palestinian lands and then offers that land back in exchange for peace while gaining more land from another side to use as leverage later on for peace again and so on and so forth which eventually goes nowhere and keeps the conflict breathing. All for the gain of those benefiting from the war economy.
I only wonder how the US will react to this. The sad part is that the international community can do nothing to force Israel to obey their decision. That is not mentioning that everyone is suffering economically and will be resistant to offer any real help to palestine. The show goes on.
State of Israel was created under UN resolution. So if Israel does not obey UN resolutions, it means Israel itself is illegitimate State.
Israel and its minority supporters across thee world are struggling to stop the world body in voting in favor of Palestine.
The fruitless negotiations have been going on for over 20 years without any results due to Israeli refusal to going back to 1967 border.
The solution is very simple: Palestinians have been saying openly that they recognize the state of Israel based on 1967 borders. It’s Israel and its supporters, who are not honest. They just play delaying tactics. Israel wants to grab as much occupied land as possible and then negotiate and ask Palestinian to settle on current west bank and Gaza.
The Zionist movement and its Jewish lobby in US are behind all this nonsense dirty game. President Obama also took U turn from his previous policy on Israel/ Palestine and playing in the hands of Jewish lobby’s dirty game.
The World Community needs to stand up and give Palestinian people their God given right of Homeland , which was stolen from them with the help of UN .So its the United Nations , to act and implement its resolutions as it did in the case of Iraq..
It is sardonic hearing someone at this level of the world civilization not just arguing against but publishing his sarcastic argument against the plain issue of the right of Palestinians to their statehood. first, Mr Michael Robin refused to mention it that Palestine remain the only occupation in today’s known world. Secondly, he hypocritically ignore the fact that this people have been denied justice simply because they are not members of the united nations. Also, the so called world dog, the United States are not the only existing nation in the whole world.
Israel froze building for 10 months, hoping to engage the Palestinians in negotiations. The Palestinians refused to negotiate until the ninth month. When negotiations resumed, they offered no ideas for compromise, so nothing could be accomplished.
Partition of the country between Arabs and Jews has been accepted by Israel since 1948. The Arab nations replied by attacking Israel. The Palestinians have made no concessions for peace since then.
Israel offered to negotiate after the 1967 war and was met with answers of no peace, no negotiations and no recognition of Israel. In the 1990s, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barack offered 97 percent of the West Bank, Gaza and shared administration of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Yasser Arafat answered by leading an intifada against Israel. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Ohlmert offered the same plan, plus the return of some Arab refugees to the Israeli homeland. He got no comment.
The Palestinians have not offered any plan that recognizes the rights of everyone else in the region.
An internationally recognized state of Palestine should be required to recognize that Israel is a Jewish state with the right to secure borders. Palestinians must make sacrifices to achieve statehood. Israelis have and remain willing to make painful concessions for lasting peace in the region.
Having the United Nations recognize a Palestinian state immediately is an attempt to avoid negotiations and the painful sacrifices necessary to bring true peace to the area. The real goal is to “create legal problems for Israel,” as acknowledged by their spokesman. The conditions for peace in the Middle East do not involve a U.N. power play.
Your article made sense. Well written and clear, your argument was valid. Sorry to see that so many comments have been emotional knee-jerks. Where the Israel is concerned, too few people know the whole history. It has never been fashionable to appreciate the Israeli view.
I totally agree with the author who outlined real facts. If you consider “Arab state”, which was created by UN together with Israel, to be “Palestine state”, than it were Egypt, Syria, and Jordan that occupied it right after UN decision to create it. All its long history Israel had to defense its very existence against its Arab neighbors. And when he agreed to make some moves for peace like giving Gaza to Palestinians, thier hostilities increased. And do not forget that it was PLO and other Palestinian fronts that are Godfathers of present Islamic terrorist organizations.
US spent billions of billions tax payers’ dollars on Isreal’s weapons. Why? We are suffer here in US and unemployment rate top 9%.