1) It
should be no surprise that 130-odd countries took the rather technical step of of
voting recognize Palestine as a “non-member” in the U.N. General Assembly. That
is roughly the number of countries that already directly recognize Palestine as
a state! If they have already actually recognized the state themselves, voting
to extend such recognition for some particular purpose is hardly
precedent-making. (Palestine’s international-recognition level rivals Israel’s.)
2) The
apparent diplomatic victory is itself a consolation prize for the collapse of
Abbas’ bid last year for actual U.N. membership for Palestine, which was
rejected at the Security Council. If that effort was to be a “diplomatic tsunami,” as Israel’s defense minister
warned, the current ploy is at most a chill breeze.
3) The
vote must be seen in the context of a long history of past anti-Israel
resolutions in the GA. These illustrate both the automatic majority such
resolutions enjoy, and their unimportance to actual events. For example, in the
1970s, the parliament of nations overwhelmingly agreed that Zionism is a form a
racism, and thus the entire country is illegitimate. In 2009, the GA adopted a
resolution that concluded Israel intentionally sought to slaughter innocent
Palestinian civilians in the Gaza War – a resolution based on the Goldstone report,
which has since been retracted by its eponymous author.
4) There
is nothing new even in the European position. Since 1980 Europe has maintained
that the lands occupied by Jordan and Egypt in their 1948-49 war against Israel
is actually“Palestinian territory,” which Israel must leave. The European votes are
consistent with their accord with almost all major Palestinian demands.
5) The
theory that some European votes were motivated by the recent Gaza campaign
shows that Israel can’t just win. It gets rocketed when it leaves territory,
and that same rocketing is used as a pretext for going along with efforts that
defy all previous agreements. It is a classic good cop/bad cop routine Hamas
and Fatah are running.
6) Abbas’s
repeated refusal to heed any of America’s insistent and increasingly pathetic
requests (stop the resolution, or even tone it down) represents a slap in the
face for President Obama – a flat refusal to cooperate or accomodate American
(and many European) interests. This demonstrates the failure of Obama’s policy “outreach”
towards the Palestinians, and his general courting of the Arab world. Despite
his explicitly creating “space” between Israel and the US in his first term, it
has not made the Palestinians even the least bit tractable on any issue, even
when it comes to embarrassing the U.S.
Presumably
all those who were indignant about Netanyahu’s purported “defiance” of Obama
will now take up the President’s honor against Abbas.
7)
Speaking of the President – credit where credit is due. I have previously criticized the record of his
first three years on Israel, and stand by that. My criticism was always
non-partisan. As I often point out, the Democratic Party has always been in
lock-step with the general American solicitude for Israel, but Obama in his
first three years took a different, confrontational course.
In the
year before the election, he switched gears. I am happy to observe that since
the election, his support of Israel has been what one would expect of any
generic American president. One suspects that Abbas’s obvious rejection of any
serious peace process, and his open use of Obama as a cat’s paw, began to grate.
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