The rapturous applause that greeted Mahmoud Abbas, appearing before the U.N. General Assembly in his role as chairman of the PLO, was deceiving. The collection of states that swooned when he mentioned Yasser Arafat’s 1974 appearance in the same hall will never give him a state — nor even the foreign-aid money to pay his delegation’s hotel bills.
His statehood project depends on Israel and the United States, and to a lesser extent on the Europeans (and a bit of Gulf Arab financing). His U.N. gambit has annoyed or offended all of those parties. The Saudi gift of $200 million last week to support the Palestinian Authority was handed, precisely, to the PA and to its prime minister, Salam Fayyad, as a show of confidence in him and his institution-building work, bypassing Abbas and his PLO cronies.
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The Israeli reaction to the Abbas speech is predictably negative, for it was a nasty piece of work filled with harshly worded denunciations — and from which any real commitment to telling truths to the Palestinian people was absent. Instead, Abbas repeatedly referred to the nakba or “catastrophe” of 1948 as the source of the Palestinians’ plight, thereby telegraphing to Israelis that his main complaint was the existence of the State of Israel rather than its “1967 borders.” His reference to the “Holy Land” as the home of Jesus Christ and the place from which Mohammed ascended to heaven excluded all references to Jews and Jewish history, and delivered the same awful message. The Abbas speech will end up strengthening Netanyahu’s tough approach to Israeli security.
But the most striking evidence of Abbas’s error came in the Quartet statement (from the U.S., the U.N., the EU, and Russia) released Friday night, after Abbas and Netanyahu had spoken. In the past two and half years, every Quartet statement has reflected Obama’s obsession with construction in the settlements and has demanded a freeze. The statements have also often reflected the Obama administration’s tilt toward the Palestinians and against Israel.
But not this one. Instead it reflected both Obama’s own U.N. speech, tilting the other way as the American elections appeared over the horizon, and EU annoyance with Abbas. This Quartet statement did not even mention settlements, not once, and instead simply laid out a long timetable for negotiations. The Quartet statement “reiterated its urgent appeal to the parties to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions,” thereby rejecting the Palestinian demand that a construction freeze come first.
The operational paragraphs were these:
1. Within a month there will be a preparatory meeting between the parties to agree an agenda and method of proceeding in the negotiation.
2. At that meeting there will be a commitment by both sides that the objective of any negotiation is to reach an agreement within a timeframe agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012. The Quartet expects the parties to come forward with comprehensive proposals within three months on territory and security, and to have made substantial progress within six months.
“The end of 2012” takes them, of course, beyond the U.S. elections. And lest the election-year tilt to Israel was still unclear, the State Department briefer who explained all this to the press late on Friday referred twice to Israeli “flexibility.” Gone are the days when the Obama administration pugnaciously sought confrontations with Jerusalem — at least until the reelection campaign is over.
But Palestinians would be mistaken to attribute the entirety of their defeat to American politics; they should note that Abbas did not get the Security Council vote he wanted. For the moment, at least, the Palestinians could not attain the nine votes they needed to win and thus force an American veto. This is another measure of their failure in New York.
It is true that Abbas’s U.N. ploy may work for him in terms of his own domestic politics — for a while, anyway. Instead of being the man who lost Gaza, he may briefly be the man who “bravely” took the statehood issue to the U.N. But he did not take the Palestinians one step closer to peace, nor did he speak to them seriously about what peace will require from them. In this he is a faithful follower of his mentor Yasser Arafat. If there is ever to be peace, the Palestinians will someday need a leadership that tells them the truth: Hard work and difficult compromises will be needed, not applause in the General Assembly.
— Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, was the deputy national security adviser handling the Middle East in the George W. Bush administration.
Hamas refuses even to recognize the right of the state of Israel to exist.
How can you "negotiate" with someone who refuses to recognize your right to exist?
Nothing has changed.
I hear 'Palestine' I think back to 9/12/01 and the pictures of palestinian kids jumping up and down and firing automatic weapons into the air to celebrate the previous day's festivities.
Abrams is right, if the Abbas is ultimately unable to even force a US veto of the Security Council, that will be a major slap in the face. And, frankly, deservedly so. Going to the UN for recognition, all the while refusing to so much as sit down at the negotiating table with the Israelis was foolish.
And if the PA winds up not being able to prevent / contain an uptick in Palestinians violence in the wake of such a setback, both the people and government of the West Bank will have once again shown themselves to be what Abba Eban called them decades ago: the people who never miss and opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Obama's tune may have changed a bit for now because November 2012 is 13 months away, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts, that should he be reelected, his old tune will return in a nanosecond.
His tune would be new and dangerous for the entire Western Civilization, not only for Israel. He said nothing when Iran's genocide-threatening regime killed and tortured thousands of demonstrators at the start of Obama's administration. He has said nothing about Syria's Assad sending tanks to fire on rebels in the city of Homs. He said nothing when the Saudis sent troops into Bahrain to violently suppress protests. Indeed, the White House has actively aided repression by regimes much worse than Mubarak was -- regimes in Yemen, Somalia, and Iran.
I don't think that it is true that Obama didn't say anything during the Iranian riots. He didn't say anything in the early days, but the sad fact is that verbal support for the anti-regime forces in those days probably would have been more harm than help. Until the people are, in general, good and ready to turn on the regime, cheer-leading from the Great Satan is counter-productive.
I disagree. Obama said absolutely nothing to help the "green revolution," even as people like beautiful Neda were being murdered in the streets for the world to see. not "at the beginning" or at any other time.
unlike their leaders, the Iranian people like Americans and are fascinated by America, and our support would have been immensely helpful. in fact, if we had done something then, we might have not had to listen to the vile Ahmadinejad spew his usual Jew-hating nonsense last week at the UN.
remember the reason for Obama's silence: he was still doing the "outstretched hand" thing. let's hope he's realized THAT isn't gonna work!
By refusing to negotiate with Israel and going to the General Assembly he has explicitly declared that Israel is not a legitimate State. He has told the world that the true roadblock to peace is the "Palestinians", not Israel.
First Liberalism and now the "Palestinians". Obama has succeeded in removing yet another mask!
It's not a measure of their failure at all. The new kids on the block at the UN and in the world are the BRICS and it looks like most will vote for Palestinian statehood. That matters even before the Assembly vote. On this issue, Israel's leverage over America is stronger than ever but America's leverage over the ROW is waning.
Israel and Netanyahu, IMO, made a mistake in addressing only half of the question at the UN. They missed the other half of the question - the half that would be presuasive to the rising powers (Brazil, India, China, etc., not to mention the Saudis and Kuwaitis).
And that is: Let's say Israel said: ok! We'll abdicate all the territory captured from Jordan in the 67 war that is disputed between ourselves and the Paletinians - or at least a really large chunk.
Then what? The conflict would not be resolved. Rockets would flow into the West Bank. Attacks would surely follow. And at some point, they one attack would be very succesful, shooting down an airliner at Ben Gurion airport or something along those lines.
When that inevitably happens, you will have war. Not "war" the way we have seen it over the last two decades. Not even war of the kind that we saw in Iraq.
No, we'd have war of anhialation. War of the World War II variety. War that would threaten every regime and every person in the middle east. War that could threaten to drag in the world powers - Turkey and its interests, NATO, Russia and its interests.
There is a dispute over territory between the Israelis and the Palestinian people, who are "stateless" only in that they are not sovereign over the country (Jordan/East Palestine) where they hold a majority; indeed, even then, they hold a semi-state in Gaza, where they alone are sovereign.
But the only result of having the status of the WB determined without peace would be to ensure the kind of war that would likely be far more terrible than anything that the world has seen for some time. Why in the world would any responsible nation even consider supporting that?
I read the text of Netanyahu's speech to the U.N. and he explicitly addressed why returning to the 1967 borders would not ensure peace. He cited instances where Israel's peace offers were simply ignored by duplicitous Palestinian leaders. He enumerated the times Israel has turned over territory to the Palestinians hoping to gain peace only to have their concessions rewarded with renewed terrorism and rockets. Netanyahu was very clear in stating that Israel is through giving up territory in a futile attempt at peace. He sees the dilemma plainly and understands what Israel's up against. His eloquent and statesmanlike speech was historically accurate and needs no explication; It was simple, direct and magnificent. We can only wish our pathetic excuse for a President was of the same caliber as Netanyahu.
Last I heard, it was Hamas, not this egomaniac Abbas, who ruled the Palestinian cesspool.
Since Hamas is diametrically opposed to the existence of next door neighbor, how can "grown up" talk of statehood cannot seriously be considered by those who have less maturity than most children.
I don't see where this idea that Hamas is in sole control of the Westb Bank and Gaza is coming from.
Gaze alone, sure. The PA has no power there. But Gaza isn't the West Bank.
A better question would be ask why Israel should negotiate with a country that doesn't have a central government that is control of all of its territory.
The author forgot to identify any concrete elements of "hard work and difficult compromises will be needed" from Palestinian leaders: a cessation of acts of war and terror, perhaps?
If Abbas weren't so utterly vile, I might feel some sympathy for his predicament. He was raised in a society that cannot view itself in any way other than as someone's (Israel's, the West's, other Arab nations', etc.) victim. If that's the only arrow in his quiver (and it seems to be), it's not going to get him or his pathetic little kleptocracy/terror state very far in the world.
