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Abbas Flips US and Israel the Bird; Goes Back to UN — Judith Levy
Here we go again.
Mahmoud Abbas has announced that he is bypassing the US-sponsored peace talks with Israel and going directly to the United Nations to claim some of the benefits of de facto statehood. You might recall that in 2012, when Abbas first went to the UN, that august body granted Palestine nonmember observer-state status, which enables it to join 63 international agencies. Abbas has signed (but apparently not yet filed) the necessary paperwork to join 15 of them, thereby “gain[ing] the benefits of statehood outside the negotiations process,” according to the New York Times. The Americans adamantly oppose Palestinian membership in any of the agencies, “which under a law passed by Congress could prompt a withdrawal of financial aid to the Palestinian Authority and a shutdown of the Palestinian diplomatic mission in Washington.” The Palestinians have decided that’s a gamble worth taking, and it’s entirely possible that they’re right.
The embarrassed Americans are busy insisting that reality is as they choose to perceive it. Though he cancelled a planned trip to Ramallah today, John Kerry had this to say about the Palestinians’ gambit: “What is important to say about the Middle East right now is it is completely premature tonight to draw any kind of judgment, certainly any final judgment, about today’s events and where things are…And President Abbas has given his word to me that he will keep his agreement and that he intends to negotiate through the end of the month of April.”
Yes, well. Abbas’s solemn word to Kerry notwithstanding, this move a) torpedoes Kerry’s efforts to get the two sides to sit down; b) confirms Israeli suspicions about the Palestinians’ bad faith; and c) directly contravenes — again! — the terms of the Oslo peace accords, which expressly forbid unilateral moves prior to a negotiated agreement on permanent status.
Here are some points to take away from all this.
1. The Palestinians, not the Israelis, derailed the negotiations. The Israelis have been willing to extend talks despite the Palestinians’ categorical refusal to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, a point one could argue would have been a reasonable deal-breaker for the Israelis. The Israelis have instead decided to elide that point and continue the time-honored tradition of making concessions while receiving nothing in return. This time around, the Israelis’ “confidence-building” concession took the form of three mass prisoner releases — already completed — with the promise of a fourth if the Palestinians agree to keep talking. Abbas’s response was to pocket the prisoner releases, push Kerry off a cliff, and run to the UN. (That fourth release might still happen if Netanyahu gets Kerry to sign off on the release of Jonathan Pollard, which would — controversial as it is — constitute a domestic political win for Bibi. It’s rumored that that concession to Bibi — the only thing Israel would have gotten in exchange for any of the prisoner releases, and it’s not even a concession from the Palestinians — was what pushed Abbas over the edge.)
2. The Palestinians are explicitly and deliberately humiliating John Kerry and, by extension, Barack Obama. One imagines Vladimir Putin, the Zen master of the art of humiliating Barack Obama, observing all this with warm satisfaction. As Omri Ceren at TIP (The Israeli Project) points out in a digest of these events, “The entire basis of the 9 months-long peace initiative by Secretary of State John Kerry had relied on the Palestinians abstaining from seeking membership in UN institutions.” The American position on this has been stated and restated for years:
Sec. Clinton in 2011: “a negative scenario”; Jay Carney in 2011: “not productive or helpful”; President Obama in 2011: “peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations”; Ben Rhodes in 2011: “we would have to oppose any action at the UN Security Council including, if necessary, vetoing.”; Sec. Clinton in 2012: “unfortunate and counterproductive“; Ambassador Rice in 2012: causes “the prospects of a durable peace [to] recede”; Victoria Nuland in 2012: “only realistic path for the Palestinians to achieve statehood is through direct negotiations”; President Obama in 2012 during a call with Abbas expressed “opposition to unilateral efforts at the United Nations”.
3. The Palestinians intend to use the UN not to hasten peace with Israel but to enable more effective attacks on her, including the prosecution of Israel for war crimes in the International Criminal Court (ICC). And as bad as that is for Israel, it’s not too healthy for the UN either. Omri points out that by politicizing UN institutions, the Palestinians delegitimize and destabilize them for their own ends. UNESCO is a good example:
The ultimately successful Palestinian campaign to join UNESCO is the critical precedent. It was opposed and criticized by the White House (“premature and undermines the international community’s shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East”); the State Department (“very clear redlines in U.S. legislation and that if those are crossed in UNESCO, that the legislation is triggered”) and Susan Rice (“today’s vote to grant Palestinian membership in UNESCO is no substitute for direct negotiations, but it is deeply damaging to UNESCO.”). The US immediately cut off its funding to UNESCO, costing the organization more than $78 million per year. The loss of 22% of its core budget has crippled UNESCO.
The Palestinians’ intentions with regard to the ICC also have potentially damaging implications:
The Hague would be torn between the anti-Israel politics of some member-states and relatively clear black-letter law. It would also bring the ICC into conflict with a range of U.S. institutions and laws, risking a diplomatic crisis in which the U.S. would use financial leverage and diplomatic capital to reassert its interests. Either scenario would badly damage the credibility and viability of the ICC and of international law.
Well, them’s the breaks. You can’t unilaterally declare statehood and co-opt international bodies for the purpose of ultimately destroying your eternal enemy without breaking eggs. Kerry, zany old coot that he is, has decided that Israeli-Palestinian peace is his personal mission, so he’ll keep twisting reality to suit him, and Abbas is smart enough to dangle just enough of a carrot in front of Kerry to keep hope alive. The only way this negotiations charade will finally limp to a close will be if Obama tells Kerry to knock it off, and that’s unlikely at best. The rest of the world’s conflicts give Obama the vapors, but he still sees “legacy” possibilities somewhere between Jerusalem and Ramallah.
Lucky us.
Published in General
Judith, what were these talks likely to yield? On one hand you have Palestinian society really unwilling to give up the right of return to places like Haifa and Jaffa, on the other hand you have what looks like Israeli de facto policy to incrementally settle as much of the land between the sea and the Jordan as they could (this map, and also Daniela Weiss [?] in this documentary – with settlers on the West Bank rising by 400 thousand since the Oslo agreement).
I don’t understand what Abbas thinks Palestinians will practically gain from going to the UN (anything?), but I don’t see what the Palestinians (as opposed to the PA) gain from these talks either – in fact it looks like they’ve lost by engaging in them.
The new website is amazing. But how do I contact you by email. Is this — commenting on an
article — the only way to reach you? –mjgsanibel@aol.com
How much longer, in terms of years, will ‘right of return’ be an issue, if generations pass untethered to the land in question? Can Israel just let time work in their favor here?
That does seem to be one of the objectives of prolonged talks : – ) So you can see why the Palestinians don’t gain from entering into them. Or at least that’s the perception.
MF: Someone ought to make a map of Native Indian controlled territory in the US over the last 250 years in the US. It will look a lot like these maps, wouldn’t it? In fact, here’s one version of such:
http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/the_sun_is_up/13064998/82417/original.jpg
Here’s another one showing Zafar’s image side-by-side:
http://www.stanforddaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/HonorTreaties-492×600.jpg
Ooooh, the white man speaks with forked tongue.
MF: Well you may know more on this subject, but from this vantage point the problem does not seems to be the ‘entering into’ talks, it seems rather that the Palestinians won’t concede anything.
Well yeah – but did the Native Americans gain from all those treaties or not? If they had had a real choice (and it’s unclear whether the Palestinians do) would they have been better off not going through these consecutive agreements then renegotiations then loss of more land?In the end what did they gain from it except scraps in return for legitimising their own conquest?
Looking at the map that doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference to their situation either way.
Zafar, you really ought to get Caroline Glick’s new book, “The Israeli Solution,” and read it before spouting off your lack of knowledge regarding what is going on in Israel. The PLA ruled by Abbas who has no authority to sign anything as his presidency was over in 2009, and who stays as a despot. The vast majority of the general population of the “West Bank” actually Judea and Samaria, want out. They do not want to be under Abbas or the PLA. And they are emigrating by the thousands to go anywhere there is a democracy rather than live under PLA. The demographics of the West Bank are a mix of Arab, Arab Christians, some Jews, and the Druse. Abbas ought to sit down and shut up as the only reason he is still alive is because the IDF protect him. There are about 180,000 of Abbas minions keeping him in power and the other few millions live in terror. BTW, when a Palestine marries an Israeli, and moves into Israel with their new spouse, they are offered an Israeli I.D. card and an opportunity for citizenship. Also Arabs do not enjoy the freedom of the press.
Well considering the precedents set by Israelis themselves, the right of return is perpetual. After all 2000 years of being displaced from Judea didn’t keep the Jews from claiming the land and returning.
Isn’t the history of the Native American’s proof that negotiating under these circumstances only leads to eventual defeat. Of course Native Americans now have been granted US citizen ship. I don’t think the Israelis want to grant that to all Palestinians.
Presumably, Obama will waive the laws you cite. In all likelihood, those laws actually do have provisions allowing presidential waiver (as in the case of the Jerusalem embassy law).
Zafar seems to ignore what happened in 2000, when, at peace talks sponsored by Clinton, Israel and Clinton offered a solution that was rejected by the Palestinians. Israel agreed to give the Palestinians 97 percent of the West Bank and complete control of Gaza. To compensate for the 3 percent Israel would keep, Israel would increase the size of the Gaza territory by roughly a third. Further, Arab East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new Palestinian state. Refugees from 1948 their descendants would have the right of return to the Palestinian state. 100,000 refuges would be able to Israel. Accordingly, the suggestion that Israel has been playing a waiting game is simply wrong. Had the Palestinians accepted the 2000 peace proposal, there would now be a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with Arab East Jerusalem as its capital.
Technically, that 1949-67 map should have no land marked as Palestinian.
I’ll leave it to others to address that pre-1948 map.
Blue Yeti: #13 above has no bottom action line. Have the Dems or the Chinese already hacked our system?
The entire series of maps is deceptive. The 1946 map shows the portion of the British Mandate the British set aside for a Jewish state after the creation of the Arab Transjordan east of the Jordan. It also assumes all the land not part of specific Jewish settlements is Palestinian when in fact the overwhelming majority of it was uninhabited. A more accurate depiction would show Jewish vs Arab settlements.
The Partition map was rejected by the Arabs and their resulting defeat led to the loss of the land originally set aside for an Arab state.
The 1949-67 map incorrectly shows areas controlled by Egypt and Jordan as Palestine. Jordan and Egypt lost this territory in Israel in another war of aggression.
Sorry but when you lose a war you started, you do not get to complain about the territory you lost as a result.
MF: And the last dictum would sorta also apply to the Turks after WWI, issuing in the Balfour Amendment, wouldn’t it?
What America did/has done to the native peoples who were here in the period of conquest (the ordinary playing out of history for millennia) was far worse than what was done to the Palestinians, who have always been residents, never landlords, in Palestine. Modern Palestinian leaders have refused to concede anything—not even Jewish statehood—and it seems that most every time the Israelis concede something (like hundreds of settlers being forcibly removed from their homes by the Israeli military) the militarist Palestinians respond by shooting missiles at Jewish suburbs. No doubt the Israelis have treated Palestinians poorly, but they are forever provoked. If historical residency is the guiding principle/force here, as Palestinian leaders claim, then the Jews (and after them, Christians) have the best claim to being of Palestine. And what about Jewish return to Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq?—just a few of the territories where Palestinian Jews fled and established thriving communities after being permanently exiled from Jerusalem in 135 c.e. (BTW, as Shaye Cohen has demonstrated, the exiled Jews, known as People of the Book, attracted just as many converts as did the early Christians.) The Palestinians are celebrities more than victims.
While we are at it, how about Muslims ceding back the entire Middle East to Christians and Jews. After all, the Mohammedans conquered that land nigh 1500 years ago, and converted/killed/evicted the inhabitants thereof.
You are wrong, there was always a predominance of Jews in Israel. In the 7th century the Muslims invaded and took over the Jews and Christians alike. In 1922 the League of Nations granted the Jewish people sovereign rights to Judea and Samaria and the rest of Israel. Jordan was set aside for the Arabs/Palestinians. From the end of WWI through 1948 the British were in charge. This league set up the mandatory system as a means of controlling the colonial possession of the Ottoman Empire and to prepare them for statehood. However I’ve mentioned this in other threads.
Where in the world did you expect them to go in 1945+ after the Europeans had slaughtered 6 millions of them, confiscated their homes and property, left them literally near naked, sick, and starving. 900,000 Jews were thrown out of Arab countries with only the clothing on their backs.
All are entitled to their own opinions; but not entitled to their own facts.
I’m beginning to see a glass half full aspect to this decision. If this move aids in eliminating the ludicrous farce known as the ICC so much the better.
The British Foreign Secretary issued the Balfour Declaration, not the Turks.
Kay: I don’t think I put Jewish desires or claims on the land in question in a negative light. I was only pointing out that for the vast diaspora even 2000 years of living elsewhere did not diminish their claims or desires. Likewise I don’t think a mere 70 years will remove the desires or claims of Palestinians on lands they inhabited that are now in Israel.
As to the predominance of Jews in Israel before WWII I can not say. I certainly know they where there, and Jews have been there since the days of the old Kingdom, but have they always been a majority? That I think is debatable, and I hear plenty of contrasting facts about that. As you point out Israel has seen vast amounts of imigration. How many Israelis can claim half their great grand fathers were born in Israel, vs Palestinians? Either way should it make a difference?
Over at the Commentary blog, Rick Richman asks several pertinent questions about this insane “process”:
Good questions. Read his entire post here.
Judith, when are you going to do another “International Edition” where you have a guest like Kramer or Rubin (or whoever from Commentary, etc.) talk about this, and including Michael Oren’s own proposal for Israels responsive unilateral “Plan B”?
God bless you Kay of MT, but the ability to have a calm, fact-based discussion on this subject, with me at least, doesn’t seem to be among the gifts he gave you. We should all re-check facts that we assume are true – especially when they affirm our view of ourselves and our biases/prejudices – but right now I fear your mouth is working for the opposition.
Beleaguered Conservative: “Zafar seems to ignore what happened in 2000, when, at peace talks sponsored by Clinton, Israel and Clinton offered a solution that was rejected by the Palestinians.”
It foundered on the right of return. Or do the Palestinians have to accept any deal that’s offered to them? Israel rejects the right of return for all refugees – does that make Israel solely responsible for the failure of talks?
And since then:
Annie Robbins says “It’s the borders, stupid”:
Reuters’ journalist Noah Browning in Middle East peace talks face new challenge after Abbas’s defiant move:
Yasser Abed Rabbo, deputy head of the PLO, cautioned on Wednesday against simply returning to an “empty routine” at the negotiating table. He reaffirmed that Palestinians wanted talks to focus on setting the future borders of their state.
“We can’t return to the empty routine, a search for a framework for talks – this empty routine which is negotiating about negotiating,” he told reporters.
Continuing the talks beyond the end of this month, he said, “must proceed from and depend on one main point, and this is looking into the issue of borders“.
I was merely endorsing the prior, defensible claim that “to the victor go the spoils.” The Turks lost, the Brits won, ergo etc., etc., …
Actually they were ‘paid’ in cash, prisoners, freezes of settlement construction etc. to not go to the UN for nine months. Once Israel indicated that all prisoners would not be released, as per the agreement, why would the Palestinians feel obliged to keep their end of the bargain? I understand that Netanyahu has his political compulsions, but so does any polity, including the Palestinians’.
Is there a single good reason that the Palestinians and Israelis cannot have peace talks after the Palestinians join the UN? Lots of countries that are members of the UN still manage to hold peace talks – why not Israel and Palestine?