Palestine’s UN gambit
Abbas’s announcement that he will seek UN approval for a Palestinian state and a seat at that august institution is hardly surprising. Israel’s position during the Obama years has been understood by the world to have been significantly weakened, because so many of Obama’s actions (insulting Netanyahu, for example) have telegraphed that his commitment to Israel is exceedingly squishy compared to that of his predecessors. In addition, so much of his Middle East policy has transmitted a sense of a drifting and powerless administration that no one respects or fears, no matter what its intentions—which are nearly impossible to divine.
And without the US as stalwart friend, Israel is more isolated than ever. The Palestinian PR campaign has been remarkably effective. Support for its agenda has only increased in the nearly forty years since the Munich massacre of 1972 gained Yasser Arafat the prestige and privilege of addressing the UN a scant two years later, empty gun holster and all:
Apart from Pope Paul VI, Arafat is the only person who does not represent a government ever to address the plenary Assembly. The Pontiff had a claim to legitimacy as head of a state; he is ruler of Vatican City. Arafat heads a heterogeneous organization whose popular strength is untested, but the Arab nations nonetheless greeted him as a conquering hero.
Except for a brief moment at the beginning of Israel’s existence, when the UN voted to partition the former British colony into two states, one Palestinian and one Israeli (a partition the Israelis accepted and the Palestinians rejected, leading to war), the UN has been the stalwart champion of the Palestinians. This latest move is only the most recent in a long long line of actions in which the UN is nearly obsessed with condemning Israel; you’d almost think it was the UN’s main function.
Abbas seems a bit surprised that the Obama administration appears determined to hold to America’s usual support for Israel through a Security Council veto. But such a move is hardly surprising; even Obama is not prepared to abandon Israel so publicly and break precedent so openly.
Equally unsurprising are the responses of pundits such as Friedman of the Times to the Abbas move and the US reaction. It’s the Israel lobby holding the US hostage, yada yada yada. If you read the comments section after Friedman’s piece, you’ll see that’s the acceptable party line now, not a fringe opinion (as Glenn Greenwald approvingly points out here).
Nothing much may come of the UN gambit except more PR. The US will veto the action in the Security Council. If Abbas chooses to go to the General Assembly, he will win the vote, but the win doesn’t seem particularly meaningful in practical terms. It will probably only serve to further convince Israel of how alone it is, as though it needed any convincing at this point.
[NOTE: See also this and this.
Oh, and a prediction: just watch the trolls come. They nearly always do when Israel is the topic.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETO3-MxMe2Q
Seriously though, Wretchard points to Lee Smith at Tablet and notes:
“Lee Smith in Tablet Magazine notes that President Obama’s “sophisticated policy” towards Israel has created a gap through which the Palestinian state is now going to slip. The US promises to veto a UN vote to recognize Palestine, but the mere fact it has gotten so far has now created a slippery slope down which some future politician is going to tumble down. And that probably means trouble. It may mean future war. And yet it all began with framing the question.”
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/09/19/countersign/#more-17312
The NY Post had a short blurb about the so-called “Palestinian” delegation arriving in NYC over the weekend and that they were all dining at Cipriani. Great restaurant, but certainly not Halal.
Israel is not the “Israel” of 1947-1948.
Netanyahu gets it, but it seems a growing segment
of Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere do not.
The “Can’t we all just get along” attitude means you get slaughtered.
Have a Palestinian state. Fine. The minute Hamas or whoever launches a rocket, that is a declaration. of war by an established state. Israel invades and drives them into the sea.
As for Tom Friedman latma says it all at minute 3:55 at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MffXBqfC-CU
As for the positive responses to his article: One of the misfortunes about living in a prosperous and peaceful country is that many harmful biological traits are allowed to continue instead of being selected for extinction. We, who are more realistic about the world, can take advantage of this situation by using these people as prey, that is food in times of scarcity.
As for the Palestinians, look at their society, rotten, amoral, corrupt, backward, delusional, weak, poor, born only as a stick to hit Israel, no identity besides hatred of Israel. No unique anything that does not include Israel. This is what is up against what must be one of the most successful states in history. All their victories are hollow.
As for Israel being isolated, looks can be deceiving.
geran,
“Netanyahu gets it, but it seems a growing segment of Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere do not.”
No, that’s not the situation in my country.
The Israeli Jew in the street gets it, by and large. In the street, the events of the 2000s decade (beginning with the October 2000 Intifada) have decimated the land-concessionist Israeli Jewish Left.
The ones who don’t get it among Israeli Jews are, overwhelmingly, the same suspects as in the U.S.: Mainstream media and academe. Although Haaretz is usually brought up as the egregious example of a “Hebrew-language Arab newspaper,” the others (Yediot Ahronot / YNet, Maariv) are little better. As for the universities, words fail; even Bar-Ilan, stronghold of the Religious Zionist Right, has its fifth-columnists.
As for Netanyahu–and our politicians in general: Some of them get it, but nobody has the guts to go far enough. Netanyahu, like George W. “Islam is a religion of peace” Bush, is beholden to the bounds of political correctness. None of them shares the opinion of the majority of the Israeli Jewish populace, that “world opinion” and international “law” should be trodden underfoot for the sake of Jewish survival. Israel’s greatest peril, therefore, lies not intrinsically in the hostility of the Arabs (which is a constant), but in the lack of leadership that places Jewish survival above all.
Gringo,
“The minute Hamas or whoever launches a rocket, … Israel invades and drives them into the sea.”
World opinion doesn’t care who the aggressor here really is. Israel is deemed the aggressor by nature, by virtue of being a “colonial settler state, stealing the land of the indigenous.” Out of this predicament there is no way but to change the narrative–to disseminate the Jewish point of view that the Jews are the indigenous Palestinians while the Arabs are the settler-colonial invaders. The Jewish State, in its legal capacity as a state, will need to force the hostile media outlets (both home and abroad) to cease and desist from airing the Arab narrative, and to air the Jewish narrative instead. The MSM declared war on Zionism long ago, so it’s only fair for the Jewish State to make the MSM outlets atone for their treachery by working for Israel.
Nice history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict:
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/09/20/video-a-brief-history-of-the-israeli-palestinian-conflict/
Why, does natural selection, not apply in this case.
(Bob from Virginia: “born only as a stick to hit Israel,” wow, great summation.)
Most Israelis now get it – that the Palis never intended to make peace, but to slice us up gradually like salami.
Netanyahu is hampered by his coalition – left-wing boob Ehud Barak is currently our Defense Minister – and by the Chattering Classes of Israel.
Center-right Israelis have debated for decades exactly what Netanyahu is made of: is he a squishy middle-of-the-road waffler, or a closet hard-core Likudnik hemmed in by the Israeli left?
We are about to find out.
Americans complain about RINOs – Republican candidates who simply go along with left-wing Dem policies. We have something similar here in Israel – after decades of socialist hegemony (and continued left-wing control of media, academia, and courts) the mainstream nationalist party (Likud) gets knock-kneed even when elected into power. It really doesn’t dawn on them that they can countermand the left-wing elite under which they’ve grown up.
This is very frustrating to a growing number of Israelis – Likud first came to power in the 1970s and there is now a young cohort of voters who never experienced the all-powerful Labor party of Israel’s early years.
Unfortunately that generation is not yet holding the reins of power.
Netanyahu has been exposed to American conservatism, but he has also shown himself reluctant to shift the gears of Israeli society – privatization and market reforms proceed at a snail’s pace, for example.
The Likud government could, with the stroke of a pen, liberalize the media and sell off the remaining government TV channel – which is virulently left-wing. Why don’t they? They are cowed by the Left’s projection of power, even though the Israeli left is a shell of its former self.
The more hawkish wing of Likud sees this as an opportunity to end the fiasco of the Oslo “peace” era. Whether they’ll have the will to follow through on it…
Curtis, stupid people are protected in the US, and pampered by the MSM, hence they are allowed to reproduce. In a more natural environment their stupidity would make them easy prey and subsequently extinct.