Showdown Over Palestinian State
With the Middle East peace process in free fall, leaders from every side are desperate to reverse the past year of war, broken promises, and frigid relations. But soaring tensions are propelling the region towards a showdown.
Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, told reporters that the Palestinian Authority is setting guidelines for a Palestinian state to present to the UN Security Council, the ultimate goal being international recognition.
"Now is our defining moment,” he said. “We went into this peace process in order to achieve a two-state solution. The endgame is to tell the Israelis that now the international community has recognized the two-state solution on the '67 borders.”
“God willing, we will soon have an independent state with its capital in Jerusalem,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told a Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) conference in Algeria.
Despite the bravado, Palestinian officials claim they have no intentions of hurrying their decision. Nimr Hamad, an adviser to Abbas, told Maariv, “We want the Security Council to discuss this only after we've been given assurances. There is no point in rushing just so that we collide with an American veto."
Caution must be exercised during such a momentous endeavor, especially when conflict is inevitable. The US position won’t support any initiative that excludes Israeli input, a message Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is driving home.
“There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” he told an audience in Jerusalem that included American senators, “and any unilateral attempts outside that framework will unravel the existing agreements between us and could entail unilateral steps by Israel.”
Israeli officials, notably Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, expressed similar opposition, and they’re correct in believing negotiations have no substitute. Unilateralism is a recipe for instability, not conflict resolution, except Netanyahu is playing the wrong card in Palestine.
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