A Palestinian State?

There is an international and domestic political train wreck that could happen in September of this year.

Here’s the situation. The Palestinians are working toward the recognition of a Palestinian State by the United Nations and expect things to mature sometime in September. What the Right Wing has missed, or chosen to ignore, about Obama’s recent speech was his statement opposing such a course of action.

Despite all of the hullabaloo, stating that the 1967 borders was the starting point of negotiations is not a change in U.S. policy. Stating that the U.S. opposes the U.N. initiative was the important point and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, blew it by ignoring this critical point and harping on the 1967 borders thing. I suspect he did that as a play to his Right Wing supporters here in the U.S.

The Palestinians need 128 votes in the General Assembly to approve a Palestinian state by voting it admission to the U.N. They currently have 112 votes but hope to increase that number to 130 or 140 by September.

Of course, first they have to get the resolution to the General Assembly. In order to do that, the 15 member Security Council must first vote for statehood and the U.S. has veto power in the Security Council. All the Palestinian votes in the General Assembly are useless as long as the U.S. vetoes the resolution.

So, what’s the point?

The Palestinians are hoping they can pressure Obama by staging protests for independence and reform similar to those in Tunisia and Egypt. The Palestinians ask, “what would be the argument of President Barack Obama in trying really to disregard this wish?”

Duh, the argument would be domestic U.S. politics. There is no way a sitting U.S. President would not order the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. to veto this resolution unless a previous agreement with Israel had been reached. According to Gallup, a whopping 63% of Americans say their sympathies are with Israel in the Mideast spat against only 17% that sympathize with the Palestinians. The remaining 20% claim to be neutral.

The Palestinians U.N. diplomat, Riyad Mansour, said if the negotiations didn’t work, the Palestinians had “other tactics” available. He didn’t expand on what these “other tactics” might be but did make the point that neither Israel in 1948 nor the U.S. in 1776 “negotiated” their independence.

Personally I think such threats are hollow. The Palestinians can’t win independence through violence. That would only lose them supporters. They need to figure out a way to get U.S. support. The problem of course is the U.S. will not publically meet with the Palestinians without Israeli participation.

The Palestinians have made no headway in U.S. public opinion. As a matter of fact the current 63% is pretty to a record support level. They’ve actually lost ground. In the 1990s a lot of Americans claimed to be neutral.

Personally, my sympathies are evenly divided. I feel sorry for the Palestinians but I can’t bring myself to support people that strap bombs onto teenage girls in order to kill other teenage girls in grocery stores. If you want to fight, then wage war on the Israeli army and not on children.

On the other hand, the Israelis deserve to live in peace but that doesn’t excuse some of their current tactics either. It seems to me that the Palestinians are doing a lot of dying over there because the Israelis tend to be a tad heavy handed.

So at the moment I find both sides both sympathetic and reprehensible. Therefore I stand neutral.