The ball is back in the Palestinians’ court.
The upshot of last week’s Lollapalooza of speechmaking at the United Nations is that the Obama administration has succeeded in persuading the international community to back the resumption of talks without preconditions — a key demand of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
A statement released Sept. 23 by the Quartet — the grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that guides Middle East peacemaking — reiterated its “urgent appeal to the parties to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions.”
The statement came just hours after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered a fiery address to the U.N. General Assembly demanding statehood recognition and setting as a condition for renewed talks a “complete cessation of settlement activity.”
Abbas’ request for Palestinian statehood recognition was slated to be officially announced at the Security Council on Sept. 28, and the council’s 15-nation committee on the admission of new members was expected to hold its first private informal meeting on the matter on Friday, Sept. 30. But a vote on the request could be days or even weeks away.
A few weeks ago, it seemed that the United States would be forced to use its veto at the Security Council to quash the Palestinian bid. But now it’s far from clear the Palestinians will be able to muster the nine votes needed to prompt a U.S. veto — as the United States no longer seems to be the lone “no” vote on the Security Council.
“If a vote was held today, the Palestinians wouldn’t have enough votes to carry the day and the Americans wouldn’t even need to use their veto,” one Western diplomat told Reuters.
“The very fact that it’s even in play is a major achievement by U.S. diplomacy, supported by Israeli diplomacy and Jewish NGO diplomacy,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, which held an estimated 350 to 400 separate meetings in advance of last week’s United Nations activity.
The meetings by AJC and others began months before the General Assembly. The goal was to pressure, sway, cajole and beseech governments from Washington to Libreville, Gabon, to line up against the unilateral Palestinian statehood bid.
A secondary goal was to ensure as little attention as possible was paid to the so-called Durban III conference, the event that marked the 10th anniversary of the 2001 U.N. anti-racism conference in South Africa that served to rally anti-Israel forces.
Indeed, the Durban III confab in New York Sept. 22 was boycotted by 15 countries — and mostly ignored by the media.
But did countries skip Durban III because of lobbying by Jewish groups, or did they decide it wasn’t in their interests to be part of a farcical process where notorious human rights violators such as Zimbabwe could herald their records fighting racism? Did media outlets fail to give much attention to Durban III because the Jews had discredited it, or because it didn’t merit much ink or airtime compared with the other big stories of the week?
“If someday the history is written, believe me we played an essential role,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, which aims to be the Jewish community’s voice on issues of foreign policy.
Jewish groups and their allies continued to press General Assembly members right up until the start of Rosh Hashanah this week. Their aim was to oppose the unilateral Palestinian bid, even though a General Assembly resolution endorsing Palestinian statehood is practically assured passage.
Abbas said that if his bid with the Security Council was rejected, the Palestinians would turn to the General Assembly to raise their status as a permanent observer to a nonmember observer state — and resubmit the application.
Meanwhile, in his speech to the General Assembly last week, Netanyahu offered something new: a public declaration that he was ready to abide by parameters set out by President Barack Obama in his May 19 speech that called on the sides to negotiate borders using the 1967 lines, with agreed-upon land swaps, as the basis.
Netanyahu was backing away from his previous insistence that Israel could not abide such conditions, but he was also paying back Obama for a Sept. 21 U.N. speech deemed favorable to Israel.
“Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it,” Obama told the General Assembly. “Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than 8 million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that 6 million people were killed simply because of who they are.
“Those are facts. They cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland.”
It remains to be seen how the U.N. week will play out in the immediate future. Upon returning home, Abbas and Netanyahu both received adulatory welcomes from their respective publics for speeches that included charges of “ethnic cleansing” on both sides.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress stepped up demands to cut off approximately $600 million in aid received annually by the Palestinian Authority, both because of Abbas’ statehood bid and because of talks with Hamas aimed at setting up a unity government.
But Israel and some of its closest allies are quietly pushing back against an assistance cutoff, saying security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been key to maintaining the quiet in the West Bank.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.