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Unilateral Palestinian Statehood Move Dismissed
“What is the solution for us?” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked reporters Tuesday in Cairo. “To remain suspended like this, not in peace?” Getty Images by Joshua Mitnick Political analysts interpreted the suggestion as a sign of weariness on the part of the Palestinian Authority, which is frustrated with the inability to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. “What is the solution for us?” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked reporters Tuesday in Cairo. “To remain suspended like this, not in peace?” Dror Bar Yosef, an expert on Palestinian politics at the Center for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem, said the move is a sign of the growing despair of the Palestinian people. No peace talks have been held since 
“This is only a call for help — to show how bad things are — and that they are not progressing,” he said, adding that he does not believe the Palestinians would make good on their threat of unilaterally declaring statehood. And the threat was dismissed by Sweden, which currently serves as the rotating president of the European Union. It said conditions are not ripe for a unilateral declaration of independence. “The Palestinian plan is clearly an act borne by a difficult situation where they don’t see any road ahead,” said Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt. The U.S. State Department was equally dismissive, saying Palestinian sovereignty will be best achieved through bilateral rather than unilateral actions. This is not the first time such a threat has been raised. In 1999 when the peace process also appeared at an impasse, then Palestinian President Yasir Arafat warned that he might simply declare that a Palestinian state existed. But Hillel Frisch, a political science professor at Bar-Ilan University, said the threat today carries far less weight because Iran and Afghanistan are more prominent on the U.S. agenda. “Today the Palestinian issue is one of five or six major issues, and certainly not the most important one to the U.S.,” he said. “This threat is going to leave them worse off because it’s going to prove to be an empty threat; it’s going to weaken their case.” The Islamic terrorist group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, also rejected the PA initiative and pointed out that Arafat had actually declared a Palestinian state in 1988. A Hamas spokesman was quoted as saying that any Palestinian state should encompass not just the West Bank and Gaza, but all that is now Israel. Taking the Palestinian drive for statehood to the United Nations could ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Israel by shifting the conflict to a body where the Jewish state is usually outnumbered. Such international recognition of a Palestinian state on land captured by Israel in 1967 would make Israel’s control of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, including the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, illegal under international law. “Palestine would be recognized as a sovereign state, and we will be seen as occupying sovereign Palestinian territory rather than the occupied West Bank, which doesn’t have a clear definition under international law,” said Yossi Alpher, a co-editor of the Israeli-Palestinian opinion journal BitterLemons.org who nonetheless also predicted that international recognition of such a move would be highly unlikely. In rejecting the Palestinian threat, Netanyahu told a conference in Jerusalem: “There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side.” One Likud Knesset member suggested that Israel might formally annex some Jewish West Bank settlements, which prompted a Labor Party leader to threaten to withdraw his party from the government should that happen. Alpher said Israel could also cancel economic relations with Palestinians in the West Bank — whose economy has continued to grow despite a worldwide economic downturn. In addition, he said, Israel could cut electricity and health services. Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat insisted that the appeal to the UN is meant to “preserve” the West Bank for Palestinians because Israeli settlements continue to expand. On Tuesday, after Israel approved the building of another 850 housing units in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, Erekat reportedly said the action “shows that it is meaningless to resume negotiations when this goes on.” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat was quoted as saying he would not halt either Jewish or Arab construction in any part of Jerusalem and that it is “illegal” to impose a freeze just on Jewish construction. A Palestinian government spokesman, Ghassan Khatib, said this other approach to achieving Palestinian statehood is being explored because the “bilateral approach is reaching a deadlock.” “Isn’t the UN the international forum to deal with conflict and crises, especially when the bilateral forum isn’t working?” he asked. The Palestinian threat is likely to play well among Palestinians, according to Nashat Aqtash, a professor of communications at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. “From the Palestinian point of view the negotiations are never-ending, and they have failed,” he explained. “It’s about time to bring it to the UN. There is a good chance for the plan to pass. If not it will be a very clear message from the world to the Palestinians that negotiations can never achieve a peaceful settlement.” But Bar Yosef of the Center for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem said the PA initiative may be only a delaying tactic before the Palestinians make use of their most potent threat against Israel: pushing for one bi-national state. “They know that this is Israel’s worst fear,” he said. Such a move would mark a major shift in the strategy of the Palestine Liberation Organization over the last two decades, which has formally backed a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It would also mark a departure from the two-state plan of Palestinian Foreign Minister Salam Fayyad to slowly build up the institutions for a sovereign Palestinian government. Although Bar Yosef said the Palestinian public is no more keen on the idea of a bi-national state than Israeli Jews, he said it may gain traction in the future because of demographic trends predicting a Palestinian majority in all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean within two decades. “It means that Israel will not be a Jewish state,” he said, adding that Palestinians would then be able to claim Israel is “racist” and “apartheid.” Although the threat of statehood is being widely rejected, Bar Yosef said the Obama administration might use it as leverage to get both Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. In another development, the UN nuclear watchdog group, the International Atomic Energy Agency, raised concerns this week that the West’s discovery of a uranium enrichment site near Qom suggests that there may be other secret nuclear sites in Iran. And it noted that Iran has not been forthcoming about the Qom site, saying at first that construction was started in 2007 even though the agency had evidence it was started in 2002. In addition, the agency said Iran had failed to provide full and credible answers to demonstrate that the Qom plant is only for civilian purposes. Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was quoted by an Indian news agency as saying this week that a U.S.-backed plan to enrich Iran’s nuclear fuel rods in other countries was a positive development if it could be tweaked a little. Although the original proposal had the support of several Western nations, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told The Jewish Week that he distrusts the Iranians. “I don’t believe them ... and I will never believe them,” he said, adding that he does not believe the IAEA has the ability to learn the real truth of the Iranian nuclear program. Iran insists it is for peaceful purposes; the West believes Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb. Shalom was in the U.S. to address the national conference of the Jewish National Fund. In addition to vice prime minister, he is also minister of development of the Negev and Galilee and works closely with JNF and its projects in those areas. Staff Writer Stewart Ain contributed to this report.
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