Mahmoud Abbas's triumph at the United Nations was also a failure, writes Graham Usher at the UN On 23 September Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas laid out his people's case to become a member state of the United Nations and was rapturously received, if only within a packed General Assembly. "This is a moment of truth," he said. "Our people are waiting to hear the answer of the world. Will it allow Israel to occupy us forever? I can't believe anyone with a shred of conscience can reject our membership of the UN." There are powerful states which can. No sooner had Abbas submitted his bid to the Security Council than Western powers scrambled to contain it. The so-called Middle East Quartet (the United States, European Union, Russia and UN), anxious to avoid an American veto, called for Israel and the Palestinians to meet within a month and reach a peace agreement in a year. The proposal has been tried in the past. It will fail this time too. The Palestinians say there can be no return to talks unless they are based on the 1967 armistice lines and accompanied by a "complete" freeze on settlements. The Quartet statement mentions neither. Abbas has signaled he won't press immediately for a vote, hoping for other "options" to emerge. One had been proposed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy. This accepted the Quartet's timeline but called for more "collective" control of negotiations because no "single country [read: the US]... can resolve so complex a problem." He also called for Palestine to become a non-member observer state at the UN, obviating the need for a US veto. But this hinged on Abbas not going to the Security Council and vowing not to use any new "observer state status" to prosecute Israel on UN bodies like the International Criminal Court. Abbas refused. In response, France withdrew its proposal and backed the Quartet statement. The Palestinians as of now have only six of the 15 member states on the Security Council backing their membership application: that's not enough to force a vote. That's precisely where America and, it seems, the EU want the bid kept. These moves expose the confusion at the heart of the Palestinians' UN gambit: is it a tactic to improve their bargaining position in any return to Oslo-like talks, as the Sarkozy trade would suggest? Or is it a new strategy that breaks with the Oslo model of US control and Israeli power, in favour of a new diplomacy based on UN oversight and international law? At the General Assembly, it looked like a new strategy. Abbas is not a good speaker. Yet he eloquently described the origins of the Israeli-Arab conflict in his people's dispossession; how the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) came to accept a two-state solution; how that solution has been all but wrecked by Israel's settlement policies; and how the time had come for a new paradigm for negotiations, with "a greater and more effective role for the UN". He received a standing ovation. Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu is a good speaker. He called for peace talks without preconditions only to then impose terms (such as a permanent Israeli security presence in a future Palestinian state and an upfront recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state") that would render negotiations effete. He got sparse applause, apart from the US delegation, which was enthusiastic during his speech and silent during Abbas's. That spoke volumes. The US has vowed to veto any Palestinian vote at the Security Council. In his address United States President Barack Obama not only rehearsed every Israeli argument against the bid; he adopted the Israeli narrative on the conflict. "Peace is hard," he said, "because Israel is surrounded by neighbours that have waged repeated wars against it". He made no mention of settlements or the occupation or even that, since 2002, the entire Arab world has offered Israel a full peace if it fully withdraws from occupied Arab land. It was the most pro-Israeli speech ever made by a US president at the UN, said a veteran Jewish American commentator. PLO official Hanan Ashrawi said it was the reason "why we are going to the UN". The danger is that they may get trapped there. Abbas cannot accept the Quartet statement without doing enormous harm to his new stature among Palestinians. But to reject it outright would alienate Russia, the EU and UN, powers he believes essential to counterweight the US monopoly over the negotiations. His weakness is compounded by two other flaws in his policy. Abbas got a hero's welcome when he returned to Ramallah. But the stage-managed West Bank rallies contrasted poorly with the minuscule Palestinian gatherings in favour of the bid in occupied Jerusalem, Israel and the diaspora, let alone the non-existent demonstrations in Hamas-ruled Gaza, testimony to Abbas's failure to ground the new UN policy in a genuine national consensus. He also said in Ramallah that the UN bid was "the Palestinian spring". In fact in New York he and his team only paid lip service to those movements and states most associated with the Arab uprisings. When the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the UN not a single member of the Palestinian delegation was in attendance. This is stupid, even tactically. The reason Palestinian independence is back on the international agenda is because of the Arab revolts: if the Europeans are once more engaged, it is not out of concern with the Palestinians' plight than because "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could become an issue on the Arab street", admitted an EU diplomat. It's also clear states like Turkey and any new democratic Arab governments will play a bigger role in making Palestinian independence a keystone of the new regional order than deals struck with Nicolas Sarkozy. Abbas knows this, which would account for his new defiance against the US. But by history and temperature he belongs to the old Arab order of Pax Americana. He is wise enough to admit that the Oslo process he led for 18 years has reached a ford in the river. It is less clear whether he is the man who can lead his people across it. (see p.10)
