Pundits dubbed Mahmoud Abbas's speech at the UN as historic and described Obama's stance against Palestine's UN membership as hypocritical and bankrupt. In the London-based daily Al-Hayat, Jihad Al-Khazen congratulates Palestinians for victory in the UN after President Abbas's speech. In "Palestine's jubilation at the United Nations" Al-Khazen wrote that despite the fact that Israel will most definitely attempt to thwart the decision of this majority, while the United States will attempt to circumvent it, Palestine's request will not be ignored. "I have attended every annual session of the UN General Assembly for 33 years now, and therefore I know what I'm talking about, and I have never heard applause that lasted more than, or that was louder than, the one President Mahmoud Abbas received, that Palestine received. Nor have I seen anything like the standing ovation he was given, when the members of the delegations stood applauding and cheering, as though the new member was their own country." He also referred to the many times which members of delegations applauded, interrupting Abbas's speech. Al-Khazen cites the time when they applauded and cheered when Abbas referred to Yasser Arafat's speech at the General Assembly in 1974, when the former Palestinian leader said, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand". And when Abbas said that the goal of the Palestinian people is the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, over all the territories occupied by Israel in June 1967, they applauded, as when he said that "our people will continue their peaceful resistance against the Israeli occupation." Al-Khazen wrote, "The glorious day, Friday 23 September 2011, was a jubilee for Palestine at the United Nations." "The session restored my faith in humanity. It was clear that the peoples of the world reject oppression and that they dare stand against it, even when Israel and the United States are attempting to stop the march of history," Al-Khazen wrote. He said that he was overcome with tears as he listened to Abu Mazen's speech, and that he found that many eyes were tearful as well, and not all those who were crying were Arabs and Muslims. "It was a day where Palestine triumphed over Israeli barbarism, and Abu Mazen put Netanyahu in the dustbin of history, even before he opened his mouth to lie. Congratulations to Palestine and the Palestinians. Congratulations to us all," Al-Khazen wrote. In his article in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat Tariq Al-Homayed wrote that the simplest way to describe Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations was that it was "bankrupt, laden with contradictions". In 'Obama: A bankrupt speech', Al-Homayed wrote that while President Obama paid tribute to the awakening Arab street, he also stressed the importance of the security of Israel. "This is strange," Al-Homayed wrote. He explained that if Obama recognises that the Arabs are yearning for freedom and democracy, and declares that his country is standing with them, "then how can he denounce the Palestinians demanding their own state in the United Nations? Why is freedom deemed to be an entitlement for all Arabs and Israelis, while it is denied the Palestinians?" Al-Homayed charged that it has become clear to the Arabs that Obama is not capable of producing peace, and that he cannot abide by what he said to the Arabs when he spoke to them in Cairo at the beginning of his term in office. "If Washington uses its veto, Obama will have stabbed a dagger into the Arabs at the peak of their momentum," Al-Homayed wrote. In Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Abdel-Bari Atwan wrote that recognition of Palestine as an observer member, or a full member if obtained, will be a "moral victory" but "will not change anything on the ground" despite all attempts to "beautify it by the media machine accompanying the president." However Atwan is aware that in the age of defeats and official Palestinian "no-action", "small victories are blown out of proportion." According to Atwan, President Abbas went to the UN to obtain recognition of "an imaginary state without territories, borders, or sovereignty" from a position of despair and not a position of strength. Atwan explained that this happened after Abbas became strongly convinced "after 20 years of humiliating and ignominious negotiations of the impossibility of an independent Palestinian state that was supposed to crown the Oslo agreement or be its outcome." "He, President Abbas, therefore decided that history will remember him, even in one line, as the one who achieved this state at least on paper after which he would retire from the Palestine Authority assured of having made some achievement," Atwan claims. In "Obama's hypocrisy on Palestine" Atwan wrote that he wished that President Abbas would have added to his UN speech a sentence that told President Obama that he was "interfering with airplanes, missiles, and NATO in LibyaIraq, and Afghanistan to support peoples and their battle for liberation while you intervene to use the veto against the Palestinian people to deny them basic rights which you were the first to recognise." And that he is asking Palestinians to "reach their state through negotiations with their enemies and that is something you did not say to the Libyans, Iraqis and others." "Enough hypocrisy," Atwan wrote. In its editorial, the Palestinian daily Al-Quds wrote that what happened in the UN "was a great diplomatic and moral victory." The editorial added that "the great popular reception given by tens of thousands of Palestinians to Abu Mazen when he returned from the UN shows the national consensus on the president's move." The editorial also referred to Palestinian celebrations in all parts of the occupied territories and in the diaspora as "a testimony that all Palestinians demand that the international community support the Palestinian Spring in the same way that they did the Arab Spring."
