The crises in Palestine and Syria have exposed only the Security Council's indecision, writes Graham Usher at the UN After the drama of the Palestinians' bid for full UN membership, power politics has reverted to the usual rut of inaction on the Security Council. Six months since the Syrian revolution began the council has still to develop a united response, despite the death of 2,700 Syrians and abuse of thousands more. And the Palestinian bid remains snared on the same reef that has prevented peace talks for over a year: Israel's relentless settlement policies, especially in occupied Jerusalem. The Palestinian bid was always bound for inertia, at least in the short term. On 28 September it was referred by the council to a committee assessing whether "Palestine" could become a UN member state. Few experts doubt the West Bank Palestinian Authority (PA) has most of the attributes of sovereignty. Even fewer think the committee will make a decision. The PA currently has six out of the council's 15 members backing its bid. It needs nine to force a vote. Even if it gets the nine it knows the move will be vetoed by the United States, which has vowed to defend Israel on the council. But the US knows a veto will do real harm to its already tarnished stock in the region. For these reasons neither the PA nor the US wants the bid to come to a vote anytime soon, preferring instead that diplomacy take its course. But so far the only thing diplomacy has produced is an anodyne statement from the Middle East Quartet of the US, UN, European Union and Russia. This calls on Israel and the Palestinians to resume negotiations in a month with the goal of reaching a final agreement in a year. Israel has welcomed the move. Publicly the PA has said the Quartet statement had "encouraging elements". Privately PA officials were scathing that it made no reference to a settlement freeze or that the 1967 armistice lines must serve as a basis for negotiations on a two-state solution, conditions the PA believe are necessary if any process is succeed. Palestinian resolve was hardened by Israel's approval on 27 September of the construction of 1100 new units in the already mammoth Gilo settlement in East Jerusalem. They were Israel's "1100 answers" to the Quartet, said Riad Mansour, head of the Palestine UN mission. The Quartet statement has put the PA in a bind, however. If PA President Mahmoud Abbas accepts it, he will undo the kudos he earned among his people for defying the US in submitting the bid. But were he to reject it outright, he risks alienating Quartet members like the EU, UN and Russia, powers he deems crucial antidotes to Washington's pro-Israeli bias. This is another reason the UN is unlikely to move swiftly on the UN bid. Moving swiftly is not a mark of the Security Council's response to the ongoing carnage in Syria. Since the protests began in March it has mustered only two statements, including one in August that called on "all sides to act with the utmost restraint": a formula that managed to equate the sporadic violence of the protesters with the systematic violence of the regime. Last month EU members on the Security Council circulated a draft resolution calling for sanctions on the regime, including an arms embargo. It was opposed by Russia and China, ostensibly because it might encourage violence, actually because it could harm the lucrative arms trade both countries have with the Syrian government. On 28 September -- in a desperate attempt to achieve consensus -- the EU members submitted a new draft resolution dropping the call for sanctions except as a threat. Russia said the new text still continued a "policy of regime change". After all, said Vitaly Churkin, Russia's UN ambassador, "innocent formulations'" issued by the Security Council in March were used to legitimise NATO's bombing campaign in Libya. Russian obstruction has been supported not only by China but by India, Brazil and South Africa, the so-called "middle powers" on the Security Council. They too were incensed that Security Council resolutions on Libya, passed to protect civilians, became licences for European and US policies of regime change. They fear a sanctions resolution on Syria may go down the same road to Western military intervention. They have grounds for doubting Western good faith, given that both the US and EU now have policies for ousting Bashar Al-Assad's dictatorship in Syria. But the three countries' case has been flawed through their failure to present an alternative to the EU prescriptions on Syria, a stance that, like Russia and China, makes them de facto apologists for the regime. As countries that present themselves as defenders of human rights and waged historic struggles against colonialism and authoritarianism in their own lands, such an abdication may cost them dearly in the future. It remains to be seen whether even a weak resolution on Syria will pass on the Security Council. One thing is clear. Russia, China and middle powers' passivity has rendered the Security Council as irrelevant to the crisis in Syria as the US veto has rendered it irrelevant to the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Neither enhances the UN as an organisation or promotes its goals of peace and security.
