Palestinians To Approach UN For State Recognition

By Mohammed Mar’i – Ramallah

The Palestinian Authority (PA) will present the UN Security Council (UNSC) with a draft of a resolution declaring statehood in the coming days, a senior Palestinian official said on Wednesday.

Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said in a press statement that the resolution is scheduled to be filed when Bosnia takes the UNSC’s presidency in January.

Erekat added that the Palestinian leadership is “waiting for Bosnia to take the presidency of the Security Council.”� The Palestinian negotiator expressed his hope that the US would not veto the move.

He added that Australia, Japan, Korea and New Zealand would recognize the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders.

Erekat said that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will leave for Brazil on Wednesday to lay the cornerstone of the Palestinian Embassy there on Jan. 1. Brazil recognized the Palestinian state on the 1967 borders in early December.

According to Erekat “the Israeli government is witnessing an international isolation that it hasn’t witnessed before.”�

According to other reports the Palestinians will submit a proposal calling for a Security Council resolution to halt Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said on Wednesday that Palestinians expect wider recognition of their statehood in the coming year and it will mean more than the mere “Facebook state” predicted by an Israeli minister.

Fayyad said recognition by many countries would “enshrine” the Palestinians’ right to a state in all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which Israel captured along with East Jerusalem in a 1967 war.

Seventeen years of peace efforts had failed to deliver this promise, he told reporters. The current Israeli coalition’s stated commitment to a two-state solution could not be relied on “given the erosion that has taken place,” he said.

Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador announced recognition of Palestinian statehood in the past month. Chile, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua are reported to be weighing the same move.

“These are welcome developments,” Fayyad said.

However, the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon said that the US and Europe are straying from the idea of unilaterally establishing a Palestinian state.

The European Union has staved off Palestinian pressure in favor of waiting until an “appropriate” time, while the US House of Representatives passed a resolution this month saying only peace talks could set such a process in motion.

In September, the US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians collapsed after Israel refused to extend a 10-month moratorium over freezing settlement constructions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Abbas and other Palestinian officials had threatened to use other diplomatic options, including dissolving the Palestinian Authority, in case Israel keeps insisting not to freeze building settlements.

While the Palestinians say they are still committed to a negotiated peace deal, they have grown increasingly frustrated and have started taking alternative actions to put Israel on the defensive. As part of that campaign, they have been seeking unilateral recognition of an independent Palestinian state, even in the absence of a peace deal.

 

Hamas strategy is a plan for victory

(CNN) — On my last day on a visit to Beirut, Lebanon, I participated in a long conversation with a Hamas political leader.

I agreed that the conversation would be off the record, but without direct quotation, I can summarize what was said.

The peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is dead, in the view of Hamas. Likewise, economic growth in the West Bank is illusory, a product only of Western aid. The Palestinians are divided, and the international community has lost interest in us.

That might sound like a negative assessment. Yet my Hamas interlocutor insisted that today’s desperate outlook would soon yield to tomorrow’s glorious victory.

With the peace process dead, the Palestinian Authority would break apart. West Bank Palestinians would realign themselves with Hamas. Those who refused would be eliminated as collaborators.

The Hamas man did tacitly acknowledge that Palestinian attacks on Israel have failed in the past. He declined to agree that the 2000-2003 intifada was a failure or that Hamas had been defeated in the December 2008 Gaza war. But he did not argue that these wars were successes either.

But next time, things would be different, the “resistance” would be global: Hamas, he suggested, would call Muslims around the world to join the fight against Israel, just as Muslims worldwide joined together in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviet Union.

This next fight — he said — would force Israel to rethink its continued existence. He said that just as his generation was more radical than his father’s, so the next generation would be more radical than his own. The Hamas man asked with sinister humor: “If you Americans care so much about the Israelis, why don’t you give them California?”

The tone was defiant, belligerent, confident. Yet through it all, I also heard a despairing undertone. The Hamas man lamented that nobody understands Hamas. Those who try to talk to them — like U.S. president Jimmy Carter — end up paying a heavy political price. He veered from boasting that they would never negotiate with the Israelis to complaining that Israel had ignored their offer of a truce in 2004.

He claimed the flotilla organizers who tried to bring aid to Hamas-controlled Gaza had achieved a great success — then later complained that nothing had changed, that Israel controlled the flow of goods into Gaza as tightly as ever.

The plan seemed to be: for Hamas and the radical Palestinians to suffer defeat after defeat until finally Israel collapsed. That does not sound like a very good plan.

Earlier on the trip, another Hamas representative had explained this point of view very succinctly: “To emerge from the fight with your steadfastness undiminished: that is victory.”

But actually … no it’s not victory. Fighting and losing, followed by more fighting and more losing is a formula for prolonging the pain of defeat. Hamas promises its supporters a far-off day of apocalyptic retribution and redemption. If my source is right, there will be another outburst of violence soon.

Palestines independent fighting groups will suceed soon, they are not afraid on death, instead off they willing to give their lifes for independents.