Defying U.S. and Israeli opposition, Palestinians asked the United Nations on Friday to accept them as a member state, sidestepping nearly two decades of troubled negotiations in the hope this dramatic move on the world stage would reenergize their quest for an independent homeland.
In the West Bank, the core of that hoped-for state, a Palestinian man was shot dead in a clash with Israeli soldiers and settlers as antagonisms flared over the statehood bid.
Earlier in the week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rebuffed an intense, U.S.-led effort to sway him from the statehood bid, saying he would submit the application to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon as planned.
President Obama encouraged this with his incompetent, tilted handling of the 1967 border issue. Well, incompetent is the charitable way of looking at it since he is an Arabist. We have to stand with Israel, but this president is simply not reliable on that point at all.
The United States will probably have to veto the PA move, which will isolate us further just when the Arab world is in upheaval — thanks again in part to this administration’s machinations. That decision to help Mubarak take his place under the bus looks worse by the day, and it never really looked good from a US or Israeli security standpoint.
It’s becoming harder to envision a path forward that doesn’t run through another major Middle East war. They cried “peace, peace,” but there is probably to be no peace.
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