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Nazareth:
Amid the enthusiastic applause in New York City and the
celebrations in Ramallah, it was easy to believe — if only a for
minute — that, after decades of obstruction by Israel and the
United States, a Palestinian state might finally be pulled out of
the United Nations’ hat. Will the world’s conscience be midwife to
a new era ending Israel’s occupation of the Palestinians?
It seems not.
The Palestinian application, handed to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
last week, has now disappeared from view — for weeks, it seems —
while the United States and Israel devise a face-saving formula to
kill it in the Security Council. Behind the scenes, the pair are
strong-arming the council’s members to block Palestinian statehood
without the need for the US to cast its threatened veto.
Whether or not President Barack Obama wields the knife with his
own hand, no one is under any illusion that Washington and Israel
are responsible for the formal demise of the peace process. In
revealing to the world its hypocrisy on the Middle East, the US
has ensured both that the Arab public is infuriated and that the
Palestinians will jump ship on the two-state solution.
But there was one significant victory at the UN for Mahmoud Abbas,
the head of the Palestinian Authority, even if it was not the one
he sought. He will not achieve statehood for his people at the
world body, but he has fatally discredited the US as the arbiter
of a Middle East peace.
Craven to Israel
In telling the Palestinians there was “no shortcut” to statehood —
after they have already waited more than six decades for justice —
the US president revealed his country as incapable of offering
moral leadership on the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict. If Obama is this craven to Israel, what better reception
can the Palestinians hope to receive from a future US leader?
One guest at the UN had the nerve to politely point this out in
his speech. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president who himself
appears to be wavering from his original support for a Palestinian
state, warned that US control of the peace process needed to end.
“We must stop believing that a single country, even the largest,
or a small group of countries can resolve so complex a problem,”
he told the General Assembly. His suggestion was for a more active
role for Europe and the Arab states at peace with Israel.
Sarkozy appeared to have overlooked the fact that responsibility
for solving the conflict was widened in much this way in 2002 with
the creation of the Quartet, comprising the US, the European
Union, Russia and the United Nations.
The Quartet’s formation was necessary because the US and Israel
realized that the Palestinian leadership would not continue
playing the peace process game if oversight remained exclusively
with Washington, following the Palestinians’ betrayal by President
Bill Clinton at Camp David in 2000. The Quartet’s job was to
restore Palestinian faith in — and buy a few more years for — the
Oslo process.
Blair’s bias
However, the Quartet quickly discredited itself too, not least
because its officials never strayed far from the
Israeli-Washington consensus. Last week senior Palestinian
negotiator Nabil Shaath spoke for most Palestinians when he
accused the Quartet’s envoy, Tony Blair, of sounding like an
“Israeli diplomat” as he sought to dissuade Abbas from applying
for statehood.
And true to form, the Quartet responded to the Palestinians’ UN
application by limply offering Abbas instead more of the same
tired talks that have gone nowhere for two decades.
The Palestinian leadership’s move to the UN, effectively bypassing
the Quartet, widens the circle of responsibility for Middle East
peace yet further. It also neatly brings the Palestinians’ 63-year
plight back to the world body.
But Abbas’ application also exposes the UN’s powerlessness to
intervene in an effective way. Statehood depends on a successful
referral to the Security Council, which is dominated by the US.
The General Assembly may be more sympathetic but it can confer no
more than a symbolic upgrading of Palestine’s status, putting it
on a par with the Vatican.
So the Palestinian leadership is stuck. Abbas has run out of
institutional addresses for helping him to establish a state
alongside Israel. And that means there is a third casualty of the
statehood bid — the Palestinian Authority. The PA was the fruit of
the Oslo process, and will wither without its sustenance.
Entering a new phase
Instead we are entering a new phase of the conflict in which the
US, Europe, and the UN will have only a marginal part to play. The
Palestinian old guard are about to be challenged by a new
generation that is tired of the formal structures of diplomacy
that pander to Israel’s interests only.
The young new Palestinian leaders are familiar with social media,
are better equipped to organize a popular mass movement, and
refuse to be bound by the borders that encaged their parents and
grandparents. Their assessment is that the PA — and even the
Palestinians’ unrepresentative supra-body, the Palestine
Liberation Organization — are part of the problem, not the
solution.
Until now they have remained largely deferential to their elders,
but that trust is fast waning. Educated and alienated, they are
looking for new answers to an old problem.
They will not be seeking them from the countries and institutions
that have repeatedly confirmed their complicity in sustaining the
Palestinian people’s misery. The new leaders will appeal over the
heads of the gatekeepers, turning to the court of global public
opinion. Polls show that in Europe and the US, ordinary people are
far more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than their
governments.
The first shoots of this revolution in Palestinian politics were
evident in the youth movement that earlier this year frightened
Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas into creating a semblance of unity.
These youngsters, now shorn of the distracting illusion of
Palestinian statehood, will redirect their energies into an
anti-apartheid struggle, using the tools of non-violent resistance
and civil disobedience. Their rallying cry will be one person-one
vote in the single state Israel rules over.
Global support will be translated into a rapid intensification of
the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Israel’s
legitimacy and the credibility of its dubious claim to being a
democracy are likely to take yet more of a hammering.
Events at the UN are creating a new clarity for Palestinians,
reminding them that there can be no self-determination until they
liberate themselves from the legacy of colonialism and the
self-serving illusions of the ageing notables who now lead them.
The old men in suits have had their day.
Jonathan Cook
won this year’s Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His
latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran
and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and
Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed
Books). His website is www.jkcook.net
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