The speech of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN on Friday brought pangs of sadness and melancholy over the reality that nothing has changed in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
On the contrary, for the Palestinians, the situation has gotten worse, more destructive with a frustrating aura and a climate of fear, hopelessness and dispiritedness. There was an element of déjà vu in the speech that the road at the UN had long been travelled, yet it was like nothing ventured nothing gained but not for lack of resolutions and condemnations.
However, the 79-year-old hard-knuckled politician was upbeat, no doubt remembering the famous olive branch speech that Yasser Arafat made at the UN in 1974. Abbas, much older with tear and wear of politics behind, looked tired and even dishevelled. Perhaps by years of diplomatic mishaps and lack of commitments on the part of Israel, whose latest deadly escapade was launching a 51-day ‘genocidal war’ against Gaza. Israel has also been long ridden roughshod over the Palestinians and Abbas probably has long realised that Israel has tagged him along the empty promises of a futile peace process.
Abbas said, time and again that Israel has failed the “test of peace” and what it wanted was to create a series of “ghettos” and simply to “return to past patterns…” is “naive at best” and will no longer work because Palestinians are no longer willing to accept the dithering negotiations that lead to nowhere with the Israeli occupation firmly in place.
He made it abundantly clear “it is impossible, and I repeat — it is impossible to return to the cycle of negotiations that deal with the fundamental question”, which is to establish a Palestinian independent state but has been repeatedly suppressed by Israel since the Madrid Peace Conference way back in 1991. Abbas sought to be as clear as possible when he told the representatives of the 193-member nations at the UN General Assembly “there is no meaning or value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the state of Palestine with [occupied] east Jerusalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian territory occupied in 1967”.
These were strong words but just failed to live up to expectations. This, however, may have been due to his way of understanding the nature of the political realities of the region, world politics, power politics and pandering to them and/or accommodating them.
Source of dismay
To many, this will have sounded like shooting oneself in the foot and a source of dismay because over the weeks before the speech was made, those close to the Palestinian leadership affirmed that Abbas would use the UN rostrum to force-kick the peace process and push for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within three years. The idea would first be mooted in the UN General Assembly and be lobbied for in a resolution through the UN Security Council.
There was none of this in Abbas’ speech, which may have dashed hopes of those who expected a strong stance in front of the international body. Of course, there was direct reference to it in a rounded kind of way because the Palestinian president is a product of old fashioned dictums and beliefs, which says when you are in politics you just keep talking. Unwilling to rock the boat too much, he adopted what at best can be described as a “vague approach” to detailed steps of how the Palestinian state should be created, what the mechanisms are, how Israel will have to submit to final status negotiations and so forth. Abbas only said that a resolution would be put on the table of the Security Council. However, he didn’t give a time frame for it.
The Palestinian president was unfailing in his diplomatic niceties to the US President Barack Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry. The American administration openly believes that the only way to a diplomatic breakthrough is through negotiations, which is a good point, but such initiatives are constantly frustrated by the Israelis.
While it is only too well to attempt to rise to the international political apex and take it from the top, it is difficult to see if the result on the draft resolution will be accepted to be discussed even though it is thought that there are diplomatic negotiations through France. Abbas’s speech is just the beginning. Many are saying if this fails, the Palestinian leader would apply to join the International Court of Justice at The Hague (ICJ), (since Palestine is a member of the UN) and prosecute Israel for war crimes.
It has been argued Abbas has so far been opposed to making an application to the ICJ, mainly to keep the door ajar to diplomacy, but he may well be forced to do this and have a showdown with Israel. Abbas’ UN speech may still have a lot of diplomatic implications and ramifications and should not be seen as another end-of-the-road initiative.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a Phd in Political Science from Leeds University in the United Kingdom.