On Friday, the Palestinian National Authority intends to go before the United Nations to request recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Although there is strong backing for the bid, the United States, in the name of supporting Israel, has stated its willingness to use its Security Council veto power to keep the Palestinians from joining the UN as a full voting member.
The US has also refused to join in a more symbolic General Assembly vote that could change the Palestinians' status from a ‘nonvoting observer entity' to a ‘nonvoting observer state.' Here are five reasons the US should support the Palestinian bid and not exercise its veto at the UN.
(1) Negotiations have failed. Two decades of negotiations have not brought the Palestinians a state of their own. Israelis and Palestinians blame each other for the current impasse.
But the question of who is at fault is irrelevant. What matters is that in 1993, when the Oslo accords set up a framework for a negotiated settlement for a two-state solution, there were a little more than 100,000 Israeli colonists living in the West Bank. Now that number stands at more than 300,000.
(2) The current Likud-led Israeli government is unlikely to ever agree to a sovereign Palestinian state. A decade ago, Benjamin Netanyahu, vying for Likud Party leadership, made his position clear in a speech to the group's central committee: "My friends," he said in 2002, "We must present the situation in the clearest possible way: We won't lend a hand to the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River... We must vote as one in favour of the draft resolution against a Palestinian state." It is true that seven years later, under intense pressure from the Obama administration, Netanyahu, as Israeli prime minister, grudgingly accepted the notion of a Palestinian state in principle. But the unprecedented conditions he called for — that it have no military, no control over its borders, no capital in occupied east Jerusalem, no right of return for Palestinian refugees and that it recognise Israel as a ‘Jewish state' — seemed deliberately designed to negate the possibility of true Palestinian sovereignty. (3) Obama has utterly failed to advance the Middle East peace process. Obama came into office vowing a more active and even-handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis. Yet beyond a few lofty speeches about Palestinian suffering, he has offered no substantive policy shifts or specific proposals for moving negotiations forward. Obama's attempt to temporarily stop Israel from building colonies in the Occupied Territories backfired when he caved in to Israeli intransigence. The president's kowtowing to Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing has made the US look weak on the global stage. If for no other reason than to prove to the world that the US is not Israel's lap dog, the president should refrain from vetoing a Palestinian state.
(4) Contrary to popular belief, it is not political suicide to defy the will of Israel. There is no doubt that American public opinion remains overwhelmingly pro-Israel. But polls show that the majority of Americans believe the US should not favour one side over the other in the conflict. According to a 2008 J Street poll, 78 per cent of American Jews said they supported a two-state solution and 81 per cent wanted the US to pressure both sides to end the conflict.
(5) Palestinians are doing almost exactly what Israelis did 60 years ago. Israel maintains that the Palestinians cannot declare statehood and seal it through the UN. Yet the Palestinians are merely following the trail blazed by Israel six decades ago. In 1948, after the UN voted for the partition of Palestine, debate among the world powers about how to divide the land dragged on and violence between Jews and Arabs grew worse. The Jewish Agency simply pre-empted negotiations and unilaterally declared the state of Israel; the US immediately recognised it, and the UN accepted Israeli sovereignty the following year. By rejecting that strategy outright, Israel is not only being hypocritical; it is invalidating its own existence as a state. There is one more reason to support the Palestinians' bid at the UN. It is the moral thing to do.
Reza Aslan is the founder of AslanMedia.com and the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam.
