Editor's Note: Robert M. Danin is Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is a former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and a former Director for the Levant and Israeli-Palestinian Affairs at the National Security Council.
By Robert M. Danin, Foreign Affairs
The Palestinians' effort to attain international statehood recognition at the United Nations in September is aimed at enhancing their leverage in future negotiations with Israel. In a candid May 16 op-ed in the New York Times, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and chair of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), acknowledged as much. "Palestine would be negotiating from the position of one United Nations member whose territory is militarily occupied by another," he said, "and not as a vanquished people."
Ironically, this effort, if successful, could achieve the very position Palestine could have attained long ago at a much lower price. Phase II of the 2003 Quartet Roadmap for Peace offered the option of creating "an independent Palestinian state with provisional borders" as a stepping stone to a negotiated permanent final-status agreement. The Palestinian leadership long rejected this option, fearing that that establishing a state prior to resolving all outstanding final status issues with Israel would leave them unresolved in perpetuity. Now they have effectively reversed course, hoping for just such an outcome. Only now, the Palestinians are pursuing this goal outside of any international diplomatic effort, rather than within one.
To be sure, attaining some form of UN membership for Palestine could indeed enhance the Palestinian leadership's leverage in final status negotiations with Israel. They would be negotiating on behalf of a state, not a provisional body and non-state entity. As a UN member, Palestine could resort to legal recourse at the UN Security Council, the International Court of Justice, and possibly the International Criminal Court. Moreover, attaining UN membership would arguably enhance the Palestinians' claim to the pre-1967 armistice line, since that line will have been recognized internationally. Of course, U.S. President Barack Obama already enshrined the 1967 line as the basis for negotiations over a final border in his May 19 State Department address on the Middle East.
For its part, the Palestinian leadership has good reasons to be reluctant to return to the negotiating table without a clear reference point. The three weeks of talks with Israel last September damaged, rather than strengthened, their confidence in their Israeli interlocutors. Israel's subsequent refusal to renew its settlement moratorium or offer an alternative peace plan further diminished faith in the process.
In the increasing likelihood that Palestine could achieve recognition as a "non-member state" at the UN General Assembly this September, Palestinians could gain a few additional diplomatic tools for the next round of talks. But the net outcome would likely set back, rather than advance, their national aspirations. First, accession to the UN would undermine Palestinians' moral and historical claims to being a stateless people, a status that has kept their plight at the top of the international agenda for decades. In the international community's eyes, moreover, the conflict with Israel would effectively become a border dispute - one of scores around the world - not an existential challenge to the Palestinians. This would reduce the saliency and centrality of the Palestinian issue for many.
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As the Oxford University law professor Guy Goodwin-Gill recently argued in a legal brief to Palestinian leadership, the move to statehood would also terminate the legal status of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The state of Palestine's authority would effectively be limited geographically to parts of West Bank and perhaps Gaza. Palestinian refugees outside of the newly recognized state would be left without any representation within international institutions. And Gaza would presumably be considered a Hamas-occupied Palestinian territory, given the failure to date to implement its April 2011 unity agreement with Fatah. At best, the state of Palestine would thus rule around forty percent of the West Bank. The other territories that the Palestinians claim - the remaining sixty percent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza - would all be controlled by Israel or Hamas.
Practically, Palestine's newfound ability to confront Israel in international fora would not be the boon many believe either. Rather than pressuring Israel to become more forthcoming and to rapidly seek an agreement with the Palestinians, the confrontational atmosphere could trigger an Israeli public backlash. With its preponderance of power and control of the territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, Israel would likely take harsher countermeasures on the ground, such as withholding tax remittances, restricting Palestinian movement, and possibly annexing some West Bank territory, arguing that Palestinians had abrogated the Oslo framework, which has preserved some semblance of cooperation and Palestinian governance.
Having defied Israel, the United States, and possibly parts of Europe, the Palestinian leadership's UN gambit would cast them as acting unilaterally, a charge Israel has generally suffered. Palestinians' alleged provocative behavior would rapidly increase tensions on the ground, creating an extremely combustible environment. Meanwhile, a failure at the UN could easily spark violence on the Palestinian side as dashed expectations lead to rage. It would also deal the Palestinian leadership a huge public embarrassment.
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Such a development would be tragic, given the successes of the effort led by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to build the Palestinian state from the ground up in the past few years. Most notable has been his unification and professionalization of the security forces into a single chain of command. This has enhanced security for Palestinians and Israelis, thereby convincing Israel to allow the PA to expand the range of its control over territories within the West Bank. The recent focus on the UN gambit has diverted attention - and badly needed support - from preparing Palestinians themselves for real independence, not the kind of virtual independence they might achieve in New York.
By orienting their efforts toward the UN and away from the Fayyad-led state-building process, Abbas has made the PA more, not less, dependent on others to realize its goals. Fayyad's plan was designed to prepare the groundwork for Palestinian statehood "under occupation and despite the occupation," as he often notes. This effort at Palestinian self-empowerment asks little of the Israelis, other than that they leave Palestinians alone. The effort at UN statehood recognition calls on the international community to deliver a state, rather than have negotiations with Israel produce one.
By focusing on state-building, the PA had improved living conditions and strengthened security for Palestinians. All along, one of its aims was to create a peaceful and conducive environment for negotiations, rendering Israel's occupation unnecessary and ultimately unjustifiable. And indeed, slowly and without fanfare, Israelis have taken steps to lift the burden of the occupation on Palestinians, opening the West Bank a little more to the movement of people and goods and allowing Palestinian security forces to expand their control over larger parts of the West Bank. The under-the-radar approach made such tangible improvements possible.
By adopting a publicly confrontational approach toward the Israelis, the Palestinians risk undermining the goodwill and security on the ground that is the sine qua non for any further progress. Palestinian frustrations with never-ending negotiations and ongoing Israeli settlement activities are clearly justified. But the response of the Palestinian leadership has only managed to convince Israelis and many in the international community - perhaps inadvertently - that they seek to delegitimize the Jewish state, not live alongside it. The Palestinian quest for statehood alongside Israel serves the interests of both parties, the Middle East, and the world. Finding a path back to negotiations and toward invigorating the state-building project would make its realization more likely. At this point, with the plans to petition the Security Council for statehood already set, the least costly detour on this path would be to provide the Palestinians a symbolic face-saving achievement in New York short of statehood, combined with a pathway back to negotiating an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of Robert Danin. Copyright 2002-2010 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc.
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This is a great article. Although I am for a Palestinian state, I would rather that the Palestinian people be united first. The PLO/Fateh/Hamas framework in place is not going to get anywhere for the Palestinians.
Maybe, many roads lead to Rome! whichever one the Palestinians choose would be a stony path. Apart from political obstacles they also have the Gordian's Knot to solve out of geographical point of view.
I do not see any "Gordian's Knot to solve out of geographical point of view". It is true that the West Bank and Gaza are separate by Israeli territory but itshouild not be a big problem if the relations between Israel and the future Palestinian state will be normal. Afer all, the United States of America somehow manages to exist as one sovereign state despite being cut in pieces by Canada...
It'd take a lot of history for those relations to be normalized... That's a pretty hefty assumption.
Abba Eban once said "The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity". A sovereign independent state was offered to Palestinian Arabs many times in the past and they've alwasys rejected it because establishment of a Palestinian state ALONGSIDE Israel meant recognition of Israel and the end of the Arab dream about the destruction of Israel. Now it seems that the Palestinians turned around and want to be RECOGNIZED as a state in the UN. This, however, is NOT the case. The real goal of this trick is to solicit US veto in the UN and use it to blame the Jews, Israel and the US for the continues violence in the Middle East. The LAST thing Palestinians want now is regognition in the UN as such recognition will put the Palestinians in a pretty comical position where the Palestinian state will be recognized by the UN but NOT recognized by the Palestinians themselves. Palestinians can not UNILATERALLY declare a state because the moment it is declared the newborn Palestinian state will find itself AT WAR with Israel and will have to ask for peace or face the consequences.
How serious is the US for a negotiated deal between Palestine and Israel brokered by the US? Dennis Ross is one of the US envoys sent to the Middle East. Per Dennis Ross' profile in Wikipedia and his book The Missing Peace, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,: "So while the Palestinians were desperate for a state and believed the purpose of the negotiations was to gain independence and establish a state, Ross and Netanyahu were opposed to the idea." Is it likely that it may be difficult for the Palestine leadership to trust them after such a stated position?
There is no need for the Palestinian leadership to trust the US brokers or anyone else as long as the Palestinian leadership will continue to REJECT each and every offer they receive. A sovereign independent state was offered to Palestinian Arabs in 1948, 1967, 1978, 2000, 2001, 2005, 2009 and they've REJECTED every one of them. It will also help if the Palestinian leadership will realize that the purpose of PEACE negotiations is to achieve PEACE. Not to force the Palestinians to accept a state they did not and do not want.
Thinker, What will you do if some one steals your home and make some body else occupy it and occupiers at gun point tell you to negotiate so that they could legally become the owner. Are you going to negotiate those occupiers ?
truthhurts: What will you do if some one steals your home ...
I would PRODUCE THE LEGAL DEEDS proving that the "stolen" home actually belongs to me instead of trying to force my neighbor out of HIS home. Can YOU show such legal deeds proving that the land of Palestine belongs EXCLUSIVELY to the Arabs?
Not at all. In the current government, Obama's the undisputed strongest advocate of peace negotiations. And, based on his halfhearted attempts to resume peace negotiations in the past 2 years, I think we all know how important of an item a lasting peace and negotiations are on his and the country's national agenda.
Palestine by definition is whatever remains of Greater Syria not already claimed by modern Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel or Gaza. At a national level it is like unincorporated county land, the rest of the county having been taken by cities and towns that were better-organized. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza will not yield territories under their control and neither will Israel. The Arab Muslim world fought a series of wars against Israel, losing each time, and Palestine was only separated from Jordan, and Gaza was only separated from Egypt, because Israel made that happen. These are not unique states with unique cultures and their borders are defined by coincidence and the defensive needs of existing states.
There was no Israel in Ottoman empire , but there was Palestine. The same Palestine which was stolen by Western Nazis 1917.
No, not the Nazis, but the Brits. Supported by the British Balfour Declaration, Jewish people were given the chance to build a homeland in Palestine!
Palestine is still these, my friend.... just as there is Europe that also was "stolen" from the 'Europeans' by some petty French, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Polish, Greeks and other "thieves".
Stopped reading this article as soon as I read this paragraph
" But the net outcome would likely set back, rather than advance, their national aspirations. First, accession to the UN would undermine Palestinians' moral and historical claims to being a stateless people, a status that has kept their plight at the top of the international agenda for decades. In the international community's eyes, moreover, the conflict with Israel would effectively become a border dispute – one of scores around the world – not an existential challenge to the Palestinians. This would reduce the saliency and centrality of the Palestinian issue for many."
The author assumes here that an entire group of people displaced as a result of the 1967 war have used their condition of BEING displaced as a position of bargaining power. However true that may be, he further assumes that the Palestinians, by going to the U.N., are actually doing themselves a disfavor because this will inevitably remove their bargaining power. Apparently, the Palestinian's dream of "national aspirations" is to continue to live in plight and disharmony so as to never leave the spotlight of being the "refugees". Logical? I think not.
In the final two sentences of this paragraph, he says that if the U.N. grants the Palestinians observer state status, the dispute between Palestinians and Israel would boil down to nothing more than a "border dispute" in the view of sovereign states, further removing the assumed "spotlight" the Palestinians have as "displaced people". So in order for the Palestinians to continue their quest for an independent state i.e. their "national aspiration", they have to maintain their position of being a displaced people so that the international community may recognize the dispute between Israel and Palestine as something more than JUST A "BORDER DISPUTE"?????
I am sorry, but you are running circles around yourself.
Are you truly destroying a "peace process" when you have no say in said "peace process", never-mind the fact that there hasn't been a "process" since 1993.
"Only now, the Palestinians are pursuing this goal outside of any international diplomatic effort"
Are you serious???? They are going to the UN!!!!! THAT IS AN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EFFORT!!!!!!!
This is typical of the one sided rubbish published in U.S. The rest of the world wants a fair solution, not a solution negotiated between a strong and weak power. The whole purpose of the UN is to g beyond the era of colonialisation and land acquisition by force. If Israel keeps up with its illegal settlement building, the rest of the world and its strengthening neighbours will get more and more angry. The only people deligitimizing the Israeli state is themselves, with their continued illegal settlement building.
Let me understand... You're telling us that a "fair" solution is NOT A NEGOTIATED ONE??? A "fair solution" is one that is FORCED on a weak power by the strong one??? I wonder where did you get your ideas about "fairness"...
You seem to have this upside down. A fair solution is not one "negotiated" between a strong and weak party, where the strong one tries to ignore international norms because they have more guns. A fair solution is negotiated between equals. Israel thinks it can keep illegally building settlements and create new "facts on the ground". That is not fair.