Global stability is held hostage to years of savage terrorism and de facto war in a small corner of the Middle East. The crisis leads to a tense vote before the United Nations, over whether a new member-state should be recognized in the region, with a formal mandate to defend its interests and negotiate viable peace terms.
The date is May 11, 1949, and the UN—in a show of remarkable consensus between the United States and its then arch-enemy, the Soviet Union—admits the young, embattled state of Israel to its General Assembly.
There are many echoes of Israel’s own birth in another momentous drama now unfolding in New York, with its backdrop in the same conflict. Acting on a deeply controversial initiative from Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority since 2005, the UN is to deliberate member status for Palestine. In effect, this would amount to official recognition of statehood.
The cluttered stage, in both dramas, features ex-terrorist groups whose leaders now claim the mantle of statesmen, contentious issues of long-term security, rapidly changing geopolitical realities—and no less significant, the domestic political agendas of world decision-makers.
There were profound doubts six decades ago on each of these points, with Security Council members Belgium, Britain, Canada, China and France all abstaining from a preliminary vote to endorse Israel’s UN application.
Six decades ago! That phrase alone should give pause to anyone who argues for business as usual— the continuation of more than half a century of fruitless negotiations between Israel, a state with internationally recognized powers and legitimacy, and Palestinians with no formal status.
The only way to move the agenda ahead is a step that replicates the dynamic of 1949, a step that takes at face value the repeated insistence of Israel and the United States that they support self-determination for the nationless people of Palestine.
Domestic Concerns
You don’t need to be a White House insider to grasp that Barack Obama was looking over his domestic shoulder on Wednesday, September 21, when he addressed the subject of Palestinian membership at the UN. The Jewish-American electorate is regarded as a crucial constituency in the 2012 presidential sweepstakes.
“One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then—and I believe now—that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own,” the President said. But, he added, “Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN.”
The next day, the Administration confirmed that a Palestinian bid to join the UN would be vetoed by the United States, a permanent seat-holder on the Security Council.
On their part, Obama’s top Republican rivals have built their Jewish strategy on a fervent courtship of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his most outspoken rightwing coalition partners. They make no secret of their determination to stall any solution until the “facts on the ground”—code language for Jewish settlement in the West Bank territories, the erstwhile site of a Palestinian state—renders outright annexation by Israel a fait accompli.
In 1950, the Arab population on the West Bank numbered approximately 500,000. Today, there are nearly 500,000 Israeli settlers there. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have invariably foundered on precisely this point, with immediate expansion of the settlements as the postscript.
“I do not believe in a two-state solution,” Danny Danon, deputy speaker of the Knesset, the national legislature, flatly announced in August. Danon is a close acquaintance of Texas governor and G.O.P. presidential hopeful Rick Perry, who will visit Israel this year as his personal guest.
President Obama’s UN speech made no mention of the settlements.
Six decades ago, President Harry Truman had the courage to challenge his main Western European partners and a significant faction of his own party to back Israel’s petition for UN membership. In the end, as Israel emerged as one of Washington’s most dependable allies, Truman’s gamble proved to be far-sighted
Is President Obama really in a tougher spot than Truman? Will American Jews desert the Democratic ship if the captain disagrees with the likes of Danny Danon?
If they do, they aren’t paying close attention to Republican statements on subjects other than the Middle East. Perry, like fellow candidate and Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann, is a born-again Christian who openly equates “real” American principles with “inviting Jesus into your heart.” That should ring alarm bells in every Jewish home in the land.
In fact, the evidence is strong that Jewish Americans do take notice of these peculiarities and are far more willing than the president to protest Israeli policies that increase Middle Eastern tensions. In a 2009 poll by the centrist Jewish organization J-Street, 60 percent of American Jews opposed the expansion of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.
In a follow-up J-Street poll last year, only 10 percent identified Israel as a principal concern in Congressional elections. Nearly three-quarters said Washington should exert pressure on Israel, as well as the Palestinians, to achieve a peace breakthrough.
Sarkozy’s Compromise
Clearly, a major confrontation within the Security Council, or between the United States and a UN General Assembly that is largely sympathetic to the Palestinian claim, is in no one’s interest. It would further alienate the world community from Israel and seriously diminish U.S. influence in the Middle East at a critical juncture.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy, not often an advocate of compromise, advocates a middle road. On Wednesday, he proposed that the Palestinian Authority be accorded “enhanced status as a non-member state,” an interim procedural motion that can be implemented by the General Assembly without Security Council approval.
The status would be subject to a strict timetable: 30 days to re-open peace talks, followed by six months to resolve border and security disputes, and a year to reach a “definitive agreement.” After that, the Security Council would be asked to recommend full member status, which must be approved by two-thirds of the General Assembly.
The approach has yet another precedent in the region’s history. Israel applied three times for UN membership before it was successfully admitted in 1949. But its initial step toward self-determination and legitimacy had been taken 18 months earlier—a timetable nearly identical to that proposed by Sarkozy—when the UN recommended the partition of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.
Hardliners will argue that 2011 is not 1949, and that the history of Palestinian involvement in terrorism makes any step toward diplomatic recognition perilous.
Overlooked is the uncomfortable truth that Israel’s own road to legitimacy was marked by years of terrorism. The first UN mediator in the Jewish-Arab conflict, Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadotte, who negotiated the release of 30,000 prisoners from Nazi concentration camps in World War II, was assassinated by Zionist militants in 1948.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Netanyahu’s predecessor as leader of Israel’s ruling Likud party, was a founder of the Irgun, a lethal Zionist paramilitary force. Under his direction, the Irgun bombed Jerusalem’s King David Hotel in 1946, killing 96 people, and carried out the massacre of more than 100 civilians in the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin in 1948.
Yet it was also Begin who invited President Anwar Sadat to Israel in 1977, brokering a lasting peace with Egypt.
“Now Is the Time”
If Begin could make such a journey, there is considerably less reason to suspect the motives of Mahmoud Abbas, a confirmed moderate with none of the violent baggage that former guerrilla chief and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat carried.
It is Abbas who has led the struggle to contain Hamas, the Gaza-based fundamentalist group behind many terrorist attacks, and prevented it from taking power in the populous West Bank.
If it is true that 2011 is not 1949—or the 1977 of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat—the essential difference lies the wholesale reordering of the region’s political geography in the past year. What lies ahead is anyone’s guess.
“Israel will not always find itself sitting across the table from Palestinian leaders like Mr. Abbas and the prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who object to terrorism and want peace,” former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece Thursday.
Olmert worries that the UN bid is premature. But he is also convinced that an unprecedented opportunity for genuine progress is at hand, if Israel and the Palestinians alike will act on it. “Now is the time. There will be no better one.”
Frank Viviano is a veteran correspondent for the giornaledibarganews based in Barga, Italy (his articles are here) and the New America Media, an independent online publication based in San Francisco that focuses on multicultural media.