Palestinian Leader Mahmoud Abbas Asks United Nations to Recognize State

Sept. 21: President Obama talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting in New York. (AP)

UNITED NATIONS-- Defying U.S. and Israeli opposition, Palestinians asked the United Nations on Friday to accept them as a member state, sidestepping nearly two decades of failed negotiations in the hope this dramatic move on the world stage would reenergize their quest for an independent homeland.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was greeted by sustained applause and appreciative whistles as he approached the dais in the General Assembly hall to deliver a speech outlining his people's hopes and dreams of becoming a full member of the United Nations. Some members of the Israeli delegation, including Foreign Minister Avigdor Liebermann, left the hall as Abbas approached the podium.

Negotiations with Israel "will be meaningless" as long as it continues building on lands the Palestinians claim for that state, he declared, warning that his government could collapse if the construction persists. That would put 150,000 people out of work.

"This policy is responsible for the continued failure of the successive international attempts to salvage the peace process," said Abbas, who has refused to negotiate until the construction stops.

"This settlement policy threatens to also undermine the structure of the Palestinian National Authority and even end its existence."

To another round of applause, he held up a copy of the formal membership application and said he had asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to expedite deliberation of his request to have the United Nations recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

Ban has to examine the application before referring it to the Security Council. Action on the membership request could take weeks, if not months.

Abbas' jubilant mood was matched by the exuberant celebration of thousands of Palestinians who thronged around outdoor screens in town squares across the West Bank on Friday to see their president submit his historic request for recognition of a state of Palestine to the United Nations.

"I am with the president," said Muayad Taha, a 36-year-old physician, who brought his two children, ages 7 and 10, to witness the moment. "After the failure of all other methods (to win independence) we reached a stage of desperation. This is a good attempt to put the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people on the map. Everyone is here to stand behind the leadership."

To be sure, Abbas' appeal to the U.N. to recognize an independent Palestine would not deliver any immediate changes on the ground: Israel would remain an occupying force in the West Bank and east Jerusalem and continue to severely restrict access to Gaza, ruled by Palestinian Hamas militants.

The strategy also put the Palestinians in direct confrontation with the U.S., which has threatened to veto their membership bid in the Council, reasoning, like Israel, that statehood can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties to end the long and bloody conflict.

Also hanging heavy in the air was the threat of renewed violence over frustrated Palestinian aspirations, in spite of Abbas' vow -- perceived by Israeli security officials as genuine -- to prevent Palestinian violence. The death on Friday of 35-year-old Issam Badram, in gunfire that erupted after rampaging Jewish settlers destroyed trees in a Palestinian grove, was the type of incident that both Palestinians and Israelis had feared would spark widespread violence.

Yet by seeking approval at a world forum overwhelmingly sympathetic to their quest, Palestinians hope to make it harder for Israel to resist already heavy global pressure to negotiate the borders of a future Palestine based on lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967.

"We extend our hands to the Israeli government and the Israeli people for peacemaking," he said.

"Let us build the bidges of diolague instead of checkpoints and walls of separation, and build cooperative relations based on parity and equity between two neighboring states -- Palestine and Israel -- instead of policies of occupation, settlement, war and eliminating the other," he said.
It was not clear how serious Abbas was about his very public threat to dissolve his limited self-rule government, born of the landmark accords Israel and the Palestinians signed in the 1990s.

Palestinians say they turned to the U.N. in desperation over 18 failed years of peace talks. But Israelis say the Palestinians are to blame for their own predicament.

Palestinians, omitting mention of years of Palestinian violence against Israel and two spurned peace offers from Israel under previous governments, accuse the Israelis of not wanting to give up territory conquered in the 1967 war. And they refused to return to the negotiating table without a construction freeze in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, where half a million Israeli settlers live.

Netanyahu says he is prepared to sit down immediately to talk peace without conditions. But in practically the same breath, he puts forth two deal-breakers, insisting that a united Jerusalem will remain eternally under Israeli control and insisting on a long-term Israeli military presence on the western frontier of the West Bank even after a Palestinian state is established.

Palestinians say they turned to the U.N. in desperation over 18 failed years of peace talks. But Israelis say the Palestinians are to blame for their own predicament and have turned to the U.N. precisely to avoid negotiating.

In recent weeks, international mediators have been furiously trying to piece together a formula that would let the Palestinians abandon their plan to ask the Security Council for full U.N. membership, and instead make do with asking a sympathetic General Assembly to elevate their status from permanent observer to nonmember observer state. The other part of that formula would include the resumption of negotiations in short order.

The U.S. and Israel have been pressuring Council members to either vote against the plan or abstain when it comes up for a vote. The vote would require the support of nine of the Council's 15 members to pass, but even if the Palestinians could line up that backing, a U.S. veto is assured.

The resumption of talks seems an elusive goal, with both sides digging in to positions that have tripped up negotiations for years. Israel insists that negotiations go ahead without any preconditions. But Palestinians say they will not return to the bargaining table without assurances that Israel would halt settlement building and drop its opposition to basing negotiations on the borders it held before capturing the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza in 1967.

Israel has warned that the Palestinian appeal to the U.N. will have a disastrous effect on negotiations, which have been the cornerstone of international Mideast policy for the past two decades. Netanyahu, who is to address the General Assembly later Friday, shortly after Abbas makes his own address, opposes negotiations based on 1967 lines, saying a return to those frontiers would expose Israel's heartland to rocket fire from the West Bank.

He also fears that if that principle becomes the baseline for negotiations, then Palestinians won't settle for anything less, despite previous understandings between the Palestinians and previous Israeli governments to swap land where settlement blocs stand for Israeli territory.

Talks for all intents and purposes broke down nearly three years ago after Israel went to war in the Gaza Strip and prepared to hold national elections that ultimately propelled Netanyahu to power for a second time. A last round was launched a year ago, with the ambitious aim of producing a framework accord for a peace deal, but broke down just three weeks later after an Israeli settlement construction slowdown expired.

The U.N. recognition bid has won Abbas broad popular support at home, but it is opposed by his main political rival, the Islamic militant Hamas movement that violently wrested control of Gaza in 2007.

Gaza's Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, accused Abbas on Friday of relinquishing Palestinian rights by seeking recognition for a state in the pre-1967 borders. Hamas' founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and a state in all of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, though some Hamas officials have suggested they would support a peace deal based on the 1967 lines.

"The Palestinian people do not beg the world for a state, and the state can't be created through decisions and initiatives," Haniyeh said. "States liberate their land first and then the political body can be established."