High politics or high treachery?

Why the unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence will transform Middle Eastern politics forever.

By ALEX RYVCHIN
Settlement construction (photo credit: .)
Settlement construction
(photo credit: .)
It was a bizarre sequence of events. US President Barack Obama’s attempts at statesmanship were about to bear fruit. Israel and the Palestinians were to resume talks with optimism and hope unseen since the early days of the Obama administration. Everything was up for grabs: Borders, resources, refugees, Jerusalem.
Then the Palestinians did something curious. They imposed the following condition on before resuming negotiations: Suspend the grant of all building permits for Jewish communities in the West Bank or there is nothing to talk about.
Suddenly it wasn’t the rocket volleys from Gaza which obstructed peace. Nor was it the fact that the proverbial civil war between Hamas and Fatah ensured that no one faction could speak on behalf of the Palestinian people.
No. Now it was the local authority applications for granny flats and attic extensions that stood in the way of the Palestinians and their state and Israel and the peace it craves.
Israel ultimately bowed to the pressure the Americans applied and agreed to temporarily deny the Finklesteins of Kiryat Netafim their granny flat. The “facts on the ground” would remain unaltered while talks were conducted. But as the days and weeks of the moratorium ticked by, the Palestinians, far from surging triumphantly towards the negotiating table, did something entirely different. They did nothing.
The moratorium came and went, with no bang, merely a whimper; and at end of it, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, unable to justify to his own people why theFinklestein’s granny still had no flat, permitted the bureaucracy of building consents to meander back into action.
It baffles the mind: Why demand the moratorium only to then see it lapse? Why even set such a condition when the unilateral disengagement from Gaza in 2005 showed that Israel was prepared to forcibly remove Jews from land which would form part of a future Palestinian state?
As it turned out, the Palestinian stunt was a stroke of genius. Public opinion and the demands of world leaders which inevitably ensues it were transformed. Somehow, in agreeing to the moratorium but in failing to extend it when talks still had not resumed, Israel became the villain. In fact, Netanyahu’s stubborn refusal to grant a second moratorium was solely to blame for the failure of talks and the elusiveness of peace.
With public opinion successfully manipulated, the Palestinians threw off the burden of a negotiated peace and took the road of unilateralism. The world reacted cautiously but ultimately favorably. After all, in light of this Israeli intransigence, what choice was left for the Palestinians?
And now for the final act of a masterful display of high politics: In bypassing the UN General Assembly and applying to the Security Council for full member status, the Palestinians have forced the hand of the United States. To abstain would be to grant the Palestinians the state they desire on the terms they demand and in doing so, demonstrate that decades of American intervention and shuttle diplomacy was superfluous. Their role as superpower and global mediator would be spectacularly undermined.
But to play its veto card will only confirm to the Arab world what it had always suspected – America is merely a proxy of the Zionists that with the nimble fingers of a puppeteer manipulating the movement of a far larger object, ensures that every American action reflects its will and whim.
How this performance will be received is too difficult to foresee. Will it enflame a region already with an appetite for rebellion? Or will it merely send the Palestinians trudging crestfallen back to their homes ready to fight another day? Whatever the reaction, one thing is clear. Through an act of either astute politics or bald faced duplicity and with the help of the finest political strategists and international lawyers that Oxford can produce and that money can buy, the Palestinians have entirely re-branded the Arab-Israeli conflict and the role of the US within it – and the international audience has done nothing but applaud every stanza.
The writer is a London based lawyer and founder of The Jewish Thinker (www.jewishthinker.org), a non-profit organization promoting debate and contribution to matters affecting Jewish thought and life.