Israel voices opposition to Palestine's UN bid
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E-mail Xinhua, November 29, 2012
Israeli officials and experts threw a damp over Palestine's planned Thursday bid for a non-member state status in the United Nations, in spite of the strong determination showed by Palestinians.
The Israeli authorities also blamed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' UN bid as a "flagrant breach" of the 1993 Oslo Accords, intended to pave the way for a full resolution to the Palestine-Israel conflict.
"The Palestinians are going to violate the fundamental clause of the Oslo Agreement with this action, all these issues need to be solved through negotiations and not by avoiding them, like Abbas is doing," Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, told Xinhua.
"With this move, things are going to get a lot more difficult to return to the negotiating table, knowing that with a great deal of pride they announce that they are violating the agreements," he said.
Even if Palestine achieves a non-member status at the world body, Israeli officials believe that this will not have any legal consequences since it is mostly a symbolic status. But the political ramifications of Abbas' move may go deeper than excepted.
"For a few years now we've been trying to get the Palestinians back to the negotiations to no avail, and now it will be much harder to do so after we have seen how they have jumped over the agreement and of course, we don't know now if they will pursuit more confrontation with Israel by the new avenues that are going to open up for this decision," Hirschson said.
Currently, Palestine is regarded as an observer "entity" at the United Nations. Acceptance of Palestine as a non-member state, similar to the Vatican's UN status, would implicitly recognize the Palestinian statehood.
The upgrade could also grant the Palestinians access to bodies like the International Criminal Court in The Hague, where they could file complaints against Israel.
On Tuesday, Riyad Mansour, permanent observer of Palestine to the United Nations, said Palestine's UN bid would be "a historic moment" for both the Palestinians and the world body.
"You give me an impression that you are ready for a historic event on the 29th of November," Mansour said at a press conference in New York.
"That will be a historic moment in the struggle of the Palestinian people, and a historic moment in the history of the United Nations," he added.
But in the view of Yehuda Bloom, Israel's former ambassador to the UN, Abbas' stance and the timing for the UN bid are due to his weak position in the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) and his feud with the Islamic Hamas movement in Gaza.
The Palestinian UN bid was "a big mistake" that would slow down peace negotiations with Israel, he said.
Bloom said Abbas' power and credibility were weakening and Hamas was gaining ground, especially after the recent hostilities between the Islamic movement and Israel.
"This operation has strengthened Hamas in the Arab world, while Abbas is perceived as a weak leader, so he needed to do something dramatic to regain credibility," said Bloom, also a former professor of international relations at Hebrew University.
"Abbas is making a huge mistake with this move, that will slow down the peace process. This is also the view of the Americans and they have pointed it out to Abbas that he will make things more difficult with the peace negotiations," he said.
Abbas plans to submit Palestine's second bid to upgrade its status at the United Nations on Thursday. The new bid is watered down compared with a full membership proposal that he presented in September last year.
Israel and its closest ally, the United States, oppose the Palestinian move at the United Nations.
However, the Palestinians are guaranteed a majority support in the 193- member UN General Assembly, which has a majority of Arab, Muslim, developing and Non-Aligned Movement countries. The new Palestinian UN bid is expected to be granted by the General Assembly by a vote of simple majority.
On Saturday, Abbas said at his West Bank headquarters that upgrading the Palestinian status in the United Nations to a non-member state might be the last chance for making peace in the Middle East.
"The Palestinian side is ready to return to the negotiating table as soon as getting the Palestinian state's membership," he said. "This might be the last chance for making peace in the Middle East before time goes."
In the face of the U.S. opposition to the Palestinian bid, Abbas believed that "there is nothing preventing us from getting the incomplete membership in the UN."
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