Palestinians petition UN for homeland

Yesterday a senior Palestinian dipolmat petitioned the United Nations Security Council to support a Palestinian state, in the wake of fruitless and delayed peace negotiations. Any such petition would probably be met with an American veto, but if the Security Council accepted it, the shockwaves would be relentless, as the always sensible nice guy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a warning:

There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Any unilateral action would only unravel the framework of agreements between us and can only lead to one-sided steps on the part of Israel.

Netanyahu did not elaborte on this assertion, but did say he wanted a peace agreement. So peace our way, our else? An Israeli legal expert did go into detail, explaining that any lone Palestinian action would result in Israel abandoning short-term peace treaties. With continued expansion of Israeli settlements into east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and the inability of the U.S. to apply pressure on Israel to stop construction, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned that he would quit his post, and now Palestinian frustration has resulted in this latest move. While Abbas has said he not want to run in a January election, Palestinian election officials postponed that election because Hamas, the Islamic militant group which controls the Gaza Strip, has made the situation hopeless. But officials from Abbas' Fatah Party met yesterday in the West Bank and pledged they would convene in December to extend the president's term.

Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian diplomat, explained the motivation for turning to the United Nations:

Now is our defining moment. We went into this peace process in order to achieve a two-state solution. The endgame is to tell the Israelis that now the international community has recognized the two-state solution on the '67 borders.

Despite the fact that Hamas banished those loyal to Abbas in 2007 when they gained control of Gaza, Erekat affirmed that the U.N. proposal would include Gaza, as well as the West Bank and east Jerusalem. He did not say when the actual proposal would be made to the United Nations, but did add that it was intended to place pressure on Israel. Erekat added that Russia and unnamed European countries are "on board" with the petition.

Palestinian independence was declared on November 15, 1988. As a result, intensive violence erupted until 1993, when the intial acting peace treaty was signed. Although it received widespread global support, it wasn't realized. What it did accomplish was the establishment of intertwined administrations and relations which did not qualify as necessarily peaceful, but did create the Palestinian Authority, provide stability to Palestinian imports and exports, utilities, tax collection and security coordination. Israel meanwhile could end relations with the Palestinian Authority if a U.N. backed plan for a Palestinian state replaced this arrangement.

Robbie Sabel, a professor of international law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and previously an Israeli Foreign Ministry legal adviser, said that Israel would be well within its rights to abandon all treaties:

In fact, Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to Israel's Foreign Ministry and now a lecturer in international law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Associated Press that Israel would be within its legal rights to cancel all peace accords. Israel controls the majority of the West Bank, which contains three hundred thousand settlers, one hundred military bases, settlements and roadblocks.

Walled Horizons is narrated by and features Roger Waters (founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd), who visits the security barrier or wall in the Palestinian territories and provides his observations as a musician and a songwriter who has written about walls. The film explores how Palestinians in urban and rural areas have been impacted by the sall's construction since the International Court of Justice's Advisory Opinion in 2004, which declared the wall's route in the West Bank illegal. Several senior Israeli security officials are interviewed in the film, two of whom were directly responsible for planning the wall's route and explain the reason for constructing it.