Page 1 of 3 Palestine: Mission accomplished for China
By Peter Lee
Whether or not China finally votes in favor of recognition of the "State of
Palestine" at the United Nations, or simply abstains - or if the matter never
even comes to a vote either in the United Nations Security Council or General
Assembly - it can already celebrate its "mission accomplished" moment with
President Barack Obama's speech before the UN General Assembly opposing the
move.
China is relieved to finally find itself on the right side of a Middle Eastern
issue after months of dismaying news for autocrats.
While the Arab Spring was shaking the Middle East, Beijing had sent its special
envoy for the Middle East, Wu Sike, in a
seemingly quixotic attempt to shift the region's focus to the upcoming
Palestinian vote.
In late August, well before it was a foregone conclusion that Palestinian
National Authority (PNA) President Mahmoud Abbas would resist Western pressure
and follow through on his promise to take the statehood issue to the UN, Wu
announced in Cairo that China would "support" the establishment of a
Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital - while cannily omitting
the detail as to whether China would actually vote for the statehood measure in
the Security Council. [1]
China's geopolitical bet paid off nicely as Obama was unable to disengage
himself from the cleft stick that he had been hoisted upon by the Palestinian
National Authority, Israel, and his domestic political priorities.
In his address to the General Assembly, Obama went full Israel, as Ha'aretz
newspaper's Chemi Shaley reported in an article with the saucy title "Obama
gets a kosher seal of approval" and subtitled "In the eyes of his Israeli
audience, including [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and [Foreign Minister
Avigdor] Lieberman, Obama's speech was nearly faultless, an assessment
subsequently confirmed by the harsh criticism leveled at it by Arab and
Palestinian officials."
Characterizing Obama's speech as "probably the warmest pro-Israel speech ever
given at an annual UN General Assembly meeting by any US president, bar none",
Shaley went on to say:
US President Barack Obama certainly never dreamt
that one day he would be so warmly endorsed by Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor
Lieberman, of all people. But today, following Obama's speech at the UN General
Assembly, Lieberman was literally gushing with praise ... Obama will now be
able to wave to his Jewish voters a kosher "seal of approval" from no less an
authority than Lieberman, the "Rebbe," as it were, of the ruling Israeli
right-wing coalition. [2]
The Guardian offered a look at the
other team's assessment:
Obama's speech was greeted with despair in the
West Bank. Mustafa Barghouti, an independent politician and former Palestinian
presidential candidate, said he was disappointed. "It clearly shows the double
standards of the US when it comes to the Palestinian issue. Obama spoke about
freedom, human rights, justice in South Sudan, Tunisia, Egypt - but not for the
Palestinians," he said.
A Ramallah shop owner, Marwan Jubeh, said: "Israel and the US are one and the
same: the US is Israel, and Israel is the US. Israel doesn't want to give the
Palestinians anything and Obama can't do anything without Israel because
congress is pro-Israel." [3]
As a result, the UN meeting is
not about America's desired theme: triumphantly welcoming the new Libyan regime
midwifed out of the Arab Spring with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
bombs and the support of the Gulf autocracies.
Instead, America's role as promoter of democracy and human rights in the Middle
East is overshadowed by the spectacle of its abject support of Israel on the
matter of Palestine, and the ridiculous and highly-publicized gyrations of the
Obama administration as it tries to dodge the onus of vetoing the Palestinian
application in the Security Council.
Even if the Assad dynasty's doom in Syria is sealed in the upcoming days or
months, the rhetoric of the United States leading the transformation of the
Middle East with its democratic and human-rights ideals will be undercut.
And that's the way China - and Saudi Arabia, Beijing's lodestone for Middle
Eastern matters - like it.
The conniptions over Palestinian statehood - and, more to the point, the
over-the-top media hubbub accompanying it - looks very much like a
self-inflicted wound for the Obama administration.
An upgrade of Palestine's status at the UN is unlikely to be the promised
existential catastrophe for Israel.
The primary, if rather embarrassing, argument for denying Palestine full state
recognition is that it would expose Israel to potential war
crimes/genocide/crimes against humanity prosecutions at the International
Criminal Court (ICC). Currently, Israel boycotts the court and the PNA doesn't
have the legal standing to join. But it could, if it had state status at the
UN.
However, as Colum Lynch pointed out in Foreign Policy, the PNA has already
exercised a provision of the ICC treaty allowing non-member states to request
an ICC investigation to bring the issue of Israeli excesses in Gaza during
Operation Cast Lead in 2008/2009 before the court. So the cat is somewhat out
of the bag already.
Also, Israel can take comfort from the fact that ICC chief prosecutor Luis
Moreno-Ocampo, in contrast to his remarkable alacrity in jumping all over
Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi's alleged wrongdoings, has been mulling over
the well-documented problems in Cast Lead for two-and-a-half years without
reaching a decision to prosecute. [4]
Nevertheless, the statehood bid has attracted the kind of organized and
systematic opposition in the media that so often characterizes thorny Middle
Eastern issues that involve Israel.
Israel's harshness on the West Bank is generally acknowledged, and then excused
by its apologists.
Nevertheless, over the past few years, the PNA has more or less dutifully
established itself as a reasonable and non-violent interlocutor of Israel (its
critics would say hopelessly appeasing and corrupt client) on the West Bank.
It has expended its resources and international aid building the political
infrastructure - particularly the cooperative (critics would call colluding)
security forces - that Israel declares is a necessary precondition for
statehood.
The PNA's current eschewal of Hamas-style militancy on the West Bank has spared
it the catastrophe of Israeli military operations like Cast Lead, which
devastated Gaza.
The area under complete PNA civilian/security control has grown to about 40% of
the West Bank. But these gains, largely in isolated towns and peripheral areas,
have been offset by Israel's encroachment in the areas near Israel.
The Israeli government has exploited the NPA's reasonableness/supineness by
slicing and dicing the West Bank economically, militarily and demographically
with barriers, settlements, military bases, restricted roads, water grabs and
arrogation of land titles.
There is considerable rhetoric thrown around to obfuscate the issue but a map prepared by the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs provides a convincing illustration of Israeli encroachment on the West Bank. The territory looks like a cancerous kidney. [5]
The PNA's acceptance of this rather unequal relationship was exposed - and
undercut - by the publication of the "Palestine Papers" [6]. In order to regain
political traction with its disillusioned electorate, the PNA seized on the
issue of representation at the UN.
The relative complexity of the Palestinian governance regime has offered ample
opportunity for mischief and misunderstanding.
A critical analysis proffered by one Guy Goodwin-Gill, a barrister and senior
research fellow at Oxford, on purported problems with the statehood bid
promised to sow some dismay in the PNA's ranks by calling into question the
ongoing status of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
The PLO already has standing at the UN as representative of all Palestinians,
including those in the worldwide diaspora.
The PNA was created out of negotiations between the PLO and Israel in Oslo, and
was envisaged as an interim exercise in limited self-governance by the
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza under the PLO until a sovereign
Palestinian state emerged.
Proceeding from the premise that the intent of the statehood application was to
replace the PLO at the UN , Goodwin opined that this would displace the PLO as
the representative of the Palestinian people, disenfranchise the diaspora, and
place "the interests of the Palestinian people are at risk of prejudice and
fragmentation, unless steps are taken to ensure and maintain their
representation through the Palestinian Liberation Organization". [7]
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