Sparks is a veteran South African journalist and political analyst
Business Day South Africa Published: 2011/08/17 07:10:15 AM
VOLATILE though international affairs may appear at the moment, they could become more so within a few weeks as major new developments unfold in theMiddle East.
First will be the election of a new government inEgypt, beginning with a parliamentary poll scheduled for sometime next month, then a presidential election in October or November. Second , the Palestinian movements Fatah and Hamas, which have been at each other’s throats for the past four years, have signed a reconciliation agreement and decided to call jointly on the United Nations (UN) to grant recognition of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders established after the Six-Day War.
Both are politically interlinked, since the Egyptian elections will define the changed political nature of the most important of the Arab states, and that of the so-called Arab Spring chain of revolutions that gave rise to it. Those changes in their big neighbour, as well as the spirit of the Arab Spring generally, have also spurred the Palestinians to attempt a new course of diplomatic action that could prove embarrassing for the west, particularly theUS.
There can be little doubt that the new regime in Egypt will be less supportive of Israel than that of the ousted Hosni Mubarak, which in itself will take pressure off the embattled Palestinians — especially those in the narrow Gaza Strip, which borders Egypt. Even though the Muslim Brotherhood, which has historical ties to Hamas, has said it will not run a candidate for the Egyptian presidency, it is likely to emerge as the strongest party in theCairoparliament, which will inevitably influence the new government’s attitude towardsIsrael.
But it is the Palestinians’ planned initiative to seek UN recognition that I want to deal with in more detail today. It strikes me as being a smart move — though fraught with economic dangers for the Palestinians — that could prove a game-changer in their long conflict withIsrael.
I say this because the new Palestinian strategy will bring an end to the farcical ritual that masquerades as the “peace process”, which has been dragging on interminably and will clearly go nowhere as long as the US is not prepared to exert meaningful pressure on Israel, which even the most liberal US president dare not do for fear of electoral punishment at home.
The new initiative will force every UN member to show its hand publicly. Most countries have routinely declared their support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But how many will be prepared to vote to recognise a Palestinian state? TheUS has already indicated that it will veto the Palestinian proposal should it go before the UN Security Council.
Its rationale, one assumes, is that the 1967 borders are unacceptable toIsraelfor security reasons, so it can only support a deal that has been agreed to in negotiations between the principal antagonists. But I’m afraid that for many less partisan folk around the world, such a pretext will sound hollow.
“If you really believe in a two-state solution, why not vote for it?” they are likely to say. “The 1967 borders already give the Palestinians a much smaller state than the one assigned to them in the original 1948 partition plan put forward by the UN.”
But the Palestinians don’t want to alienate the Americans by pushing them into too tight a corner, so they will not in fact take their case to the Security Council. There is another course open to them, ironically established by the Americans themselves, when they wanted to sidestep a Russian veto in getting UN endorsement for going to war againstNorth Koreain 1950.
Resolution 377, otherwise known as the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, states that “in cases where the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to act in order to maintain peace and security, the General Assembly shall consider the matter and may issue nonbinding recommendations”.
The Palestinian Authority has signalled that it will do this next month.
Its announcement has already set off a frantic lobbying campaign for General Assembly votes by both sides, which at the time of this writing seems to be going in favour of the Palestinians. They claim to have secured the support of 122 of the UN’s 193 members, which is just five short of a two- thirds majority.
That would not give the putative Palestinian state membership of the UN: only the Security Council can grant that. But it would elevate the Palestinians from observer status to that of a “nonmember state”, which would give them considerable international legitimacy. Back in 1947, 33 General Assembly members voted to recogniseIsraelat a time when the world body contained only 58 member nations.
After such a sweeping vote, many individual nations would be likely to recognise the Palestinian state and establish diplomatic relations with it.
And while it would not be a full member of the UN, Palestine would be eligible to join its institutional bodies, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organisation, the Food and Agricultural Organisation and, most notably, the International Criminal Court.
Such enhanced international status would surely call into questionIsrael’s continued occupation of a widely recognised independent state and, with that, increase pressure onIsrael to halt the enlargement of itsWest Bank settlements. The status of those settlers, whom some estimates number at 400000, and their easy access to workplaces in Israel, which is denied to West Bank Palestinians, would also come into sharper focus.
All of this will surely increase the moral pressure on the West. TheUS, we can be sure, will vote against the resolution, but this will be an embarrassment it would rather avoid.Washingtonhas been putting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to avoid the vote by returning to negotiations with the Palestinians, but to no avail. Netanyahu is pinned fast by his extreme right-wing coalition partner, Avigdor Lieberman, and the Palestinians are weary of that futile exercise.
The key question, then, is how other western powers will vote in the General Assembly — particularly those of the European Union which, together with the UN, the US and Russia form the Quartet charged with mediating the conflict. Will theUK,France andGermany, all of which have substantial Muslim populations, vote against the Palestinians? Or will they abstain? Some serious cleavages could appear.
But while this new strategy puts the Palestinians in the driving seat for a change, it also has dangers for them. They are in dire financial straits, with unemployed youths already demonstrating against joblessness, and there are threats that theUSmay cut off aid if the Palestinians go ahead with their UN strategy. The Israelis, too, may withhold customs duties due to the Palestinians as they have done before.
The oil-rich states of the Arab League are supposed to come to the rescue should this happen, but they are notoriously unreliable. WouldEuropehelp? It’s doubtful. In the end, the Palestinians may face the same choice black South Africans did when they called for sanctions to help end apartheid: endure the suffering in the hope that it will bring greater liberation in the long term.
http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/Content.aspx?id=150838
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