In 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the forerunner to Fatah, signed on to the Declaration of Principles with Israel. The agreement, brokered by the United States, said the parties would engage only in bilateral negotiations to reach any agreement on the final status of a Palestinian state.
This week, in the august body where Zionism was once declared racism, where “human rights” councils are regularly led by the world’s most impressive Jew haters and votes condemning Israel are more common than any other, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority, will break this agreement, as he has so many others.
He will make a formal request for the United Nations to unilaterally approve Palestinian independence when the world’s leader convene in New York. Though it’s unclear whether the PA — with the backing of Arab nations and various other stalwarts of liberalism like Russia and China — will be asking for a General Assembly vote (certain to pass and give them “non-member observer status”) or a Security Council vote (one that would grant full voting rights and likely will be vetoed by the United States).
What we do know is that any vote will further undercut American influence in the Middle East, incite violence across the region and fail to bring the Palestinian people one inch closer to their desired goal of statehood. After all, the UN vote can’t change reality. No Israeli government will stop using checkpoints until Palestinians stop targeting civilians. No one will hand East Jerusalem to the PLO. There can be no Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders because today such borders are untenable and a threat to the existence of Israel.
It simply doesn’t matter what Liechtenstein or Sierra Leone have to say on the matter.
But it’s even worse. Sure, the United Nations has historically vacillated between deep irrelevance and monumental ineffectiveness. But with all its prevaricating and impotence on genuine threats to human rights across the world, next week it will be actively precipitating violence and endorsing ethnic cleansing.
It is understood that one of the preconditions for the existence of a Palestinian state is the judenrein West Bank. It will be purified of Jews, regardless of their political inclinations, Zionist or not, because effectively speaking no Jew will be able to live in the West Bank or East Jerusalem safely. Palestine Liberation Organization’s ambassador to the United States, Maen Rashid Areikat, has admitted as much.
Which segues to another problem: Hamas. The Palestinian Authority has charged itself with making decisions about the future of its people without mentioning its partner. Hamas will be large part of any future Palestine, even though it does not recognize Israel and believes the borders of a future Palestinian state should begin at Jordan River and end when the last Jew is living, if they’re lucky, in the suburbs of Cleveland.
What will happen if the United States is forced to veto this unilaterally and fantastical Palestinian nation, or ignore its United Nation’s granted “independence”? One can imagine how much anger our enemies will whip up (it doesn’t take much, mind you). In an increasingly unstable Muslim world, leaders can use this pointless fiasco as an outlet to displace popular rage and redirect attention from their own shortcoming and point it towards Israel.
One need look no further than the fading Arab Spring to understand the inherent danger in this. Earlier this month, an Egyptian mob overpowered 90 police officers and stormed the Israeli embassy. The ambassador to Cairo and 70 other Israelis were forced to evacuate on a military plane in the middle of the night to save their lives.
Israel’s ambassador and most of its embassy staff have temporarily left Jordan because of the UN vote.
Another onetime ally the increasingly Islamic Turkey has similarly turned on Israel, kicking out the Israeli ambassador, and ending military ties and trade pacts. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to send warships as escorts to “aid ships” in the next activist-filled flotilla trying to reach the Palestinians. A United Nations failure will only provoke more hostility and put the two nations in a potentially catastrophic position.
Supporters of Israel often speak in perfunctory tones about the existential threat Israel faces. But one would have to go back to 1973 to find a more perilous time for the Jewish state. With this vote, the United Nations is simply giving in to its seemingly pathological need to undermine Israel — no matter the circumstance, no matter the consequence.
There can be no other reason for a vote that is simultaneously so dangerous and so utterly useless.
Then again, that’s the perfect way to describe the United Nations.