Sixty-Five Years Later

On November 29, 1947, on a vote of 33 to 13, the United Nations General Assembly voted to divide Palestine into two states – one Arab, the other Jewish – effectively recognizing the birth of Israel. Reflecting a landslide vote that everyone knew was a virtual certainty, on November 29, 2012, the expanded General Assembly voted once again on regional statehood, this time according UN “observer status” to Palestine (through the Palestinian Authority). The vote was 138 in favor, 9 opposed (obviously including the United States and Israel) with 41 abstentions. Since this was a General Assembly and not a Security Council measure, the United States had no veto right. For a moment, the world focused on an Arab issue that was not the radical changes brought about by the Arab Spring and its aftermath or the struggles in Syria. It was back to the old Israeli-Palestinian issue.

As U.S. and Israeli government officials grouse how this vote was “not helpful” to settle regional tensions, and notwithstanding the rain of Gaza rockets on civilian targets in Israel, the vast majority of nations on earth have a lot of trouble with resisting a long-standing movement of a seemingly disenfranchised minority to achieve nationhood. And as I have blogged before, the region is rife with power-hungry surrogates willing to fund ultra-violent extremists in a quest for global stature.

The hatred runs deep. It is programmed from generation to generation. As the stepson of a U.S. diplomat in Beirut in the 1960s, I watched how political players positioned Palestine and Palestinian refugees for the long and tortured reality that would continue to plague the region half a century later. Gamal Abdul Nasser, President of Egypt (briefly joined with Syria as the United Arab Republic) during my days in the Middle East, used Israel and the Palestinian refugees to refocus the frustration of his impoverished masses on these extrinsic forces.

I heard the Hitler-like vitriol in Nasser’s radio broadcasts across the region. Blame everything on Israel. Make sure that the Palestinians don’t assimilate into the regional Arab populations. Keep them in refugee camps, even if under the most horrendous conditions – open sewers, powdered milk, barbed wire enclosures and horrible dwellings, often positioned so that the refugees could look over into Israel and see where they once lived.

Young Palestinian boys were told that their only mission in life was to recapture the family homestead, now well within Israeli borders. The message was passed from generation to generation, a sacred responsibility that only got worse as Arab nations were sequentially defeated (and Israeli territory expanded) in the wars of 1967 and 1973. While regional sympathies and popular support were with these refugees, their messianic mission and singular mindset made their presence in neighboring Arab countries clearly unwanted. NIMBY on steroids.

As Hamas, which rules the Gaza part of Palestine, has goaded its populace with promises of glorious military success against Israel – God is on our side, they cry – tensions and hatred have fanned into blazing wall of intolerance and profoundly unrealistic expectations. No serious military strategist would give Hamas a chance in hell of triumphing over a determined Israeli invasion. Still, until the recent fragile ceasefire, the Gaza rockets poured. And the very ceasefire itself, a de facto recognition of Hamas by Israel to effect the truce, was a victory for Hamas.

So what does this latest UN vote mean? It certainly doesn’t create the desired Palestinian autonomy, but it does give the Palestinian Authority (which governs the West Bank) a boost over triumph-claiming Hamas and provides the Palestinians with a voice at the UN… just like any other member nation… but without the ability to vote. It takes the continued building of Jewish settlements on the West Bank to open discussion (and general opposition) on the General Assembly floor.

Would Palestinian autonomy settle the region? The hatred would not dissipate, and for many the sacred mission to recapture the family homestead is still a mandate. Unfortunately, the lack of education, infrastructure and economic opportunity among most Palestinians makes them a dangerous group with very little to lose. The path to stability is simply not in any near-term scenario. It will take decades – more if the rest of the world doesn’t invest in Palestine and upgrade the economic opportunities – to quiet the simmering hatred. And in the meantime, political egos will continue to fan the flames of hatred for personal gain. It’s just too easy.

But will Palestine become autonomous in the foreseeable future? The UN vote tells you it’s not handwriting on the wall anymore; it’s chiseled in stone. Just look at a map of Israel. It is surrounded, and it cannot assume that it can perpetually defeat all of its neighbors. We just need to figure out how to implement the inevitable and inflict the least amount of damage in the region. Think about the issues that are the most difficult to solve, particularly what happens to Jerusalem which is a sacred essential city to both Muslims and Jews (not to mention a few Christians!). But it is going to happen, and we need to help the process along knowing it will take a very, very long time for emotions to settle. There are no miracles, no joy, in this process… even if Palestinians would celebrate autonomy for an instant… They have to continue to make sense of their lives in this impoverished land.

The November 29^th New York Times summarizes the triumph and the hatred engendered in the UN vote: “President Mahmoud Abbas [above] of the Palestinian Authority, speaking to the assembly’s member nations, said, ‘The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the state of Palestine,’ and he condemned what he called Israeli racism and colonialism. His remarks seemed aimed in part at Israel and in part at Hamas. But both quickly attacked him for the parts they found offensive.

“‘The world watched a defamatory and venomous speech that was full of mendacious propaganda against the Israel Defense Forces and the citizens of Israel,’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel responded. ‘Someone who wants peace does not talk in such a manner.’

“While Hamas had officially backed the United Nations bid of Mr. Abbas, it quickly criticized his speech because the group does not recognize Israel… ‘There are controversial issues in the points that Abbas raised, and Hamas has the right to preserve its position over them,’ said Salah al-Bardaweel, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, on [November 29^th]… ‘We do not recognize Israel, nor the partition of Palestine, and Israel has no right in Palestine,’ he added. ‘Getting our membership in the U.N. bodies is our natural right, but without giving up any inch of Palestine’s soil.’”

A day after the UN vote, “An Israeli official says Israel has approved the construction of 3,000 new housing units in West Bank settlements.” Huffington Post, November 30^th. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was less than subtle about this development, saying “Israeli settlement plans in a strategically sensitive area of occupied land near East Jerusalem would deal ‘an almost fatal blow’ to peace hopes.” BBC.co.uk, December 2^nd. Why does implementing the inevitable have to be so damned difficult?

I’m Peter Dekom, and this tinderbox impacts our way of life from practical issues like the price of oil to the very basis of our moral imperative.