AMERICA-ISRAEL FRIENDSHIP LEAGUE CRITICIZES U.N. DESIGNATION OF PALESTINE AS NON-MEMBER OBSERVER STATE
AMERICA-ISRAEL FRIENDSHIP LEAGUE CRITICIZES U.N. DESIGNATION OF PALESTINE AS NON-MEMBER OBSERVER STATE
NEW YORK, N.Y., December 3, 2012 - Kenneth J. Bialkin, Chairman of the AIFL, noted that Abba Eban, when he was Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, observed that the Palestinians "have never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity". True to form, the Palestinians have orchestrated an empty gesture in wringing a vote out of the U.N. General Assembly to grant them status as an observer "state" with no practical power except to seek to harass Israel before various international bodies. Such action by the newly recognized non-state will only aggravate the bilateral atmosphere with Israel and further impair the prospect of a negotiated settlement. Those states who voted for the resolution, in clear repudiation of the U.S. and Israeli positions, have made a further mockery of the U.N. process. The newly recognized entity has no legitimately elected officials, is divided into factions which hate each other, is effectively bankrupt, and is living only on charity and handouts. It has none of the legally recognized qualifications for statehood.
The nations that voted to support or abstained from the resolution may have thought they were taking a step towards peace, but had the same benighted mindset that afflicted those countries in the 1930s who hailed Neville Chamberlain when he claimed he achieved "peace in our time" in appeasing Adolph Hitler by handing him the Czech Sudetenland. The feckless effort of the Palestinians to impersonate a legitimate sovereign state only serves as a further step in Arab efforts to attack the Jewish state. It will certainly not encourage the Israelis to make further concessions.
In elite circles, it is thought fashionable to say the Palestinian people deserve a state. But by what measure of merit do they qualify? They claim that a state exists by reason of an empty fiat which purports to consign portions of the Land of Israel already occupied by a member state of the U.N. The Palestinians have been offered recognition of a true state by Israel. All they need do, as advocated by President Obama, is accept Israel's right to exist and enter direct negotiations without preconditions. Failing that, they do not deserve recognition.
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