The irony of Israel ostensibly welcoming Tuesday’s UN resolution calling for a Palestinian state while on the ground its armed forces do everything to prevent such a state from coming into being will not be lost either on the Palestinians or the Israeli public, although the former are well used to such duplicity. The latter, however, must be fairly confused by the mix of signals coming from the Sharon government.
As to the resolution itself, its importance is self-evident. The fact that the US promoted the document “affirming a vision” of Palestinian state is perhaps the most significant part of it. Although President Bush is already on the record about the need for a Palestinian state, the UN has in the past been the venue for constant American antipathy to Palestinian aspirations and vetoes on anything that smacked of criticism of Israel. At long last, however, Washington has changed its tune, and done so in the one place where such a change should bring results. The UN is, after all, the only body that can make international law — in this case provide the legal basis for a Palestinian state. The only other way to Palestinian independence is by the Israelis being forced out of the occupied territories or pulling out of their own accord and the Palestinians then declaring their own state. At the moment that is not realistic.
But important though this resolution is, it is not going to dramatically alter events. It is a stepping stone — no more. Moreover, no one can ignore the wealth of existing UN resolutions on the Middle East which have been ignored, almost from the moment they were passed, even by those who proposed them. As long ago as 1947, there was a resolution calling for Arab and Jewish states living side by side. Indeed, the Middle East has the unenviable record of being the one region where UN resolutions are invariably not acted upon. It might seem reasonable, therefore, to conclude that this latest resolution will go the same way. Skepticism is certainly a legitimate response.
The difference, though, is that there appears to be a will in Washington to achieve a breakthrough. The more sympathetic language coming out of the White House; the seeming pressure on the Israelis to negotiate; the resolution itself; the return of Gen. Anthony Zinni to the region: all point to a change in the American view of what needs to happen in the region.
But it is because of those so many disappointments in the past that there will be skeptics now over what could be a valuable building block. The Palestinians no longer believe in offers and promises. They want results. Such skepticism is sad, but inevitable. They are also likely to notice a coincidence: the last time the Bush administration did not say, “Arafat should do more” was when it was seeking Arab support for a war. Now it is again seeking Arab support for another war and, for a second time, Bush has stopped saying “Arafat should do more”. May mean nothing; or again, may mean a lot.
There is one other sad aspect to this otherwise very welcome development. It is that it has taken violence on an unprecedented scale to make the US reassess the situation, that is, if there has been a reassessment; almost 1500 people have died in 19 months, three-quarters of them Palestinians. Some extremists will certainly conclude that violence pays.
