If the Palestinians Declare a State Unilaterally

Jamie Glazov
frontpagemag.com
14 March '11

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.

FP: Kenneth Levin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

I would like to talk to you today about the Palestinian Authority’s efforts of seeking recognition as an independent state via the UN and on a nation by nation basis.

The PA has pursued United Nations Security Council condemnation of Israeli settlements, is threatening to go now to the General Assembly with an anti-settlement resolution, and is threatening as well to seek recognition from the UN of Palestinian statehood along the pre-1967 cease-fire lines. It has also sought and received such recognition from various nations around the world, particularly in South America but elsewhere as well.

What is your understanding of this PA strategy?

Levin: Thanks Jamie.

It has always been the goal of the Palestinian leadership to gain recognition, and territory, without acknowledging Israel’s right to exist as the national homeland of the Jewish people and without giving up Palestinian pursuit of additional claims against Israel; its goal, ultimately, is Israel’s dissolution.

At the time of the initiation of the Oslo accords, on the evening of the famous signing and handshake on the White House lawn in September, 1993, Yasir Arafat appeared on Jordanian television and explained to his constituency and his wider Arab audience that they should understand Oslo as the first phase of his 1974 plan. In 1974, he had elaborated a plan according to which the Palestinians would take any land they could acquire by negotiations and use that land as a base from which they would pursue Israel’s annihilation. Arafat repeated this understanding of Oslo many times thereafter.

When Arafat, Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Clinton held their talks at Camp David in 2000, Arafat rejected all the concessions offered by Barak and Clinton and refused to put forward counter-proposals. He was unwilling to agree to any accord, whatever the territorial and other concessions made by Israel, because an “end-of-conflict” agreement was demanded from him in return and he was not interested in ending the conflict and foregoing future, additional Palestinian demands.

Around the same time, Arafat spoke of declaring a state unilaterally, as a way, again, of establishing “Palestine” without signing away future claims against Israel. President Clinton made clear that the U.S. would not support such a unilateral move and, not least because of U.S. pressure, European states conveyed the same message.

(Read full "If the Palestinians Declare a State Unilaterally")

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