Avni: The UN statehood charade

Benny Avni
New York Post
01 June '11

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/the_un_statehood_charade_1QmvRToxx5aHUwpmbtJQ6M

Why Israel hasn't much to fear

The end-of-summer proclamation of a Palestinian state at the United Nations is so momentous, we hear almost daily, that Israel must make fresh concessions to avert it. Don't buy it.

Yes, President Obama cautioned recently that the "international community is tired of the endless process" -- indicating that if Jerusalem wants to stop the upcoming UN gang-up, it must do much more to help him renew that endless process. And Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak famously dubbed the expected September UN move a "diplomatic tsunami."

But a tsunami is a real, destructive force. And, as a Japanese diplomat told me recently of the Palestinian UN maneuvering, "it's no tsunami."

The "nightmare" scenario: America vetoes a Security Council proposal to declare the West Bank and Gaza a state -- so the Palestinians move quickly to the General Assembly for a vote that admits the state, by a landslide vote, as a UN member. And that endorsement then renders any Israeli presence in the West Bank, including security-related patrols, illegal under international law.

Not so fast, said Joseph Deiss, the president of the General Assembly, at a press conference last week: Under its own rules, the body can't approve any new UN members unless the 15-member Security Council recommends it first.

Now the Palestinians are looking for ways to overcome an expected US veto -- but yesterday's threat by PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki to reconvene a "Uniting for Peace" emergency session won't do the job. According to a 1950s International Court of Justice ruling, that loophole doesn't cover such issues as UN membership.

So, yes, a General Assembly vote for statehood would be a small step forward for Palestinians. But so was a similar 1988 vote, when the assembly endorsed Yasser Arafat's declaration of a "Palestinian state" (110 members voted for the resolution, with only Israel and America opposed). And nobody remembers that "historic" vote.

I had to look up the details: It changed the name of the Palestinian UN Observer Mission from "PLO" to "Palestine" -- but legally, it changed nothing.

Neither will the vote this fall -- which will affect the daily lives of West Bankers much less than, say, the Palestinian Prime Minister Salem Fayyad's recent (mild) heart attack. Or, indeed, than Fayyad's political survival in the aftermath of the recent Hamas-Fatah pact.

A realist, Fayyad is trying to build a Palestinian state on the ground -- unlike fantasists Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian boss, who've tried to "build" it at Turtle Bay and in world capitals.

The September vote would also have less effect on Israel than the universal "oy vey" chorus of Jerusalem politicians and US Jewish leaders would have you believe.

As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday, no one could stop the General Assembly resolution. With the Muslim bloc's support, the Assembly could declare the earth flat, Netanyahu said, but it won't change the laws of nature.

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot reported that Netanyahu tried to sell that ho-hum attitude to Obama during his Washington trip. But Obama is too attached to the "international community" to buy it.

A group of international jurists wrote to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday, arguing that a General Assembly declaration of a Palestinian state would violate signed agreements, rendering it "illegal."

They're right, but Israel would do much better using its legal minds to highlight such treaty violations as Egypt's Sunday opening of the crossings into Gaza.

To update the nursery rhyme, mortars and missiles from Gaza may break your bones, but Turtle Bay will never hurt you.

beavni@gmail.com

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