Richman - Re: Obama’s Misguided UN Appeal to Abbas

Rick Richman
Commentary/Contentions
06 September '11

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/09/05/obama-un-appeal-abbas/#more-766544


Let me add a footnote to Jonathan’s post about the Obama administration’s attempt to “bribe or cajole” the Palestinian Authority to forego seeking UN recognition of a state. It was clear back in April there was a different way to proceed — one that would not have wasted this crisis.

When Mahmoud Abbas announced his “reconciliation” with the terrorist group the PA was required under the Roadmap to dismantle, and moved to seek a determination of the boundaries of a Palestinian state through the UN (rather than through the negotiations required by the Roadmap), the U.S. should have seen the move not as something to be countered by pre-negotiation concessions by Israel or the U.S., but as a moment of truth for the putative Palestinian state: if the PA cannot meet its commitments under the Roadmap, there is no reason to believe it can meet its commitments under a peace agreement. The PA should have been given a choice: forego further attempts to run around the Roadmap, or forego further U.S. support for a Palestinian state.

The “reconciliation” agreement pledged new elections “within a year” — a transparent attempt to show the UN the two halves of the putative Palestinian state were united and ready to be recognized as a democratic state. The chances of those elections occurring are as likely as General Franco recovering, since Fatah and Hamas cannot live “side by side in peace and security”™ with each other, much less with Israel. But the U.S. should have held the PA to its word: hold your election, elect someone committed to peace with Israel and to prior agreements, or forget about further U.S. efforts to create a Palestinian state.

If the PA is not able to hold an election, or to elect leaders committed to prior agreements, or willing to negotiate without preconditions, or to make the concessions necessary for a state, the U.S. should have no interest in supporting such a state, much less making it a central part of U.S. foreign policy. Such a response to the PA stratagem would have placed the burden where it should have been, as J.E. Dyer has noted, and would have done so at a time when it was still possible for the PA to call off its self-destructive move. Instead, the Obama administration is coming to the end of an increasingly desperate effort to preserve a process the PA has already made clear it cannot complete.

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