Despite American objections, 138 countries including many of our supposedly closest European allies, voted in the UN to recognize the Palestinian territories as a “non-member observer state,” the same status accorded the Vatican.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu responded by saying:
“Israel is prepared to live in peace with a Palestinian state, but for peace to endure, Israel’s security must be protected. None of (Israel’s vital interests) appear in the resolution and that is why Israel cannot accept it. The only way to achieve peace is through agreements that are reached by the parties directly not through UN resolutions that completely ignore Israel’s vital security. And because this resolution is so one-sided, it doesn’t advance peace, it pushes it backwards.
“I have a simple message for those people gathered in the General Assembly No decision by the UN can break the 4000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel.”
As Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs reports: This tragic vote achieves the fruition of two long-held Palestinian goals. It deems all disputed lands “occupied territory” and all Palestinian terrorists as legitimate freedom fighters. The vote also shifts the spotlight away from Hamas’s strategy of armed conflict with Israel, switching the focus to Fatah’s tactic of international diplomacy.
The mainstream press will also fail to understand that the UN’s unilaterally seeking to declare a state in the West Bank violates the Palestinians’ Oslo Accord commitments, that is, to refrain from “steps that will change the status of the West Bank.” Moreover, high-ranking Palestinian officials have boasted that the resolution will mark the formal end of the decades-old Palestinian peace process with Israel.
The vote is one more indication that the Obama foreign policy is in shambles. The fact that our European allies would brazenly vote against us shows how little influence we have left in the region. Furthermore, Obama and our western allies do essentially agree that the Palestinians deserve their own state. Based on what criteria? As James Carafano of the Heritage Foundation characterizes it, if the Palestinians were granted statehood wouldn’t we expect that they would:
- Be unable to provide for the basic needs of their people
- Oppress all those who object to totalitarian rule
- Be the avowed enemy of their neighbor, Israel
- Be one more state sponsor of terrorism
- Be even more empowered by Iran and a potential proxy for the delivery of portable nuclear device to the US?
Wouldn’t we expect that a new Palestinian state could become the new training and staging ground for the coming 9/11 cubed?
