The Palestinian quest for statehood now a priority

Abbas, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and president of the Palestinian National Authority, has confirmed that this September he will make a request for international recognition of the State of Palestine along the lines of the 1967 border.

In turn, says Abbas, that state would then look to be admitted as a full member of the United Nations. If indeed the hour has finally come for Palestinian statehood then it would, in my view, be long overdue.

The real question though, is can such a bid be successful and, perhaps more crucially, is Mahmoud Abbas the right man to lead it?

Zionist hardliners don’t think so. Hardly surprising, then, that they are suitably outraged not just by the notion that anyone should posit the idea of a Palestinian state.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also waded into the fray with the unusual move of releasing a signed response accusing Abbas of “blatantly distorting history.” An interesting take coming from someone like Netanyahu.

The fact that Israel has been comparatively silent until recently has been a measure of how confident it feels in keeping the Palestinians in check. To be frank, the Palestinian leadership has not helped in this regard, allowing itself to be politically manipulated, ensuring its top people spent more time at each other’s throats rather than focusing on establishing unity and a cohesive strategy that might make their hopes of nationhood a reality.

How encouraging, then, to see the Palestinian leadership wake up to this realisation, setting about the political task with what appears to be a new impetus.

The old guard aside, all of a sudden it seems the offshoots of the Arab Spring are being nurtured by a younger generation of Palestinians keen to incorporate the lessons learned from these democratic uprisings into their own struggle.

First there was the rapprochement between bitter rival factions, Fatah and Hamas, brokered interestingly by Cairo. Then there was the remarkable events of the past week, what one Arab writer called “a profoundly revolutionary moment,” as young Palestinians took part in demonstrations on the Syrian and Lebanon borders commemorating the Nakba, or catastrophe as they call the day their forebears were displaced from their homeland and Israel was created in 1948.

What is becoming clear is that the central message from the Arab uprisings is registering on the Palestinian political radar and that the quest for national liberation, democracy, and social justice has many parts which are inextricably linked.

In effect, the scene is now set for the Palestinians to pursue a rights-based approach to their struggle, rather than simply depending on the arguments that underpinned those “initiatives” that have so failed them in the past, be they the Oslo Accords or the insignificant contribution made by Tony Blair and the Middle East Quartet.

Already, Israel’s response suggests it may be facing a challenge from the Palestinians unlike anything it has seen for some time. As ever, Netanyahu has wasted no time in turning the screw, creating further hardship by withholding $105 million in customs and tax dues from the Palestinian people.

Israel’s security apparatus has been switching its focus from targeting armed Palestinian groups to pinpointing Arab, Israeli and international activists involved in popular protest and building pressure abroad.

The message is straightforward. Israel is getting worried and Abbas is right when he says that Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would “pave the way for the internationalisation of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one”.

Given such a scenario playing out at the UN and short of the usual mealy-mouthed prevarication that has so often been the hallmark of the international community’s betrayal of the Palestinians in the past, my biggest fear is that they themselves squander this potentially pivotal moment as a result of the festering rivalries that still lurk within their ranks.

Both Fatah and Hamas have to overcome mutual suspicion, significant differences of opinion and practicalities on the ground if the implementation of a united Palestinian government is to be achieved and their case at the UN made from a position of solidarity. This while all the time confronting determined Israeli efforts to spoil the accord struck in Cairo.

In the eye of the storm itself of course comes Mahmoud Abbas, the man of the hour who has no shortage of detractors among many Palestinians who regard him as little more than a lackey.

Indeed, even as Abbas was making his statehood case, critics promptly pointed to the fact that he remains committed to allowing Israel to annexe vast tracts for settlements on the territory of this putative state.

These more outspoken critics aside, there are also those who simply cannot buy into the idea that the statehood bid will in reality amount to much or significantly advance the Palestinian cause.

But as Abbas himself has emphasised, the Palestinian quest for recognition as a state should under no circumstances be seen simply as a stunt.

“Too many of our men and women have been lost for us to engage in such political theatre”, he rightly points out.

For more than six decades now the Palestinians have demonstrated with great fortitude how it is possible to retain one’s humanity in the face of oppression.

Before September at the United Nations General Assembly, they must not let internal political differences be their undoing or deny them the respect and recognition they deserve from the international community.