Here we go again…the General Assembly of the U.N. will reconvene this week and offer the usual mix of a minority of statesmen and women and a majority of law-abiding member states, of half- baked democracies and of unrepentant dictatorships.
The initiative to ask for full membership by President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority will certainly create a tension which might reverberate worldwide. The Israeli Prime Minister will be a lonely man, at the helm of a lonely country. Egypt is becoming unreliable, while Turkey reviews its priorities and Syria becomes a living hell next door. The odds are ominous. The Arab Spring might well turn into a cold winter. The fault lines in the Middle East make any diplomatic initiative hazardous. I personally hope that a last hour deal might still be achieved but the prospect thereof looks tenuous. If we come to a situation where the sole veto of the United States shields Israel we will find ourselves in the worst case scenario. I wish the EU would abstain but I doubt that the Europeans will have the guts (I hope I will be proven wrong).
What is at stake here is morality more than just politics. We all are in favor of a two-state solution based on security and equality. The two parties share a negative collective memory. Israel will always be a country unlike any other because of the horrendous fate which befell the Jews and which has no equivalent in history. The Palestinians for their part lost everything, in the first place their dignity. Refugees rot in camps in supposedly friendly Arab countries.
Nevertheless, peace remains possible as long as there is a meeting of wills, aspirations and minds. In the end Hamas has to move away from its unacceptable premise. I fully understand that peace, under the present conditions, is quasi-unachievable as long as one segment (Hamas, with the blessing of Iran and Hezbollah…and the list might get larger) of the two parties wants the destruction of the other. If Hamas maintains its current “fatwa” against the Jewish state, it is doomed to remain a rogue entity. The EU should therefore abstain in the Security Council rather than be part of a sham. This is unfortunate for Abbas and his most able Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. It is also a setback for Netanyahu who might not be the ideal partner in peace talks, given his personal history and his political alliance with the right, but who has shown courage if not vision.
A show of force against Israel in the Security Council and in the General Assembly might have dire consequences. I wish the Europeans would not be part of it. They are supporting statehood for the Palestinians and have been first financial contributors. They intend to remain so but they have to beware of playing in the hands of Iran’s minions by acquiescing to good intentions tainted by unwelcome interlopers. The times of teasing between President Sadat and the Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir look almost unreal today. The Quartet is dead on arrival and Tony Blair appears to have become irrelevant when confronted with the amount of hate and bad faith he has to deal with on a daily basis. One should never give up, remain available for what is possible but also keep one’s distance from what might become lethal. In this we have to support both parties, inviting the Israelis to refrain from getting into overdrive (settlements, borders, refugees) and pressing the Palestinians in the West Bank to reject any inconsiderate move or internal realignment as long as Gaza’s landlord sticks with its unpalatable ideology.
Conditions have to fall into place so that a consensual atmosphere might be created, easing the creation of a viable, territorial homogeneous Palestinian state, next to a democratic secure Israel. Israel surely wants as much to return to its roots, being the Silicon Valley of the region, and restart the short-lived MENA process with its neighbors, who deserve as well to show what their soft power can achieve. After all, most Arabs are equally eager to be free from emotional disorder. Their contemporary literature and contribution to modernity give ample proof that religious and secular societies can work and live together. The menace of the mad suicide bomber must come to an end because the perpetrator does not only kill at random, he condemns, through his deed, a great civilization to the gallows. ”The Dream Palace of the Arabs” by the philosopher Fouad Ajami tells it all.
Let us hope that countries will think twice this week, while remaining aware of the Ides of September! This ballot is unlike any other.
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