UN Summit in September Will Press for Palestinian State
Goverment Must Use UN Summit to Publicly Support Formation of a Palestinian State - Ó Fearghaíl
Fianna FáilJuly 12, 2011
Spokesperson Foreign Affairs Seán Ó Fearghaíl TD has called on the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore to publicly support the formation of a Palestinian State at the UN in September, recognising that a two-state solution is the best path to peace in the Middle East.
Deputy Ó Fearghaíl said:
“Nabil Shaath, a senior Palestinian negotiator, is currently visiting Ireland seeking support for the UN meeting in September. I believe the Government must go to that meeting and support the establishment of a State for the Palestinian people.
“Fianna Fáil has always supported the cause of the Palestinian people and encouraged all sides to work for peace in the region. Indeed we were heartened to see President Obama appoint Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East Peace Envoy following his extraordinary work on the Good Friday Agreement. I know Senator Mitchell, who has now retired, is hopeful that genuine progress for peace can be made between Israel and the Palestinians.”
“I have been in contact with Sadaka – the Ireland Palestine Alliance. I support their efforts to raise the profile of this issue. Fianna Fáil has today tabled a motion before the Dáil calling on the Government to formally recognise a Palestinian State. We believe this State should be based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders.”
Deputy Ó Fearghaíl concluded:
“I am encouraging the Government to accept the motion and demonstrate that the elected representatives of the Irish people stand with the Palestinians in the pursuit of peace and a viable, permanent, secure State.”
Arab League to Seek UN Seat for Palestinian State
The Arab League decided on Saturday to seek full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital, ignoring opposition from the United States and Israel.
The Arab League's peace process committee, meeting in Doha, said it would request membership for the state of Palestine at the U.N. General Assembly's meeting in New York in September.
"The committee decided to go to the United Nations to request full membership for Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital," it said in a statement.
The 1967 borders refer to Israel's frontiers as they stood on the eve of the 1967 Middle East war in which it captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, from Jordan.
The Palestinian leadership began peace talks with Israel nearly two decades ago with the aim of founding a state alongside Israel in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Israel says that peace talks and an agreement are the only way for the Palestinians to achieve their goal of nationhood. But with the peace process at a standstill, the Palestinian leadership has been seeking new ways to advance their cause. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas opposes the use of violence.
The Arab League's U.N. move looks set to fail because of the opposition of the United States, which has veto power in the Security Council. But Israel fears the maneuvering will leave them looking vulnerable on the diplomatic front.
U.S. President Barack Obama, in a May 19 speech, condemned what he described as "symbolic actions to isolate Israel at the United Nations," a reference to the Palestinians' plan to push for recognition at the September meeting. The Palestinians currently have the status of U.N. observers without voting rights.
NO COMMON GROUND
The Doha meeting had been convened in the wake of major Middle East policy speeches in Washington by Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu had said in a speech to the U.S. Congress he was ready to make "painful concessions" for peace, saying he was ready to give up parts of what he called the ancestral Jewish homeland -- a reference to the West Bank.
The Palestinians said Netanyahu's ideas for peace had put more obstacles in the path of an already moribund peace process.
Abbas, in his opening remarks to the Doha meeting, said there were "no shared foundations" for peace talks with Netanyahu and seeking U.N. recognition was his only option.
"We see from the conditions that Netanyahu laid out that there are no shared foundations ... for negotiations. Our fundamental option is to go to the United Nations," he said.
He expressed fear that the step would lead some states to "try to impose a siege upon us," though he did not say to which governments he was referring. "We hope that there will be a safety net from the Arab states," he said.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) headed by Abbas is dependent on financial support from international donors including the United States and the European Union. It also relies on customs duties collected on its behalf by Israel, which triggered a financial crisis for the PA earlier this month when the Israeli government temporarily withheld the funds following a reconciliation deal between the rival Fatah and Hamas groups.
U.S.-brokered talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down last September in a dispute over continued Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.
"In these circumstances, it seems better to me that we freeze discussion of the peace process until there is a partner ready for peace," said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, who was chairing the meeting.
Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa, a leading candidate for the Egyptian presidency, told Reuters that Netanyahu had presented nothing but a series of "no's" in his speech to the U.S. Congress.
"The sound path is going to the United Nations and political struggle," Moussa said. "I believe that negotiations have become futile in light of all of these nos. What will you negotiate on?"
Egypt Says Obama Speech Will Help Palestinians
Associated PressMay 20, 2011
President Barack Obama's backing of a key Palestinian demand on the borders of its future state will help win U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state, Egypt's U.N. ambassador said Thursday.
Maged Abdelaziz linked Obama's support for the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to the Palestinian campaign to get two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly -- at least 128 of its 192 member states -- to recognize Palestine as a state by September. He predicted the Palestinians would get support from at least 130 nations, which would be "a milestone," and would keep pursuing additional recognitions.
But for a newly created Palestine to become a member of the United Nations, Abdelaziz said, it must get support from the Security Council, where the United States, Israel's closest ally, has veto power. Palestine is already recognized as an independent state by 112 countries, Abdelaziz said.
"If they put a resolution in the General Assembly requesting the Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and this resolution passes ... with 170 or 180 votes, I'm sure that this is going to put a lot of moral pressure on the Security Council, and particularly on the United States, in order not to veto," Abdelaziz told a group of reporters.
He said he didn't know whether the Palestinians will push for a resolution in September because Palestinian leaders are still discussing what to do.
A resolution would be purely symbolic -- not legally binding like Security Council resolutions -- but it would have an impact, Abdelaziz said.
"I think the Palestinian situation would be much stronger if they got the two-thirds majority required for the General Assembly -- not to use it in the General Assembly, but use it as a card to put more emphasis on their issue in the Security Council in order to have the Security Council also act," he said.
Abdelaziz welcomed Obama's support for the pre-1967 borders with "mutually agreed swaps" of land because it "runs in conjunction with the efforts by the Palestinian leadership to garner the most possible number of recognitions of the state of Palestine on the borders of 1967, with those swaps."
But the Egyptian ambassador said Obama missed an opportunity to address other key issues including Israel's continued settlement activities, water, ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the return of refugees "which is a critical issue," and the Palestinian demand for East Jerusalem as its capital.
He said he hoped that Israel and the Palestinians will resume negotiations but said the U.S. president didn't outline the basis of negotiations, which many had hoped for, or give a timeline.
Abdelaziz said one possibility being discussed by Palestinian leaders would be to adopt a General Assembly resolution supporting Palestinian statehood in September "and then allowing one or two years for negotiations on the basis of the parameters to be established in that resolution."
By the time those negotiations end, he said, the next U.S. presidential elections would be over, which presumably would mean the White House would not face the political pressures that exist today and might look favorably on U.N. membership for Palestine.
September has loomed large because Israel and the Palestinians have agreed on Obama's target of September 2011 for a peace agreement, a date endorsed by the European Union and much of the world.
As U.S.-brokered direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resumed last September, Obama announced at the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting that a peace treaty should be signed in a year. But those talks collapsed weeks later after Israel ended its freeze on building settlements.
The Palestinians insist they will not resume peace talks until Israel stops building settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem -- lands it captured in the 1967 war and which the Palestinians want for their future state.
Israel maintains that the Palestinians should not be setting conditions for talks and that settlements didn't stop them negotiating in the past.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama have expressed vastly different visions about the path forward -- Obama is urging a return to the bargaining table while Netanyahu has attacked the Palestinians' intention to set up a "unity government" backed by both the moderate Fatah of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Iranian-backed Hamas which controls Gaza and refuses to recognize Israel.
Egypt mediated talks between Fatah and Hamas that led to the agreement on a unity government, he said, and it is trying to ensure that the reconciliation is not just symbolic.
"We're putting a lot of emphasis on Hamas changing its positions in order to join the peace process and to stop all kinds of activities that it's doing against it," Abdelaziz said.
Obama Speech Will Assist UN Recognition of Palestinian State, Egypt Official Says
Egyptian envoy to the UN says U.S. President's support of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders crucial, adding that Cairo was pressuring Hamas to accept Quartet Mideast peace principles.By The Associated Press
May 20, 2011
President Barack Obama's backing of a key Palestinian demand on the borders of its future state will help win UN recognition of a Palestinian state, Egypt's UN ambassador said Thursday.
Maged Abdelaziz linked Obama's support for the borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war to the Palestinian campaign to get two-thirds of the UN General Assembly — at least 128 of its 192 member states — to recognize Palestine as a state by September.
He predicted the Palestinians would get support from at least 130 nations, which would be "a milestone," and would keep pursuing additional recognitions.
UN General Assembly
But for a newly created Palestine to become a member of the United Nations, Abdelaziz said, it must get support from the Security Council, where the United States, Israel's closest ally, has veto power.
"If they put a resolution in the General Assembly requesting the Security Council to recognize the state of Palestine and this resolution passes ... with 170 or 180 votes, I'm sure that this is going to put a lot of moral pressure on the Security Council, and particularly on the United States, in order not to veto," Abdelaziz told a group of reporters.He said he didn't know whether the Palestinians will push for a resolution in September because Palestinian leaders are still discussing what to do.
A resolution would be purely "symbolic" — not legally binding like Security Council resolutions — but it would have an impact, Abdelaziz said.
"I think the Palestinian situation would be much stronger if they got the two-thirds majority required for the General Assembly — not to use it in the General Assembly, but use it as a card to put more emphasis on their issue in the Security Council in order to have the Security Council also act," he said.Abdelaziz welcomed Obama's support for the pre-1967 borders with "mutually agreed swaps" of land because it "runs in conjunction with the efforts by the Palestinian leadership to garner the most possible number of recognitions of the state of Palestine on the borders of 1967, with those swaps."
But the Egyptian ambassador said Obama missed an opportunity to address other key issues including Israel's continued settlement activities, water, ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the return of refugees "which is a critical issue," and the Palestinian demand for East Jerusalem as its capital.
He said he hoped that Israel and the Palestinians will resume negotiations but said the U.S. president didn't outline the basis of negotiations, which many had hoped for, or give a timeline.
Abdelaziz said one possibility being discussed by Palestinian leaders would be to adopt a General Assembly resolution supporting Palestinian statehood in September "and then allowing one or two years for negotiations on the basis of the parameters to be established in that resolution."
By the time those negotiations end, he said, the next U.S. presidential elections would be over, which presumably would mean the White House would not face the political pressures that exist today and might look favorably on UN membership for Palestine.
September has loomed large because Israel and the Palestinians have agreed on Obama's target of September 2011 for a peace agreement, a date endorsed by the European Union and much of the world.
As U.S.-brokered direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations resumed last September, Obama announced at the General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting that a peace treaty should be signed in a year. But those talks collapsed weeks later after Israel ended its freeze on building settlements.
The Palestinians insist they will not resume peace talks until Israel stops building settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem — lands it captured in the 1967 war and which the Palestinians want for their future state.
Israel maintains that the Palestinians should not be setting conditions for talks and that settlements didn't stop them negotiating in the past.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama have expressed vastly different visions about the path forward — Obama is urging a return to the bargaining table while Netanyahu has attacked the Palestinians' intention to set up a "unity government" backed by both the moderate Fatah of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Iranian-backed Hamas which controls Gaza and refuses to recognize Israel.
Abdelaziz said Obama's statement last September created momentum among Arab nations and the Palestinians which they don't want to lose.
Egypt mediated talks between Fatah and Hamas that led to the agreement on a unity government, he said, and it is trying to ensure that the reconciliation is not just symbolic.
"We're putting a lot of emphasis on Hamas changing its positions in order to join the peace process and to stop all kinds of activities that it's doing against it," Abdelaziz said.He said this means having Hamas accept the principles outlined by the Quartet of Mideast mediators — the UN, U.S., European Union and Russia — which include recognition of Israel and honoring all past agreements with the Jewish state.
