1 Day to Go – Friday is Speech Day

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Tomorrow, Friday, September 23rd, Palestinian Authority Chairman Abbas will speak to the UN General Assembly and lay out his position vis-à-vis UN recognition of statehood for the Palestinian Arab population of Judea and Samaria (and maybe even Gaza). Even now it is not clear what position he will take as he and his associates are clearly under a great deal of pressure to climb down from the high perch they have selected for themselves without losing face, a most important consideration in this part of the world and particularly in Muslim society.

Yesterday, the disappointment on the faces of the Palestinian delegation to the UN during President Obama’s speech was visible to all. Chairman Abbas sat there with his hands clasped to his earphones while next to him sat one of his associates shaking his head in disbelief. And why? Obama made it perfectly clear that while the US remains in favor of two states for two people in this part of the world that the path to achieving that is by negotiation between the two parties and not by UN resolutions. But he reiterated the basic principles that he laid out in his speech in May and which, independent of whether this is what Israel feel is in its best long term interests or not, they are indeed the parameters that have been discussed now for some years.

Obama went further and, to our joy here, underscored the need for any solution to provide Israel the security we must have in order to go to the next step with the Palestinian Arab leadership. From our perspective here the speech was balanced, recognized Israel’s need under any peace agreement to ensure its long term viability, and threw the responsibility for hammering out a solution, if there can be one, to the parties involved.

Of course those on the left in Israel were very quick to condemn the speech as being too soft on Israel. This morning’s Ha’aretz newspaper was full of criticism of the President for bowing to both Israeli pressure and election year political considerations in the US. Some excerpts:

Akiva Eldar penned a piece called “Introducing President Barack Netanyahu” and said that the President’s speech will not advance the peace process one iota. He went on to predict that Obama’s passivity could lead to civil unrest against both Israel and “its American patron” as well as lead to a loss of a Palestinian partner to the two state solution.

Yossi Sarid said that the speech was not good or bad it was simply “another empty speech. Above all, it was a sad, depressing occasion” He went on to say that Obama is not Obama, but simply the man who used to be Obama. He then castigated the President for not showing leadership and standing up for the Palestinian statehood attempt.

Other commentary from the left made additional statements regarding how Obama dropped the ball on this. On the other hand, those of us who have been arguing for months that moving this initiative forward in the UN is a bad move were pleased both by the speech and the efforts that the US is making to ensure that there is no majority for the initiative in the Security Council.

But the pressure must be kept up as the battle is not yet over. The fact, for example, that Rabbi Avi Weiss of Riverdale, NY, who attempted to mount a demonstration yesterday in front of the UN but could only muster 35 people in a city where 1.97 million Jews live speaks to the apathy of the American Jewish Community on the issue. Rabbi Weiss is due much gratitude from all of us for “doing something” and, of course, because he was blocking traffic on First Avenue he got arrested as well. Hopefully he has posted bond and is now out of jail. As for the local community, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Tomorrow, after Chairman Abbas speaks Prime Minister Netanyahu will take the rostrum. Hopefully he will speak the truth similar to what I outlined in my blog a few days ago and point out to those in the chamber that the opportunity to sit and negotiate with Israel has been open to the Palestinian Arab leadership for over a year and it is they who refused to come to the table. While our government is not totally blameless either given some of the characters in our leadership, the unwillingness of the Palestinian Arab leadership to come to the table during the 10 month suspension of building in the settlements was a strategic error and one that defied all logic.

One of the founding fathers of the US and its first president, George Washington is reputed to have said: “The marvel of history is the patience with which men and women submit to the burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.” His observation has been proven correct over the last 250 year, both for good and for bad. But what both sides to this conflict need now are leaders who can extract themselves from the binding aspect of history and chart a new and dynamic course. Hopefully they are up to the task but tomorrow will tell.