For decades, the world has known that the contours for any political settlement in this century-old intractable problem were hovering around either a two-state solution (the 78-22 formula), one-state (bi-national, one-man one-vote), or apartheid (one people controlling the fate of another.)
Many in the world including the U.N, the U.S, the E.U, and even liberal Zionists (hoping to preserve the Jewish majority and Zionist nature of the state) have embraced the two-state solution. But successive Israeli governments have worked incessantly to shut down this option in the hope that Israel could retain East Jerusalem and as much West Bank territory and aquifers as possible, while making life difficult for the Palestinians so they could either give up and leave, or accept the hard realities of the status quo.
Whether Shamir, Rabin, Barak, Sharon, Olmert, or Netanyahu-Lieberman; all Israeli leaders have expanded the settlements and built a segregated system in the West Bank and Jerusalem that in essence foreclosed the two-state option.
At the same time, millions of people around the world are fed up with injustices carried out by imperialist, racist, or colonialist policies. They support the notion of racial equality, of one-person one-vote in historical Palestine that would also redress the historical injustices done to the Palestinian refugees.
In essence, Abbas, who reached a dead end, is trying to salvage his failing approach by claiming a hollow diplomatic victory. But the problem with it is that it will provide Israel with the perfect pretext to deny the Palestinian refugees right of return to their historical land enshrined in international law and UN Resolution 194.
This move will also provide Israel with the justification to reject the one-state solution that guarantees real equality, democracy, justice, and genuine peace, once it fails to subjugate the Palestinians or expel them from their land.
So with this action the Palestinians are freely giving up their only remaining card to play toward any future settlement: the dissolution of the PA and the pursuit of one-state.
The Obama administration, meanwhile, is at a loss. On the one hand, President Obama has himself called last year for the establishment of the State of Palestine within a year. He declared that the two-state solution is imperative and a vital national security interest of the U.S. But on the other hand, his administration has done everything in its power to derail this effort.
The only explanation of this myopic behavior is the depth and breadth of the influence of the Israeli lobby, especially over Congress and the Republican Party. A recent New York Times article described how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton frequently calls on Israeli politicians to lobby Republican members of Congress on Middle East issues.
In one instance the paper quotes a Republican member of Congress, who said that, "Netanyahu has more credibility in the Congress than Obama." This statement, claiming that the majority in Congress would believe a foreign leader over their president in what constitutes the national security interest of the country, is incredible and possibly treasonous.
Many in the Palestinian leadership, including Abbas's advisors Saeb Erekat, Nabeel Shaath and Yaser Abed Rabbo, talk openly that this call for statehood is a tactical move to force Israel back to the negotiating table with some leverage and international backing. It seems that they have no intention to change their colossal path of negotiating away -- behind closed doors -- fundamental Palestinian rights and to continue to provide "security cooperation" against other Palestinians in the West Bank.
If Abbas were really serious about this move, he would not have waited until today to submit the statehood application, when the U.S. could demand postponing the Security Council vote (to avoid a devastating veto damaging its credibility around the world) by using a rule that allows delays for up to five weeks. Had he applied early he could have forced the U.S. to veto the resolution this week and expose its hypocrisy, while demanding the implementation of previous UN resolutions that call for Palestinian statehood, right of return, and rejecting all Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories as well as the annexation of East Jerusalem.
In short, the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people is misplaced and should not be reduced to the question of statehood on 22 percent of their historical land. Any solution addressing the Palestinian problem must deal with the main cause of this predicament.
Thus any long-lasting and genuine resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must be based on the following principles.
1) The rejection of a nineteenth century political system and ideology that bestows political and civil rights in a country based on ethnicity or religious affiliation. Zionism for over a hundred years has called for the ingathering of Jews around the world in Palestine and the expulsion and exclusion of Palestinians from their homeland.
For decades Israel has prevented the implementation of UN resolution 194 calling for the return of Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948 to their cities and villages, while simultaneously granting automatic citizenship rights and housing to millions of European and American Jews in Palestinian territories, most recently to over a million Jews from the former Soviet republics in the 1990s.
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