Israel backs away as support for bid firms

JERUSALEM: With Western support swelling in favour of a Palestinian bid for enhanced status at the United Nations, Israel engaged in damage control on Wednesday, a day before the vote.


Israeli officials began to play down the significance of a draft resolution that calls for the upgrading of the Palestinian status from observer to non-member observer state — a move also opposed by the United States. Israel has also toned down its threats of counter-measures after the vote in the General Assembly, which is virtually certain to pass, aware that a harsh reaction would only isolate it further.

We always said that the reality was that the Palestinians have an automatic majority in the General Assembly.__Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesman

"The United Nations General Assembly will pass a one-sided anti-Israel resolution that should come as a surprise to nobody, and certainly not to anyone in Israel," said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman. "We always said that the reality was that the Palestinians have an automatic majority in the General Assembly."

Mr Regev acknowledged "a certain amount of disappointment" over the decision of some friendly European countries to support the Palestinians or abstain from the vote, but said: "Ultimately what we will see at the United Nations is diplomatic theater. It will in no way affect the realities on the ground."

Israel's response, he said, would be "proportionate" to how the Palestinians acted after the vote.

At first, Israel had hoped to deter the Palestinians from pursuing a vote. Officials warned that such a step could result in Israeli responses as drastic as the cancellation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accords or the collapse of the Palestinian Authority.

When that effort failed, Israel focused on ensuring what it called a "moral majority" in the vote, meaning that even if most nations voted in favour of the Palestinian bid, the biggest world powers and most European countries would not.

But France announced on Tuesday that it would support the Palestinian bid. Other European nations, including Switzerland, Denmark and Norway, have followed.

Britain, which had previously lobbied along with the United States to try to get the Palestinians at least to postpone their manoeuvre, said it would consider voting for the resolution pending certain amendments and public assurances, including a clear commitment from the Palestinians that they would return immediately to negotiations with Israel without preconditions and that they would not pursue Israel for war crimes in the International Criminal Court. But on Wednesday it seemed unlikely those assurances would be forthcoming, meaning Britain would abstain.

Germany has said it will not vote for the resolution but has not yet specified if it will vote against it.

Israelis and the Palestinians agree on one thing: support for the Palestinian bid grew as a result of the recent fighting in the Gaza Strip between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that oversees Gaza, which elevated the stature of Hamas among Palestinians at the expense of that of Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank.

"Before the military confrontation there were several European countries willing to oppose the resolution," said Oded Eran, a former Israeli ambassador to the European Union. The new support, he said, was meant "to give Abbas a moral victory over Hamas in the contest between violence and diplomacy".

Husam Zumlot, a Palestinian official who has been active in lobbying in Europe, said more countries had decided "to support the diplomatic horizon and not the military-security approach that they see leads nowhere".

Israel has argued that the Palestinian move is a unilateral action that violates peace accords and that a vote for the resolution – which, according to the draft, "reaffirms the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to independence in their state of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967" – will make it harder to negotiate a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But looking at a resounding defeat in the General Assembly, Israeli representatives are increasingly describing the bid for enhanced status as meaningless.

"Other than symbolic value for the Palestinians," said Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, "it may give them some procedural advantages, such as access within the United Nations system to some things, but that's it. It does not change the status of the territory."

Mr Palmor added that there would be no automatic response from Israel.

"We are going to see where the Palestinians take this," he said. "If they use it to continue confronting Israel in other UN bodies, there will be a firm response. If not, then there won't."

NYT

Sourced