adminRAMALLAH – Palestinian leaders are making moves to escalate their diplomatic offensive against Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, warning that if their demands are ignored, they will appeal directly to the UN. Earlier on Monday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, currently in the United States, told a group of students at Cooper Union university in New York that he plans to submit a timetable for resuming the Middle East peace talks to the UN General Assembly later this week.
This announcement comes two weeks after Abbas presented the Obama administration a revamped political plan for ending Israel’s occupation and establishing a Palestinian state, but Washington has not given an official response to it yet.
In the case that Washington rejects Abbas’ proposal, Palestinians said they will appeal to the UN Security Council and demand international intervention to bring an end to the occupation and solve the Palestinian crisis.
According to Ahmed Majdalani, a senior member in Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), the uptick in Palestinian diplomacy reflects their determination to come to an international resolution to the occupation.
“The substance of the Palestinian move is to get a clear political position issued by the Security Council. It includes an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967 and recognizes a Palestinian state with known and clear borders,” said Majdalani.
The Palestinian president is scheduled to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York. Kerry and Abbas spoke by phone several days ago, during which Kerry reportedly asked Abbas not to apply to the Security Council, considering the move a unilateral one.
“We know very well that the diplomatic and political battle is not easy and the American side is pretty clear that it will not stand to the side of the Palestinians,” said Majdalani, adding he expects Israel and the United States would obstruct by all means the Palestinian appeals to the international community.
The US-sponsored direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians had stopped last March after it went on for nine months. Nothing was achieved due to differences between the two sides on settlement building, security and borders.
The lack of progress with the talks have left many Palestinians disillusioned with the peace process, which they say just stalls the establishment of Palestinian state and allows Israel to continue to build illegal settlements in the West Bank.
The international arena has “become one of the few available options remaining for the Palestinians . . . amid this ongoing stalemate in the peace process and security deterioration,” Ghassan al-Khatib, a political science professor at Beir Zeit University in Ramallah, told Xinhua.
“The US sponsorship of peace in the Middle East was totally consumed and the only thing remaining for the Palestinians is the international law and the international agencies,” al-Khatib said.
Current Palestinian political and diplomatic moves “are achieving gains by pressuring on Israel and isolating it,” he said, adding that as Palestinians continue to gain international support in the UN, it would “create a political balance of power for the Palestinian cause.”
Throughout the past the international community has shown strong support for Palestinian statehood and independence. – Xinhua.
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