A New World: United States and Israel Irrelevant at the UN

We are entering into a new world order and amazingly the US and Israel are becoming more irrelevant. The latest example is the voting that took place yesterday at the United Nations where the General Assembly approved the inclusion of Palestine as an observer member. Despite the strong opposition from the United States and Israel, a large majority of member nations supported the Palestinian Authority’s request to be accepted as an Observer State member.

The Palestinian president said at the UN that the recent vote is a “birth certificate to the reality of the state of Palestine ” Now, Palestine enjoys the same status of the Vatican.

The vote showed that the world is in favor of the recognition of Palestine as an independent state. A total of 138 countries, including Spain, voted in favor, for only 9 against, with the U.S. and Israel at the head of the opposition. Meanwhile 41 other member states abstained.

Hours earlier, U.S. President Barack Obama spoke out against the vote. He described the initiative as an error from Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority. “Nothing can replace direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine.” Obama forgot to say that direct talks were already held and Israel rejected every single option on the table that would allow the existence of two sovereign states that could live side by side in peace.

Obama and his team have worked hard diplomatically during these last days to try to convince the Palestinians to back off. Obama himself, shortly after his re-election on November 6, called on Abbas to reconsider the situation. He asked for a margin of time to promote a new round of negotiations, since the previous one has been frozen for two years.

Abbas rejected the proposal and went ahead with his project. “We are here because we believe in peace,” he said from the podium of the General Assembly. “In the last days (referring to the conflict in Gaza last week) we’ve seen the desperate need for peace. We did not come to add more complications, but we seek to bring this new life into the negotiations,” he said.

But the Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, said that it is the Palestinians that interfere with conversations. “They prefer to come to New York than to travel to Jerusalem,” he said. “There is no UN resolution that can break the bonds of the Israeli people to the land of Israel.”

At the conclusion of the vote, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, described the resolution as unfortunate and counterproductive, “that is why we voted against.” And she insisted on Obama’s call to direct negotiation. “Do not fall into further provocations,” she said. Despite Rice’s  descriptions, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said that the resolution of the Assembly was very useful. “This is a call for negotiations,” he said. “I think the Palestinians have the right to live in their independent state. I think the Israelis have the right to live in peace and security with its neighbors. “

For its part, the Spanish delegation said that “if there had been progress in the negotiations, the outcome of this vote would have been different.”

“Palestine comes today to the General Assembly because it believes in peace for its people, which as proven in recent days, it is desperately needed,” Abbas said in his speech before the voting in favor of the proposed resolution was carried out.

“Your support for our efforts today will give you a reason to hope for a nation besieged by a racist and colonialist occupation,” he added. The president said that the Palestinian people will not accept anything less than “an independent State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital, on the territory occupied in 1967 to live in peace and security with Israel.”

In the meantime, the Israeli ambassador to the UN said that the vote “will not advance peace and will not change the situation on the ground because the Palestinian Authority does not control Gaza, 40 percent of the territory you want to control, and which is now in the hands of Hamas, a group listed in terrorist organizations,” the ambassador added. He forgot to mention, however, that it was Israel itself the one that strongly contributed to the creation of Hamas, just as the United States did with al-Qaeda in the 1970′s.