AA Edit | Will Clamour For Palestine Work?
The Palestinians’ cause is justified considering how they were promised nearly half the territory when Israel was created in 1947, and they came close enough to recognition after the Oslo Accord in 1993
The international call for a Palestinian state has grown to an impressive list of 147 countries (of 193 in the UN fold) as the UK, Australia, Canada and Portugal recognised it just ahead of the United Nations General Assembly which begins today. The outrage over the continuing war in Gaza that has brought about death and destruction, besides imposing hunger and starvation on a couple of million people, is the immediate trigger for so many allies of the USA coming forward now to recognise a home for the Palestinians whose cause for a homeland has been a historically just one.
The political messaging is strong in this right now but the UN Security Council, which must ratify such a move, is unlikely to be ever allowed to recognise Palestine statehood so long as Israel, with the help of Jewish power controlling the US veto, is able to block it. And the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is dead against the proposal, is committed to doing everything he can to make statehood an impossible proposition, escalating the war as he has already with desertification of the land in and around Gaza City.
The Palestinians’ cause is justified considering how they were promised nearly half the territory when Israel was created in 1947, and they came close enough to recognition after the Oslo Accord in 1993. But subsequent wars and the Gaza strip’s recent history with Hamas, as a known instrument of terror, gaining a role in administration by winning the Gaza polls, has led to the cause of the long-suffering people not being recognised.
‘Palestine’ satisfies the statehood recognition criteria of a permanent population, defined territorial boundaries even if they have lost 30 percent of their land since 1967, a government in place and the ability to conduct international affairs. The rest of the world wants the conferment of statehood in their pursuit of a long sought after two-state solution that should, in theory, lead to a more peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs.
If this symbolic call for recognition at least leads to the renewal of the peace process and a cessation of hostilities by Israel and release of remaining hostages by Hamas, it would have achieved something. It is, however, a burden of Palestinian history that it should suffer one of the most hawkish Israeli regimes in Tel Aviv with a leader who will continue to refuse to yield so long as the USA backs him.