State of Failure
Page 17
Latin America proved fertile ground for the initiative, especially with the rise of other left-wing governments in South America’s most important countries—not only Brazil, but also Chile, Argentina, and, especially, Venezuela. In early February 2009, Costa Rica officially recognized a Palestinian state,2 and just two months later, Palestinian and Venezuelan officials established diplomatic relations and inaugurated a Palestinian embassy in Caracas.3 In November 2009, Abbas toured the region, visiting Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Venezuela.4 That month, Venezuela formally announced support for Palestinian statehood.
The following year, Lula continued to advocate for Abbas. In March 2010, he visited Israel and the Palestinian territories, expressing support for the Palestinians and criticizing the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.5 In December, as promised, just before his term in office was to expire, Lula announced that Brazil recognized an independent Palestinian state.6 With that, the Latin American floodgates opened. Shortly after Lula’s announcement, Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador expressed support for a Palestinian state.7 In addition, Uruguay announced its intention to offer recognition in 2011 and further indicated that it would establish diplomatic representation, most likely in Ramallah.8
On New Year’s Eve 2010, Abbas attended a ceremony in Brasilia, where he laid the cornerstone for a new Palestinian embassy.9 Over the coming weeks, additional Latin American states joined the diplomatic parade. Chile, home to a Palestinian population of about 300,000, offered its unsurprising support.10 Guyana, Peru, and Paraguay followed.11 In February 2011, Suriname joined in.12 Uruguay’s official recognition followed in March.13
Latin America was not the only region to support the initiative. In June 2010, France announced it would upgrade the Palestinian delegation in Paris to a mission led by an ambassador.14 Spain, Portugal, and Norway did the same later in the year.15
Remarkably, the Palestinians leveraged the sympathy within the international bureaucracy and exploited the pervasive frustration over the continued failure of the peace process. It was an unquestionably successful campaign. The effort to garner widespread international support was a new and decidedly evolved approach to their campaign against Israel, where the government was flummoxed by the speed and cleverness of the Palestinian maneuverings. The Israelis couldn’t keep up.
In the fall of 2010, the Palestinian leadership first began making it clear that statehood was their agenda. The October issue of the Monocle, a London-based magazine, revealed that the PA in the West Bank was planning to roll out a currency—the Palestinian pound. In a one-on-one interview, Palestine Monetary Authority Chairman Jihad al-Wazir, son of Fatah founder and PLO terrorist Khalil al-Wazir, insisted that the step was “not necessarily immediate.” However, based on the interview with the Marquette University graduate, it was also clear that a great deal of planning had already gone into the currency. For example, the Monocle reported that a photo of the late Yasser Arafat “is almost certain” to appear on the currency and that the design of the currency would likely be decided by competition. Reserves of the currency would also be held in the Palestinian Central Bank, which was under construction in Ramallah.16
The currency has deep historical meaning. In short, because the Palestinians have never had an independent nation, they’ve never had their own currency. The pound was the currency of the British Mandate of Palestine from 1927 until the creation of Israel in 1948. From 1948 until 1967, when the West Bank was under Jordanian occupation, citizens were forced to do business in Jordanian dinars. Similarly, thanks to the Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip, citizens there had little choice but to trade in Egyptian pounds. Since 1967, the Palestinians in both territories have primarily done business in Israeli currency—the lira until 1980, and the shekel since.
Meanwhile, Abbas continued to enlist the assistance of foreign leaders to recognize a Palestinian state without Israel’s agreement. On December 5, he visited Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an in Ankara. Shortly thereafter, the Palestinian envoy to Turkey announced that Erdog˘an would recognize a Palestinian state (within the 1967 borders) at an unspecified time.17 Erdog˘an also reportedly promised to go to bat for the initiative with other heads of state.
By the end of 2010, almost 100 countries had already recognized an independent Palestine, and it was unclear how many others Abbas had asked to sign on to his plan. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat approached UN and European officials, demanding that they force Israel to stop imposing “facts on the ground” in the West Bank through the construction of settlements.18 Abbas adviser Nimer Hammad added that the Palestinians were considering a plan whereby the United Nations would approve of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.19
In the first months of 2011, Cyprus, Greece, and Ireland upgraded their Palestinian diplomatic missions. In March, the United Kingdom and Denmark did the same.20 By the spring of 2011, Slovenia and Spain had announced their recognition of a Palestinian state.21 They were then followed by the Dominican Republic and Peru.22 In July, Bulgaria, Belgium, and Norway announced their support.23 The Palestinians clearly had the upper hand, despite protests from the United States, Israel, Canada, and a handful of other countries.
Europe was a particularly interesting battleground. The Palestinian drive for recognition at the United Nations exposed deep fault lines among the 27 member states of the European Union.24 German chancellor Angela Merkel observed, “It is not certain that unilateral recognition will contribute to promoting peace.”25 Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini echoed her concerns: “Peace is made through negotiation, not through imposition.”26
By contrast, French president Nicolas Sarkozy stated in May 2011, “If the peace process is still dead in September, France will face up to its responsibilities on the central question of the recognition of a Palestinian state.”27 Spain’s foreign minister, Trinidad Jimenez, similarly opined, “There’s the feeling that now is the time to do something, to give the Palestinians the hope that a state could become reality.”28 Spain had upgraded its mission, too.29
Many of the European countries did not heed Israel’s warnings over how the unilateral Palestinian initiative might create challenges for a two-state solution. Instead, many insisted that such a move would help prod the two sides toward peace. The logic: a stronger Palestinian hand would force the Israelis to respect the Palestinian side’s positions.
As the Palestinians openly mulled their options, the international community failed to make any demands on the Palestinians. There was no discussion about conditioning international aid based on good governance. There was no discussion about improving upon the state-building program.
Some states may have felt that such a move might undercut the Palestinians. But amending the UN resolution would not have rejected the premise of taking steps toward a Palestinian state. Rather, it would have placed realistic conditions on Abbas in exchange for recognizing his maneuver. This, however, was the road not taken.
Another road not taken was congressional oversight. The Palestinian leadership was traveling to dozens of countries to drum up support for the statehood bid.30 Accordingly, the Palestinians were spending huge sums of money to pursue this diplomatic initiative, and it was entirely unclear where those funds were coming from. Were they being drawn from the PA’s coffers? If so, this subject fell squarely in the wheelhouse of Congress, which controls the purse strings for the estimated $600 million in aid furnished yearly by the United States to the PA.
The Palestinians were traveling frenetically across the globe. From Mahmoud Abbas to Hanan Ashrawi to Nabil Sha’ath, the Palestinians were spending untold sums of cash to press their case in international capitals. All of that travel could not have been cheap. And it was all happening while the PA was suffering from a cash crunch. Indeed, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad openly complained that the PA was facing a financial crisis because donor nations
were delaying or withholding funds.31
US lawmakers, for their part, registered their disapproval of the Palestinian UN gambit and were threatening to withhold aid. The maneuver, after all, was an outright rejection of the Oslo Accords, the legal framework for US–Palestinian relations. In many ways, it was also a rejection of the US role as the primary broker for continued diplomacy. And whether intended or not, the move also had the effect of isolating the United States from the Arab world. Indeed, how could the United States deny the yearning of the Palestinian people, particularly as it supported other Middle Eastern people’s struggles for independence during the “Arab Spring”?
A potential full cut-off by Congress threatened the Palestinians with a complete financial collapse. The Israelis, who collect some $100 million in value-added taxes (VAT) on behalf of the Palestinians each month, also threatened to withhold funds. At the time, US aid and Israeli VAT amounted to more than $1.5 billion per year.32 This sum was roughly three-quarters of the PA’s annual budget.
With the maneuver at the United Nations slated for the September 2011 UN General Assembly, Palestinian newspapers reported plans for a mass rally the day of the vote, which leaders called “Palestine 194,” marking their desire to become the United Nation’s 194th member state.33
Al-Jazeera quoted PLO official Yasser Abed Rabbo calling for “millions to pour into the streets” in support of the bid.34 Marwan Barghouti, a popular Palestinian figure now serving five life sentences in Israel for terrorism, also expressed support for mass demonstrations.35 Abbas, the architect of the statehood drive, embraced the protests as well.36
Amid these calls for peaceful rallies, analysts began to question whether they would remain peaceful. With the United States poised to block a Palestinian request for full statehood, Palestinian columnist Daoud Kuttab warned, “If this path is blocked, there is no telling which route the Palestinians will take.”37
Kuttab was not simply hypothesizing. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in May showed that more than 70 percent of Palestinians thought a new uprising was around the corner.38 Facebook pages had popped up calling for orchestrated Palestinian uprisings against Israel. There was even a “Third Palestinian Intifada” iPhone app, which Apple later removed at Israel’s urging.39
Bracing for the worst, former Israeli defense minister Shaul Mofaz announced that the country would call up military reservists in advance of the UN vote.40 To the relief of the Israelis, violence never erupted.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Mahmoud Abbas told the UN General Assembly on September 23, 2011, “I would like to inform you that, before delivering this statement, I submitted, in my capacity as the President of the State of Palestine and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, to His Excellency Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, an application for the admission of Palestine on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif [Holy Jerusalem] as its capital, as a full member of the United Nations.”
He continued, “I call upon Mr. Secretary-General to expedite transmittal of our request to the Security Council, and I call upon the distinguished members of the Security Council to vote in favor of our full membership. I also call upon the States that did not recognize the State of Palestine as yet to do so.”41
With that, Abbas made history. He appealed to the United Nations for statehood. And while it can certainly be argued that Arafat had already done this in 1988, the Palestine 194 campaign felt distinctly different. The Palestinians had put in the effort to rally the international community, and they had done so successfully. The only hitch: The United States, as a permanent member of the Security Council, was poised to veto their efforts. The Palestinian bid was, therefore, symbolic at best.
Nevertheless, Abbas was roundly rewarded at home. As Al-Jazeera reported, “A welcome party was planned at the Muqata, the presidential headquarters [in Ramallah], and a stage was set up next to the grave of the former president, Yasser Arafat, inside the compound.”42
Not surprisingly, Abbas’s own loyalists sponsored the celebrations. The Palestinian workers’ union called on its members to join the celebration, and government offices closed to enable employees to attend. The teachers’ union also announced that schools would close early to allow students and teachers to join the party. Both state TV and the state-run news agency WAFA called on the public to rally at the Muqata. Palestinians across the West Bank received text messages advertising “the official mass reception.” Palestine TV devoted its broadcast to Abbas, showing photographs of the leader throughout the years as well as footage of him meeting ordinary Palestinians and international figures.43
As expected, Abbas’s reception was considerably cooler in Washington. The House of Representatives, led by then Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), sought to punish Abbas and his West Bank government for snubbing American-led diplomacy. Some legislators wanted to reduce US aid to the PA, whereas others wanted to slash it entirely. The White House, for its part, wanted to keep aid flowing so that Washington retained leverage to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
In the end, the compromise in Washington was to withhold $200 million in financial assistance as a warning to the Palestinians not to return to the United Nations. There was considerable disagreement between the executive and legislative branches of the US government, but the end result was a victory for Congress.44
However, the Palestinians were not prepared to accept defeat. With more than 100 countries in support of the “State of Palestine,” the Palestinians had earned support that they could leverage. Abbas and his advisers made a play for membership at the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2011. As soon as the discussion of the broader UN bid had subsided, the UNESCO debate began to heat up.
As had been the case with the broader UN maneuver, the United States, Israel, Canada, and a handful of other countries were opposed. Among the more vocal supporters was France’s Sarkozy. But this position soon appeared to backfire on the French leader.
According to a little-known American law passed during the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the United States is prohibited from giving funds to any part of the UN system that grants the PLO the same standing as member states.45 So, as the Palestinians pushed for full membership, they were effectively pushing for a $70 million per year (America’s 22 percent) slashing of the UNESCO budget, which operated on a $325 million per annum budget.46
Apparently, the Quai d’Orsay began to have second thoughts. French diplomats noted that despite their earlier backing of the Palestinian unilateral bid, it was “not the right time or the right place” to wrestle with the question of Palestine. These statements came only a few months after Sarkozy had signaled support for the broader initiative.47 The reason: UNESCO is headquartered in Paris, and the French did not wish to see its funding cut.
France retreated, but the UNESCO train had effectively left the building. In October 2011, UNESCO’s 58-nation executive board approved a draft resolution for Palestinian membership, sponsored by several Arab states, by a 40-to-4 vote.48 The four countries opposed were the United States, Germany, Latvia, and Romania. France was among the 14 countries abstaining.49
Around the same time, senior UNESCO officials made the rounds in Washington, meeting with Obama administration officials, legislators, and other influential Beltway types, trying to convince them that UNESCO’s activities were in America’s interest. They were also desperately hoping to find a loophole that could help circumvent the aforementioned law that would leave the organization without US taxpayer funds as a result of Palestinian admission.
UNESCO voted in October 2011, with 107 of 173 countries voting in favor, 14 opposing, and 52 abstaining. Immediately thereafter, US funds were slashed.50 The UNESCO victory for the Palestinians was a Pyrrhic one at best.
On January 1, 2012, several countries that would have voted against the Palestinian bid rotated off the Security Council, making way for Guatemala, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Morocco, and Togo.52 Although the exact intentions were not clear, Abbas’s advisers were again telegraphing their intentions to return for another round at Turtle Bay. Even as the talks between Molho and Erekat were taking place, Nabil Sha’ath said that 2012 “will be the start of an unprecedented diplomatic campaign on the part of the Palestinian leadership, and it will be a year of pressure on Israel that will put it under a real international siege. The campaign will be similar to the one waged against apartheid in South Africa.”53
By the end of January, the Palestinian Ma’an News Agency reported that Abbas “refused and will continue to refuse” more meetings with Israel,54 and the Palestinian leadership was planning to revive the bid at the United Nations.55 PLO spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi declared, “We will persist in our efforts to pursue membership in the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, and other multinational agencies and organizations.”56
In mid-February, Abbas told the Arab League that if Israel did not accept his preconditions for negotiations, including a full settlement freeze, he would “go to the Security Council and the General Assembly.”57 Abbas received the full support of the Arab League.58 A month later, Saeb Erekat, the lead Palestinian negotiator, said that an agreement had been reached between the Palestinian leadership and Qatar to return to the United Nations.59 In April, during a visit to Tunisia, Abbas reiterated, “If you do not see any progress with the peace process, we will go to the United Nations.”60