The Palestinian move at the UN Security Council to gain statehood and vacation of its territory occupied by Israel has failed again. Credit for this Palestinian setback goes to the same very American negative vote that talks of peace but works to keep the confrontation alive in the Middle East. It was the 22 Arab states' joint proposal, represented by Jordan in the Council, that the Zionist entity should vacate by December 31, 2017 all the West Bank that it occupied in 1967. That the United Nations should grant statehood status to Palestine was in fact a reminder to the world body which in 1948 had divided Palestine into two independent states - Palestine and Israel. The Arab move for the Council vote was also inspired, no less importantly, by the shifting sands in the West where public opinion was waking up to the lingering plight of people of Palestine at the hands of Israel, that was busy digging deep its feet in the occupied territories raising illegal settlements - the opinion entrenched further by brutalization of Gaza enclave residents at the hands of Israeli forces last June. Sweden had cast the first stone by according recognition of Palestine, as many others in that camp were expressing readiness for bilateral recognition of state of Palestine. The Arab diplomats at the UN thought the time had come for a vote of the Security Council, perhaps unaware of the behind-the-scene attempts being made by the United States government to ensure adoption refusal based on the lacking numbers. A resolution needs nine votes or more in favour and no vetoes by the five permanent members. The Arab leaders were confident with Nigeria voting for the Palestine the resolution would be adopted - perhaps unaware of the phone calls that Nigerian President Jonathan Goodluck had had received from US Secretary of State John Kerry.
So when put to vote eight members supported the resolution, the United States and Australia voted against and five - Britain, South Korea, Rwanda, Nigeria and Lithuania - abstained. With China, France and Russia being the supporters of the resolution the state of Palestine does enjoy enormous de facto recognition, and if its status at the world body remains that of an Observer State this is no great loss to its strategic clout. Of course, there is the debate about the timing of the vote; some say the mover should have waited because the recomposed Security Council, to be in place from January 1, 2015, would be favourable to Palestine. But this is also true that deferment was seen to be obliging the United States which too wanted it at least till Israeli general election to be held in March. The US opposed the resolution because, according to its representative Samantha Power, "this text addressed the concerns of only one side", and didn't fit its efforts for a two-state solution. Britain however is a bit apologetic over its abstention; "We are disappointed that normal and necessary negotiation did not take place on this occasion", says its ambassador to the UN, Mark Lal Grant - so much for the British democracy which last year passed a resolution supporting full statehood status for Palestine. But no such reservations were there on the part of China, the Russian Federation and others who supported the resolution. The resolution, according to China's UN ambassador Liu Jieyi, the resolution aptly reflected just demands of Arab states and is in accordance with UN resolutions, including the 'land for peace' principle. Not that a minimum nine-vote majority would have earned Palestine UN recognition, but this would have won it a kind of symbolic victory at the world forum and exposed America's double standards. But for how long a tyrannical, illegitimate regime can be kept alive; there is a limit to everything, and so is it to the supply for Israel in the American oxygen tent. Within hours of failure at the UN Council Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas moved for membership of the International Criminal Court - the membership which should not be denied to a polity which has suffered more atrocities than any other country in the recent history. Recall the barbaric incursion the Israeli forces made to prove their aggression one of the bloodiest for the present times: of some two thousand victims in Gaza enclave nearly 500 were children. What else defines a war crime?
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