Palestinian Statehood - another 63-year wait?

The farce of Palestinian statehood gets more absurd by the day. Abbas seeks recognition of Palestine in the UN - but why?

“Palestine” has been in existence for over 2500 years – the Romans took the name from the majority population known as Philistines, who pre-dated the Jewish invasions of 500 B.C.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the current name was bestowed by the Romans around 140 A.D. and the territory was referred to as Palestine up until 1948 – including by Jews, the League of Nations, and the United Nations.

The United Nations in 1948 decided to partition “Palestine” – not “Israel”, not some fictional “Jewish homeland”, but Palestine, an existing nation with a 67% Arab population.

In doing so, the UN not only forcibly created two states – Israel, and Palestine, but also acknowledged the pre-existence of one of them - Palestine. The UN determined the borders, and these have been upheld time and time again by UN Security Council Resolution after UN Security Council Resolution.

The UN already created the Palestinian state!! It already created the borders!!

Israel immediately declared independence, and was admitted to the UN in 1949 as a new state. That we can understand – it never existed before, and needed to apply to do so to have any hope of legitimacy.

But Palestine DID already exist, was already recognised to exist, and like Sudan, Palestine should not have to apply for additional recognition. Israel, like South Sudan, was the new boy on the block who had to garner recognition - not Palestine, not Sudan.

Why, then, are we subjected to this absurdity of Palestine having to beg for recognition from the very organisation that itself created what it wants them to seek recognition for? Even Kafka would be getting confused..and how long is this farce going to take to play out in the “Castle” of the UN? Another 63 years? Until or unless Palestine agrees to re-enter ‘negotiations’?

Negotiations which themselves are based on negating international law, in the form of past UN Security Council Resolutions regarding borders, regarding refugees’ right of return, regarding illegal settlements built by Israel?

Will we, and the UN, accept and condone Israel, backed by a US-European Quartet, trying to force Palestine to break established international law?

Will we, and the UN, accept and condone Israel, backed by a US-European Quartet, trying to force Palestine to breach the Chapters 11 and 12 of the UN Charter, and Article 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by recognising Israel as a ‘Jewish’ state rather than recognising everyones’ fundamental freedoms “without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”?

To do so will not only undermine the Rule of Law, but also the very credibility of the United Nations itself.

This absurdity must stop. Palestine did, and does, exist.

The UN is the Frankenstein here, and it now has the responsibility to both recognise Palestine, and do something about the monster it created in Israel.

If the UN fails in this, it will have the vast majority of world public opinion to deal with - and may well join the failed regimes of the Arab Spring on the scrap-heap of history.

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