Photo by Ahmad Nimer posted on Twitter here.

After both meetings, there was a press conference.

In Jerusalem with Netanyahu, BAN said “Settlements do not help the peace process… I told the prime minister that he should refrain from future construction”. [Just future construction? The goalposts keep getting moved...]

Netanyahu reportedly told BAN that the settlement issue must be discussed during negotiations, “it can’t be a precondition”… [So, the Palestinians need to negotiate about settlements? Somehow, this sounds different than just saying settlements are one of the final status issues in negotiations...]

According to the New York Times, “Mr. Netanyahu thanked Mr. Ban for his ‘good intentions’, but he said the settlement question should be dealt with as part of a final agreement. ‘It cannot be a precondition to enter into that agreement’, he said”. This is published here.

This NYTimes story added: “An Israeli official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue said Israel was ‘ready for mutual confidence-building measures in the framework of a peace process that is moving forward’ — in other words, as long as the measures came with guarantees that the Palestinians would stick with the talks. He would not specify what steps they might include. Another Israeli official said that in a closed meeting with Mr. Peres, Mr. Ban suggested that Israel, as the stronger party, should release Palestinian prisoners as one way of improving the atmosphere”…

In Ramallah with Abbas, BAN said “A viable Palestinian state is long overdue. I continue to believe a two-state solution is long overdue … The international community has been clear: all settlements are contrary to international law … [In the "exploratory" talks recently in Amman] the Palestinians have been forthcoming in producing proposals on territory + security, and I very much hope Israel will present their proposals. This is what I told Israeli leaders today”.

BAN also said, in answer to a question from the press, that “I fully share the Palestinians’ complaint that they have been under occupation for such a long time, suffering all these hardships without prospects of knowing when this will be over … We have wasted almost 20 years since Oslo … [But] negotiations is the best way to get results”.

Travelling with BAN was the former UN Special Envoy here, Terje Roed Larsen [who is still working on the Lebanon dossier]…

The long-serving Ambassador of the Observer Mission of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, was also present.

BAN added, in response to another question, that “On 23rd September I received the Palestinian application for UN membership, and I immediately conveyed it to the UN Security Council. I made it immediately clear that I fully support the aspiration of the Palestinian people to become a UN member within the framework of two states … it’s still in the hands of the UN Security Council”.

Abbas told BAN: “Mr. Secretary-General, I hope to be able to host you soon in an independent state”…

But, Abbas said, in response to a question from the press, that “We toured the whole world to get 9 votes in the UN Security Council, though I knew at the end that we faced the veto … Unfortunately, we did not achieve our goal of getting 9 votes … At some point we will review all our steps in the near future”.

He also said there was “a need to stop the campaign of arrests” and to free detained parliamentarians”…

Abbas, in his remarks, did not insult the Quartet … instead, he offered a light but rather indistinct compliment.

The Chief Palestinian negotiator Sa’eb Erekat was seated in the front row, during the press conference [next to Terje Roed Larsen], and PLO Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi was there as well.

“In the end”, Abbas said, I wish to assert that what we want is a two-state solution within the 1967 borders, and the need to end the Israeli presence on all our territory, including the Jordan Valley and East Jerusalem”.

[Last week, at the end of the 5th "exploratory meeting" in Amman in which Israeli + Palestinian negotiators sat together for the first time a long time, an Israeli envoy made sweepingly broad indications of Israel's territorial interests -- and said Israel wanted to keep a security presence along the Jordan River...]

Tomorrow, BAN is going to Gaza in the morning, and will address the Herzliya Conference at 8 PM, before flying back to New York after midnight.

[Earlier on this trip away from New York, the UNSG was in Ethiopia; Davos, Switzerland, and Amman...]

The photo below was taken by the dashing Jean-Marc Ferre, one of the world’s best photographers.

A series of Jean-Marc’s shots of this annual sheep-grazing moment, in the lovely autumnal scenery [more suited to landscape painters than to anyone or anything else]  is now posted on Flikr here.

The UN photo caption describes this as an “environmentally-friendly way to mow the lawns” — but it’s more than that. It also fertilizes the lawns. And, on top of all that, it’s an income-earning activity, as the sheep-owners pay for this privilege.

But – wait a minute — are these photos also timed to coincide with the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha, which starts Sunday early morning? [And in which pious Muslims slaughter sheep to commemorate Abraham's near-sacrifice of his son Isaac...  though it could be argued that the Divine intervention would be better commemorated by abstaining from sacrificing lambs today...]

Leaving that thought aside, and moving to another, here’s one more of Jean-Marc Ferre’s shots of the sheep on the lawn on the palatial grounds of the UN Office in Geneva … where the Palais des Nations was built in the 1920s, after the First World War, to house the headquarters of the League of Nations which became deadlocked and moribund in the mid-1930s, in the lead-up to the Second World War…

I could say something about the sheep in the park, and the sheep inside the buildings who have done so many dishonorable and disgraceful things … but I’ll refrain for the moment — in honor of the [very very few] good memories of the rather bad place I had the misfortune of working for some 14 years [it is impossible to overstate the harm that was done here], and in honor of these lovely photos taken on a beautiful fall day, and above all in honor of the photographer, Jean-Marc Ferre.

According to one adviser to UNRWA, the vote count has been revised to 114 votes in favor [not just 107, as was reported yesterday]… But, because my internet was down from morning till evening [apparently, a Washington Post blog reports that it was a hostile attack on Palestinian servers, and affected both the West Bank and Gaza], I haven’t had a chance to check who, how, or why…

A Swedish diplomat expressed shock and more at Sweden’s negative vote, in a conversation with a friend on the terrace of the Ambassador Hotel this evening.

A UN person said that he believes France’s decision to vote yes is because of the recent Tunisian vote, with an Islamist party taking the overwhelming majority, as well as changes in the air in Morocco and Algeria.

Personally, I think the explanation for the French “yes” is that UNESCO is based in the French capital Paris [where it would likely have received a rather mixed reception], and France is UNESCO host country…

Daniel Levy writes on FP’s Middle East Channel here that “France has stated that it would support Palestine at the UNGA but not at the UNSC”.

Yes, this is also a good explanation — it is, in so many words, indeed what French President Sarkozy said in his speech at the UNGA High Level Debate in September, before Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally filed the Palestinian “UN bid” for full membership via the Security Council.

If you extrapolate a bit more widely, you could postulate, from factoring in the UNESCO vote, that France will support Palestine everywhere but in the UN Security Council …

What is clear is that the Europeans don’t have a common position, at least not yet — though I still suspect one may firm up by the time we come to the UNSC vote on the Palestinian vote. A common European position to abstain will mean that the Palestinian request will fail to get the necessary number of votes to pass — so the U.S. will not be obliged to exercise its veto power, as threatened. This is a slightly more gentle way of deferring the Palestinian request, and telling them to “come back later”.

Here on the terrace of the Ambassador Hotel in [East] Jerusalem, the consensus is that Saudi Arabia will pay any deficit in UNESCO’s budget due to the near-instantaneous U.S. announcement that it is withholding a $60 million payment in November.

But who will make up the shortfalls in funding to the Palestinian Authority? The U.S. has already — and since August — withheld some $200 million in money earmarked for USAID projects in the West Bank, in anticipation of the Palestinian “UN bid”. Now, again today, the Israeli government has once more decided, in response to the UNESCO vote, to suspend transfer of tax money collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority. The Jerusalem Post reported Tuesday night that Palestinian presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh said that “The talk about freezing tax revenues belonging to the Palestinian Authority is a provocation and theft of our money … We call on the Quartet and the US administration to put an end to these practices, which will have a negative impact on the whole region”. This JPost report is published here.

Meanwhile, the estimable Craig Murray [a former career diplomat and former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who now calls himself simply a "human rights activist"] has written here on his blog that, as a result of the UNESCO vote yesterday, “Palestine is now a state. Membership of the United Nations is not in international law a pre-condition of statehood, and indeed is not compulsory for states. The existence of states not members of the UN is recognised in international law, not least by the UN itself. Palestine has just joined UNESCO for example under a provision which allows states which are not members of the United Nations to join if they get qualified majority support – which Palestine overwhelmingly did. So the UNESCO membership is crucial recognition of Palestine’s statehood, not an empty gesture. With this evidence of international acceptance, there is now absolutely no reason why Palestine cannot, instantly and without a vote, join the International Criminal Court. Palestine can now become a member of the International Criminal Court simply by submitting an instrument of accession to the Statute of Rome, and joining the list of states parties … There is an extremely crucial point here: if Palestine accedes to the Statute of Rome, under Article 12 of the Statute of Rome, the International Criminal Court would have jurisdiction over Israelis committing war crimes on Palestinian soil. Other states parties – including the UK – would be obliged by law to hand over indicted Israeli war criminals to the court at the Hague”…

As was pointed out in the comments section on this Craig Murry post, “On 22 January 2009, the Palestinian National Authority lodged a declaration with the [ICC] Registrar here, under Article 12(3) of the Rome Statute which allows States not party to the Statute to accept the Court’s jurisdiction”.

This was done a few days after a cease-fire went into effect [on 18 January 2009, just hours before Barack Obama was sworn in as U.S. President] in Israel’s massive Operation Cast Lead against Hamas in Gaza. And, the PA Foreign Minister, Riad Malki [who was present in the Paris meeting of UNESCO yesterday] went to the Hague in mid-February to speak with ICC Prosecutor Luis Ocampo. In a press conference in Ramallah in September, Riad Malki said that he was told at that time that it would be better if Palestine filed its request for an ICC investigation into the Gaza operation if it were a STATE.

Craig Murray’s post raises a very interesting point. Now that the State of Palestine has been admitted as a full member of at least part of the UN system, this is a very effective counter to the often-heard Israeli argument that because there has never in history been a Palestinian state , there is no justification for one now. [This particular argument gets worse, and goes on to say there never was and is not now anything such as the Palestinian people, so what are the Palestinians going on about, the whole thing is ridiculous, etc. etc. etc.]…

This Israeli argument about the irreality of anything really Palestinian was previously refuted, at least theoretically, by American international law professor John Quigley, who has argued that the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence means that the state exists [and just "statehood", which I understand to mean the realization of a state on the ground, that has been lacking].

Now, this Israeli argument about the total absence of Palestinian sovereignty and statehood has been refuted in actual UN practice.

As Craig Murray writes in response to a comment on his post, “Diplomacy is the only chance for Palestinians. They can’t win by force…”

In response to the Palestinian move, the Israeli Government reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu has, as a first step, in response to the UNESCO move, this evening ordered — ordered, not merely permitted — the construction of some 2,000 additional housing units in “the Jerusalem area” [actually, in the West Bank].

The Prime Minister’s media adviser [whoever that is] issued a statement saying that Netanyahu has now “directed that the construction of apartments in Jerusalem, in the Etzion Bloc and in Maaleh Adumim, be accelerated. These are thousands of residential units, in areas that will, under any future agreement, remain part of Israel. The foregoing directive was issued at the end of the first discussion by the forum of eight ministers; the next will discuss future steps”.

Self-determination, an American principle developed by President Woodrow Wilson during the First World War, used to be a very important ideal — and it used to be considered, at the UN, a grievous international wrong for any country to prevent another people’s self-determination. And, the UNGA has many times endorsed the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

Henry Siegman, former President of the American Jewish Congress, wrote this summer on FP here that “it is in fact Israel that is engaged in the ‘delegitimization’ of the Palestinian people’s right to national self determination and statehood, not the reverse. For proof of this one need look no further than Israel’s near-hysterical efforts to prevent the Palestinians from bringing their case to the United Nations, the institution that happens to be the source of Israel’s own legitimacy, as acknowledged in Israel’s Declaration of Independence. For what Israel’s current government apparently most fears is the legitimacy that the United Nations uniquely can confer not only on Palestinian statehood but on the 1967 borders. A state that since 1967 (i.e. for most of its existence) has imposed a military occupation on its neighbor, confiscating its territory and dispossessing its population, is guilty not only of an abstract challenge to its neighbor’s claim to statehood but of violently preventing it on the ground. Such rogue-like behavior does indeed bring Israel’s own legitimacy into question … Before casting the promised veto at the United Nations that would deny Palestinians their right to national self-determination, President Obama might well want to rethink the fairness, legality, and morality of such a course, not to speak of its damage to America’s credibility in the region and beyond … Surely he must know that no one anywhere believes any longer that the peace process as its exists, to which he has urged Palestinians to entrust their future, promises anything other than hopelessness and despair”…

Meanwhile, throughout the day, diplomats, Palestinian officials, and journalists were discussing — ok, well not really discussing, but certainly at least mentioning — reports attributed to Egyptian officials who said that they have obtained Israeli agreement to hold off until midnight [which just passed] on a massive air assault that is ready to go against Gaza [unless a cease-fire really takes hold], in response to rocket fire from Gaza that killed 1 Israeli man and wounded number of others in the coastal city of Ashdod that continued intermittently an Israeli retaliatory strike on Gaza on Saturday afternoon that lasted through Monday, killing 12 Palestinians and wounding many others.

Ramos Horta, who was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, alongside East Timor’s Archbiship Belo, for their efforts for self-determination and peace in East Timor, wrote in his article, published on 19 September, that “Arguments against full Palestinian UN membership are not persuasive“.

“The Palestinians, having waited for 20 years since the Oslo Accords, that promised them a full sovereign Palestinian State living along side with the state of Israel, have decided to seek full UN membership status now. They have every right to do so and I do not see how a Palestinian State that is a full member of the UN would be detrimental to Israel and US interests. Full UN membership carries with it not only rights but in equal manner duties and responsibilities, among them, the obligation to not allow its territory to be used to launch attacks on other countries…
“The dilemma and challenge for Israel is to vacate most of West Bank. But Israeli leaders and settlers are the ones who created this problem for themselves and must now have the courage and wisdom to leave West Bank and hand over the settlements to the Palestinian authorities. A special fund could be set up, led by the US and Europe, to buy back from Israel the thousands of housing units, schools, health clinics, etc scattered in the West Bank. While no amount of money would ever suffice to buy back the lives lost, Palestinians would receive high quality infrastructures that in some way would constitute a small form of compensation for decades of humiliation and dispossession…
“To my friends in Israel and the US, I will say, do not oppose Palestinian UN membership; support it instead. Provide the financial means the Palestinian leaders need to turn their economy around. Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu told me in his office in Jerusalem earlier this year that he wanted to see an economically prosperous Palestinian state. I believe he meant it. Now is his chance to show vision and bold leadership by endorsing Palestinian UN membership, lift the Gaza blockade, and facilitate trade…
“I have heard arguments from all sides. Arguments against full Palestinian UN membership are not persuasive. After more than 60 years of absence, to a great extent due to past Palestinian and Arab leaderships miscalculations, it is time that the five million Palestinians living in West Bank and Gaza, and the many others scattered in the region and elsewhere, see their national flag hoisted along aside that of other powers of the world, great and small, rich and poor”.
[Jose Ramos-Horta, 1996 Nobel Peace Prize laureate and President of Timor-Leste, made State Visits to Israel and Palestine earlier this year.]

This article by East Timor’s President Jose Ramos Horta, recommending full UN membership for the State of Palestine, is posted here.

He will be speaking at a conference at Bir Zeit University this [Tuesday] morning [co-sponsored by the Bir Zeit University Institute of Law + the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung] on “The Quest for Palestine Statehood: Legal, Political and Economic Implications”.

At an appearance at the [Quaker] Friends Meeting House in Ramallah [arranged by the independent Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq] on Monday night, Quigley said that the Palestinian right to statehood existed before or prior to — and without reference to — the UN General Assembly’s Resolution 181 [adopted 29 November 1947], but he noted that the PLO relied upon Resolution 181 as the basis for their claim to statehood in 1988.

Asked [by Sam Bahour, who was in the audience] if UNGA Resolution 181 is legal, if it had a legal foundation, Quigley replied that it was adopted as a recommendation, as a suggestion to 2 parties, as a proposal to the two parities, to deal with the situation by partition, with economic union and respect for the rights of everyone. [The situation = Britain announced after the Second World War that it wanted to get out of its responsibility for the Mandate of Palestine that it acquired from the League of Nations after the First World War].

So, Quigley continued, this UNGA Resolution 181 was viewed very clearly as a recommendation, but because it was rejected by Arab countries, the major powers a few months later put it aside.

Quigley then suggested that what gave UNGA Resolution 181 legality, or legitimacy [he avoided specifying the term] was the PLO’s acceptance of it, over 40 years later, as the basis for the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in 1988.

In terms of the unfulfilled Palestinian right of Self-Determination, Quigley said that it would have been better supported if the PLO had not, in 1988, confined its territorial claim to the West Bank and Gaza — it could have, at that time, called for Self-Determination in much larger territory.

However, he said, having made the determination in 1988 that they would establish their independent state within the borders / armistice lines that existed before the June 1967 war, it would be very difficult [if not impossible] for the Palestinians to go back on this now.

He did note that Israel became UN member in 1949 without specific mention of territory [or borders]; Israel’s subsequent occupation of territory in 1948 [after the departure of British forces] beyond the delimitation proposed in the UNGA resolution’s 1947 partition plan, has “never been dealt with in any way”.

It is very hard to argue that Jewish settlers in the West Bank have a right or claim to territory there on the basis of Self-Determination — especially, he said, since the International Criminal Court has now solidified the position of the Geneva Conventions, and also of customary international law [including the Hague Convention of 1907, which Israel does accept], that establishing settlements under a military occupation is a war crime.

The real problem, Quigley added, is that it will be very difficult for the Palestinians to gain jurisdiction over Israel in in international fora, because Israel opts out from the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in every international human rights treaty except the Genocide Convention.

In contrast to the positions held by some in the audience in Ramllah, Quigley said that the PLO’s “UN bid” — its filing of an application for full membership on 23 September — will enhance its ability to represent Palestinian interests.

If anything, Quigley said, Palestinian statehood enhances representation for the Palestinian diaspora. He argued that some Palestinian complaints [including the fears of diaspora about their lack of representation] with regard to the recently-submitted “UN bid” are “internal questions”.

Just because there hasn’t been a very effective effort made in the past to implement the rights of those outside, doesn’t mean that they still won’t be in the future, Quigley noted. “All I’m saying is that Palestine as a state will be in a stronger [and better] position to do so”, though it remains to be seen what will happen.

He also noted that there doesn’t seem to be any indication of an attempt to abandon the Palestinian right of “repatriation”.

And, he said, Palestinian complaints that there should have been greater consultation before making the UN bid is also an internal Palestinian matter, while “at an international level, a state representing a population that acquiesces in its control — even if it doesn’t like what that state does — is capable of taking such actions”.

The legal opinions of Oxford Professor Guy Goodwin Gil are “a bit hard to follow, for me”, Quigley said, as Goodwin Gil doesn’t think Palestine is a state [contrary to the position Professor Quigley has held for years], and wouldn’t be — even if that status is accepted by the UN General Assembly”… By contrast, Professor Quigley said he believed that “the Government of Palestine has every right to represent and present those issues [human rights obligations] in whatever fora are available… It is recognized that states have a right to make complaints and seek reparations”.

But, Quigley noted, this memo “was exaggerated a bit … to mean that statehood is a bad idea — which Goodwin Gil didn’t say … his concern was that the PLO might be abandoned … and Self-Determination would then become a problem”. But, Quigley said, “Mahmoud Abbas in the UN was quite clear that the PLO would continue its representation of all Palestinians, including those outside”

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UPDATE: One of Professor Quigley’s most distinctive positions is that Palestine is a state, already.

How does he come to this conclusion?

He explained it, both at the event at the Friends’ Meeting House last night, and again today in the conference at Bir Zeit University on “The Quest for Palestine Statehood”:

After the First World War, he said, there was a rather contradictory approach:

(1) On the one had, it was recognized [in the Covenant of the League of Nations, he specified] that the peoples of the Arab territories in the former Ottoman Empire had the right to Self-Determination — that is, there was acceptance of the peoplehood of the inhabitants of those Arab territories, and of their right to Self-Determination, yet
(2) on the other hand, the major powers were looking out for their own interests.

The Balfour Declaration [issued during the First World War] was adopted out of consideration of British interests at that time. After the war, in 1923, the British Cabinet entered into a [secret, internal] program of reassessing whether or not to stick with the Balfour Declaration, which they decided, after a serious study, wasn’t going to work. This was discovered only years later, when the documents were finally made public. But, he said, the British government was afraid that if it went back on the Balfour Declartion, they might risk being relieved of the Palestine Mandate which had been given to them at their insistence. So, the British continued to give reports about how it was establishing a Jewish National Home and also at the same time protecting the right of all inhabitants of Palestine.

[Quigley noted in the Bir Zeit Conference today that "the Balfour Declaration was very much contradictory to Self-Determination", though "the actors at that time [including, Quigley noted, Palestinian lawyer Henry Cattan, and British Mandatory official Norman Bentwich] considered Palestine a state”. .

Quigley said that Iraq, Syria and Palestine were three entities which — though under separate mandates after the First World War issued by the international organization of the time, the Geneva-based League of Nations — were considered States. “This may seem odd, if you don’t have complete control [or sovereignty]“. But, he said, the precedent for this situation existed in international law, and was the “Protectorate” regime.

What is necessary, Professor Quigley said, is “that there be no other entity that claims sovereignty”, he argued.

And, he said, there were no other claims on Palestine [that is, he said, there were and still are are no other claims -- at least not officially, on the West Bank, and on Gaza -- except for Israel's unilateral annexation of the Old City of East Jerusalem and nearby areas of the West Bank which it agglomerated in the weeks after the June 1967 and re-named the "Greater Jerusalem Municipal Area", a move which UN member states subsequently declared in numerous resolutions, both in the UN General Assembly and in the UN Security Council, as "null and void"].

Other evidence that Palestine was considered a state, Quigley added, included these facts:
(A) the Permanent Court of International Justice, which had been set up by the League of Nations, determined a claim in Justice that “Palestine was a successor state to the Turkish empire in the State of Palestine [like Syria, like Iraq, in their respective territories]; and
(B) in 1932, the British government wanted to change its tariff law to exempt goods coming in from Palestine [so as not to disadvantage Palestinian goods, Quigley explained]. But, there was a slight legal problem, he said: Britain at the time had a number of Most Favored State Treaties already with other states. “The question turned on the status of Palestine — was it a state, or was it so connected to Britain [that it was part of Britain]. The British Government decided to ask the U.S., in secret correspondence that was made public some years later. The U.S. response was: Palestine is a state, so if you give Palestine zero tax status, we too will claim zero tax status”. Quigley added that Britain also asked Italy and France, who also replied [in 1932] that they considered Palestine a state, and if Palestine was given zero tariffs then they would also claim the same zero tax status; and
(C) Palestinian nationality was considered separate from Britain, based on the statehood of Palestine: and
(D) after World War Two, Egypt administered Gaza on the basis that it was Palestine, and maintained Palestine law which was published in the Palestine Gazette because “it was the territory of Palestine. In the West Bank, the situation was somewhat different — the territory was incorporated by decision of the National Assembly of Jordan at the time — but this was considered, Quigley explained, “provisional upon the resolution of the ‘just case of Palestine’ “.

Furthermore, Quigley told the audience at the Friends Meeting House in Ramallah, in 1945, at the time when the League of Nations was formally dissolved and the United Nations came into being, UN member states pledged in the UN Charter to establish / continue the rights that existed under the League of Nations –which included the right of the population of Palestine to Self-Determination.

And, when Britain announced [in 1946] that it was going to abandon the mandate, the Palestinian representatives at the UN said that if that’s going to happen, then there should be a Palestinian state.

Instead, Quigley noted, the UN General Assembly-appointed Committee came up with the idea of partition — even though the League of Nations Mandates were supposed to end with the independence of the territories under mandate.

Quigley explained that he believed that the UN General Assembly was seeing the Palestine Question in conjunction with the Question of displaced Jews in Europe, and Palestinian interests were being subordinated to those of displaced Jews in Europe — which, he said, “to my mind is why UNGA Resolution 181 is written as it is”.

And, he said, when the Jewish fighters took over territory beyond the partition plan, “the UN did not react — why? Because it [Resolution 181] had been rejected by the Arab sides. And the U.S., which had been the major backer of Resolution 181, they abandoned it and decided it would be good to do something else. The U.S., in April and May of 1948, developed a detailed plan for Trusteeship. But, the organized Jewish community decided to declare a state in Palestine, and got the U.S. [President Truman, who was then engaged in an election campaign] on their side … to the great consternation of the U.S. Secretary of State and State Department, which was at that time heavily involved in trying to go to Trusteeship over Palestine”.

[In 1967, Israel did not declare sovereignty over Gaza and most of the West Bank territory it acquired by war -- leaving room for a Palestinian claim, Quigley said -- though Israel did, about three weeks after the June war ended, declare sovereignty over some areas which it then called the "Greater Jerusalem Municipality".]

Quigley’s argument then jumps to the PLO decision [ratified by the Palestine National Council] in 1988 to constitute itself as a government for the State of Palestine.

At the Bir Zeit Conference today, Quigley noted that the PLO Declaration of Independence in 1988, and its decision taken in the same session that the PLO Executive Committee would serve as the Provisional Government of Palestine, refers back to the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne [which made it possible for the British Mandate over Palestine go into effect]. In the 1988 statement, Quigley said, “the PLO said that it was not creating new state — but instead was creating itself [or, its Executive Committee] as the potential government of Palestine”.

Subsequently, Quigley added, “in the practice of the UN, though not as a formal matter but instead for practical purpose, Palestine has been treated as a state in the UN General Assembly and in the UN Security Council”.

At the Friends Meeting House in Ramallah last night, Quigley noted that after the PLO’s 1988 Declaration, the UN General Assembly then adopted a resolution welcoming that decision, with the explicit idea the the PLO was the representative of the Palestinian people — presumably, Quigley said, with the idea of eventual statehood being accepted by the UN.

“The premise of the Declaration was based heavily on Self-Determination and Statehood”, Quigley noted, and the PLO “through the 1980s tried to find a way through international law” to reach statehood.

But, Quigley said, the U.S. opposed the idea that Self-Determination and Statehood should be at the center of the move. Instead, he noted, in 1991, the U.S. took the lead in promoting the concept of bilateral negotiations — which took legal considerations out of the picture and left it up to negotiations between the two parties, who definitely are not on a par”.

So, “since those negotiations are not based on any legal concept”, Quigley said, “nothing would go ahead unless Israel would agree to stop constructing settlements — so now we have a situation where negotiations are serving as a cover for settlement construction … [Then], in the Oslo Process starting in 1993, no obstacles were placed on the construction of settlements. So by 2011, there is now very little prospect of a negotiated settlement because of that issue.”

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John Quigley is a Professor at Ohio State University, and author of. among other things, these specifically-relevant books:
• The Case for Palestine: An International Law Perspective (Duke University Press, 2005);
• The Statehood of Palestine: International Law in the Middle East Conflict (Cambridge University Press, 2010); and
• ‘Self-determination in the Palestine Context’, in International Law and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Routledge, 2011).

The Palestinians say that there has to be a complete stop to Israeli settlement activities on the ground, first. They now also say they want the negotiations conducted within an international framework of legitimacy. And, they have made it clear that they want to start where Netanyahu’s predecessor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left off with them in September 2008, shortly before he was required to resign during a corruption investigation.

The Quartet spent five intensive days in New York trying to draft a statement they could all agree upon and that would also meet Palestinian requirements, in an effort to avert the Palestinian “UN bid”. After yesterday’s speeches by Abbas and by Netanyahu, the Quartet issued the following statement, which proposes a resumption of negotiations within the month, and agreement by the end of 2012:

“The Quartet takes note of the application submitted by President Abbas on 23rd September 2011 which is now before the Security Council.

The Quartet reaffirmed its statement of 20th May 2011, including its strong support for the vision of Israeli-Palestinian peace outlined by United States President Barack Obama. [[note - This refers, therefore, only to Obama's speech at the U.S. State Department on 19 May, in which he called for negotiations to resume first on borders, which Obama said should be the 1967 borders, and security. It deliberately omits reference to Obama's speech to AIPAC on 21 May, in which he caves in to Israeli pressure and for the first time endorses the controversial language in the 2004 letter of George Bush to Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which recognized existing demographic realities on the ground - meaning the Jewish settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank...]]

The Quartet recalled its previous statements, and affirmed its determination to actively and vigorously seek a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242, 338, 1397, 1515, 1850, the Madrid principles including land for peace, the Roadmap, and the agreements previously reached between the parties.

The Quartet reiterated its commitment to a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the Middle East and to seek a comprehensive resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and reaffirms the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative.

The Quartet reiterated its urgent appeal to the parties to overcome the current obstacles and resume direct bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations without delay or preconditions. But it accepts that meeting, in itself, will not reestablish the trust necessary for such a negotiation to succeed. It therefore proposes the following steps:

1. Within a month there will be a preparatory meeting between the parties to agree an agenda and method of proceeding in the negotiation.

2. At that meeting there will be a commitment by both sides that the objective of any negotiation is to reach an agreement within a timeframe agreed to by the parties but not longer than the end of 2012. The Quartet expects the parties to come forward with comprehensive proposals within three months on territory and security, and to have made substantial progress within six months. To that end, the Quartet will convene an international conference in Moscow, in consultation with the parties, at the appropriate time.

3. There will be a Donors Conference at which the international community will give full and sustained support to the Palestinian Authority state-building actions developed by Prime Minister Fayyad under the leadership of President Abbas.

4. The Quartet recognizes the achievements of the Palestinian Authority in preparing institutions for statehood as evidenced in reports to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, and stresses the need to preserve and build on them. In this regard, the members of the Quartet will consult to identify additional steps they can actively support towards Palestinian statehood individually and together, to secure in accordance with existing procedures significantly greater independence and sovereignty for the Palestinian Authority over its affairs.

5. The Quartet calls upon the parties to refrain from provocative actions if negotiations are to be effective. The Quartet reiterated the obligations of both parties under the Roadmap.

6. The Quartet committed to remain actively involved and to encourage and review progress. The Quartet agreed to meet regularly and to task the envoys and the Quartet Representative to intensify their cooperation, including by meeting prior to the parties’ preparatory meeting, and to formulate recommendations for Quartet action”.

This statement is posted here.

By then, back-stage talks between Israeli and Palestinian “academics” and “individuals” over dinners in idyllic settings in northern Europe had reached the stage that the Oslo process was ready to go public, and the Declaration of Principles was signed on the White House lawn in a live event in September 1993.

Now, almost four years after the direct American supervision over direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations was launched at the Annapolis Conference, Palestinian negotiators have brought the file back to the UN, saying they want the international community to take a stand, and they want to exercise their right to ask for full UN membership.

As Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said to reporters on the flight to New York, “all hell has broken loose”.

A day before his big speech — which will be broadcast live on screens in centers of major West Bank cities, particularly Ramallah and Nablus — Abbas is reported in the New York Times [see our earlier post] to have said that he is not happy with either the Americans or the Arabs: “I am fed up with all these people + I don’t know what to do when I return back”.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu — who is on tape**,here, during a visit in 2001 to the large West Bank settlement of Ofra, between Ramallah and Nablus, as saying he deceived the U.S. and will destroy the Oslo Accords and prevent a solution — was for a while not even going to go to the UN, in order to deny credibility to the Palestinian “UN bid”. But, it assumed such proportions that he had to go.

Despite an offer, Netanyahu + Abbas have not met in New York. But, that is not a big deal.

For, Netanyahu has a strategy. He and his staff briefed Israeli journalists on it earlier this week. The Jerusalem Post’s Herb Keinon reported it in the Jerusalem Post: “Netanyahu’s strategy is to explain. Explain, explain, explain. He is a man of words. He loves to read, and to speak – some less charitable would say he loves to lecture. And he believes in the power of words, of oratory, of rhetoric … [H]e is carrying a speech to explain to the world what he feels much of it fails to see: that the Middle East has changed; changed radically, and changed fundamentally. At Sunday’s cabinet meeting Netanyahu explained why he decided, after weeks of deliberation, to go to the UN himself and combat the Palestinian Authority’s statehood recognition move. ‘My UN trip will have a double goal’, he said. ‘The first goal is to ensure that this move to bypass negotiations does not succeed and is stopped in the Security Council’. The second goal, he said, is to present the truth about ‘our desire for peace’ and Israel’s historic rights to the country that go back ‘only 4,000 years’. And then he cut to the chase: ‘I will also speak about our intention to achieve peace with our neighbors while ensuring our security. If this was clear and necessary in the past, then today it is even more important. Especially now, when the Middle East is undergoing a great upheaval, from Tunisia to Yemen, from Libya to Egypt, Syria and throughout the region; when we don’t know what tomorrow will bring, or how things will turn out’.” These remarks, which echo remarks made in recent months by a number of other Israeli military and security officials, are published in the JPost here.

Netanyahu said he was going to the UN in NY to speak the truth. Apparently, most of it has to deal with Israel’s security, and the requirement to maintain superiority and control to maintain Israel’s security.

Indications are, he will speak about the Jordan Valley.

When Israel began to build its Wall, almost a decade ago, it wanted to build it straight down the Jordan Valley. The U.S. Administration at that time [George W. Bush] quietly ruled that out.

Netanyahu wants to revisit the matter.

Toward the end of his article, the JPost’s Keinon wrote that “Last September, during those few days when Netanyahu and Abbas did speak for a few hours, the Prime Minister told Abbas that Israel would need a military presence along the Jordan River for a long period of time. When Abbas asked Netanyahu why, the prime minister replied that one never knows what could happen, and that a presence on the Jordan River – to protect against any untoward developments from the east – was a necessity. And that was before the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the chaos in Syria, the uncertainty in Jordan, and the rift with Turkey. How much truer is it now, he will argue, how much more caution is needed now, than in the past, because who really knows what will develop. If Fatah can lose control of Gaza to Hamas in a matter of weeks, if the Egyptians leadership can now talk about re-visiting and perhaps trashing a 30-year peace treaty, then previous assumptions and strategies and ways of doing business need to be re-thought”.

We posted earlier, on 11 August, on our sister blog www.palestine-mandate.com here about Mahmoud Abbas telling visiting American Congressmen that negotiations had been blocked by Netanyahu’s demand to keep IDF troops in the Jordan Valley: “Abbas told a group of visiting American Congressmen, including Steny Hoyer of Maryland [Democratic Party whip in the House of Representatives], that ‘there are no negotiations now because Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has placed pre-conditions’, specifically a demand that there be an IDF presence in the Jordan Valley. Abbas told the delegation that the discussions he has had with Netanyahu in the past ‘have led nowhere, because unless we agree to be occupied by IDF troops, he doesn’t want to talk about anything in the next step’. Abbas, according to Hoyer, said he met with Netanyahu last year, but that those talks ‘went nowhere because Netanyahu only wanted to talk about security, and that the implementing of that security was deployment of IDF troops in the Jordan Valley’.”

Netanyahu is due to speak about an hour after Abbas makes his address in the UNGA on Friday, around the middle of the day in New York, and evening here in Jerusalem.

**On the Jordan Valley, Netanyahu said in the 2001 home video, linked to above, that “His approach to White House demands to withdraw from Palestinian territory under the Oslo accords, he says, drew on his grandfather’s philosophy: ‘It would be better to give two per cent than to give 100 per cent’. He therefore signed the 1997 agreement to pull the Israeli army back from much of Hebron, the last Palestinian city under direct occupation, as a way to avoid conceding more territory.
‘The trick’, he says, ‘is not to be there [in the occupied territories] and be broken; the trick is to be there and pay a minimal price’. The ‘trick’ that stopped further withdrawals, Mr Netanyahu adds, was to redefine what parts of the occupied territories counted as a ‘specified military site’ under the Oslo accords. He wanted the White House to approve in writing the classification of the Jordan Valley, a large area of the West Bank, as such a military site. ‘Now, they did not want to give me that letter, so I did not give [them] the Hebron Agreement. I stopped the government meeting, I said: ‘I’m not signing.’ Only when the letter came, did I sign the Hebron Agreement. Why does this matter? Because at that moment I actually stopped the Oslo accord’.” This is recounted by Jonathan Cook in a 2010 article published in The National, here.

Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s predecessor as Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert — forced to resign to defend himself against charges of corruption — wrote an Op-Ed published today in the New York Times saying that he feels uneasy at the current turn of events: “As tensions grow, I cannot but feel that we in the region are on the verge of missing an opportunity — one that we cannot afford to miss”.

In the Op-Ed, published here, Olmert write: “The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, plans to make a unilateral bid for recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations on Friday. He has the right to do so, and the vast majority of countries in the General Assembly support his move. But this is not the wisest step Mr. Abbas can take. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has declared publicly that he believes in the two-state solution, but he is expending all of his political effort to block Mr. Abbas’s bid for statehood by rallying domestic support and appealing to other countries. This is not the wisest step Mr. Netanyahu can take. In the worst-case scenario, chaos and violence could erupt, making the possibility of an agreement even more distant, if not impossible. If that happens, peace will definitely not be the outcome The parameters of a peace deal are well known and they have already been put on the table. I put them there in September 2008 when I presented a far-reaching offer to Mr. Abbas”.

Now, by the end of 2008, according to public promises made by the Bush Administration when it launched the Annapolis process in November 2009, there was supposed to be a deal that would result in the creation of a Palestinian state.

Abbas and his advisers aware, by September 2008, that Olmert was under growing pressure to step down.

Israelis and others have accused Abbas of not responding to the Olmert offer. But, Abbas and his negotiators insist that they did produce their own map on territorial matters, and a counter-proposal on the percentage to be exchanged.

The Palestinians did not give their map to Olmert, because Olmert did not give a map to them [one was later published in Haaretz].

Barack Obama won the American Presidential election in November 2008 — to take office in January 2009.

And, on December the IDF launched Operation Cast Lead with such force, and such a death toll in its opening hours, that Abbas and his negotiators were obliged to call off further contacts.

Just before the oath of office, the IDF and Hamas each observed their own cease-fires. A few days later, Obama appointed George Mitchell as the Special UN envoy for the Middle East.

In February, Benyamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party tied with Tzipi Livni’s Kadima Party in general Israeli elections, but State President Shimon Peres decided that Netanyahu was more likely to be able to form a governing coalition. He was — the most right-wing in Israel’s history.

Mitchell got Obama to back a call for an Israeli settlement freeze, what the Palestinians said they needed to see before returning, post-Gaza war, to talks. Netanyahu haggled over the time, and got a reduction. Just as direct Israeli-Palestinian talks were set to resume, in March — and, during the visit of American Vice President Joe Biden — an unfortuitous but deliberate announcement of expansion of the Ramat Shlomo settlement blew up the arrangement.

The Palestinians also said that they wanted negotiations with Israel to resume at the point they were broken off in December 2008 — with Olmert’s offer still on the table. At some point in the spring of 2010, Palestinian negotiators say they gave to Mitchell their maps that they only showed to Olmert in 2008.

At the end of September 2010, as Netanyahu refused to renew what he insisted would be a one-time only settlement freeze, efforts to resume talks failed again.

This is when Mahmoud Abbas and his advisers decided to go to the UN. The timing was decided by several factors: Obama’s statement to the UNGA in September 2010 saying he hoped to see arrangements in place for a Palestinian state by the following year, and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s two-year state-building project August 2009-September 2011.

Now, what?

In his Op-Ed today Ehud Olmert said his “2008 parameters” should again be put on the table. He wrote that this included included a shared Jerusalem ["Arab neighborhoods" = Palestinian capital; "Jewish areas" = capital of Israel], and that neither side would declare sovereignty over Jerusalem “holy places”, to be administered jointly [with the assistance of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the USA].

Other writers have said that Olmert’s Op-Ed is a repudiation of both Netanyahu and, now, Obama. But, while Olmert’s bottom line positions are different from Netanyahu’s — it’s not by a lot. [Guessing: Netanyahu may consider joint administration over Christian and Muslim "holy places", but certainly not over Jewish "holy places" or "places of historical significance"; Netanyahu would probably not agree to sharing an East Jerusalem that would be the capital of a future a Palestinian state. The Netanyahu government has a broader, though not yet publicly defined, claim to Jewish settlements in the West Bank. And Netanyahu advisers and officials have suggested that they -- unlike both Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert -- would not allow unrestricted immigration of Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian diaspora into a future Palestinian state. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat once suggested that the future Palestinian state wouldn't, or couldn't - for financial reasons - allow unlimited Palestinian immigration, either...]

Olmert wrote, in his Op-Ed that “the territorial dispute would be solved by establishing a Palestinian state on territory equivalent in size to the pre-1967 West Bank + Gaza Strip with mutually agreed-upon land swaps that take into account the new realities on the ground”. [This is a combination of the only new proposal contained in the Geneva Initiative of December 2003, a 1:1 territorial swap, combined with the assurance of recognizing existing demographic realities on the ground that George W. Bush supplied to Israel's then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2004, in acknowledgement of Sharon's 14 points of reservations on the Road Map].

On refugees, Olmert wrote that “the new Palestinian state would become the home of all the Palestinian refugees [except for a small number that Israel would absorb on humanitarian grounds] … just as the state of Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people”.

And, for Israel’s security, Olmert wrote, “the Palestinian state would be demilitarized + it would not form military alliances with other nations” – [Olmert did not mention Israel retaining the Jordan Valley, but the question is left open if the Palestinians would not be in a position to defend their eastern border...]

[[And, by the way, Ehud Olmert told Turkey in his NYTimes OpEd that Israel is sorry: "In Israel, we are sorry for the loss of life of Turkish citizens in May 2010, when Israel confronted a provocative flotilla ... I am sure that the proper way to express these sentiments to the Turkish government and the Turkish people can be found".]]

As if they don’t know. Or — as if someone else should tell them.

Since their 1988 Declaration of Independence, the Palestinian National Council agreed to form their state with the borders of June 4, 1967 — the eve of the war which saw Israel conquer the West Bank and the Gaza Strip [and the Golan Heights].

In 2008, as the U.S.-brokered Annapolis direct negotiations between Israel and Palestinians faltered, then-Secretary of State Condoleezzaa Rice said that defining the borders between them would help define which Israeli Jewish settlements in the West Bank [if any] would be “legal”.

Obama’s words today at the UN go even further…

“One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then – and I believe now – that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that genuine peace can only be realized between Israelis and Palestinians themselves. One year later, despite extensive efforts by America and others, the parties have not bridged their differences. Faced with this stalemate, I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May. That basis is clear, and well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.

Later, Obama met Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was very pleased with the Obama statement, and after that, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, with a weary and disillusioned Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who had put his head on the desk in front of him during part of the Obama speech.

Abbas’ spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said later that both men had reiterated their positions.

Haaretz reported later that “U.S. President Barack Obama told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday that UN action would not achieve a Palestinian state and the United States would veto any Security Council move to recognize Palestinian statehood, the White House said. ‘We would have to oppose any action at the UN Security Council including, if necessary, vetoing’, Ben Rhodes, the White House national security council spokesman, told reporters after Obama met Abbas in New York. PLO diplomatic envoy to the U.S. Maen Rashid Erekat told Haaretz that the U.S. President ‘reiterated the commitment of the U.S. to the establishment of the Palestinian state, as part of the two-state solution, and stressed the position of the US that the UN is not the right venue to reach this goal.” This article is posted here.

There were demonstrations in the West Bank on Thursday denouncing the Obama speech, and a number of Palestinian writers found a ready acceptance in American publications for their English-language Op-Ed articles or blog submissions.

But, Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiating team did not escape criticism either, from other articles such as this one published on the Al-Jazeera English-language website, here.

The pressure on Mr. Abbas in New York has been immense, and he has reportedly felt both isolated, and abandoned.

There are rumors that he is preparing to resign when he returns to Ramallah — though from which of his three posts [Chairman of the PLO, President of the Palestinian Authority, leader of the Fatah movement] is not entirely clear.

An extraordinary article in the New York Times today’s paper [Thursday], reported from both a reception in New York and Jerusalem, says that “Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, met secretly with Mr. Abbas three times in recent months in efforts to … avoid a United Nations battle. Mr. Netanyahu ultimately pulled the plug on those talks, leaving Mr. Abbas a sense of having no alternatives. Mr. Peres said in an interview in Jerusalem that he tried to convince Mr. Abbas that United Nations membership would not help because what is needed is independence for the Palestinians and security for the Israelis, and the United Nations can deliver neither. ‘He told me, “I’m alone, betrayed by the United States, betrayed by Israel and by everyone else”, ‘Mr. Peres recalled from a recent conversation. Mr. Abbas echoed those sentiments on Tuesday night. Terje Roed-Larsen, a former United Nations envoy to the Mideast who now leads the International Peace Institute in New York, hugged him and asked for a meeting later in the evening. ‘Tonight our schedule is full with the Americans’, Mr. Abbas replied. ‘They want us to meet, but we don’t, really we don’t want’. Mr. Larsen asked why he was going then. ‘I don’t know why really’, Mr. Abbas said,’I am not happy with anybody, not with the Americans, nor the Arabs. I am fed up with all these people and I don’t know what to do when I return back’.” Abbas’ weary, unguarded, unwise words to Terje Roed-Larsen are published here.

Part of what makes this so interesting is that it is not clear how the NYTimes heard this conversation — was its UN correspondent Neil MacFarquhar standing right beside the two men [Terje Roed-Larsen, former UN Special Envoy, and former Foreign Minister of Norway when he hosted Palestinians and Israelis for talks that led to the Oslo Accords]? Or, did Mr. Roed-Larsen pass this conversation on to the NYTimes?

It is also interesting to recall that Roed-Larsen himself was, in July 2004, once called persona non grata by Palestinian presidential spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh — then working with Yasser Arafat — after Roed-Larsen told the UN Security Council that “The Palestinian leader is under house arrest but this isn’t an excuse for passivity + inaction”.

Another NYTimes article published today, reported from the corridors of the United Nations, says that in his address to the UN General Assembly, “President Obama tried to qualify his own call, just a year ago, for a Palestinian state. And President Nicolas Sarkozy of France stepped forcefully into the void, with a proposal that pointedly repudiated Mr. Obama’s approach. The extraordinary tableau Wednesday at the United Nations underscored a stark new reality: the United States is facing the prospect of having to share, or even cede, its decades-long role as the architect of Middle East peacemaking. American officials acknowledged that their various last-minute attempts to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian negotiations with help from European allies and Russia had collapsed. ‘The U.S. cannot lead on an issue that it is so boxed in on by its domestic politics’, said Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator in the government of Ehud Barak. ‘And therefore, with the region in such rapid upheaval and the two-state solution dying, as long as the U.S. is paralyzed, others are going to have to step up’.” This article is posted here.

A third article in the NYTimes, also from the UN, reported that “President Nicolas Sarkozy of France broke sharply on Wednesday with the effort by the Obama administration and some Europeans to quash the effort by the Palestinians for recognition here, instead calling for enhancing their status in the General Assembly to that of an observer state. ‘Let us cease our endless debates on the parameters’, Mr. Sarkozy said. ‘Let us begin negotiations and adopt a precise timetable’.
The timetable he suggested is resuming the negotiations in one month, agreeing on borders and security within six months and finishing a definitive agreement within one year. The Palestinians have sought a specific timeline, suggesting that endless stalling was slowly erasing the chances for a two-state solution. In the meantime, if the Palestinian effort at membership faces a Security Council veto, the deadly reverberations will be felt across the Arab world, Mr. Sarkozy warned. ‘Each of us knows that Palestine cannot immediately obtain full and complete recognition of the status of United Nations member state … But who could doubt that a veto at the Security Council risks engendering a cycle of violence in the Middle East? … ‘Why not envisage offering Palestine the status of United Nations observer state?’ said the French leader. ‘This would be an important step forward. Most important, it would mean emerging from a state of immobility that favors only the extremists’.” This can be read in full here.

Here, for the record, are the rest of Obama’s words to the UNGA yesterday on the Israeli-Palestinian situation:

“I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. So am I. But the question isn’t the goal we seek – the question is how to reach it. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the UN – if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem.

Peace depends upon compromise among peoples who must live together long after our speeches are over, and our votes have been counted. That is the lesson of Northern Ireland, where ancient antagonists bridged their differences. That is the lesson of Sudan, where a negotiated settlement led to an independent state. And that is the path to a Palestinian state.

We seek a future where Palestinians live in a sovereign state of their own, with no limit to what they can achieve. There is no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. And it is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and effort in the building of a Palestinian state, and the negotiations that can achieve one.

America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable, and our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day. Let’s be honest: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they were.

These facts cannot be denied. The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.

That truth – that each side has legitimate aspirations – is what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes. That’s what we should be encouraging. This body – founded, as it was, out of the ashes of war and genocide; dedicated, as it is, to the dignity of every person – must recognize the reality that is lived by both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The measure of our actions must always be whether they advance the right of Israeli and Palestinian children to live in peace and security, with dignity and opportunity. We will only succeed in that effort if we can encourage the parties to sit down together, to listen to each other, and to understand each other’s hopes and fears. That is the project to which America is committed. And that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come”.