Politics
Out of context: Reply #16167
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- ukit0
Vote to establish a Palestinian state scheduled for next week
http://english.aljazeera.net/ind…
So it looks like there will be a UN vote and the US will be among the few nations in the world to vote "no". Not even Mahmoud Abbas' repeated assurance that his first act following the vote will be to open negotiations with Israel will have an impact on the US position. No, we will stand with Netanyahu even though internationally the perception that the US and Israel are joined at the hip is the last thing any president wants.
But let's not give up hope. This weekend is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a particularly inauspicious time for the Obama administration to look like Netanyahu's puppet.
This is not to say that the terrorists who would love to strike America again are seriously concerned about the Palestinians. They aren't. But America's seeming hostility to the Palestinians and our "no daylight" alliance with Israel gives them a convenient pretense to commit terrorism. And it gives the vast majority of the people in the Middle East, who are fighting against both al-Qaeda and their Western-backed dictators, further reason to question our motivations in the region.
The Palestinian issue is the one issue on which all Muslims are united. Whether Saudi, Iranian, Indonesian, or Afghani, the one issue that brings Muslims together is the belief that the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza are terrible wrongs, supported by the US. Muslims aren't the only ones who feel this way, as will be demonstrated by the overwhelming vote for the Palestinian statehood resolution that the US and Israel will stand virtually alone in opposing.
The Obama administration should keep that in mind when it decides how it will handle the vote. Promoting the two-state solution, starting with a vote FOR a Palestinian state at the UN, is not only the moral thing to do - just as it was when the US supported Israel's statehood at the UN in 1947 - but it is also the right thing to do from the standpoint of America's security. For Israel's sake, for the Palestinians', and for our own, the President should tell the US ambassador to the UN to vote "yes".
However, the U.S. cannot veto a potential second vote in the 193-member General Assembly that would make Palestine a nonvoting observer state at the world body. That would afford the Palestinian state entry to join dozens of United Nations agencies and treaty groups like the International Criminal Court, where in theory it could take up cases against Israeli officials for alleged war crimes or settlement building in the West Bank.
- I live in the USA and would like to vote "Yes"Knuckleberry