Democracy Now! debate: Does UN statehood bid advance or undermine Palestinian struggle?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is expected to officially submit a statehood request to the United Nations Security Council later today. The United States has vowed to veto the move.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I am convinced that there is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them, on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.

JUAN GONZALEZ: A new poll shows the Obama administration’s stance on Palestinian recognition at the United Nations is more extreme than that of a strong majority of Israeli citizens. A joint Israeli-Palestinian poll shows 69 percent of Israelis think their government should accept U.N. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. The survey also found 83 percent of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories supported the bid. Many Palestinians have expressed concern about the U.S. decision but remain committed to their goal.

KIMUR, Ramallah Resident: [translated] We have brought a lot to the table, and we have conceded a lot. We have given up on 78 percent of the land of historical Palestine for the state of Israel. What else do they want? They want us to leave. We will not leave. We will stay. And we will not be afraid of America, Israel or any other threats, whether they are to cut off donations or American aid. We will persist to remain on this land.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Israeli Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Danny Danon praised President Obama’s speech at the United Nations and warned Israel will have a strong reaction to the Palestinian bid for U.N. membership.

DANNY DANON: There is no hope in the near future. This is the reality for the near future. Until we will not see a viable partner among the Palestinians, there will be no real, genuine peace. It is not popular to say it. We all want change, peace, tomorrow morning. It’s not going to happen tomorrow morning. We will have to wait until we will see a real partner among the Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has said President Mahmoud Abbas will not be deterred and hopes the U.S. will not continue to be opposed to his country’s bid for statehood.

SAEB EREKAT: I would hope that the U.S. would revisit its position, because if we want to seek a Middle East that’s democratic, free, void of extremists and so on, we cannot maintain the status quo. The U.S. cannot continue treating Israel as a country above the laws of man. And that’s the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more on the proposal for Palestinian statehood set to go before the U.N. Security Council, we’re joined by two guests. Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of news and analysis website, The Electronic Intifada, and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He’s in Cleveland. We’re also joined by Mouin Rabbani in Washington, D.C., visiting scholar at the Institute for Palestine Studies. He is also co-editor of Jadaliyya ezine. Previously he worked as Palestine director of the Palestinian American Research Center.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s go first to Washington, D.C., to Mouin Rabbani. What is your take on what is happening today at the United Nations, Mahmoud Abbas presenting his statehood bid?

MOUIN RABBANI: Yeah, well, the Palestinian leadership today is going to deposit an application for full membership in the United Nations at the Security Council. And it seems that the Security Council, at the behest of Washington, will sit on it, while Washington seeks to garner enough votes in opposition to this proposal, so it doesn’t have to exercise a veto. And it seems that the Palestinian leadership is not going to increase the pressure by also going to the General Assembly.

I have to say I think the main issue here is not the bid for recognition or statehood. I think the key issue here is the extent to which this initiative creates space and possibility for the internationalization of the question of Palestine in all its dimensions. In other words, a beginning of an irrevocable turn away from the Oslo process, which time and again has proven that it serves as nothing more than a political cover for the consolidation of Israeli control and the deepening colonization of the Occupied Territories.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Ali Abunimah, you have been a vocal opponent or critic of this move by the Palestinians. Why?

ALI ABUNIMAH: Good morning, Juan. Good morning, Amy and Mouin.

Well, if we take what the PA, the Palestinian Authority, leadership say at face value, they say that their goal here was to try to break the status quo and to sort of return to negotiations, but on much better and more reasonable terms. That’s what they said. And if we evaluate it by those criteria, it’s been a complete disaster, because, in fact, what we saw from President Obama was a speech that was more pro-Israel than anything we have ever seen from him, which is saying something. And that was not a speech by a president of the United States addressing a world body with any sincerity about bringing an end to the conflict. That was a candidate running in an election where he is being very falsely and unfairly accused of not being pro-Israel enough. And that showed in the speech. So, the Palestinian Authority, rather than having ended the Oslo status quo, will go back home having achieved nothing and having simply demonstrated that it remains a captive of a situation where Palestinians are expected to carry out security, so-called security, for the Israeli occupation, are totally dependent on European Union and United States financing, and therefore financial blackmail, and have closed off all avenues for political action. And so, I see, really, this as a total failure.

The source of the opposition really came from a lot of Palestinians across the political spectrum who expressed fears that going to the United Nations to call for a state on a fraction of historic Palestine, without recognition of any other Palestinian rights, such as the rights of Palestinian refugees or the rights of Palestinian citizens in Israel, rather than advancing the cause of Palestine, could actually limit it and circumscribe it in the future because of unintended consequences. But it doesn’t look like that’s going to be a factor, after all, because this bid has gone absolutely nowhere.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani, your response?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, you know, Ali is making the point that, for the Palestinian leadership, they’ve approached this entire issue as a tactical maneuver rather than a strategic initiative. And in that, he’s completely correct.

The point, rather, is, does this—does this initiative—or to the extent that it’s initiative, rather—create possibilities for a new dynamic for Palestinians to deal with the issues of occupation and self-determination and so on? And what I think you’ve seen in Palestinian society is a very broad desire to begin to move decisively away from the Oslo framework, which has been really, you know, bilateral negotiations, forever, about nothing, under unilateral American custodianship, with the U.S.—you know, Obama’s speech yesterday left even the Israelis in stunned disbelief about the extent of its pro-Israeli partisanship. So, no disagreement there. Rather, the issue is, you now have this initiative. This initiative creates possibilities, if the leadership is put under sufficient pressure by Palestinian society, to take it well beyond what the leadership intended. I think what Ali has been saying about the leadership is, more or less, essentially correct. But there—you know, the dynamic that’s created is by no means limited to what the leadership intends to do with it. And I think the key issue here is that this provides an opportunity to move away from Oslo and back towards the internationalization of the question of Palestine, where Palestinian—the issues of Palestinian self-determination are addressed on the basis of Palestinian rights as codified in a very large corpus of U.N. resolutions, rather than, you know, being codified in the pro-Israeli positions of the American administration and a Congress that has decisively gone off the deep end.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Ali Abunimah, what about this issue of bringing back the question of the—through the international community, of dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian question? I was struck a couple of days ago by an interview with Brzezinski, a former key official in the Carter administration, who said that he saw this as a possible turning point in terms of the loss of influence of the United States in the Middle East and the rise, basically, of the European powers to be—to take a lead in attempting to resolve the question.

ALI ABUNIMAH: I don’t think that’s right. On the contrary, the role the European Union has been playing has been absolutely abject in terms of trying to be sort of a deal maker to get Israel’s demands written into Quartet statements, the Quartet being the self-appointed ad hoc group of international officials that has unilaterally placed the—replaced the United Nations on the question of Palestine. And the European Union provides the largest subsidies to Israeli occupation under the guise of aid to the Palestinian Authorities. So I don’t see the Europeans playing that role.

But on the question of internationalization and changing the dynamic, I agree with Mouin that that’s what needs to happen. But, you know, listen to your—to the introduction to this debate, and we had someone called Saeb Erekat being quoted as the chief negotiator. I and the rest of the Palestinians thought that Saeb Erekat had resigned after the scandals of the Palestine Papers were revealed. And yet, there he still is, calling himself chief negotiator. I think that that demonstrates the lack of accountability of this Palestinian leadership, the lack of connection to the Palestinian people, the lack of responsiveness to the Palestinian people, particularly the Palestinian diaspora and Palestinian citizens of Israel, who have essentially been written out of the question of Palestine. And part of the disaster of the Oslo process has been to reduce and circumscribe the Palestinian cause to residents of the West Bank and Gaza—and now perhaps only residents of the West Bank, as even Gaza is consigned to the garbage can.

And what we really need to do, I think, is rebuild a Palestinian consensus and body politic based on the rights and demands of every segment of the Palestinian people, inside and outside the country, based on fundamental rights, not a demand for limited statehood, which ignores the rights of the majority of Palestinians. Can this bid jump-start that process? I don’t know. But I think there are other movements going on that have been much more dynamic and much more inclusive, such as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which was dismissed as very marginal just a couple of years ago but is now sufficiently frightening and threatening to Israel, that they’re enlisting the United States government to fight it, which, of course, the Obama administration has enthusiastically volunteered to do by pledging to help Israel fight so-called delegitimization. What they call delegitimization, we call a struggle for universal rights and self-determination of Palestinians.

AMY GOODMAN: Mouin Rabbani—

ALI ABUNIMAH: So I think there are other avenues that need to be explored. And this U.N. bid, I think, has, if anything, demonstrated the dead end of a diplomatic process within a U.N. system that is so hopelessly broken and rigged on behalf of the powerful.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Mouin Rabbani, your response, but also what you would have liked to have seen President Obama say?

MOUIN RABBANI: Well, you know, Ali makes some very relevant criticisms of the Palestinian leadership, and I think one could add many more to what he’s said. And, of course, what is an essential requirement here is a reconstruction of the Palestinian national movement on the basis of an inclusive and purposeful strategy, and all the rest of it. At the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that there is this initiative at the United Nations and that Palestinians now have an opportunity to take this initiative well beyond the objectives for which it was launched by the leadership and to seek to intelligently use this initiative to promote the re-internationalization of the question of Palestine by addressing the issues of self-determination and the end of occupation on the basis of Palestinian rights as codified in international law and U.N. resolutions. I don’t think that that issue should have to wait until we get the leadership that we want or that we deserve, and I don’t think that these two elements are necessarily contradictory.

Now, in terms of Obama’s speech, I mean, you know, it’s—again, Israelis themselves reacted with stunned disbelief that an American president would give a speech at the U.N. that left even Avigdor Lieberman delighted and saying, you know, Bibi Netanyahu is now going to have to rewrite his own speech, lest he come across as less Israeli than the American president.

So, again, you know, getting back to the larger question, one of the key values of going to the United Nations and promoting the internationalization of the question of Palestine is precisely to get away from this hopelessly compromised American role in—not in resolving this conflict, but which has in fact come down to a policy of transforming Israeli impunity and promoting Israeli impunity as a central plank of American Middle East policy and basically acting in support of perpetual Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. So there can be no solution within the current framework. There can be no solution, unless the American role is replaced by a genuinely international one. And I think that going to the United Nations represents an essential first step in that direction, complemented, of course, by many other strategies and tactics, some of which Ali has mentioned. But at the end of the day, one either has Oslo or one has internationalization, and I don’t think that there’s a third option between the two.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there, Mouin Rabbani with the Institute for Palestine Studies and Ali Abunimah, co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.