Face-to-Face

The Palestinian Authority decided it would prefer to bypass peace negotiations with Israel in favour of bold action; going directly to the United Nations, declaring itself unilaterally prepared for statehood, and readying itself to be welcomed as a newborn state by the warm arms of its supporters.

Now that the Security Council has reached a stalemate of indecision rather than the majority welcome that Mahmoud Abbas confidently anticipated, the PA is threatening "violence and anarchy".

"Violence and anarchy" are not unknown to the Palestinians. It appears to reflect what they think and do best, when they feel themselves to have been unjustly thwarted. First, the nakba, then the 'occupation', then the machinations of its enemies to ensure sovereignty would continue to evade them.

Palestinians are past masters at aggrieved victimhood. Their grievance against the world has kept them 'refugees', representing a world record at that status. As 'refugees' they have presented themselves as wounded and unfairly deprived. And the world community has been paying them sympathetic-homage, in treasury and sympathy for over 60 years.

During that time no discernible effort has been made from a leadership group to forge a working nascent state with the infrastructure needed to become independent of foreign funding. Its neighbour whom its anger and hatred is directed toward has been assisting it in the goal of statehood achievement. For its troubles, Israel has been slandered and its borders violently breached.

Matters do become complex when the grieving body continues to rail and to mount violent attacks on its neighbour which itself is anxious to resolve the conflict, to enable both to live normal, productive and useful lives, setting aside enmity and destructiveness. Coming together to a peace table to work out complex issues where both will be forced to make sacrifices to reach agreement does require an open mind.

The Palestinians closed theirs the moment they began to pile on pre-conditions. Refusing to return to the peace negotiations until and unless each of those conditions was met; with the understanding, given their past record, that even then nothing of any real substance would result, for while no issues are off the table, offers are never substantial enough to entice the Palestinians to accept a final peace offer.

So - off to the United Nations. And the initial euphoria of the Palestinians flush with the certainty that success would be theirs - elevating the status of President Mahmoud Abbas to guardian of the nakba and hero of the new state - has descended to grim reality. There are no acceptable, workable short cuts.

First things first. And on this occasion, for this particular objective, a final agreement to reach a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians must pre-date the new state.

They may, should they now desire, achieve another type of status in recognition of who and what they may yet become; observer status. Granted to another state-within-a-state, but not-yet-a-state, the Vatican, and which the Palestinian Authority had spurned to be elected to, just a short month earlier.

Disappointment runs deep and bitter; the PA had planned and cajoled, and done its utmost to blacken Israel's diplomatic eye - to little avail. They have been quite successful in the propaganda war. Far less so in the realpolitik, diplomacy area.

The ball is in the Palestinian Authority's court. They've whacked it around quite a bit of late. They haven't played the game quite as legitimately, quite as fairly, quite as honestly as they might have. But this is, after all, the Middle East, where anger and hatred and rhetoric and dissent and violence are as natural a part of the landscape as is sun and sand.

Ramallah may be feeling confounded, furiously frustrated and abandoned by their friends' lack of clout, but those who do have real clout, the United Nations, United States, European Union and Russia are all determined to get the game back on track. Back to first things. Peace negotiations, face-to-face.