Virtual statehood or the Right of Return (Omar Barghouti)

[shira]

<snip>

“Palestine 194” is the name of a campaign called for by Palestinian officials to drum up support for their “September Initiative”, or bid for statehood, in the hope that “Palestine” would become the 194th member of the UN. This same number, however, has historic connotations for the people of Palestine. It has been etched in our collective consciousness as the UN General Assembly resolution stipulating the right of the Palestinian refugees - most of whom were forcibly displaced and dispossessed during the 1948 Nakba by Zionist militias and later the state of Israel - to return to their homes and properties.

Without any sense of irony, Palestinian officials who have time and again colluded in eroding official international support for UNGA 194, as the Palestine Papers have amply shown, are now appropriating that very number and using it in a bid that runs the risk of surrendering the right of return associated with it for more than six decades. This is merely a symbol of the far more substantive moral, political and legal bind that this Initiative may potentially place the Palestinians and their supporters in.

The “September Initiative” is at best vague and confusing and at worst damaging to the interests of the Palestinian people. Regardless, it is entirely divorced from the will of the Palestinian people, and those advocating it have no democratic mandate from the people to employ it in any way that jeopardises our UN-sanctioned rights.

more...
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/09/201191394042383843.html

So now, besides the EU, USA, and J-Street opposing the latest UN Palestinian statehood bid, we see the BDS movement joining Hamas in opposition to it. Leading me to question which Palestinians, other than Abbas and his lackeys, are for it? And why so many supporters of it here at DU?

[shira]

1. Palestinians on statehood: 'We want action, not votes at the UN'

Mohammed Hassan al-Atrash, a man whose life story is a microcosm of all that has befallen the Palestinian people over the past 63 years, smiles ruefully at the prospect of a Palestinian state winning the support of most countries in the world at the United Nations next week.

"I am a simple man," he says, leaning on his sturdy walking stick. "I don't know about politics. But from my life experience, I don't think we will gain anything. What is left, after the settlements, the military zones, the wall, the bypass roads? You think you can build a state on a few scattered villages?

"If the UN is supportive of the Palestinians, they should stop Israel from doing all this. Talk is easy. What's important is what is happening on the ground."

It is a view shared by many Palestinians. As world leaders engage in frantic last-minute diplomacy in an attempt to avoid a damaging car crash of competing interests in New York, Palestinians shrug and get on with lives governed by checkpoints, permits, house demolitions, land confiscation and harassment from Jewish settlers. A vote at the UN, they say, will not end Israel's occupation.

more...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/14/palestinian-statehood-action-un

[aranthus]

2. Do you get the sense that the UN ploy is Abbas' last attempt at relevance?

He wants to keep his job.

[shira]

3. Yep, he wants to be Palestine's first President. Yippee! And his drones here are all for it. n/t

[aranthus]

4. Actually, I don't mind Palestinian statehood now.

The things that Israel wants in return the Palestinians are never going to agree to, and it would be worthless if they did. So work out the borders other than Jerusalem and make a deal. With the clear understanding that if the Palestinians/Arabs attack Israel thereafter, that Israel is free to destroy as much of the Arab/Muslim world as necessary to prevent the survivors from ever again being a threat.