Harry Reid cheers Senate passage of Palestinian resolution

By Karoun Demirjian

Wednesday, June 29, 2011 | 5:15 p.m.

Lawmakers across the political spectrum are cheering the Senate’s unanimous passage yesterday of a resolution urging President Obama to cut off all aid to the Palestinian territories if leaders decide to forge ahead with plans to seek recognition of their statehood from the United Nations in September.

“A negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should come through direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations,” Sen. Harry Reid said of the resolution Wednesday. “A fair beginning to good-faith talks also means the Palestinians cannot simply stop by the negotiating table on their way to the United Nations to seek recognition as a state.”

But it seems like the resolution, while defining for the U.S. Senate, may be little more than sabre-rattling to the Palestinians.

Reid is one of the staunchest defenders of Israel in Congress, and last month, obliquely criticized President Obama for speech in which he commented on the Israeli conflict. Reid delivered those words the annual gathering of AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel lobby in the U.S, citing Nevada’s "spirited pro-Israel community" and "fastest-growing Jewish community in the country" in his remarks.

At the time, some spoke of delivering an official resolution of disapproval over comments the President had made suggesting the U.N.-recognized, pre-1967 boundaries should serve as a basis for negotiating a final settlement, but it never materialized. This Senate resolution is the first official action the Senate has taken on the subject since then.

But it doesn't appear that the resolution, which serves only as a recommendation to the President, will have much effect on developments overseas.

Three months ago, Palestinian leaders barely flinched when lawmakers discussed similar de-funding measures over the reconciliation of Fatah, the leading party in the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, and Hamas, which effectively runs Gaza, and which the U.S. has listed as a terrorist organization.

A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said then that “the Palestinians need American money, but if they use it as a way of pressuring us, we are ready to relinquish that aid.”

The Palestinian Authority receives over half a billion dollars a year from the United States in a package of political and economic aid, which was increased last year in order to help the PA pay off its debts.

The U.S. also provides a package of military aid to Israel worth slightly more than $3 billion a year, at least 75 percent of which comes back to U.S. companies in defense contracts.

The PA’s earlier brush-off of U.S. threats to pull aid may have been delivered in the context of the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation, but that remains a point clearly at the front of U.S. lawmakers’ minds as they weighed in, objecting to the U.N. taking a decisive role in the ongoing conflict.

“If peace talks are to be fruitful, the Palestinians cannot bring to the negotiating table a terrorist organization that rejects Israel’s right to exist,” Reid said in his statement.

Resolution drafter Senator Ben Cardin stressed that a final, peaceful, two-state solution could be achieved by negotiations alone.

Negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians have been ongoing, in fits and starts, and interrupted several times by wars and/or one or the other party walking away from the table, since Israel was created in 1948.

It was U.N. General Assembly resolution (181) that established the territorial boundaries of the state of Israel back in 1947. The U.N. Security Council then superseded that with Resolution 242 in 1967, in the aftermath of the Six Day War, which established the concept of Land for Peace, and has been the basis for discussions of where the ultimate boundaries of the two states will be (the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank since 1967 have made those boundaries guidelines at best; but ultimately, a future Palestinian state is expected to include most of the West Bank and Gaza).

If the U.N. weighed in on the Palestinians’ petition, it would not be to draw a new map; they’d declare the state along the old, pre-1967 lines that are officially the Israeli borders the U.N. recognizes anyway (they are also the ones that President Obama said last month would serve as a guideline to a negotiated settlement). But if accepted, it would give Palestinians something they haven’t had before: the ability to sit in the General Assembly, and cast a vote like all other recognized countries.

The Palestinian National Authority currently has conditional observer status at the U.N., a designation that also applies to the Holy See, and one which several other nations have lingered in before securing full membership, such as South Korea (1949-1991), North Korea (1973-1991), and Monaco (1956-1993). The most recent state to graduate from conditional observer to full state status was Switzerland, in 2002.

The Palestinians will try to take their case to the full General Assembly when it convenes in September, and where they’ve got plenty of allies: already, about 70 countries have recognized Palestine as a state and established full diplomatic missions there.

But to get to the G.A., it’s first got to secure a recommendation from the U.N.’s Security Council, where the U.S. can and often does wield a veto.

The U.S. has already used that veto to stymie U.N. condemnation of Israel’s continued building of settlements in the West Bank earlier this year.

At a conference of pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC earlier this year, Obama pledged to "stand up against efforts to single out Israel at the United Nations". AIPAC was pushing for the Senate resolution.

While it is technically possible to circumvent the Security Council, the two-thirds majority required under the "Uniting for Peace" resolution is procedurally difficult to achieve, and can only be invoked when the Security Council failed to uphold its "primary responsibility" of maintaining peace and security. "Uniting for Peace" has only been invoked 10 times since it was established in 1950, five years after the U.N. was formed.