To-Do List for the Palestinian Statehood Bid
Things that should happen before Abbas goes to the United Nations
November 12, 2012
Mahmoud Abbas in 2011(AP)
Yesterday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told a disapproving President Obama that he would go forward with the Second Annual Unilateral Palestinian Statehood Bid at the United Nations™. To help Abbas with his quest, I’ve assembled an incomplete to-do list of steps that he should take prior to pursuing the bid.
1. Read a newspaper. Especially the part about the 100 Gaza rockets that struck Israel over the weekend.
2. Retract his retraction of the visionary statement he made a few weeks ago in which Abbas recognized that the Palestinian Right of Return (aka the de facto erasing of Israel) is a fantasy.
3. Revisit Find all the good accomplished by last year’s symbolic and counterproductive statehood bid at the United Nations.
4. Respond to Ehud Olmert’s generous and far-reaching peace offer from 2008.
5. Work with the only actors who can actually help make a Palestinian statehood bid viable–Israel and the United States–to create the conditions necessary for peace by agreeing to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu without preconditions.
6. Ask himself whether or not he is using the United Nations to marginalize rivals and delegitimize Israel.
Earlier: Mahmoud Abbas Channels Paula Abdul
Abbas Tells Obama He’s Intent on UN Status Bid [JPost]
The Approach of Unwanted War in Gaza [Times of Israel]
Adam Chandler was previously a staff writer at Tablet. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic, Slate, Esquire, New York, and elsewhere. He tweets @allmychandler.
