Daily Times

America’s star is fading on the world stage. Its role as the global policeman is no longer tenable. This, at least, was the message delivered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the UNSC this week. He has a point.

On-the-ground Palestinian experts have noted that Israel, too, is cognisant of the shifting of regional sands. This, they contend, explains why the Jewish state has been seeking closer ties with Russia, China, India and Japan. And it is also what has prompted Abbas to call for a different kind of multilateral alliance to restart the peace process. He envisions getting the Europeans as well as Moscow, Beijing and others on board. Meaning that both the Israelis and Palestinians are mostly on the same page. For once. Which begs the question as to what could possibly go wrong.

The answer is quite a lot, actually; despite Abbas still foreseeing a US involvement of sorts. For the right-wing American media is already up in arms over the staged audacity of the Palestinian President not sticking around to see what either the US or the Israeli ambassadors to the UN had to say. We, for our part, cannot say that we blame him. After all, he and the Palestinian people have heard it all before.

For this is not just about Trump Town’s Jerusalem Shuffle — though a reversal of this gross misstep did feature on Abbas’ extremely detailed three-point agenda for peace. Something that prompted the right-wing US media to chastise the Palestinian President over issuing a demand that he knew Washington would never go for. Which, of course, misses the point of the latter simply asking that an unlawful move be taken off the table. Other calls include the formation of an international mechanism that will assist both sides in negotiating matters related to permanent status in accordance with the Oslo Accords that were signed back in 1995.

Yet what good is all this without the necessary political will all round?

For this is not about this or that roadmap for peace. This is about almost every single American administration having failed the Palestinians. This is about the international community making a mockery of their fundamental right to statehood by appointing the warmongering Tony Blair as the UN special envoy to the Middle East. This is about the world body seeing fit to recognise the state of Israel some 70 years ago while denying the same to the Palestinians. This is about Balfour and illegal land-grabbing and ethnic cleansing. In short, this is about democracy as a failed global experiment.

Thus while the stakes could not be higher — the prospect for peace seems as elusive as ever for the Palestinians given that the way forward hinges once more on Israeli say-so as well the required impetus from the international community. The best we can hope for is that a resurgent Russia and a rising China can do what the US could have done but chose not to. As for the UN — it has simply underscored its utter irrelevance on this front.  *

Published in Daily Times, February 23^rd 2018.