Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on October 25, 2012

RAMALLAH, West Bank Palestinian leaders plan to shake up the 19-year-old peace process and proceed with a United Nations statehood bid next month over U.S. objections, chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said.

"It's a moment of truth," Erakat said in an interview at his West Bank office in Ramallah. "We're determined to change the status quo."

The move to upgrade the Palestine Liberation Organization's status to that of a "non-member state" in the UN General Assembly comes a year after the failed effort to obtain full membership through the Security Council, a step the Obama administration blocked.

By forcing the statehood issue Palestinians risk jeopardizing international aid that accounts for about 14 percent of gross domestic product and inviting retaliatory measures from Israel, which captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza in the 1967 Middle East war.

"We are ready to go directly back to the negotiations once we return from the UN," Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told reporters in Ramallah Wednesday.

The Palestinian bid to upgrade its observer status at the UN is likely to pass the General Assembly, where the United States has no veto as it does in the Security Council, Erakat said.

If the vote succeeds, "Palestine will become a nation under occupation," Erakat said. "The moment we get this, every single thing Israel does in east Jerusalem or the West Bank will become null and void."

The Palestinian cause has fallen into relative obscurity since formal peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government were frozen two years ago. There was only one mention of Palestinians during Monday's U.S. presidential debate on foreign policy.

Peace talks stumbled over the issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Abbas said he would not return to negotiations unless Israel froze all settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Netanyahu has refused to renew a 10-month freeze on construction that expired in 2010, and this week said Israel considered all of Jerusalem its "eternal capital." The two sides first started direct peace negotiations with the Oslo Accords that were signed at the White House in 1993.

More than 327,000 Jewish Israelis live in 121 fortified West Bank settlements and other scattered outposts amid some 2.6 million Palestinians, according to 2010 census data. Another 193,000 Jews live in east Jerusalem, most in separate areas from the 281,000 Palestinians, according to 2010 data compiled by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies.

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Palestinian UN bid in defiance of US seeks to jolt talks

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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