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Will U.S. Veto UN Resolution on Palestinian State?
(Commentary) Jonathan S. Tobin - With the Palestinians pushing for a UN Security Council resolution that would unilaterally recognize their independence in the territory won by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War, the U.S. administration must decide whether it is truly in its interests to facilitate an end run around the peace process it has sponsored. The PA claims that the peace negotiations promoted by the U.S. over the years has not brought them closer to gaining a state and that only by having the international community force its hand will Israel ever be willing to retreat to the 1967 lines. But this campaign is about avoiding a negotiated end to the conflict, not finding a shortcut to one. The Palestinians have been offered statehood in Gaza, almost all of the West Bank, and a share of Jerusalem three times by the Israelis in 2000, 2001, and 2008. The obstacle wasn't Israeli settlements or intransigence, but the fact that Abbas knows it would be political suicide for him to sign any deal that would recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one, no matter where its borders were drawn. What the Palestinians want is a way to avoid negotiations that would obligate them to end the conflict with Israel as the price of their independence. The problem with negotiations isn't that the Israelis have been intransigent, but that no matter how much Obama and Kerry tilt the diplomatic playing field in the direction of the Palestinians, a solution must in the end require them to make peace. The UN resolution they want would merely obligate the Israelis to retreat from more territory without any assurances that what happened when they gave up every inch of Gaza in 2005 - the creation of a terrorist Hamas state - would not happen again in the more strategic and larger West Bank.