Palestinian Territories

There are repeated efforts to forge a unity agreement of some sort between Hamas and Fatah, leading to a new "unity government" for the Palestinian Authority. Such a coalition was briefly in force in 2007 after the Saudi-sponsored Mecca Agreement. It quickly broke down into violence and led to the Hamas coup in Gaza. What would it mean today? One immediate effect of such an agreement would be a new PA cabinet in which Salam Fayyad would no longer be prime minister. Fayyad’s presence has meant, first, transparency and a struggle against corruption. His departure almost guarantees that the integrity of the PA’s books and finances will decline. But Fayyad as prime minister not only oversees the books; he also oversees the security forces. What were once thirteen armed gangs reporting to Yasser Arafat is an increasingly professional sector, keeping order in the West Bank and working well with the Israeli army and police against terror. With Fayyad gone, it is predictable that the PA services, including the American-trained police, will tend to become more corrupt and more political, serving the interests of Fatah or of certain Fatah leaders. At a deeper level, a unity agreement would bring Hamas into the PLO and thereby compromise the PA’s and PLO’s commitment to fight terrorism and seek a Palestinian state without violence. Since the death of Arafat in 2004, the PA and PLO have abandoned terrorism and spoken out against it. But consider two recent statements [courtesy of Palestinian Media Watch], made days apart in December. First, PA president and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas, talking about negotiations with Hamas: we established some foundations for an agreement. Among these foundations - first, Hamas concurs with us on the following points: the first point is that the calm and the ceasefire are [in place] not only in Gaza, but also in the West Bank - that’s one. Two - the resistance must be non-violent -popular. There will be no military resistance, honestly. And we agreed on this. The third point [was] that the permanent solution is on the ’67 borders. Hamas agreed to this, too. The fourth point - that we would go to elections in May of next year. Second, the statement by the Hamas "prime minister" Ismail Haniyah on the 24th anniversary of the founding of Hamas: We say today, explicitly, so it cannot be explained otherwise, that the armed resistance and the armed struggle are the path and the strategic choice for liberating the Palestinian land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river, and for the expulsion of the invaders and usurpers [Israel] from the blessed land of Palestine. The Hamas movement will lead Intifada after Intifada until we liberate Palestine - all of Palestine, Allah willing. Allah Akbar and praise Allah. We say with transparency and in a clear manner, that Palestinian reconciliation - and all sides must know this - cannot come at the expense of [our] principles, at the expense of the resistance. These principles are absolute and cannot be disputed: Palestine - all of Palestine - is from the sea to the river. We won’t relinquish one inch of the land of Palestine. The involvement of Hamas at any stage with the interim objective of liberation of [only] Gaza, the West Bank, or Jerusalem, does not replace its strategic view concerning Palestine and the land of Palestine." So, the most one can say is that Hamas is willing to stop committing acts of terror for a while when that seems tactically smart, but ultimately the goal is a violent destruction of the State of Israel. How could there possibly be a peace negotiation if half of the PA government is committed to the Haniyah view? In the past, it was sometimes possible to argue that Hamas participation in the PA did not give it a role in the PLO--and it is the PLO with which Israel is in principle negotiating. But now Hamas is on the verge of joining the PLO as well, and according to the United Nations and the Arab League the PLO is the "sole legitimate voice of the Palestinian people." So what happens when that voice is calling for Israel’s destruction? And when Hamas joins the PLO, how can the United States possibly allow the PLO to maintain its representative office in Washington? Perhaps these negotiations between Hamas and Fatah will never bear fruit. Perhaps both sides merely wish to appear to favor "unity" while in fact neither wants it. Perhaps the elections planned for May will never take place--a reasonable bet, considering that there have been no elections for six years. Perhaps a new cabinet will be formed in Ramallah and soon collapse, as happened last time. But peace negotiations cannot occur until we know the answer--until we know the identity and intentions of those who may be governing the West Bank and may sit across the table should talks resume. So Secretary of Defense Panetta’s now famous demand "just get to the damn table" looks especially foolish today, when people who want "Palestine - all of Palestine -from the sea to the river" and say they "will lead Intifada after Intifada until we liberate Palestine - all of Palestine" may be part of both the PA government and of the PLO.  

Iceland recently recognized Palestine as a state. As I noted in The Weekly Standard, according to Iceland, Palestinian sovereignty includes 100 percent of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. Palestine, as Icelanders see it, includes the Western Wall of the Second Temple, Judaism’s holiest site. The judenrein policy enforced by Jordan during the years it ruled Jerusalem would thus be reinstated. And Israel in any recognizable form would anyway disappear, for the Allthingi resolution calls for all Palestinian refugees--of whom according to the U.N. there are five million--to "return" to Israel. Remarkably Iceland made this move exactly sixty-four years to the day after its ambassador to the United Nations played a key and courageous role in helping establish the State of Israel.  It is a marvelous story, told in full in the memoirs of Abba Eban (which I quote in the Standard piece). As I concluded there, "There will probably be very few Icelanders who know this story and wonder how their country fell from being a model of courage and principle to one of self-regard and mock bravery. One doubts it will be widely told in Reykjavik."

A Palestinian rides his bicycle as he passes the United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) headquarters at Shati refugee camp in Gaza April 26, 2008. (Courtesy REUTERS/Ismail Zaydah). Since the end of the Second World War, millions of refugees have left refugee camps, and refugee status, and moved to countries that accepted them--quickly or slowly--as citizens. Post-World War II Europe was an archipelago of displaced persons and refugee camps, housing 850,000 people in 1947--Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Germans, Latvians, Greeks, and many more nationalities. By 1952, all but one of the camps had closed. Hundred of thousands of Jewish refugees from Europe went to Israel after 1948, and then hundreds of thousands more arrived from Arab lands when they were forced to flee after 1956 and 1967. The children and grandchildren of these refugees, born after their arrival, were never refugees themselves; they were from birth citizens of the new land, as their parents had become immediately upon their own arrival. In this process many nations and agencies have played wonderful roles, not least the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The exception to this refugee story is the Palestinians. In most of the Arab lands to which they fled or travelled after 1948 they were often treated badly, and refused citizenship (with Jordan the major exception) or even the right to work legally. And instead of coming under the protection of UNHCR, they had a special agency of their own, UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency. In the decades of its existence, it has not solved or even diminished the Palesinian refugee problem; instead it has presided over a massive increase in its size, for all the descendants of Palestinian refugees are considered to be refugees as well. Once there were 750,000; now there are five million people considered by UNRWA to be "Palestinian refugees." And UNRWA is now the largest UN agency, with a staff of 30,000. UNHCR cares for the rest of the world with about 7,500 personnel. The political background to this story is simple: only in the case of Israel was there a determined refusal to accept what had happened during and after World War II, with the establishment of the Jewish state and the increase in its population by the acceptance of refugee Jews. Of all the world’s refugees, whom UNHCR tries normally to resettle, only the Palestinians are an exception. UNRWA presides over generation after generation of additional refugees, and Arab states and leaders make believe that some day they can turn back the clock and send them--and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren--to Israel. To say this is not necessarily to criticize the day-to-day activities of UNRWA, for it was handed a mission by the UN. There are and have always been many UNRWA officials who are reliable international civil servants. And no doubt, any change in UNRWA’s role should come slowly and carefully so as not to harm innocent people caught up in international political struggles. But UNRWA should cease to exist, and Palestinian refugees should be handled by UNHCR with the intention of resettling them. That process should begin with a redefinition of who is a refugee entitled to benefits, so that benefits are based on need rather than on status. Moreover, Palestinians who have citizenship in other countries should not be considered refugees at all--the standard practice for every other group of refugees in the world. Why, for example, should the nearly two million Palestinians in Jordan, over 90 percent of whom have Jordanian citizenship, today be considered refugees by UNRWA at all? Lest that position seem idiosyncratic, consider this: in 2010 Canada cut off its funding of UNRWA, and just now the Netherlands government has said it is considering the same action. How did they explain this? The foreign minister told parliament that Holland would "thoroughly review" its policy and the ruling party called UNRWA’s refugee definition "worrying." UNRWA, said the party spokesman, "uses its own unique definition of refugees, different to the UN’s. The refugee issue is a big obstacle for peace. We therefore ask the government acknowledge this discrepancy, which leads to the third-generation Palestinian refugees." Correction: fourth-generation, actually. It is worth noting that there are many other criticisms of UNRWA: that it overlooks terrorist group activity in some camps, or allows members of Hamas and other terrorist groups to hold UNRWA staff positions. But those are criticisms of how UNRWA is carrying out its mission, while the deeper problem is the mission itself. That mission might accurately be described as enlarging the Palestinian refugee problem forever and thereby making any Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement tremendously more difficult if not impossible to achieve. Closing UNRWA would in the end be a great favor to Palestinians who live outside the West Bank and Gaza, assuming that the needed services it provides them could be provided by other agencies or the governments of the countries in which they live. Some of those individuals will some day move to the West Bank or Gaza, but they do not need UNRWA to do that. None of them will ever move to Israel, and the existence of UNRWA helps to maintain the cruel myth that they will. The "peace process" seems stalled today; no negotiated final settlements is on the horizon. But there are many things that can be done that move toward peace, such as the building of Palestinian institutions and improvement of the economy in the West Bank. Starting the process of closing down UNRWA would be a move toward peace, as it would replace the permanent perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem with a process designed to reduce it in size and some day solve it.

The Dome of the Rock is seen during sunset in Jerusalem's Old City on January 12, 2011 (Baz Ratner/Courtesy Reuters). Jerusalem-- After a brief visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, it is clear that Israelis and Palestinians are gazing past one another, focused largely on their own internal developments and on broader regional issues. Both share a sense that the plate tectonics of the region are shifting, and both are trying to figure out how best to navigate through this changing environment. The euphoria I sensed among Palestinians the last time I visited several months ago, brought about by Mahmoud Abbas’s efforts to attain statehood recognition in New York, was burst by the Israel-Hamas deal in which Corporal Shalit was exchanged for more than one thousand Palestinian prisoners. Hamas delivered; Abbas hasn’t.  While settler violence, both against Palestinians as well as against the Israeli army, has recently increased dramatically in the West Bank, the sense that an uprising could explode at any time has dissipated. Though, one can never be sure. A Palestinian friend called it “the calm between the storms.” Meanwhile, internal Palestinian political machinations have intensified. Abbas’s repeated call for elections in various Palestinian political bodies, combined with his pledge not to run himself, has set off intense backroom Palestinian politicking. Abbas and Hamas’ Khaled Meshal failed to make significant headway in bridging their differences in their meeting in Cairo last month. Still, the pace of Palestinian reconciliation efforts has been stepped up, and no one would be surprised if a breakthrough were reached tomorrow. Yet nobody is predicting it. Fatah-Hamas meetings are slated to be held this month, as are intensive meetings that will explore the prospects of bringing Hamas inside the PLO, the supreme Palestinian political organization representing the interests of Palestinians worldwide. The central question yet remains: on whose terms would they agree? Meanwhile, Israeli officials are watching regional developments with alarm. They see the potential for Assad’s downfall to roll back Iranian influence in the Arab world. They also fear that Syria’s instability could spill over into Jordan or Lebanon or indeed directly over their shared border. And Israeli officials continue to fret over Egypt, seeing developments there trending against Israeli interests. Yes, the Israelis have been able to return their ambassador to Cairo, and nobody is threatening to tear up their peace treaty tomorrow. Nonetheless, Israeli officials worry about the political successes so far of the Muslim Brotherhood and of the more extremist Salafist parties, and they see developments in Egypt constricting Israeli freedom to maneuver concerning Gaza. While some in Israel are arguing that the regional unrest should lead Prime Minister Netanyahu to redouble his efforts to reach out to Mahmoud Abbas, the snap Likud primary that Netanyahu recently called for late January will push him further away from any peacemaking efforts in the next few months. He wins no points from the hard right in Likud by making gestures toward the Palestinians right now, even if larger national interests might argue for drawing the Palestinians back to the table lest broader regional issues render such talks impossible. Yet above all, Israeli officials are most worried and most focused on Iran. They are not convinced when President Obama and other senior American officials insist on every occasion that all options remain on the table and that an Iranian nuclear weapon is unacceptable. Instead, the Israelis seem to suspect that the United States may be prepared to live with an Iranian bomb. U.S. and Israeli officials have intensified their crisscrossing of the Atlantic in their efforts to overcome what appears to be a profound absence of mutual trust between the two sides. So far, the numerous exchanges have not succeeded in forging a strategic agreement on how to handle the Iranian threat. Let’s hope Israel and the United States reach some understanding soon, lest one side acts having miscalculated the intentions of the other.

With the Palestinian Authority still negotiating for a unity government with Hamas, and elections now scheduled for May 2012, it is worth asking whether Hamas has changed. Has the effect of the Arab Spring, where Islamist parties have won elections in Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt, led Hamas to turn away from terrorism toward the ballot box or to moderate any of its positions? Here is what the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah, Gaza’s “prime minister,” told a huge rally in Gaza on December 13: We affirm that armed resistance is our strategic option and the only way to liberate our land, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the River [Jordan]. God willing, Hamas will lead the people... to the uprising until we liberate Palestine, all of Palestine. So, the commitment to terrorism and the absolute refusal to accept the existence of Israel remain. Indeed, this was a call for the violent destruction of the Jewish State. Those who, like Secretary of Defense Panetta, continue to say “just get to the damn table” are blinding themselves to the most obvious problems of the “peace process.” Putting aside the fact that it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who are refusing to go to the table, is it worthwhile negotiating with half of the Palestinian polity when the other half is announcing such goals, and any agreement that might be reached cannot be implemented? In fact the Haniyah statement raises once again another issue: should a terrorist group still committed to violence be permitted to contest the elections? In 2006, the United States and the Quartet said yes, because a group might in theory abandon violence after winning and then be a suitable participant in democratic politics. Perhaps there are circumstances, in some places, where that theory would apply, but it should not be applied to Hamas, in 2012; Hamas has shown that it will not abandon its goals or its methods. Given that Hamas is a part of the Muslim Brotherhood, here is a question about other Brotherhood groups, affiliates, or sympathizers coming to power in other Arab lands: will they denounce Hamas for such statements and call for a peaceful settlement? Will they say they agree with PLO leader and PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s rejection of terrorism? How they talk about these issues, and how they treat Hamas leaders, will tell us a good deal about the political paths they will take. It is not the only litmus test, but it will be a useful one.  

King Abdullah of Jordan speaks with Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas during a welcoming ceremony in the West Bank city of Ramallah November 21, 2011 (Mohamad Torokman/Courtesy Reuters). Jordan’s king Abdullah made an unusual foray today into the West Bank to meet Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Given that Jordan’s capital is a ten minute helicopter flight from Ramallah, it is remarkable that the monarch’s last visit there was over a decade ago. But Abbas also has a home in the Jordanian capital, largely obviating the need for—and making all the more unusual—Abdullah’s visit to Ramallah. Abdullah’s visit is even more surprising given Jordan’s current domestic context. Many East Bankers, who form the King’s political base, are worried by (and unusually critical of) the king’s recent efforts to improve ties with Jordan’s Palestinian majority. Some East Bankers, usually the dominant force in Jordanian society, are disproportionately reliant on the government’s patronage and have been hardest hit by the country’s economic woes. The country’s Palestinians, in contrast, tend more toward the private sector where greater opportunities currently exist. Thus, Abdullah’s trip to Ramallah today was all the bolder, given the discomfort it would engender amongst his East Bank base already suspicious of the king’s efforts toward the Palestinians. So why the unusual trip? Abdullah’s visit was no doubt precipitated by Abbas’s upcoming meeting later this week with Hamas’s Khaled Meshal. Many top Palestinians have concluded against the backdrop of developments in Tunisia and Egypt that Islamist parties are on the ascendancy. Closer to home, Israel’s recent prisoner trade of more than one thousand Hamas members for Gilad Shalit has “convinced” many top Palestinians that Israel and the West are now making amends with Islamist parties at Abbas’s expense. Amman’s own efforts to lure Jordan’s Islamic Action Front into the government will have only reinforced that misperception. But Abdullah had another basic objective in seeking out Abbas today: to convince the Palestinian leader to return to negotiations with Israel rather than seek unity with Hamas. Jordan’s foreign minister, Nasser Judah, bluntly noted that the visit was an attempt "to support the resumption of direct negotiations, because the goal is to guarantee the creation of an independent Palestinian state." With Hamas’s leader slated to visit Jordan next week, Abdullah no doubt sought to signal everybody and reassure Abbas that Jordanian sympathies remain with the Fatah-backed Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. Abdullah surely does not want Abbas to go wobbly on Hamas when the two Palestinian faction heads meet later this week in Cairo. It is a reflection of both Abdullah’s increased boldness (he was the first Arab leader to call for Syria’s Assad to step down) and his growing alarm at the current peace process drift that he felt compelled to call upon Abbas to orient his efforts back toward Israel. He sees that diplomatic neglect is sometimes not benign. Moreover, the Jordanians see Abbas edging closer toward a path that will either go nowhere or produce a government with which neither the West nor Israel will want to engage. With so few willing to evidence bold leadership to arrest deteriorating Israeli-Palestinian ties, the king’s move should be commended as a necessary diplomatic intervention.

"Palestinians ponder next step in their statehood bid," said the Los Angeles Times. "Palestinians will keep knocking on U.N.’s door," said Reuters. They will go to the Security Council; or they’ll go to the Security Council only if they’ll win; even if they won’t win; now, or maybe later; then to the General Assembly, or maybe not, after all. Palestinian "diplomacy" is now a series of contradictions that display little more than confusion. In this context it is not at all surprising to see renewed negotiations between Fatah and Hamas. PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has refused to negotiate with Israel for nearly three years now. He thought he had an ace up his sleeve going to the UN instead, but that option has not panned out. American opposition and the lack of enthusiasm elsewhere (Europe, for example) doomed the effort in the Security Council because the PLO could not round up the nine votes needed. Initially, going to the General Assembly to raise the PLO’s status to "non-member state" observer could have been claimed as a real victory, but the Palestinian diplomatic mismanagement ruined that. They talked it down instead of up, devaluing the only success available to them and finally (for now, anyway) abandoning this path. The taste of victory at UNESCO was also bitter, for the Palestinians were quickly told--by friendly countries and by the UN system as well, which wants American dollars to keep flowing--not to try that again in any other UN agency. So, having refused negotiations and now turned victory into defeat in the UN, Abbas is turning to yet another option: "unity" talks with Hamas. These have been on again and off again for about a year, with pious speeches and oaths of unity by the dozen but never any progress. It is possible that Abbas will arrange to sign something this time, at the cost of the resignation of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. That would be another self-inflicted Palestinian wound, for the "unity" with Hamas will never last. The Hamas and Fatah militants, or perhaps it is more accurate to say the Hamas ideologues and terrorists and the Fatah office-holders, hate each other. And the loss of Fayyad will cost the PA plenty, for he is the only Palestinian official whom donors in Europe, the United States, and the Arab oil producing countries trust. Moreover, many of the Europeans and American officials who are most fervently pressing Israel for negotiations will pipe down a bit when the Palestinians announce that Hamas is now part of their government. Abbas has tried all the options with which he is familiar. He is not the man of the future, and may be sincere this time when he says he wants to retire. Reports suggests that he will not have to live on a meager pension, and life will perhaps be much better if he can shift the burdens of office--actually, three offices, counting his jobs as Fatah chairman, PLO chairman, and PA president--to someone younger. Abbas does not relish having to explain to Palestinians that the world will not deliver a state on a silver platter, and that negotiations with Israel will require painful compromises. It seems right now that with the UN gambit in a shambles a deal with Hamas may be struck. That will most likely collapse in six months, but perhaps he can keep it afloat for twelve or fifteen and see if a new American president or a re-elected Barack Obama will shake things up. No one around him seems to have a better idea.

Palestinians are committed to a two-state solution despite losing a UN membership bid, says Mideast expert Daniel Levy, but moving forward requires addressing Israeli political entrenchment and a lack of Palestinian unity.

The announcement that Dennis Ross is leaving his post creates a serious problem for the Obama administration. Ross has spent decades working on the "peace process" and knew almost every influential Israeli and Palestinian official. He also knew almost every influential American Jewish leader. The former pattern of acquaintances has not enabled Ross to get anywhere in the Middle East due mostly to errors made by President Obama and his initial Middle East envoy George Mitchell. Once they posited that a total Israeli construction freeze, including in Jerusalem, was a necessary precondition for negotiations, the possibility of talks was gone. The Palestinians could henceforth accept no less, but no Israeli leader could offer such a freeze. There have been many other errors, and both Israeli and Palestinian leaders have been saying off the record for about two years that they did not understand what the White House was up to. The good personal relations that president Bush maintained with top Israeli and Palestinian officials were lost. And it seems clear now that there will be no progress in the "peace process" next year--a year in which there will be an American election, very likely an Israeli election, and even possibly a Palestinian election (though history suggests betting against that one). But with the diplomacy frozen, Ross’s departure is not a diplomatic problem for the White House; it is instead a problem for the Obama re-election campaign. For Ross was the only official in whom most American Jewish leaders had confidence. As most of them are Democrats who have long accepted Ross’s faith in the "peace process," they viewed his role as the assurance that a steady, experienced, pro-Israel hand was on or near the tiller. When the White House did something that clearly harmed U.S.-Israel relations (such as the recent Sarkozy-Obama exchange on how difficult it is to deal with Prime Minister Netanyahu, where Sarkozy called Netanyahu a liar and Obama appeared to agree), or made foolish demands of Israel (such as the 100 percent construction freeze), and when the tone of the relationship clearly became far worse than it had been under Clinton or Bush, Jewish leaders comforted themselves that Dennis was still there. He was the person to whom they reached out, or who reached out to them and comforted them; he explained that things were not so bad really and that the President really cared about all this and had the warmest concern about Israel. No one else in this administration can now fill that role, as the President enters an election year with a powerful need to maintain the 78 percent support he had last time in the Jewish community. Thus the political problem. While as noted Ross’s departure does not in itself create a diplomatic problem, it does highlight once again the degree to which this administration has mismanaged affairs in the region. It has lost the confidence of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and more broadly of Arab leaders, all of whom believe that American influence in the region is declining. It has presided over three years in which Israelis and Palestinians have not even been sitting together at the table, which would have calmed nerves even if it produced little or no progress. And it does not seem to know where to go next. The dates the Quartet has suggested for the Israelis and Palestinians to move forward--territorial proposals in January, and a final agreement by the end of 2012--seem designed to get everyone through the Christmas/New Year’s holidays and the round of 2012 elections. I don’t know why Mr. Ross is leaving and leaving now, but with the diplomatic situation that grim, who can blame him? And who can blame him if he has tired of being the facade of wonderful Obama-Israel relations behind which the actual political and diplomatic relationship steadily became colder and more distant.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas holds up a letter to United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon requesting Palestinian statehood at the 66th United Nations General Assembly at UN headquarters in New York on September 23, 2011 (Eric Thayer/Courtesy Reuters). The United Nations Security Council will soon revisit the Palestinian request for membership. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to discuss this upcoming development and other Palestinian-Israeli issues with CFR.org consulting editor Bernard Gwertzman. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Bernie is a legendary former New York Times diplomatic correspondent. In the interview, I discussed the stepped up multitrack Palestinian diplomatic effort at the United Nations and its ramifications for peace efforts. What peace efforts, you might ask? We discussed that too, as well as the rumors swirling through the Israeli press about a purported Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The overall situation between Israelis and Palestinians appears to be deteriorating rapidly. International diplomacy is largely focused elsewhere, and nobody seems to have good ideas about how to arrest this latest tailspin. Do you have any good ideas? I’d love to hear them. Feel free to post a comment. To read the interview on CFR.org, please click here.

Following full UNESCO membership, Palestinians have increased efforts for statehood recognition, but the United States is continuing its push to bring them back to the negotiating table for direct talks, says CFR Mideast expert Robert Danin.

The world is now watching UNESCO and other UN agencies take up the call for recognition of Palestinian statehood. But an interesting poll suggests that the enthusiasm of the Palestinian political class is greater than that of many Palestinians in Jerusalem for this endeavor. It’s not that they oppose creation of a Palestinian state. It’s just that they don’t want to live there. Here is the core finding of the poll: In the wake of Washington’s decision to cut funding to UNESCO, a new phase of diplomatic debate approaches regarding the application for recognition of a Palestinian state "with East Jerusalem as its capital." Yet new research reveals that a surprisingly large number of the Palestinians who actually reside in the city reject that prospect. Forty-two percent say they would even try to move to Israel if their neighborhood became part of a new Palestinian state. And a statistically equivalent 39 percent say they would prefer Israeli to Palestinian citizenship. The study has some other dynamite in it. It seems the common understanding that Arabs are being driven from Jerusalem is false: Demographic research related to the above surveys produces another clear and counterintuitive conclusion: despite libelous rhetoric about the "Judaization" of Jerusalem, Palestinian population growth in the city has outpaced that of Israelis by far. Since 1967, the city’s Israeli population -- including in the new neighborhoods beyond the 1949-1967 armistice lines -- has indeed grown substantially, roughly doubling from under 250,000 to around half a million today. But over the same period, the Palestinian population has more than quadrupled, from around 70,000 in 1967 to 288,000 at last official count in 2010. Moreover, the widespread view that Arabs cannot build in Jerusalem is also false: Only a relatively small minority (24 percent) of east Jerusalem Palestinians now say they are dissatisfied with "the ease or difficulty of obtaining building permits" in the city -- a surprising finding given the preoccupation with this problem among some media outlets and NGOs. This marks a sharp decline from November 2010, when two-thirds (66 percent) reported dissatisfaction on this issue. And while 70 percent of the September respondents said that discrimination in municipal services is at least a "moderate" problem, a mere 7 percent named building permits, evictions, or demolitions as examples of such discrimination in response to an open-ended question. The study was sponsored by The Washington Institute and conducted in September by Palestinian pollster Nabil Kukali of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO), in partnership with Pechter Middle East Polls. It can be found here and is worth reading—and then reading again. A great deal of conventional wisdom bites the dust.

General view of the leaders' forum room during the 36th session of UNESCO's General Conference in Paris on October 26, 2011 (Benoit Tessier/Courtesy Reuters). The vote by UNESCO to admit Palestine as a full member distracts international attention from the only efforts that will make Palestine a genuine reality: negotiations and state-building efforts on the ground. No good has emerged from the past twenty-four hours’ developments, but already we are seeing considerable harm. First, UNESCO’s vote encourages PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas to pursue a strategy that only harms Palestinian aspirations to statehood, as I argued in Foreign Affairs in September. Yet, having secured the UNESCO membership, Palestinians will accelerate their internationalization efforts. Today, their top UN envoy in Geneva announced that they will seek membership in over a dozen other UN agencies, including the World Intellectual Property Organization, the World Health Organization, and the International Labor Organization. This will distract international diplomacy away from resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and instead politicize many UN agencies that do important work. Secondly, the Obama administration’s reaction—immediately cutting off aid to UNESCO in response to U.S. legislation—harms U.S. interests elsewhere. UNESCO mainly underwrites projects that have nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For example, in Afghanistan UNESCO is working to bolster the literacy of the Afghan National Police and is leading the country’s largest education program reaching some six hundred thousand Afghans. At a time when Washington has sought to employ the United Nations as an instrument of multilateral action, cutting off aid to UNESCO seems to work at cross-purposes with U.S. objectives. Third, having made headway with membership in UNESCO, Abbas will likely step up his push for Palestinian statehood at the Security Council. However, the Palestinians do not appear to have the nine votes that would trigger a U.S. veto—Bosnia yesterday announced that it will abstain. This will not deter the Palestinians from seeking a vote that they will likely lose. Once they are defeated at the Security Council, the Palestinians intend to shift their efforts to the General Assembly, where they will likely gain the status of non-member state. This will confer upon Palestine the ability to challenge Israel in multilateral fora such as the International Criminal Court. Such a step will doubtless ignite strong Israeli countermeasures. Indeed, the UNESCO vote already has precipitated an Israeli backlash. The Israeli government just met several hours ago and decided to accelerate the construction of some two thousand units in East Jerusalem, the Etzion Bloc, and in Ma’aleh Adumim, a large settlement east of Jerusalem. Israel also announced it will withhold last month’s tax revenues that are owed the Palestinian Authority. Rather than harming Abbas, withholding revenues will undermine Prime Minister Fayyad, who will find it hard to pay Palestinian workers’ salaries. This damages Fayyad’s standing personally and bolsters his political detractors within Fatah and Hamas. Through its decision tonight, Israel declared settlement activity a punitive action. And withholding funding harms the one person who is working constructively to build real security on the ground for Palestinians and Israelis alike. Thus, the unhelpful UNESCO vote has triggered a series of steps that harms the very goal it purports to advance—genuine Palestinian statehood and independence. Rather than encouraging the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table or even toward simply adopting a more cooperative attitude, the environment is rapidly souring. The actions over the past twenty-four hours do not gain the Palestinians one additional inch of territory, while Israel’s actions will draw attention away from unhelpful Palestinian efforts. With the Israeli-Gaza border heating up again, the situation on the ground—the place where things really count—is teetering precariously on the edge of a deterioration into further violence and bloodshed.

According to news reports, the Obama Administration has a new proposal to cope with the issue of construction in Israeli settlements. Israel would “halt the construction of new neighborhoods but could continue building in existing settlements….” The idea is that Israel would refrain from any construction outside current settlement boundaries. If there is construction only within existing settlements, there would be no American condemnations. If this is a good idea, a decent compromise, one can only wonder why it took the Obama White House nearly three years to get there. For this policy was precisely what the Bush Administration agreed with prime ministers Sharon and Olmert. In the early months of the Obama Administration, officials flatly denied such a deal had ever existed. In June, 2009 I wrote about this Obama error in the Wall Street Journal. And error it was: in December 2003, prime minister Sharon stated that “Israel will meet all its obligations with regard to construction in the settlements. There will be no construction beyond the existing construction line….” Had the Obama Administration realized the value of what had been achieved by its predecessors and continued the policy, we would not have endured nearly three years without any Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Nor would the administration have tried instead to impose a total construction freeze, a condition that no Israeli government could meet and that thus created a new and insuperable obstacle to negotiations. Now, if this news story is true, the administration is moving back to the Bush position. Well, better late than never. But it is likely that the Palestinians will now call such a deal too little too late, and reject it. Perhaps, if  the Palestinian rejection is made very strongly in private, administration spokesmen will deny that any such proposal was ever made. But it ought to be made, because these terms are sensible: as long as there is construction only within built-up areas, there is no harm to Palestinians, no use of additional land, and no additional burden in future negotiations. It would be nice if administration officials admitted that after nearly three years they had come to understand all of this, but I guess that is asking for too much. It will be quite enough if they abandon their “construction freeze” mania and move to a more practical and realistic view.

The prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas could indicate a shift in Hamas’ willingness to deal with Israel, but the release of convicted terrorists could also mean renewed violence, says former U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk.