16 april 2011, signing palestine’s birth certificate

30 years of negotiation between israel, the arabs (palestinians) and america (rest of the world) had two peaks: camp david 1977, successful; and sharm el sheikh 2000, less so. After that, israel turned from moderate to rightist, america from facilitator to observer, and the palestinians to authoritarianism and civil war. Progress became unilateralist, as israel withdrew from lebanon, and then from gaza. Unilateralism replaced land for peace. Both formulae originated on the left, and were then adopted by the right, the wall following the same pattern: it was originally a leftist attempt to nudge forward a palestinian state by drawing borders that no longer existed on a "good fences make good neighbours" basis. In 2000, yasser arafat sought to take a leaf out of the same text book, threatening to just announce a palestinian state, as israel did in 1947; he eventually backed down. Now, not rashly, but after years of patient international consensus-building, the palestinians are well set to declare, kosovo-style, this september. The jericho-based palestinian authority has a good claim to be capable and ready to function as an independent state. I myself worked a little on solidifying the particular institution of its central bank. This will all come down to very real negotiations at the un, with europe likely a strong supporter. The key question is whether obama will, as is usual, exercise an american veto. These are extremely unusual times: the middle east is in chaos; so too is israel at the un; us-israel relations are extremely strained; the broad brush of "terrorist" no longer sits well with the mainstream palestinian movement; and obama is in foreign-policy mould-breaking mood, taking an extraordinary nato back seat in libya. At the last moment of such israel weakness, ariel sharon pushed through the "painful concession" of the gaza withdrawal. What all this means is that the highly reasonable and transparent way the prime-minister salaam fayyad, formerly of the imf, has been going about his business sets the diplomatic price of an american veto unusually high, and so the odds lessen of a scenario where obama takes on the claim that this is bad for israel, and avoids a veto. Watch out for american positioning and some high profile israel alternative initiatives over the next few weeks. The first international soccer stadium in the west bank was inaugurated this week. Bigger things may be kicking off soon.