The Palestinan bid for UN recognition has been rounded on by many including predictably the USA and now the world traveller (but not in a class as low as that) Tony Blair, as "deeply confrontational."
Regardless of the rights and wrongs of the whole issue, this response underlines two problems which have always dogged the Palestinian debate. It is also born of arrogance.
Firstly there is the unsaid message that "Any settlement will be the one we give you ". Secondly there is the the one that "You have little part in determining what it is".
From the Palestinian point of view the direct bid for UN recognition is a sensible one especially as it injects urgency into the seemingly endless issue. What would you do in their situation? Years of pleading their case has got nowhere. Worse than that , Israel has made resolution ever more difficult by continuing to establish new settlements in disputed territories. Each one indicates a new jagged kink and impracticality in the deliniation of the borders of a future Palestinian state to the extent that it could be a said in the future that the location of the settlements actually makes the separation of Israel and Palestine impossible.
Again, what would anyone do in the face of the situation apparently being made more difficult by the day while such as Blair urge meaninglessly and impotently that new discussions should start within a month and a settlement reached within a year? How? By whom? What is their track record over years of non achievement and refusal to insist that no new settlements are built and that existing ones may be subject to being dismantled or placed within the borders of a new Palestine whether the residents like it or not?
Add to that the issue of what confidence the Palestinians might reasonably be expected to have in the even handedness of Blair, a man who took his country into what looked like almost an ideology based war in Iran and later Afghanistan .Again if you ask the question "What would anyone do in the circumstances?" you come back to the answer that the Palestinian approach to the UN is not unreasonable and indeed is a thoroughly understandable vehicle with which to progress their case. A hysterical "Can't do that because we don't like it" reaction simply casts doubt on the good faith of those who shout it, especially when, other than plucking new timescales out of the air, they say nothing about what they will actually do to achieve delivery.
