A year on, calls for statehood hide PA failures

Mahmoud Abbas' return to the UN, in a new statehood bid, will not end Palestinian suffering. After two decades of Oslo, true statehood will only come from a change in tactics.

A year ago, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas went to the United Nations with a rightful bid for state membership. The move for full membership was never voted on at the Security Council (largely due to US pressure).* Today Mr Abbas returns to the UN General Assembly, this time seeking to lay the groundwork for a new resolution to elevate the Palestinians from "observer entity" to "observer state".

But a year on, the heady optimism has largely faded. Even in the case of a successful vote (no date has been set for one) many, not least Palestinians themselves, would consider statehood recognition to be a Pyrrhic victory. The Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, just like that of Yasser Arafat before him, is perceived to have made so many concessions since the Oslo Accords as to make the possibility of returning to 1967 borders all but impossible.

Palestinian leaders are still talking as if they believe the current negotiating framework will yield a solution. Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said this week that the planned statehood bid was to put "Palestine back on the map, on the 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital".

And yet, the fractured, ageing Palestinian leadership is unwilling to break the system. Israel keeps the PA in business by transferring tax receipts to its coffers; without a repudiation of the current arrangement, the facts on the ground will not change. And Israel can continue to withhold Palestinian money and continue its oppression.

The current belief among many Palestinians is that these concessions, and pandering to US mediating, have emboldened the Israelis to the point where Benjamin Netanyahu's government has little interest in returning to the negotiating table, or indeed halting their policy of settlement expansion. As Diana Buttu writes on the opposite page, the current two-state solution is going nowhere.

Today's speech at the UN will give Mr Abbas the chance to put the Palestinian statehood issue back on the international agenda. But with Mr Abbas's Fatah party in the West Bank, and Hamas in Gaza, no nearer to reconciliation and the much-mooted elections nowhere in sight, the Palestinian struggle for freedom languishes. The announcement that Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal will be stepping down from his position further clouds the picture.

A UN statehood bid may yet shore up domestic support for Mr Abbas. But symbolic victories will not end Palestinian suffering. After two decades of Oslo, true statehood will only come from a change in tactics.

*Editor's note: The original version of this editorial contained a factual error about last year's resolution and Security Council action. The Security Council did not veto the PA's statehood bid; it was never presented for a vote.