The Palestinian Authority is considering asking the UN to implement Resolution 181, which calls for the partition of mandatory Palestine between Jews and Arabs, if the US foils plans to seek UN recognition of a Palestinian state in September, a senior PA official disclosed on Saturday.
| You guys rejected that in '48. Remember? Your grandparents do. And a proposal, once rejected, is dead... |
PA negotiator Nabil Sha'ath said the possibility of demanding the implementation of the 1947 Partition Plan was one of a number of options the Palestinians were studying in wake of Washington's threat to veto a statehood resolution in September. Sha'ath declared that despite the US threat, the PA was determined to proceed with the statehood bid in September.
His declaration came even as some PA officials have been talking, in private, about abandoning the plan to ask the UN to unilaterally recognize a state along the pre-1967 lines.
Sha'ath's remarks were published by the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper. He said there was much the Palestinians could do after Washington vetoes the statehood bid at the UN.
"We have a lot to do, but we won't reveal our steps now," he added. "We won't give the Israelis a chance to confront us at the UN." But he said that one of the ideas being discussed was "going back to UN Resolution 181."
He said the Partition Plan called for the establishment of two states, "but Israel announced its independence unilaterally and was recognized by the UN." He noted that Kosovo did the same in spite of Serbia's opposition.
| No, Israel accepted the plan, and the Arabs rejected it, as they had rejected all previous partition plans. Then they sent five armies in to enforce that rejection... and lost. Every Arab war against Israel since then has been another attempt to enforce their rejection of the Partition Plan, making Mr. Sha'ath's little plan too clever by half. |
"Even if the US uses the veto, there will be 131 UN members that recognize Palestine," he said. "The US then won't be able to stop these countries from treating us as a state."
| All those countries could be treating the Palestinian Territories like a state now. And yet they don't. |
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