If Yossi Alpher is right, there may be a silver lining for Israel after a UN vote for a Palestinian State that actually frees PA President Mahmud Abbas to negotiate a final end-of-conflict and end-of-claims resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resulting in a two-states for two-peoples agreement.

On Sunday, August 28 I posted a piece entitled Why the Palestinians Can’t Recognize the Jewish State? http://mondoweiss.net/2011/08/why-the-palestinians-can%E2%80%99t-recognize-the-jewish-state.html This piece explains from a Palestinian perspective the principled problem they face in concluding any agreement with Israel for a two-states for two-peoples agreement. For the Palestinians to acknowledge a Jewish State of Israel means their having to negate their own claim that Palestine is Palestinian and that the refugees have the right to return to their homes they vacated in 1948 and 1967.

Yossi Alpher argues in this article (link below) that a UN vote relieves Abbas of this obstacle and enables him with international cover to conclude a two-state agreement with Israel. Why? Because the UN vote essentially sets the principle of two states, Palestine and Israel, separated by a border drawn roughly along the 1949 armistice lines with land swaps to be negotiated.

Why is Abbas not saying this out loud? There are two possibilities: [1] he is waiting for the new reality to be established by the UN, and only after that happens and after the Palestinian State is established can he legitimately say to the Palestinians that the resolution they themselves wanted effectively eliminated their claims to a greater Palestine, or [2] he is duplicitous and has no intention of giving up the dream of a “Greater Palestine” and regards a negotiated agreement with Israel as only the first part of a two-stage process leading to a greater Palestinian State.

Abbas is not stupid, nor is he blind to political reality. I believe, based on what Yossi Alpher is suggesting, that he is cunning and sees the UN move as the only way he can be relieved of the burden of worrying about the refugees’ claims to their right to return to the actual homes and/or land that they vacated.

Israel has always drawn a red line about this issue. There is consensus across the Israeli political spectrum that Palestinian refugees would have the right to return to Palestine and not to Israel, for to assert otherwise is to forfeit the Jewish character of the State and the raison d’etre of Zionism and Israel. Perhaps Israelis might be amenable to some symbolic Palestinian return as former PM Olmert agreed to do (5000 refugees in the first 10 years).

In 9 days the UN will take up this issue. The US has promised to veto the resolution in the Security Council. Such a resolution, however, is expected to pass in the General Assembly. (See the J Street resolution that I posted on Friday, September 9)

An Israeli Case for a Palestinian State – NY Times Op-ed by Yossi Alpher http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/12/opinion/12iht-edalpher12.html?_r=1&ref=global