Legal expert claims that a UN deal will see Palestinian state recognised in exchange for recognition of Israel as a "Jewish state"

An expert in international law has expressed fears over what he described as a “political deal” being prepared the UN headquarters in New York which aims to get international and Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for recognition of a Palestinian state along the borders of the territories occupied in 1967. In a lecture delivered in Amman on Wednesday, Anis Al-Qassem said, “US-Israeli-European mobilisation against Palestinian efforts at the United Nations could lead to a settlement formula similar to Israeli stipulations for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.” In the opinion of the expert in international law, the Palestinian bid for full state membership of the UN has “more negative than positive aspects, as it has arisen out of an effort to cover up defects in the Palestinian leadership with regard to its failures that extend back to Oslo 1993”.

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He added that the Palestinian Authority has “remedied its recent failures to recover the course of the peace process from its current deadlock and fill the existing political vacuum by delivering a vacuous result”. Al-Qassem recalled an interview with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, in which he said that negotiations were his first and final choice. “The request will be put to the Secretary-General of the United Nations who will either delay sending it to the Security-Council, or will transfer it to the Council which may then ask for an indefinite period of time in which consider it.”

Criticising claims by parties from the PA that the Palestinian side will lose nothing should the bid fail and gain more favourable circumstances should it succeed, Mr Al-Qassem said, “Such statements lack political wisdom and put the Palestinian cause in a precarious position”.

He pointed out that membership of the UN for an independent Palestinian state based on the pre-June 1967 borders “establishes those borders and undermines UN resolution 194” which provides for the right of Palestinian refugees to return to the lands and homes they were forced to leave during the Zionist aggression in 1948, as well as for their compensation. “It is the right of the Palestinian people to put the Palestinian Authority on trial in revolutionary courts due to its negligence toward the rights of the people.”

He accused the US and Israel of concocting their irritation over Palestinian efforts at the UN in an attempt to raise the cost of any resultant deal. “Action on the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice (2004) on the issue of the Apartheid Wall and a boycott of the Israel occupier would be more useful than the current efforts at the United Nations,” Al-Qassem claimed.