The Palestinian Authority has not yet secured the nine votes needed to approve a United Nations Security Council resolution setting a deadline for Israel to expel 10 percent of its population from parts of Jerusalem and all of Judea and Samaria.
Senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat told a Nazareth-based radio station Monday that Palestinians have yet to secure a two-thirds majority of the council.
The proposal, which calls for Israel to shrink to less than half its current size is supposed to come before the Security Council Wednesday, where majority approval could force the United States into the uncomfortable decision of deciding whether or not to veto the resolution.
Several European nations are formulating an alternate proposal calling for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as a country through negotiations within two years.
On the other hand, PA delegate to the United Nations Riad Monsor said negotiations are “history.”
The Palestinian Authority may have outsmarted itself.
It cannot save face by backing down from going to the United Nations unless U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry comes up some fancy semantics that can take PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas off from a weak and long limb on a tall tree.
Mansour insisted Tuesday, “Tomorrow, it is almost certain that a draft will be put into blue ink ,meaning a resolution will be put on the table of the Security Council.
That will get the Palestinian Authority off the hook with the Arab world that wants to see if it can finally go all the way and in effect tell the United States to take a long walk on a short pier.
But the Security Council is not going to vote on any resolution right away, and, in fact, it does not have to vote on it at all.
If Abbas does not come up with enough support on the Council when the chips are down, he might be very happy to let Kerry save him for embarrassment and agree to some sort of cockeyed double-talk that makes as much sense as the entire “peace process.”
The Palestinian Authority may will have a better chance of securing the needed two-thirds majority on January 1, when Venezuela and Malaysia will be new rotating members of the U.N. Security Council. On the other hand Jordan and Chile will leave the Council.