US support for Mahmoud Abbas's UN bid for Palestine could save two-state solution (+video)

In late 2004, besieged by the Israeli Army in his Ramallah headquarters for three years, Arafat suddenly fell ill before eventually dying in a French military hospital in November 2004. Arafat’s death became the subject of elaborate conspiracy theories, and many Palestinians, including some senior Palestinian Authority officials, continue to believe he was poisoned. The controversy was resurrected last July after an Al Jazeera documentary claimed to have uncovered new evidence supporting the poisoning theory.

The autopsy results could spark yet another crisis, as any evidence that suggests Arafat was poisoned will naturally focus suspicion on Israel, which has a history of assassinating Palestinian leaders dating back to at least the 1980s. Love him or hate him, Yasir Arafat was always larger than life, even while he was alive. As the architect of the Palestine Liberation Organization and a leader in both war and peace, Arafat is revered as the godfather of the Palestinian national movement. Ultimately, Arafat’s exhumation, and the Palestinian public’s fascination with it, is as much a commentary on the current Palestinian leader, Abbas, as it is nostalgia for the previous one.

The contrast between the two leaders is hard to ignore. Yasir Arafat is deceased, but his political legacy lives on. Although largely hated by the US, Israel, and even Arab leaders, he was admired, and in some cases even idolized, by his people. The reverse is true of Mahmoud Abbas. For all his moderation and acceptability to Israel and the international community, Abbas has little to show for his rule but a series of failed negotiations, a feckless and bankrupt authority, and an unprecedented division in the Palestinian national movement.

The one remaining card Abbas does have, however, is the United Nations statehood bid. As those close to him often point out, the choice for Abbas now is between going to the UN and going home.

With more than 130 countries already pledging to support his UN bid, a victory for Abbas seems all but assured. Yet the United States and Israel remain adamantly opposed to the move, even threatening economic and other sanctions against Abbas’s already beleaguered and cash-strapped Palestinian Authority if he goes ahead with it. Such actions are ultimately self-defeating of course, since the collapse of the PA would almost certainly mean the end of a two-state solution, as well as its greatest champion. Whatever one thinks of Abbas as a leader, he is the only actor on any side actively working to bring about a two-state solution.

Of course, Abbas’s UN bid is as much an attempt to salvage his own legacy as it is a two-state solution. In seeking to deny him that legacy, however, the United States and Israel could end up destroying the possibility of a two-state solution as well.

Khaled Elgindy is a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. He previously served as an adviser to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah on permanent status negotiations with Israel (2004 –2009) and was a key participant in the negotiations launched at Annapolis in November 2007.

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