Good Reads: Is the Palestinians' quest for statehood doomed? (video)
Mahmoud Abbas says he will seek the UN Security Council and General Assembly's recognition for a Palestinian state, despite opposition from the US – and the doubts of some Palestinians.
Palestinian children hold posters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas during a rally in the village of Azmut near the West Bank city of Nablus, Sunday, Sept. 18. Abbas is set to address the U.N. this week, planning to ask the world to recognize a Palestinian state.
Nasser Ishtayeh/AP
No single article dominated the front-page headlines this weekend. In America, the papers talk a fair amount about President Barack Obama’s debt-cutting bill. European papers have returned to tut-tutting about International Monetary Fund ex-president Dominique Strauss-Kahn's recent televised admission of a “moral failure” in a dalliance with a New York hotel maid. Mr. Strauss-Kahn, once a potential candidate for the French presidency, was accused of rape by the maid, but those charges were dropped.
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About the only issue that all papers did cover was the plan of the Palestinian Authority to seek recognition as a nation-state by the United Nations. Most think the idea is doomed.
In London, the Daily Telegraph hits the issue straight on, focusing on the statement of the Palestinian Authority’s leader Mahmoud Abbas, on arrival this weekend in New York, urging Israel “to recognise the state of Palestine, proving that there can be a two-state solution, and not lose an opportunity for peace."
Later this week, he will formally present his bid for statehood to the UN Security Council, after a year in which bilateral discussions between Israel and the Palestinian Authority have largely ground to a halt. The US, a permanent UN Security Council member, is strongly opposed to the idea and has vowed to veto a vote on accepting Palestine as a sovereign member of the world body.
The French newspaper Le Monde – ever fascinated with the world of diplomacy – casts its gaze behind the closed doors, where it reports that Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak met in New York on Sunday to see if they could put the Middle East peace process back on track. Diplomats from the US, Europe, Russia, and the UN also were engaged in meetings, but the gap is pretty wide now. Mr. Fayyad told reporters that he and his counterpart had discussed security matters, and the Palestinian Authority's “aptitude for governance.” Mr. Barak didn’t talk with the press after the meeting with Fayyad.
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