Palestinians forge ahead with UN statehood push. Are they ready?

Between tightly packed meetings with foreign diplomats, local clan leaders, and manufacturers, Hebron Mayor Khaled Osaily offers visitors a glossy booklet detailing the achievements of the West Bank's largest city.

A former tycoon, he has brought a business mentality to Hebron's bureaucracy, introducing new programs that have streamlined operations.

"This is the foundation of the state," he beams.

On the first floor of the municipality building, a row of tellers sit behind flat-panel displays – Hebron's "one-stop shop" for citizen services, as he calls it, which has reduced processing time by about two-thirds. One floor up, the municipality's chief for water resources boasts that a new computerized monitoring system cuts down on wasted water.

Beyond the confines of the municipal building, work is being completed on a new community center and school, a project financed by South Korea.

"We are better than many other countries already," says Mayor Osaily.

Indeed, the whir of activity in Hebron is part of a broader Palestinian Authority (PA) initiative to demonstrate that the building blocks of independence are in place ahead of a key United Nations vote on Palestinian membership.

Yesterday PA President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed that Palestinians will seek full membership as a sovereign state when the UN General Assembly convenes in New York on Sept. 20. His announcement, at a press conference in Ramallah, rebuffed a last-minute American diplomatic effort to persuade Mr. Abbas to call off the UN statehood campaign, which the US and Israel have characterized as a unilateral move that bypasses years of peace talks. The US has threatened to withhold its $550 million in annual aid and veto any vote in the UN Security Council on Palestinian membership.

As Mr. Abbas forges ahead despite such threats, even some Palestinians aren't convinced that the PA's building blocks can support a stand-alone country just yet – and say that pushing for the UN to take action is therefore premature and potentially detrimental to Palestinians.

Like hundreds of thousands of Palestinians employed by the government, Omar Deek – an employee in the PA's Education Ministry – only got half his salary for July because the government didn't receive funds pledged by Arab donor nations.

Looking ahead to the UN vote, and the possibility that the United States and Israel may withhold key funds in retaliation, Deek is worried about more salary problems since the PA is heavily dependent on foreign aid. He's already looking for a second job as a driver.

"I hope that the Palestinian Authority will become aware of the dilemma of its citizens more before it takes political decisions that deter the international donors," he says.

Together, Osaily and Deek represent the dilemma facing Palestinian leaders – and their Western backers – at a time of tremendous upheaval in the Arab world. Winning international recognition at the UN of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be a historic victory with far-reaching symbolic, diplomatic, and possibly legal implications.

But trying to establish a state prematurely – one that is completely dependent on outsiders and unable to control all its territories – could discredit PA leaders at home, exposing the secular government in Ramallah to a number of potentially disastrous consequences, including economic crisis, a challenge from the Islamist militant group Hamas, or a popular uprising inspired by Arab revolutions elsewhere in the region.

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