Forcing the issue

Frustrated by the lack of progress toward negotiations with Israel, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters on Monday that Palestinians might well give up on bilateral talks and go directly to the UN with their case for a state encompassing the territory that was theirs before Israel occupied the West Bank.

"The move to issue a Security Council Resolution recognizing the Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967, has begun," Erekat said.

Such a move would amount to a declaration of independence that Palestinians would seek to get internationally acknowledged and sanctioned.

Representatives of Israel, Europe and the US were immediately critical of the idea, saying the Palestinians should instead focus on restarting talks with Israel. One US senator even said that any such proposed UN resolution would be "dead on arrival."

The idea is not new. Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in fact, declared a Palestinian state as far back as 1988 - to no avail. So what do the Palestinians stand to gain by repeating that gesture now?

Possibly quite a lot, says experts, in terms of forcing the West's hand.

The power of a proto-state

Negotiations with Israel have been suspended for over a year, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been hardly forthcoming with concessions like a halt to Jewish settlements on the West Bank. So the Palestinian leadership doesn't feel it has much to lose.

Moreover, today's leaders are in a far different position than Arafat was.

"The 1988 declaration was made by a Palestinian leadership in exile as a sign of support for a two-state solution," Margret Johannsen - Senior Fellow and Middle East expert at the Institute for Peace Research in Hamburg - told Deutsche Welle. "The political leadership today fulfills nearly all the criteria of a state. They are in fact a proto-state. And the declaration would raise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the level of an international dispute."

But the direct route to the UN is also a strategy born of desperation.

"The Palestinians are disappointed by the negotiations and feel like they're stuck on a dead-end street," Felix Dane - the chief representative of Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation in the Autonomous Palestinian Territories - told Deutsche Welle. "It's an expression of their hopeless situation. It's commendable that they're trying to use international law, and not violence, even though a resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood would be vetoed by the UN Security Council and isn't supported by the EU."

Role models

Few Palestinians believe that formally declaring independence and asking for UN recognition will itself lead to a Palestinian state. But it could be a way of putting pressure on the international community to encourage Israel to be more conciliatory.

And the Palestinian leadership probably has the recent example of Kosovo, which declared independence from Serbia in 2008, in mind.

"Kosovo was certainly a kind of role model," Johannsen said. "All of the countries that recognized Kosovo would have to explain why they didn't want to recognize Palestine or else face accusations of applying double standards."

Dane concurred but cautioned that each situation is unique.

"It's definitely a tactical maneuver by the Palestinians to draw attention to their cause," Dane said. "But you can't superimpose the situation in Kosovo in any one-to-one way onto this conflict."

In particular, the experts say, the strategy may be aimed at America. Palestinians leaders hope that confronting Washington with a moral dilemma might help counteract Israel's lobbying power, especially in the US Congress.

The internal aspect

But discussions about independence are also related to the struggle for power among Palestinians and between the leadership in the West Bank and that in Gaza.

"The idea was also mooted because of the breakdown in power-sharing negotiations between Fatah and Hamas," Dane said. "It's a way of giving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas [a member of Fatah] legitimacy ahead of elections scheduled for next year."

Hardliners in Hamas have often accused the more moderate Fatah of failing to make tangible progress toward Palestinian statehood. And a Hamas spokesman rejected the new initiative as an empty gesture, saying the Palestinians should instead focus on liberating the occupied territories, presumably by force.

Johannsen, too, says that words directed at the international community also have relevance for internal Palestinian politics.

"The idea of declaring independence is something of a trial balloon," Johannsen told Deutsche Welle. "But the Palestinians would be well-advised to couple it with their own process of reconciliation."

The experts are skeptical about whether the Palestinian leadership will indeed make good on the idea of formally declaring a new state and asking for UN recognition. But even if they do, they still face the problem that what applies to the Fatah-led West Bank does not necessarily carry any weight in Hamas-dominated Gaza.

Author: Jefferson Chase
Editor: Rob Mudge