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  EXCLUSIVE: Former Israeli PM Olmert Supports Palestine U.N. Bid
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Last Edited411 Name Removed  Nov 28, 2012 09:38pm
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CategorySpeculative
AuthorBernard Avishai
News DateThursday, November 29, 2012 03:00:00 AM UTC0:0
DescriptionTomorrow, Mahmoud Abbas stands before the U.N. General Assembly and presents a resolution to upgrade Palestine’s membership to the status of an “observer-state.” The Obama administration has signaled that it will oppose this resolution, as it vetoed a Security Council condemnation of settlements last year—putatively to emphasize the need for direct negotiations between the parties. With the Iranian nuclear program still on the horizon, the administration is loathe to call its “special relationship” with Israel into question, or run afoul of a hardline Israeli consensus, of which Benjamin Netanyahu is presumably custodian.

AIPAC is mobilized, warning of Abbas’s non-violent effort as, of all things, a “flanking maneuver.” We hear much about the danger of Palestinian diplomats, newly elevated to representatives of an observer-state, bringing action in the International Criminal Court against Israeli officials and officers linked to settlements—a back-handed acknowledgement, curiously, that settlements are seen as a contravention of the Geneva Conventions everywhere but in Israel.

In opposing this resolution, however, especially in the aftermath of the recent Gaza stalemate, the administration is foregoing the chance to reinforce the very forces in Israel and Palestine that are serious about compromise. A great many Israeli leaders and military intelligence officials understand the urgency of Abbas’s timing—of strengthening his hand—and see no reason to oppose his resolution.

The most important is former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who engaged in direct negotiations with Abbas more than any other Israeli. Why should the administration ignore their view and let the region slide into what the latest flare-up in Gaza promised, Bosnian levels of bloodshed?

“I believe,” Olmert wrote me, intending his statement to be made public, “that the Palestinian request from the United Nations is congruent with the basic concept of the two-s
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