"STATE OF PALESTINE" ??????????? OY, GEVALT!!!!!!!!!!!!

FROM THOUGHT TO SPEECH TO ACTION...

Mahmoud Abbas has led the PAL on a path that calls to mind a fundamental teaching of Hasidus, "From Thought To Speech To Action".  Abbas has thought "State of Palestine".  Abbas has spoken "State of Palestine".  Abbas may imminently win an existential "State of Palestine".

Today it was reported by the Associated Press that Abbas has ordered the Palestinian Authority (PA) to officially change it's name to "State of Palestine" on the presumption that it is consistent with the recent decision of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to recognize the "State of Palestine" (SOP) as a full Non-Member Observer "State".  The keywords are "State" and "Palestine".

The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has not so recognized a "State of Palestine".  Can the UNSC override and negate the UNGA recognition of the SOP?  If so, then the effrontery of the PAL and the UNGA may be checked by firmer UNSC action than it's presently passive non-ratification of the UNGA move; and Israel must so urge the UNSC.

Perhaps in one united decision the UNSC may officially recognize the non-observer status of The Holy See and simultaneously officially nullify the UNGA recognition of the "State of Palestine".  (Whether or not the UNSC can be brought to an unanimous vote to override the UNGA in this matter should be regarded as possible on structural grounds regarding matters of proper balance of power at the UN, if a case for the Right of Override by the UNSC may be made de jure, defacto, or de implicatione by the UN Charter.)

Or must such a precedent be established via the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Brussells?  Does it not make sense, that if any type of Observer Status, Non-Observer Status, or actual Statehood is recognized by the UNGA, that such recognition must be ratified by the UNSC in order to become valid, binding, and active at the UN?  This logic should apply as well to recognition in such UN bodies as UNESCO or the Antiquities Authority.

There is a speedy "train" in motion upon which the world appears ready to board; that "train" is official recognition of the "State of Palestine".  If the UNGA may say that there is a "State of Palestine", then what is to stop the majority of individual Member States of the UN from officially doing the same?  (Are the Member States of the UN bound to honor the both the UNGA and the UNSC prior to acknowledging a State?  No, in fact neither, but, a tidal wave of "permissions" flowing outwards from the UNGA epicenter of the "Arab Spring" may drown Israel and the World.)

Precedent already exists at the UN, that Member States may not be required to acknowledge each other.  That precedent exists in that there are at least twenty member States, who have chosen not to recognize the existence of Israel.  This is a "thumbing the nose" at both the UNGA and the UNSC, as much as it is an affront to Israel's Right to Exist .  This first precedent of non-recognition is also precedent to it's inverse, that an individual State may be UN Member State and yet independently recognize any entity claiming to be a state, e.g. the "State of Palestine" or, hypothetically, the "State of Al-Quaeda in Yemen", "Al-Quaeda in Syria", "Hezbollah in Syria-Lebanon", etc.

It must be remembered that the guiltiest parties to this nefarious recognition of a "State of Palestine" may be the more than fifty Member States, which either did not show up to vote or deliberately abstained from voting; a UNGA two-thirds majority in favor of Statehood for the PA could not have manifested, had those fifty-plus Member States voted against PA Statehood.

The propaganda war waged in the name of "Palestine" by the Arabs, having achieved a worldwide victory at the UNGA, may now press further into official recognition by the majority of individual States throughout the world, leaving only the UNSC and a handful of States to yet recognize "The State Of Palestine".  The weight of time and pressure on these remaining official bodies to recognize "The State Of Palestine" does not favor Israel.  Such "olives" these Arabs press into "oil...." 

Israel urgently faces "crunch time" decisions to defend itself from deleterious final status in the face of probable international recognition of the "State Of Palestine" along unsustainable borders for Israel.  In the jargon of basketball, the "game is into overtime" and Israel must exercise a "full court press" in order to survive and advance to the next level.

What can Israel do?

In the Media and at the UNGA, UNSC, ICJ, and to individual States throughout the world, Israel must itself move from thought to speech to action or, failing to do so, concede to the Arabs a ghettoized Israel.

Israel must:

1.  Make the case, as there is no UNSC-recognized "State of Palestine", that it is premature for the PAL to change it's name;

2.  Make the case, as there is no UNSC-recognized "State of Palestine", that the UNGA must freeze it's present recognition, until and unless the UNSC recognizes a "State of Palestine".

3.  Make the case -- for by definition "Jews" and "Israel" are "Palestinian" and "Palestine" (by the ignominious nomenclature of the Ancient Romans) -- that recognition of any entity of Palestinian Arabs must only be by some appropriate name, e.g. "Fatah", as the heritage of foreign occupations of Israel/Palestine  requires prominent recognition and receives none.  (In fact it would be quite elegant to press the UN Antiquities Authority to verify this history and nomenclature of Israel from Roman times to the Present....)

4.  Make the case that Israel will not recognize the presently alleged "State of Palestine" nor will speak "of" or "to" the PAL except by an actual appropriate name, e.g. "Fatah" in proper recognition of identity and in order to no longer give verbal credibility to the identification of the Arabs as Palestinian and the Jews as Not-Palestinian.

5.  Take strong, calculated, restrained, strategic, tactical, and expeditious actions on the ground to secure Israel; these should be inclusive of settlement activities, construction activities, defense preparation activities, police activities, judicial activities, and political activities. 

6.  Make the case strongly that none of the four explicit tests of the Montevideo Criteria for Statehood are met by the PA ("Fatah"), as these four tests (stable population, borders, government, and capacity for international relations) are each of them and collectively questionable, controversial, and disputable.

**************************** LEGAL ARTICLE REFERENCE
REGARDING THE U.N., THE HOLY SEE (VATICAN), AND THE P.A./STATE OF PALESTINE:

American Society of International Law 09/07/2012
http://www.asil.org/insights121208.cfm.