France, another permanent Security Council member, is reportedly working on an alternative to Jordan’s resolution, also setting a two-year deadline but with more nuanced language in an attempt to avoid a U.S. veto.
The draft resolution backed by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will set a two-year deadline for an end to Israeli rule over territory claimed by the Palestinians – essentially all of the land captured by Israel during the June 1967 Six-Day War still under Israeli control.
The PA leadership at a meeting on Sunday night said the resolution must also identify East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state, and must guarantee the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees. In doing so it invoked a 1948 Security Council resolution that called for the repatriation of all Arab refugees wishing to return to homes they left when Israel declared statehood in 1948.
(The UN today defines some five million people in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan as “Palestinian refugees.” Israel has a total population of 7.8 million, of whom about 75 percent are Jewish.)
Netanyahu told his cabinet early this week Israel would rebuff the resolution “forcefully and responsibly.”
“This will bring the radical Islamic elements to the suburbs of Tel Aviv and to the heart of Jerusalem,” he said, alluding to the Jerusalem demand and to the fact the pre-June 1967 borders come within 11 miles of the Mediterranean coast opposite Tel Aviv, Israel’s biggest city.
In 2011 the PA sought Security Council support for statehood, but after the U.S. opposed the move Abbas turned to the UN General Assembly, which in late 2012 voted overwhelmingly to grant the Palestinians “non-member state” status.
At U.S. urging, Abbas agreed to suspend the quest for further UN recognition while negotiations continued. But the failure last April of a nine-month push by Kerry to reach a final status agreement prompted the PA to look again to the world body.
(CNS.com)