Obama To Meet Palestinian and Israeli Leaders After UN Address

Palestine 194

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to address the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday, and will follow up his speech with meetings with the leaders of Palestinians and Israelis in an attempt to convince the Palestinians to return to the negotiation table and abandon their bid for statehood.

This is expected to be the last intervention of the American leader before the President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas is expected to deliver his speech on the floor of the UN General Assembly, on which occasion he will announce the Palestinian bid for a full membership of the world body.

The American officials do not believe that the meeting with the Palestinian leader will make too much of a difference, and that he cannot be dissuaded from asking the Security Council for full membership.

What Obama will propose him is to drop the initiative after the formal intent he is about to make on Friday. White House reassures that the president will tell the president in the private discussion what he has been saying in public, that is that the pursuit for statehood by means of asking the UN is not the correct course of action, and that the only way to obtain something out of it is by negotiations with Israel.

Obama will also meet on Wednesday Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. The White House has little hope that the matter can be settled and that Abbas could be stopped from asking for a state on Friday.

The Quartet for the Middle East, composed of the United Nations, the European Union, Russia and the United States, is expected to set a timetable and a frame within which the negotiations between sides could be resumed.

Thus, they are expected to demand that Israel recognizes the pre-1967 borders and accepts to make territorial changes with the Palestinians, while the Palestinians are expected to recognize the Jewish character of the State of Israel. If that happens, officials say, the talks could be successful and the two-state solution could be made to work.

Last year, as he spoke in front of the UN General Assembly, Obama said that the officials should reach within themselves for the best, and as they returned next year they would have an agreement that would lead to another state in the UN.

They have returned this year to the UN and the state is ready to demand to be recognized but it is very much unlikely that it would be on the basis of accord between Israel and Palestinian Authority.

Palestine 194

Meanwhile, in Ramallah Palestinians took it to streets to show support for their leader. Israeli media says that support rallies happen all across the Palestinian territories on Wednesday.

In order to boost attendance, the governmental buildings, and the learning institutions are closed to allow people to gather in support of their country. People in the streets say that the UN bid for statehood is not the solution for the stalemate but a cry of desperation of the Palestinians.

These rallies are expected to repeat themselves throughout the week in all the Palestinian cities. Israeli officials said that they did not expect the rallies to end up in clashes with the IDF, especially since they are being held in cities that are under full Palestinian jurisdiction.

As the Palestinians seem more determined than ever to go through with their bid, the Israeli finance minister Yuval Steinitz considered that the action of the PNA is an “hostile act” and threatened that the financial aid for the Palestinian National Authority would be cut off.

Steinitz suggested that Israel could stop collecting the 40 percent of the PA’s budget through value added, excise and custom taxes. Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians about $135 million a month.

The United States also contribute to the Palestinian budget with $500 million annually. There are American politicians that advocate the idea of cutting the support for the Palestinians, if the attempt to ask for a state goes on.

Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, said that the Palestinian bid for statehood would not lead to scandal within the coalition but that there is not going to be any other settlement freeze in West Bank. Last month Lieberman said that for the first time Israel had a chance to end the Palestinian bid without the help of the American veto in the UN Security Council.