The Palestinians Take Over Leadership of Influential Coalition of UN Members

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday took over as chairman of the United Nations’ Group of 77 and China, a coalition of 134 developing nations which often votes in unison. He could only do so because of the UN’s complicity in treating Palestine as if it were an actual state. Several years ago, Palestine was designated a non-member observer state. Last year, it was accorded additional rights and privileges to participate in UN General Assembly matters, such as co-sponsoring proposals and amendments and making procedural motions, so that it could effectively lead the Group of 77 and China at the UN.

In remarks that UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres made at the ceremony for the handover of the Group of 77 and China chairmanship, held at UN headquarters in New York, he said that “I congratulate the State of Palestine as it assumes the Presidency of the Group of 77 and China for 2019. I welcome Your Excellency President Mahmoud Abbas and thank you for joining us today, as a clear demonstration of the strong commitment of the State of Palestine to an effective Presidency of the Group of 77 and China.” Addressing the members of the Group of 77 and China at the handover ceremony, Abbas pretended to be a statesman. He extolled the virtues of international consensus and multilateralism, which he said were currently under attack. Then he resorted to his customary attacks on Israel. "Israel's continued colonization of state of Palestine undermines our capacity for development and cooperation, coordination and obstructs the cohesive future development of all peoples of the region," he said. There is no real state of Palestine, the UN’s symbolic actions of recognition notwithstanding. Abbas’s Palestinian Authority does not control either the physical territory or the governance of the population of the Gaza Strip, a fatal flaw in the logic for a genuine Palestinian state that is supposed to encompass the West Bank and Gaza. Hamas, which is at complete odds with the Palestinian Authority, controls Gaza.

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The Palestinians have been the authors of their own destiny, not Israel. They could have had a real state of their own the same year that the Jewish state of Israel was created. Intra-regional free trade and other economic ties between a Palestinian state and Israel to their common benefit might conceivably have evolved over time, aiding in their joint sustainable development in the region. Laying such a foundation of common interests could have created strong stakeholders on both sides in a genuine peace. But that was always just a pipe dream. Instead, the Palestinians chose the rejectionist path, vowing with their Arab nation neighbors to destroy the Jewish state at birth. They failed, but they did not give up their ways of violence. Palestinian terrorists carried out relentless attacks against Jews in Israel and elsewhere before the June 1967 Six-Day War, while Jordan controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza and there were no Israeli settlements there to complain about. After Israel defeated the Arab states in the 1967 Six-Day War and then again in 1973, the Palestinians combined continued acts of terror with a diplomatic charm offensive to gain international support for their maximalist demands. Their leaders have not negotiated with Israel in good faith, rejecting several offers that would have given them much of the territory they were seeking. Why should the Palestinian leaders compromise on any of their extreme demands so long as the United Nations has their back? Gaza has been in Palestinian hands since Israel’s unilateral withdrawal in 2005. Instead of using the opportunity to build a prototype state living side by side with Israel in peace, the terrorist organization Hamas turned Gaza into a launching pad for rocket attacks against Israeli civilian population centers. When Abbas told the Group of 77 and China gathering on Tuesday that he condemned terrorism “in all its forms, colors, and types,” was he including the attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians as worthy of condemnation? The answer in a word is no. Despite Abbas’s in-fighting with Hamas for control over Gaza and any future Palestinian state, he hypocritically decided to show solidarity with Hamas at the United Nations. His Palestinian Authority successfully conducted its own campaign to defeat the U.S.-sponsored proposed UN General Assembly resolution last December that would have condemned Hamas’s violence against civilians. The Palestinian concept of a two-state solution, reiterated by Abbas in his remarks during the Group of 77 and China chairmanship ceremony, remains two states divided by the pre-1967 lines with “East Jerusalem” as the Palestinian capital. Even that would only be the first step. Abbas and other Palestinian leaders continue to insist on the full implementation of the so-called “right of return” that would result in the Palestinians’ demographic takeover of pre-1967 Israel. Just last October Abbas complained to the UN Security Council that “no one has held Israel accountable when they occupied our territories in 1948.” (Emphasis added) In short, the Palestinians’ ultimate version of the two-state solution is two Palestinian majority states from river to sea, in addition to Jordan, which has its own majority Palestinian population.