THE ARAB SPRING started a year and a half ago and has triggered enormous change in the Arab world.
It has been welcomed by most major powers but there is one cause that has been conveniently ignored: that of Palestine.
President Mahmoud Abbas recently broke his silence and vowed to knock again at the doors of the United Nations seeking “non-member status” – taking a leap ahead in the movement for recognition.
This policy statement has come after last year’s hectic effort of seeking formal United Nations membership was scrapped after much pressure from the United States and Israel.
The issue of statehood and sovereignty, however, would continue to linger until and unless a final solution is attained. This step requires nothing more than an administrative exercise at the world body, since more than 120 General Assembly members are in support of Palestine’s statehood.
Another point of interest Mr Abbas has brought to fore is the urgency to resume the stalled peace talks. The call has come despite the fact that neither the United States nor the European Union has ever addressed the Palestine issue with any sincerity.
The world powers are bogged down in an economic mess of their own, and have little time for foreign policy issues with little vote-catching appeal. Thus, Mr Abbas’ belief that the West should get back to its earlier role of “honest broker” in the Middle East is out of touch with reality.
Leaders in the Arab world have fed their population on rhetoric about Palestine and the restoration of Palestinian rights to such an extent that those countries’ failures economically and socially were blamed on their obsession with isues of liberation.
Now, we have come to the Arab Spring, which has heralded dramatic changes on a scale nobody could have predicted. Yet, amid all this change, the question of Palestine has not been heard.
The good news is that the Palestinians now have the opportunity to learn a lesson and enact their own change. This may be an opportunity for the Palestinians to begin to depend on themselves, and cease being pawns for others who have for too long used them for their own ulterior motives and interests.
The change that has swept the Middle East could yet reach Palestine, provided Palestinians are able to direct the movement in the right direction. For too long the leadership in Palestine has been fragmented between Gaza and its ambitions and the West Bank and its destructive politics.
Palestinians must become an organized force for change, so they may achieve the ends so many of them believe in. Otherwise it will surprise no one if they end up without a cause to fight for or no territory left to die for.
Reasons of exigency notwithstanding, the Palestinian problem cries out for resolution.
It is ironic that President Barack Obama’s two-state doctrine has made no headway during his four years in office.
