Importance of General Assembly Vote Greatly Exaggerated -E. Kontorovich
The UN General Assembly only has the power to admit states, not the power to create or determine members' borders.
The Security Council has already determined in Resolution 242, adopted in the wake of the Six-Day War, that Israel need not return all of the land it took in that conflict. Thus it is meaningless to speak of the General Assembly recognizing Palestine with any particular set of borders.
If General Assembly resolutions controlled Israel's legitimacy, Israel would long have ceased to exist within any borders. The GA in 1975 famously adopted its "Zionism equals racism" resolution, condemning the very project of a Jewish state in the Middle East within any borders. Yet the endorsement of the idea by an overwhelming vote did not make it real or true.
When friends of Israel fret about delegitimization by the General Assembly, they unwittingly give the body more power than it has.
(Jerusalem Post)
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Israel's Deceptive Calm -Yisrael Ne'eman
[T]he moment a Palestinian State is declared and/or recognized, the legality of Israel's presence in the West Bank becomes more precarious and the "settlement" issue more explosive. Any armed force acting in the name of "liberation" such as the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas or a state entity such as Iran, Syria or anyone else will see itself as automatically receiving international support in its confrontation with Israel. What better cover for a war against Israel could possibly exist, especially when these regimes are facing overwhelming opposition, fractionalization and unremitting cross religious/ethnic violence threatening to topple their regimes at home?
By then whatever democracy revolution emerged on the Arab world scene in the winter of 2011 may be long forgotten.
[Mideast: On Target]
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UPDATE:
Mideast Peace Plans Imminent? Please - Massimo Calabresi
There has been much talk of how the likely UN General Assembly recognition of a Palestinian state in September is forcing the Israelis and the Americans, who oppose the recognition, to come up with preemptive peace plans. It is easy to get the impression that serious plans that would move both sides toward peace might be in the offing. They're not. These plans are not designed to get real movement toward a peace deal and there's no real expectation that they would. They're designed to blunt the effects of September's Palestinian statehood vote.
At a time when the Arab world is being completely reoriented and support for Palestinian concessions to Israel is politically dangerous for Arab leaders, the peace plan talk "reflects a realization on the side of most that now is not the time to do something dramatic," says Rob Malley, a former NSC Middle East staffer now with the International Crisis Group.
(TIME)
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