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| Jericho residents march in support of the 194 bid, Wednesday. |
When I was first in Palestine in 2004, politics was regularly the first thing people talked about. Over the past couple of years people's weariness and justified cynicism seemed to have won the day. But during the past couple of weeks, there has been a palpable change, people immediately asking me what I think about the statehood bid, and increasingly going on to express their own qualified support for it. Barnaby Phillips on Al Jazeera just cited a poll showing 80% support for the bid.
This support is invariably coupled with an almost amused reference to Obama's rapid descent from 'Yes we can!' to 'No you can't'. His sanctimonious lecture about a shortcut to peace was not only offensive in its replication of Lieberman's narrative, reminiscent in fact of his pre-election AIPAC speech, but it was painfully patronising. People here know that they are contending with facts on the ground not with UN decisions on paper, and the 89 binding resolutions Israel has ignored testify to the limitations of the latter.
"We want a state in Palestine, not a seat in New York" one person in Jericho told me as he strapped a flag to a lamppost.
But what are their options? As is often said, you can't talk about the division of a pie with an interlocutor whose mouth is full and whose hands are already on the remainder. Obama dismissing the school bully and the little kid to sort it out by themselves is an outrageous snub that people feel acutely here.
Worse than this, instead of punishing Netanyahu for his intransigence and demonstrating that US aid comes at a price, it has given him free reign to pursue that which he has single-mindedly pursued since taking office: a state of play on the ground in which Palestine is literally nothing but a nearby market for Israeli goods, populated by people with no rights and no representation. To say this is unsustainable is, sadly, optimistic.
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| A balloon flying over Bethlehem Sunday. |
Of course, the statehood bid was never in itself going to solve this, and poses more questions than it answers, not least with regard to the representation of diaspora Palestinians. However, it has successfully demonstrated the imbalance of power, the sheer asymmetry of the imagined conflict here, and the extent to which Israel has all the cards.
America's hapless and weak intervention has not disguised this reality. Contrast Obama's sermon, or that of the sickeningly mealy mouthed David Cameron, with the morally consistent, forthright, and common-sensical speech of Turkish PM Erdogan. No-one will be fooled. Even the Israeli press has been confused, assuming there will be a sting in the tail. I'm not so hopeful.
But America's increasingly incompetent support for manifest injustice may have the effect of galvanising a previously wearied and divided people for whatever comes next.
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