Meretz leader justifies Abbas applications to UN treaties
April 21, 2014
“The Palestinians were right to turn to the UN to get recognition. They had no other choice.” This surprising position is expressed by the chairwoman of the Meretz Party, Knesset member Zehava Gal-On, in an interview with Al-Monitor, which took place during the attempts to resuscitate the negotiations, on April 19. Gal-On refuses to adopt the insulted and accusatory narrative of Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni, and challenges it. Lapid and Livni, the heads of the centrist parties in the coalition, claim that the responsibility for the blowup of the diplomatic process lies with the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who submitted applications to 15 international treaties, to join as a state.
“I really don’t understand why we should be scared of the Palestinians going to the UN. I don’t understand all of the hysterics of Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid. I really wasn’t troubled by it,” says Gal-On. As opposed to the heads of Yesh Atid and Hatnua parties, she doesn’t think this move was premeditated. “I don’t think he [Abbas] wanted [negotiations] to fail, but at the moment that Israel refused to carry out the fourth round and release the prisoners, he did the right thing.”
Gal-On continued: “They could go to the UN, so the world would recognize a Palestinian state, and then hold negotiations. In my opinion, we shouldn’t fear a change in the paradigm in which we got used to thinking: first negotiations and then recognition of a Palestinian state. The State of Israel could hold negotiations with a Palestinian state after its recognition in the UN. Maybe it’s preferable: because this way the negotiations would take place between two governments of equal status, not from the position of the occupier and the occupied.”
Gal-On should be listened to. Aside from the fact that she voices an original and quite a rare opinion in today's Israeli politics, the steady growth in public support of the party she heads indicates that she must be doing something right. Since the last elections, according to all the polls, Meretz’s strength is growing — even doubling — while the “fashionable parties” Yesh Atid and Hatnua are weakening.
Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/gal-on-meretz-interview-abbas-netanyahu-negotiations-un.html#ixzz2zdK8JAPS
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