UN resolution turns page in history of neglect

LETTER FROM AMERICA: When the US ambassador to the UN, Mr John Negroponte, successfully tabled a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict last week he surprised not a few diplomats. The US had travelled a long way.

Not only was the administration prepared formally in the UN to recognise the inevitability and desirability of a Palestinian state, something it had resolutely opposed since 1948; but, in submitting its first resolution on the issue in many years, the US also seemed to signal a symbolic acknowledgement of the international dimension to a dispute that in the past it has insisted should be resolved without external intervention.

Of the two inherent messages, the latter is perhaps the one which the Israelis will like the least, having reconciled themselves to the former. "It is a signal to Israel that the US cannot be depended on to veto or prevent any political action at the UN that might make an Israeli government uncomfortable," argues Dr Ian Lustick, a Middle East specialist at the University of Pennsylvania.

"There is definitively a change. The Bush administration policy until recently had been that the two sides must work it out between themselves," commented Stephen Zunes, a professor of international relations at the University of San Francisco.

And support for statehood, a long time coming, has a symbolic importance in the region. It was expressed first explicitly by President Clinton in January 2001, just before leaving office, when he said there could be no solution without "a sovereign and viable Palestinian state".

In November, in a bid to bolster Arab support for his campaign against terrorism, President Bush went further and referred to the prospective state as "Palestine" for the first time.

Resolution 1397, approved by 14 to 0, now affirms "a vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognised borders". It also calls both for an immediate cessation of violence on both sides and gives the first UN imprimatur to Saudi Prince Abdullah's peace plan, to be debated by the Arab League this weekend.

The Arab League's general secretary, Mr Amr Moussa, described the motion as "an important and objective change in the international handling of the Arab-Israeli conflict". France's Foreign Minister, Mr Hubert Vedrine, claimed over-optimistically that "the US position has joined that of the European Union and France".

The Israelis and Palestinians both welcomed the declaration, a sign, cynics might say, that it means all things to all men. But UN resolutions have a way of mattering. For a long time they have been important to both sides as benchmarks against which to hold up the conduct of the other to the scrutiny of the international community; 1397 will play into that dynamic.

There is a danger, however, that the significance of the US move will get lost in the recurring cycle of violence. Israel's massive assault on Palestinian areas had to be seen to have wider diplomatic repercussions than the mild rap on the knuckles administered by President Bush, if moderate Arab states were even to listen to his appeal to support him over Iraq.

That was the message which the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, got in every capital. Unless the US showed a willingness to stand up to the Israelis, it could expect no solidarity. For those with a longer perspective on history, the US move was much an incremental more than change in current policy. It reflected formally a sea change in thinking.

In November 1948, having recognised the new state of Israel, it became an axiom of US policy that would last until 2001 that, as the State Department put it, "Arab Palestine, standing alone, could not constitute a viable, independent state".

Through the years, influenced by the Israeli myth that Palestinian leaders had ordered the mass evacuation of their people from Israel in 1948, the US behaved as if they did not exist as a people. They were simply refugees, and those parts of Palestine not controlled by Israel could be given to its neighbours with whom a regional peace would be brokered. Golda Meir said in 1969 "that it is not as though there were a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people" and the US behaved in that vein.

Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst, writes that Henry Kissinger as Secretary of State "dealt with the Palestinians throughout his six years in office as if they would quietly disappear if ignored".

Jimmy Carter, though more sympathetic to their rights, was also adamantly oppose to statehood. Ronald Reagan's plan conceded only limited autonomy to the West Bank and Gaza.

Even recognition of the PLO as the legitimate voice of the Palestinian people was hugely problematic, in part because it was perceived by the likes of Kissinger as communist-inspired, and later because of a refusal to "deal with terrorists".

Even if it does not silence the bombers today, the acceptance by the UN of an aspiration to Palestinian statehood turns a page on a history of neglect and sets a new standard by which a just peace will be measured.