Palestinian U.N. Joy, But Difficult Questions Remain
Palestinians basked in the joy of their historic U.N. bid on Saturday, but difficult questions about the move's consequences and the future of their dream of statehood remained.
On Friday night, tens of thousands of people packed into the centers of cities across the West Bank to cheer their president Mahmoud Abbas as he urged the United Nations General Assembly to approve the membership request.
As he waved the copy of the formal bid from the U.N. podium, thousands broke into ecstatic chants of "God is great!" and "With our souls and our blood we will defend Palestine!"
The mood, festive and optimistic, was in sharp contrast to the sense of stagnation that descended over the Palestinian territories over the past year, with peace talks mired in stalemate and the Palestinians riven by division between Abbas's secular Fatah party and the Islamist Hamas movement.
The three main newspapers splashed pictures of the joyous scenes across their front pages under proud headlines about the submission of the U.N. bid.
"President Abbas: the hour of the Palestinian Spring... the hour of independence," roared Al-Quds daily over a picture of Abbas brandishing the formal membership request.
In Al-Hayat al-Jadida newspaper, columnist Adel Abdul Rahman lavished praise on Abbas for his U.N. address, underlining the unprecedented boost in popularity the unassuming president is currently enjoying in the West Bank.
"President Abu Mazen's speech was great and brave by all standards, as the leader of a liberation movement, and as the president of the Arab Palestinian people and as a statesman," he wrote, using Abbas's nom de guerre.
"The President: Palestine is resurrected," wrote Al-Ayyam, which also carried a cartoon depicting a soaring eagle with a breastplate in the colors of the Palestinian flag over the logo "The state of Palestine."
But behind the pride in a rare moment of optimism in a territory where peace has seemed far from reach for many years, difficult questions remained about what will follow the historic bid for Palestinian U.N. state membership.
For all the jubilation in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip was left squarely out of the party.
The coastal territory's Hamas rulers, which oppose the bid, reached an agreement with Abbas's Fatah party to halt the organization of any rallies in support of the membership request.
And among many Palestinians, the excitement of the moment was tempered by the expectation that the United States would prevent the bid from being approved, either by persuading enough fellow Security Council members to abstain or vote against it, or by simply vetoing the request.
There was also the specter of punitive measures against Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.
A poll carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research this week found 78 percent of Palestinians expect Israel to impose economic and political sanctions in response to the bid.
Another 64 percent said they expected Washington to do the same.
Source: Agence France Presse
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