That new round soon collapsed, after Netanyahu declined to renew a politically difficult moratorium on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank. The two sides have not negotiated since, and Abbas, frustrated by the lack of movement, decided to seek U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state this month.
“I think the Palestinians want to achieve a state through the international community, but they’re not prepared yet to give peace to Israel in return,” Netanyahu said.
Despite Obama’s argument, Palestinian officials said Wednesday that Abbas will submit the Palestinian membership application to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon later this week, probably on Friday.
Nabil Shaath, a former Palestinian foreign minister and senior member of the delegation, said it is unclear when the Security Council might vote on the application. He said the Palestinians do not expect a decision before Abbas leaves New York.
“We are not doing it to spite the United States; we are not doing this to confront the United States,” he said.
But Shaath said he was disappointed that Obama, in his speech, emphasized Israeli suffering and lack of security while failing to criticize Israel for building settlements in the occupied territories, widely considered illegal under international law.
Obama’s remarks are likely to undermine his outreach to the Islamic world, a priority of his foreign policy.
Asked recently how the initiative was progressing, Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said there remains a “continued challenge around public opinion in the Arab world.”
“I think the principal challenge has been the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” Rhodes said, adding that it is “not surprising given how important that issue is to people.”
Obama spoke forcefully, as he did a year ago, on the importance of human rights in U.S. foreign policy, and he used the popular unrest in Syria to urge the United Nations to do more to promote them.
He called on the Security Council to follow the U.S. example and impose sanctions on the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Obama has said must step down.
“Something is happening in our world,” Obama said. “The way things have been is not the way they will be. The humiliating grip of corruption and tyranny is being pried open.”
But to some, Obama’s speech, by celebrating the Arab Spring and opposing the Palestinian statehood bid, highlighted the inconsistency of his policy in the region.
“There is virtually no thread of reason running between the way he related to the rest of the world and its developments, particularly in the Middle East, and the positions he espoused on Israel-Palestine — a conflict apparently occurring on another planet,” said Daniel Levy, co-director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation. “Palestinian freedoms, rights and self-determination are somehow supposed to be attained without the recourse to leverage, international law or meaningful international support, considered to be necessary and legitimate virtually everywhere else.”
In Washington, the Senate Appropriations Committee threatened to cut off American economic aid and potentially close the Palestinians’ office in the United States.
“We want to let them know, you do that at your own detriment,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said of the Palestinian statehood effort.
The House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations has already passed a bill that would end U.S. economic aid to the Palestinian Authority if it pursues U.N. recognition, strengthening the likelihood of a cutoff.
The United States is the second-biggest donor to the Palestinians after the European Union, and the loss of the funding could severely affect the Palestinian government. The congressional bills would leave in place the $100 million annual U.S. contribution to train Palestinian security forces.
Staff writers Colum Lynch and Joby Warrick in New York and Mary Beth Sheridan in Washington contributed to this report.
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