It seems like it’s been more than just 12 months since the pro-Israel community was in uproar about an imminent “diplomatic tsunami” that we were told would swamp the Jewish state. The “tsunami” was the Palestinian Authority’s plan to get the United Nations to grant it independence without first having to make peace with Israel. The assumption among foreign policy “realists” and the Jewish left was that the Palestinians would carry the international community with them and force Israel’s government to make even more concessions to avoid total isolation. But the “tsunami” that Ehud Barak feared never came to pass. If anything, what followed that fall was a diplomatic disaster for the Palestinians that illustrated that they were the ones who were isolated.
Though the PA vowed last year they would be back at the UN for another round of this fight, yesterday they signaled they would not bother. Though PA leader Mahmoud Abbas will address the UN again in September and mention the issue, the Palestinians won’t try to get it passed in either the Security Council or even the General Assembly, where everyone assumes they have an automatic majority. This concession shows just how thoroughly Israel’s supposedly incompetent government defeated them in 2011. But it may also signify a belief on their part that they would do better to keep quiet until President Obama is safely re-elected rather than cause trouble that would only worsen their situation during the fall campaign.
