U.N. corruption was on full display last week when, as the Hudson Institutes Anne Bayefsky noted, the U.N. published its provisional list of speakers for the September opening session. For the first time ever, it listed the speaker from Palestine as the Head of State. This is just a preview of the acute diplomatic crisis and existential threat to the state of Israel that is shaping up to occur in September. The Palestinian Authority is promising to steamroll ahead with its bid, in just over a month, to be recognized as a state at the U.N., a move the General Assembly will likely approve over the objections of the U.S. and Israel. This will define a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, stretching to the 1967 borders and encompassing territory that currently is home to thousands of Israelis. It is a dangerous plan. It would violate every standing agreement the Palestinians hold with Israel, including the Oslo Accords, to negotiate a final border agreement. U.N. recognition would take place totally separate from any negotiation with Israel, and with the Palestinians neither renouncing violence nor acknowledging Israel existence. And if Western nations vote in favor of the plan at the U.N., it would also strengthen terrorists' belief that their commitment to violence and their unwavering rejection of Israel's right to exist has begun to produce their desired goals. A peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem must start with negotiations. The Palestinian Authority, however, has refused to enter talks until Israel agrees to accept its demands on border demarcations. The Palestinians' unilateral bid for statehood is not a good-faith effort to make progress on Middle East peace. It is an aggressive attempt by the Palestinian Authority and the anti-Israel contingent at the U.N., and it will only make the problem worse. While the administration says it opposes this scheme at the U.N., President Barack Obama did not help the situation when he became the first president in American history to side publicly with the Palestinians against Israel in demanding that Israel retreat to its 1967 borders, rather than have borders determined through negotiations with both sides. In spite of the U.N.s biased and dishonest approach to Israel, Obama apparently maintains faith in what is clearly a corrupt organization. His administrations commitment to multilateralism at the U.N. is nothing more than appeasement. President Obama and the State Department must be clear with our Western allies. They should reject actions that reward terrorist groups who refuse to abide by the basic principles of human dignity and freedom. A solution from history The U.S. has the leverage to prevent this diplomatic disaster if the Obama Administration wants to use it: We are by far the largest donor to the U.N., financing roughly one quarter of its entire budget. We should be willing to say publicly that if the U.N. is going to circumvent negotiations and declare the territory of one of its own members a separate and independent state, we will not pay for it. We can keep our $7.6 billion a year. We dont need to fund a corrupt institution to beat up on our allies. That is exactly how President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State James Baker handled a similar drive to force Palestinian statehood in 1989. As former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton has pointed out, the Palestine Liberation Organization attempted at that time to earn recognition by the U.N. as a state, and its efforts won significant support. But rather than cave to the Palestinians manipulations, Baker warned that the U.S. would cut off contributions to U.N. agencies if they upgraded the PLOs status. To emphasize the depth of our concern, Secretary Baker promised in 1989, I will recommend to the president that the United States make no further contributions, voluntary or assessed, to any international organization which makes a change in the PLOs present status as an observer organization. His warning got the message across. The director of one U.N. agency preparing at the time to upgrade the PLO, the World Health Organization, told The New York Times of the threat: We are very concerned. We expect there will be a serious cutoff of funds. You know the U.S. Congress. The Times later credited that warning with the decision of Arab states to not follow through with the plan. We need to show the same resolve today. Washington should make immediately clear that it has no tolerance for dangerous stunts that threaten Israels survival. When the U.N. is set to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state and Israel is the only country in the world not even permitted to determine its own capital city, something is very wrong. The time to stop this disaster is before it happens. Congress and Obama must detail the potential cost of a U.N. betrayal of Israel before the General Assembly meets.
