French diplomats are working closely with the Palestinian Authority to draft a Security Council resolution calling for the creation of a Palestinian state—despite the fact that a similar resolution failed to pass a few months ago. But, as Tom Wilson writes, the Security Council now includes nations “far more likely” to support such a move, while for its part the Obama administration has threatened to withhold America’s veto. And there is more:
The very fact that the French are even planning to submit this resolution so soon after a similar one was rejected is itself an outrageous move. . . . What possible national advantage could there be for France in seeing a particularly dubious incarnation of a Palestinian state established—not alongside but rather right in the middle of the Jewish state?
Well, for one thing, France’s Hollande-led government is desperately unpopular right now. And for another, the country has a large Muslim population that appears to be growing in both size and fury. And that’s the point: this does nothing to significantly advance French interests internationally, but it could do a great deal to improve the prospects of Hollande’s government at home.
This relationship between France’s domestic predicament and its actions on the world stage on behalf of the Palestinians is particularly unsettling because, on the French domestic scene, the situation for Jews is becoming progressively worse. As French Jewry is being hounded out of the country, many are choosing to take refuge in the state of Israel. And yet it is the security of that very Jewish refuge that the French government now seems committed to jeopardizing.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/04/08/another-palestinian-statehood-bid/