The U.S Was Right to Turn Down a Palestinian Representative for a UN Post

Feb. 13 2017

On Thursday, the new UN secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, nominated Salam Fayyad, former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), to be the United Nations envoy to Libya. Nikki Haley, America’s ambassador to the UN, nixed the appointment, provoking a storm of criticism. While acknowledging that Fayyad has a good track record from his time in the PA government, Benny Avni argues that Haley made the correct move:

Naming “Palestine” as Fayyad’s state of origin, [as Guterres’s nomination did], is crucial. Never before had a person from a country that is not a full United Nations member been named to such a high post. American law forbids, moreover, funding any international organization that recognizes “Palestine” as its full member.

That’s a context in which the American refusal to approve of the elevation of the Palestinian to a key UN job takes on a certain logic. American officials, as well as their Israeli counterparts, sensed that Guterres’s move was yet another step in the Palestinian Authority’s strategy of gaining world recognition through creeping UN acceptance. . . .

[T]he UN nomination was not about Mr. Fayyad, but about the claim to statehood that his nomination represents. . . . [A UN spokesman, commenting on Fayyad’s nomination], noted that “no Israeli and no Palestinian has served in a post of high responsibility at the United Nations. This is a situation that the secretary-general feels should be corrected.”

Yet there are those here who wonder about the logic of correcting Turtle Bay’s long-held bias against assigning top jobs to citizens of Israel, a member of the United Nations since 1949, by naming to a top post an individual from a non-member state. Trying to explain it by conflating these two as if they were one smacks of annulment of the UN’s opposition to a “one-state solution.” Doing all this without first getting the nod from America, or any other key government, is what is amateurish.

Read more at New York Sun

More about: Antonio Guterres, Israel & Zionism, Palestinian statehood, Salam Fayyad, United Nations, US-Israel relations

Expand Gaza into Sinai

Feb. 11 2025

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.

Read more at RealClear Politics

More about: Donald Trump, Egypt, Gaza Strip, Sinai Peninsula