by Jason Ditz, November 15, 2009

Frustrated by Israel’s hawkish government having declared the peace process dead several times in the past few months, Palestinian leaders say they are going to unilaterally ask the United Nations to endorse their independence based on pre-1967 borders.

In the 1967 Six Day War, Israel attacked Syria and Egypt, and when Jordan entered the war on the basis of a defense pact with Egypt it occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The territory has remained occupied ever since, and Israel has built settlements housing hundreds of thousands of Israelis in the West Bank.

Years of peace efforts have yielded little in the way of progress, and while Israeli officials now concede that the Palestinians may be allowed to have a state of their own, it will only come with a myriad of conditions attached, and only in a portion of the pre-1967 West Bank.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed outrage at the idea of unilateral statehood for the Palestinians, and has threatened unspecified unilateral actions of his own against the Palestine in the event it happens. Though President Obama has expressed US support for the Palestinian state (again, under certain conditions) in principle, it is widely expected he will oppose any UN attempt to do so without Israel’s imprimatur.

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/15/palestinian-leaders-seek-un-endo...