How to Find the Pal in Palestine

Here’s what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should say if he has a tactical bone in his body, which thus far has not been much in evidence:

UN-approved statehood for the Palestinians? Fabulous idea, love it to death. Israel is 1000 percent behind it! Go ahead—give them full membership, not just some puny observer-state status—and we’ll beg our American allies to vote for it! In fact, we’ll suggest, if they’re feeling particularly flush these days, that American taxpayers continue shoveling out $600 million a year in aid to the newly approved state. We’ll also stop building settlements.  Hell yes, we’ll ask for recognition from the Palestinians in return, but the other three demands will just be kind of modest appendages to that small request. All we’ll expect is that

(a) the newly approved Palestinian state controls the murderous impulses of Hamas, and takes full responsibility from now until eternity for any Hamas-inspired act of aggression against the state of Israel or anyone in it;

(b) the newly approved Palestinian state controls the murderous impulses of all residents and prosecutes to the fullest extent of the law anyone within its borders who undermines Israeli sovereignty or harms Israeli citizens;

(c) in the event the newly approved Palestinian state violates either (a) or (b), the member nations of the UN, especially all 15 of those nations who vote in the Security Council (yes, that includes you, Lebanon!) will immediately revoke the newly approved UN membership of the transgressor and send support, in the form of money, weapons, and troops to us, Israel, the folks who brought you the bargain of the century: full membership in return for civilization despite its discontents.

Now, two things of which we all should be aware. One is, as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas indicated in a piece in the New York Times in May, UN membership has its reality-TV kind of privileges: Get admitted and you can drag Israel before the International Criminal Court any time you choose and make sure plenty of international arrest warrants go out for practically any Israeli you like, or more precisely, don’t like. Abbas phrased this likely outcome in slightly more grandiloquent fashion (“Palestine’s admission to the United Nations,” he wrote, “would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies,” etc.)—but we all know what “pursue claims” means in UN parlance. It means practically anything you want it to mean.
Secondly, we also all know how likely it will be that any Palestinian state can control Hamas 24/7, or would choose to do so even if it could. In other words, the practical certainty is that even with Israeli and US consent to admittance, a Palestinian state approved for full membership—or a Palestinian state given only observer status, like the Vatican—will not be able to contain the murderous impulses within its borders, whatever and wherever those borders might be.
So why should Israel—or the US, for that matter—concede UN membership for Palestinians? Because it’s a done deal. Palestinians will get exactly what they want: a lot of posturing and righteous rage on the Security Council level, observer status as a state from the General Assembly, all of it invigorated by the damp-eyed swooning of fan-club nations. Grant that concession, and you reduce the cheering, take away the ammunition. And you don’t have to give away the store. You can demand in return. If those demands go unmet, as they will, you can retrieve your gifts with honor. If the Palestinians need legitimization, what Israel needs is a few moments of good-guy status. I realize perfectly that that kind of status is no substitute for a good defense system, but for Israel, it’s a great deal harder to come by. Netanyahu has never figured this out. That’s why he continues to build settlements in defiance of international law.