Palestinians Prepare to Play their Trump Card: South African Treatment at the United Nations

It’s axiomatic in Mideast politics that the United Nations is the home stadium for the Palestinian team. In [non-binding] matters relegated to the General Assembly, the Arab world underpins an automatic overwhelming majority that reflexively votes against the Jewish state. Israel would be decimated in the Security Council as well were it not for the American veto – a point underscored by former president Barak Obama’s controversial decision to withhold the “No” vote at Israel’s expense at the end of his second term in-office. Reaching beyond its ethnic majority, the Palestinian Authority is planning to use all of its strength at Turtle Bay to launch a campaign that experts in New York, Washington and the region tell The Media Line would have the minimal effect of inflicting a disastrous image assault on Israel and a less likely maximum effect of causing it to be suspended or expelled from the world body by creating an analogy that morphs the face of Israel into that of South Africa — the prototypical “suspendee.” The final piece of the puzzle fell into place for the Palestinians when outrage over legislation presented to the Israeli parliament that declared Jewish Israelis the sole beneficiaries of the right to self-determination and lowering the status of Arabic from an official to a “special” language. Although the most controversial elements of the bill were removed before the final votes were taken – including allowing “Jewish-only” communities — the unusually broad condemnation of the measure that included critics from the political right, the nation’s president and attorney general, made it an easy sell as proof to the already less-than-supportive UN membership. Despite what are being described as Herculean efforts to thwart the Palestinian campaign by Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon and American Ambassador Nikki Haley, most pundits we’ve spoken with are adamant that although the Palestinian efforts will result in nothing less than a brutal image-pounding – it’s equally unlikely they will amount to anything greater.