In a new column published on Wednesday at Human Events, Newt Gingrich calls for the United States to respond strongly to the expected move by the Palestinians to seek statehood at the United Nations in September — by threatening to cut off American funding to the U.N.
Gingrich writes:
The United States has the leverage to prevent this diplomatic disaster if the Obama Administration wants to use it: we are by far the largest donor to the U.N., financing roughly a quarter of its entire budget.
We should be willing to say that if the U.N. is going to circumvent negotiations and declare the territory of one of its own members an independent state, we aren’t going to pay for it. We can keep our $7.6 billion a year.
We don’t need to fund a corrupt institution to beat up on our allies.
Gingrich explains that back in 1989, the administration of President George H.W. Bush used the same approach with the U.N. to prevent the extension of statehood to the Palestinians.
In addition, Gingrich makes the false claim: “While the Administration says it opposes this scheme at the U.N., President Obama did not help the situation when he became the first president in American history to side publicly with the Palestinians against Israel in demanding that Israel retreat to its 1967 borders, rather than have borders determined through negotiations.”
In fact, Obama did nothing of the sort — he simply reiterated the longstanding policy of many past administrations in calling for negotiations that used the pre-1967 lines as a starting point, with further adjustments and exchanges to be discussed and agreed upon.
For the past several months, the Palestinian leadership has been on a diplomatic campaign to build support with the foreign ministries of countries around the world, with the intention of having the U.N. General Assembly vote in September to recognize a Palestinian state within the boundaries of the occupied territories that Israel gained after the Six Day War in 1967.
These actions by the Palestinians are the result of an overall decision that negotiations, as they have heretofore existed, have not resulted in agreements on statehood, while illegal Israeli settlement of the West Bank has continued.
As such, the Palestinian strategy has become to first secure statehood, and then pursue negotiations over disputed areas of control.
Including the Israeli settlements and East Jerusalem, this would mean a newly recognized Palestinian state would claim territory including over half a million Jews, who for their part are Israeli citizens and would not recognize the Palestinian state, instead seeking the protection and authority of their own government.
Eric Kleefeld
Eric Kleefeld joined TPM as an intern for the final months of the 2006 midterm elections, and then kept showing up for work. His other interests include guitars, old comic books and the politics of various English-speaking countries.
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