Palestine has, on balance, decided not to vote on the resolution after an intense weekend of negotiations and "Psychological warfare", even if President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech remains the Security Council’s flagship event on Tuesday, January 11. UN diplomats, however, had agreed to a resolution that would allow the Security Council to take a stand on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Implicitly, the result of this election would have reflected the perception of the international community of the "plan for peace" devised by the son-in-law of the American president, Jared Kushner.
"Negotiations around the text continue, said a diplomatic source. The vote is postponed sine die. " Many diplomats were nevertheless confident that the resolution would gather enough favorable votes if it had been proposed to the vote, its latest version being more consensual: it abstained from condemning the American plan for the Middle East or quoting the United States ; it reaffirmed the attachment to the two-state solution and to respect for international law. " The text would have had at least 11 votes for – maybe even 12 – and the United States would have been forced to veto ”, explains another diplomat. But the Palestinian Authority was not so sure.
Hitherto very firm on violations of international law in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the United Kingdom of Boris Johnson has however shown its rapprochement to the American position during the negotiations, according to a working document that The world was able to get hold. Indeed, British negotiators have questioned points of international law regarding the status of East Jeruslem.
Avoid retaliatory measures
Palestinian diplomats may also have taken into account the impact of the Trump administration’s pressure over the past several days. "They wanted to avoid retaliatory measures against their supporters, subjected to strong pressure", advances the last diplomat. They may also have been hesitant to put them in an overhang beforehand: already on Sunday, the Palestinian Authority began to favor the purely symbolic scope of an opposition vote in the UN plenary assembly, where a large majority is assured. "For Abbas, it is a question of demonstrating that the international order is not in the hands of one or two countries and that the legal status of the occupation will not change because President Trump decided it", Majdi Khaldi, his diplomatic advisor, noted before flying to the United States. Abbas is expected to speak to the Security Council on Tuesday before giving a joint press conference with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
