Eli Lake reports that "the Obama administration and its allies are waging a frantic, last-minute campaign to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to avoid unilaterally declaring statehood next week at the opening of the UN General Assembly." Noah Millman weighs the pros and cons of Palestine declaring statehood:
America will, undoubtedly, not even recognize a Palestinian state, which will make it exceptionally difficult for us to continue to try to be a broker between the two sides, but our non-recognition will stand out like a sore thumb once the bulk of the world has extended such recognition.
In the longer term, though, it’s the continuation of the conflict that creates problems for America. So whether a Palestinian declaration is bad in the long term depends on whether it makes it more or less likely for the conflict to finally be resolved. And that, in turn, depends on whether Abbas’s gamble pays off – whether he can midwife a Palestinian sovereignty that is actually functional and viewed as a modest success. If he can, then Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians would be “normalized” – it would be a conflict between two states rather than a conflict within a state. And the former type of conflicts are much more amenable to negotiated solutions than the latter.
The Dish 