Palestine's freedom plea to world

September's United Nations Assembly meeting is crunch time for the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, now embroiled in a diplomatic frenzy to convince the nations of the world to recognise it as an independent state and UN member.

Leading Palestinian politicians, intellectuals and commentators - and many Israeli ones too - predict that if the occupation under which the Palestinians live is not brought to an end, it will result in catastrophe for the region.

The PLO is making intensive diplomatic efforts which Palestine National Council president Saleem Za'noon describes as "knocking on every door in the absence of any peace negotiations because appealing to a sense of duty from the international community is the only option left".

The PLO is asking the world, including Israel, to recognise Palestine's right to exist as an independent sovereign state, albeit consisting of only 22 per cent of the Palestinians' former homeland.

The UN appeal faces a near-certain Security Council veto from the United States, which will deny the PLO the vital recommendation for membership.

If the US - Israel's closest ally - sends the Palestinians packing, they will still have the moral force of support from a majority of Security Council members and more than two- thirds of the General Assembly

But they will also have an enhanced sense of grievance at being treated with a double standard, ensuring they remain the last people still living under colonial-era occupation.

The PLO message is that the freedom of the Arab Spring applies to Palestinians too.

"We wish for the UN to take a just position," says Za'noon. "We came to the verge of losing faith before as resolutions on Jerusalem, borders, water, the right of return for refugees and other resolutions were ignored, but the UN is still the door that has to be used and that is the way to reach the international community.

"We have no option. Our land is being taken, the other side refuses to negotiate and insists on continued settlement building which means there is a diplomacy race on to influence others."

He says Israel is trying to influence 30 to 50 countries to oppose Palestinian statehood, while the PLO needs a two-thirds majority of the 193 countries in the General Assembly.

By September it will be a year since US President Barack Obama raised the possibility of Palestine being a UN member by this year.

But peace negotiations sputtered to a halt over continued Israeli settlement construction, then Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected the basis of Middle East Peace talks for decades - the 1967 borders with negotiated land swaps.

Former PLO Minister As'ad Abdul Rahman says Obama's speech was never forceful enough. Now he hopes Obama, despite facing elections next year, will have the "guts" to at least abstain from using the veto.

"The issue lies at the level of international will. It has become a non-secret that double standards are in play. There is self-determination for all people, but not for this highly advanced people called the Palestinians."

For Palestinian writer, activist and 1948 refugee Aida Najjar, "any child can recognise that the PLO has wasted valuable time in continuing on with the peace process so this UN action is to be applauded".

She says the Jews have every right to their own state but "not to dictate the terms for Palestine including borders, no army and no right of [refugees to] return to their homes, land, my home, my land and my memories. In my village of Lifta the Israelis now want to destroy what remains of our heritage and build a Jews-only settlement. How can you build a state when they are building thousands of settlements on our land?"

Abdul Rahman believes that if Palestine is spurned in September, President Mahmoud Abbas, who has moved the Palestinians to moderation while the Israeli government has moved to the right, will resign "so he doesn't go down in history as a traitor of the Palestinian people ... as a cover for the Israeli occupation".

Abdul Rahman believes a third intifada or uprising is likely if Palestinians under Israeli rule do not enjoy equal rights.

"We need to go to the Israeli barriers or checkpoints and throw our bodies there, and let them kill us as other Arabs have been killed in Tunisia and Egypt and Syria.

"I think then the world would understand us better, it would reveal the double standards, the quadruple standards of the West even more and we would be convincing more Israelis, I hope, like in South Africa."

In 1988, the PLO's Algiers Declaration was for a Palestinian state, but Za'noon and Abdul Rahman agree it proved symbolic because the occupation meant Palestinians had no "sovereignty over their own soil".

"We were not given a chance in 1947 [the year before the declaration of the state of Israel], we were not given a chance in 1988, and now it seems we are not being given a chance," says Abdul Rahman.

"It is a matter of international political will, but the possibility has been there since 1947 with the creation of a Jewish state and a Palestinian state."

The World Bank, the IMF and other international bodies have in the past year acknowledged that Palestinian state-building has achieved that of a middle income state.

As a formal state, Palestine could then negotiate on an equal diplomatic level rather than as an occupied people.

Two precedents reinforce the PLO's case. Kosovo was acknowledged in 2008, and while a Russian veto denied it UN membership, it is recognised as a state.

The second precedent is the Uniting for Peace resolution (377) which the US used to circumvent a Soviet veto during the Korean War, allowing the General Assembly to take over in the interests of maintaining peace.

"If we can attract the two-thirds majority of the General Assembly then we could use 377 to overcome a US veto," Za'noon says.

He believes "this is the last chance for the Palestinians".

"We have been working for a long time on this issue and don't believe we will fail. But Israel is resisting forcefully, and a US-Israel tactic to veto will show that they deal with some countries differently from the way they deal with others.

"Our diplomatic efforts have logically and morally persuaded states to recognise this situation and that Israel has not responded to any of the resolutions, requests or demands asked of it by the international community," Za'noon says.

He adds that the Palestinians would be willing to go back to negotiations "on the conditions that Israel recognises the borders of 1967 with a specified date to implement and action UN resolution 242". Statehood is important to the Palestinians because it gives them the "heft" and recourse to legal measures to end the occupation, says Za'noon.

"It is a duty of the international community to do what is required and that is for them to put pressure on Israel to leave the illegally occupied territories of 1967.

"We as a Palestinian people can't go any further by ourselves. The international community has to step in."

Abdul Rahman adds that "there is no other single people on earth that hasn't gotten rid of occupation and hasn't achieved self-determination".

Is he pessimistic?

"Tactically I am, strategically I am not.

"Whether we get our rights through another revolution, another intifada or whatever ... I have never seen Israel so isolated in my life and I think it is getting more isolated.

"There is a word in Arabic - mutasha'el - which is a combination of the words mutasha'lem (pessimistic) and mutafa'el (optimistic), so in a way I am mutasha'el ... but in the end I think we should overcome."

* Jane Young, a former political editor at TV3, is doing post-graduate research into contemporary Palestinian diplomacy.