Palestine's newly upgraded UN membership status offers the best chance to resume a lasting and just statehood deal with Israel after 20 years of stalled and fruitless talks. This is not what the Americans say. And it is certainly not what the Israelis say. Their response has been to quicken the building of illegal settlements in order to slice a new Palestinian state in half. Given what Washington and the British are saying about the resumption of talks being possible, without any preconditions, not least over new settlements, it would seem that the future has never looked bleaker for any negotiations. But the darkest hour is always before dawn. Until Friday, there was absolutely no indication that the long, cold night was ever going to end for the Palestinians. Israel had provoked divisions within the leadership of the Palestinian Authority by the simple means of frustrating and humiliating the Fatah leadership. As Israeli strategic planners anticipated, a more militant group emerged in the shape of Hamas which argued that since negotiation had not worked, the armed struggle had to resume underpinned by an outright rejection of the existence of the Israeli state. The Hamas 2006 Palestinian election victory was exploited adroitly by the Israelis to bring confusion and discord among the Palestinians. First off, George W. Bush, who had destroyed Iraq in the cause of bringing it democracy, rejected the democratic choice of the Palestinians because they had chosen the wrong party. Hamas despite its espousal of the ballot box was branded a terrorist organization. Fatah was no less happy at the result, so there was an effective split between the Hamas heartland in Gaza and the Palestinians of the West Bank. Even had the Palestinian Authority been prepared to cut a deal, the Israelis could have rejected it out of hand on the grounds that it did not include Hamas, and Hamas for its part would doubtless have rejected it as well, especially as Israel continued to assassinate its leaders and thus effectively sponsor its rocket attacks into Israeli territory. The UN vote has, however, changed the political geography. Much now depends of Fatah and Hamas. Abbas rightly basked in the cheers when he returned in triumph to Ramallah. Hamas leaders may have ground their teeth, but this was not a victory for Fatah in its power struggle with Hamas. Nor yet was it even a victory for Abbas. It was a victory for the Palestinians, all of them. UN member states were supporting the cause of a unified, sovereign Palestine. Such a state will only emerge if Palestinians heal their divisions and agree to work together. The leaders of Hamas and Fatah have to be prepared to abandon their petty power bases and look for accord. The aim should be to hold fresh elections, perhaps even overseen by the UN, to produce a single voice that can speak with complete authority at the negotiating table. The issue of whether or not Hamas is still branded “ a terrorist organization" is irrelevant. Israel came into existence with leaders who had once been branded “terrorists". Israel can protest Hamas' dedication to the eradication of the Israeli state, but then has not Israel itself been dedicated since 1967 to the eradication of Palestine?
