Palestinian statehood and the U.N.

Update, vote: 138 Yes, 9 No (including Czechia), 41 Abstain

The State of Judenfrei Palestine was painfully accepted to UNESCO one year ago. Today, another vote of this kind is expected. It's almost certain that a vote will determine that the Israeli Arabs will win the same status in the U.N. that the Vatican enjoys – the status of a non-member state recognized by the U.N.

It doesn't seem fortunate to me that just weeks after the Israeli Arabs launched a missile campaign against Israel, the world's "peace organization" is going to declare by a vote that they're a suppressed group of victims who may be living on an occupied territory. If the opposite of occupation is that they are free to throw rockets to any neighbor they find, then occupation is a necessary condition for peace.




Most U.N. members will support the wannabe "state". Also, almost 1/2 of the EU member states will support it and almost everyone in the rest will abstain.

Israel, the U.S., and Canada have said they will oppose the bid. The list of other supporters sounds like a joke, Micronesia and Guatemala. I hope it's still likely that the Czech Republic (along with one or two Baltic states) will belong to this group, too. The leading politicians as well as most of the population opposes the Israeli Arabs' political projects.

But I can imagine there is some pressure from the West. Until very recently, Germany was thought to vote "No" as well but it may have changed its mind and it will probably abstain. I am sure that there are pressures – including pressures from Czechs for whom the mindless obedience to the EU is the greatest political value - that are trying to align the Czech attitude with the prevailing group think in the EU.



A red heart of Europe is still pulsating at the heart of Europe.

And much like in the 1930s, anti-Jewish sentiments have become fashionable in the EU again. The European Union wants to ban Jewish settlers in Europe because they're "violent" or "aggressive" and their products have to be labeled by a yellow star (or another "politically correct" equivalent; symbols evolve but the basic logic is still exactly the same, namely the opinion that the Jews are a special nation that doesn't have the right to settle anywhere). When I heard about these things, I thought they were jokes but they're apparently and unfortunately not.

I hope that the pressures attempting to make Czechia neutral in this vote will lose. We're surely less potent an ally, but I would say that the Czechia is an even more determined and reliable ally of Israel than the U.S. and Canada.

Update: Around 5 pm our time, foreign minister Karel Schwarzenberg leaked that we will vote against the statehood bid (assuming Mr Schlafenberg won't fall asleep) because we our policy including opposition to all unilateral steps should be consistent. It seems that the official Iranian agency's claim that Czechia would abstain was based on no real data whatsoever (typical shameful propaganda), just someone's vague "guess" that we should always mimic Germany. But despite our proximity and dense relations, since 1945, we don't have to, you know. ;-)

At any rate, I don't expect this vote to be game-changing because of many precedents I remember. Sometime in the late 1980s, during the last months of communism in Czechoslovakia, there was a similar vote in the U.N.

My classmate V.K. – who later became the president of Patria Finance – was immensely excited that we were just living on a special day when a new state, and it was Palestine, was born. Needless to say, the situation remained exactly as muddy for the following 20+ years as it had been previously.