I am deliberately writing this article in anticipation of the Palestinian moves at the UN and the speech to be delivered by the Maltese Prime Minister to the General Assembly of the UN for one sole reason.

I am neither doing it out of disrespect for the people and the parties involved, nor am I doing it to try and beat any editorial deadlines.

My sole objective is to reflect on the issue at stake, irrespective of the outcome.

The following is a summary of my conclusions.

This initiative could not have come about at a worst time for a US administration, or for any US administration for that matter. The whole country is now in election mode and only the simple minded could expect an incumbent President to ignore the clout of the Jewish vote.

Although I have always argued over the years that if there is one power that can make it happen it is the US, on the other hand I think all those expecting it to serve as an impartial broker must be living in cuckoo land. Particularly since it has invariably vetoed every single criticism of Israel raised at the UN at any given point in time regardless of who may have been holding the presidency of the USA itself.

Therefore it came as no surprise to me that President Obama’s speech this week did not offer any real blueprint for the future.

He could simply not afford to do so.

Disappointment ran deep mainly because the speech was in stark contrast to the promise, vigour and dynamism of his earlier speech some time back when expectations were raised considerably and some began to hope in hope.

The President’s statement that, like him, many are frustrated by the lack of progress in the Middle East, will come as little consolation to those who would like to see such frustration eventually sidelined.

To make things worse, the American administration is weighed down by four negative factors:

An Israeli premier who is inflexible, unbending and knows well that at this point in time the US presidency is at its most politically vulnerable

A set of US negotiators like Dennis Ross who have been long identified as pro Israeli negotiators under various administrations. Someone who has a Jewish mother and became religiously Jewish after the Six Day War.

A non-existent peace process that only the gullible can envisage being reactivated unless binding deadlines are agreed on a priori and not just as an excuse to delay or postpone the Palestinian claim to statehood.

The sharp contrast with the understandable and laudable support of the US administration for the Arab Spring as it developed in a number of North African countries, Libya included.

What shocks me most is that while the international press, particularly that in the US, tends to get cold feet when discussing the Middle East peace process by killing a priori any discussion in the US itself about the future of Palestine, or indeed, US support for Israel, the liberal Jewish press in Israel itself has always been fair, balanced and objective without in any way weakening Israel’s genuine security concerns, Haaretz.com being a typical case in point.

As Henry Porter recently wrote – “I realised that the problem is not so much American public opinion as the lack of it. Most Americans have decided that it is simply safer to leave Israel out of the discourse.”

The fact that the Republican opposition have been stepping up the manner, in which they have been playing the Israeli card against Obama, has continued to box him further in a corner.

This could explain why there was no mention of settlements during his speech in spite of the fact that Netanyahu had long resumed construction of settlements since Obama’s UN speech of last year.

Obama did well to associate himself with Israeli concerns too, but as Hanan Ashrawi was reported to have said recently – and it is hard to find someone more rational and eloquent than her in the Palestinian camp – she could not believe what she heard. “It sounded as though the Palestinians were the ones occupying Israel!” She lamented that there was not one word of empathy for the Palestinians in the whole UN address.

In the light of such developments, it would be somewhat utopian to expect Middle East realities to be squarely addressed.

The Palestinian initiative comes at a time when everyone is struggling for his own political survival.

This applies to Netanyahu, Abbas, Obama himself and also key players like Sarkozy.

Their problem is that at day’s end they are all likely to end up as victims of indecision too. Not to say political paralysis as well.

The mere notion of timelines is admittedly attractive, but what will happen if they are not met? Who will carry the can?

I firmly believe in the negotiation process, but recalling that Oslo was two decades ago I also firmly believe that there can be no solution without strong American leadership.

Unless that happens during the first year or so of any new US presidency – if at all – the rest is likely to remain pie in the sky.

Having been promised an era of engagement we cannot be blamed for feeling deflated, for although this year has been an extraordinary year, I am not that sure that one can safely say so within a purely Middle Eastern context.

At the time of writing, it is evident that the US is highly unlikely to break the impasse. Can the EU do it? I doubt it when it has an ostensibly fragmented position in spite of the lead taken by France.

All indications do not only suggest that Abbas is likely to postpone the Security Council vote but also that he could have effectively broken the so-called US hegemony over the peace talks. That the Palestinian move will be dismissed by the Israelis as destabilizing is almost a given.

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What intrigues me is that while other countries may now want to force the pace of the negotiations, some claim that the US’ determination to veto a Palestinian state in the Security Council could have opened the way for the Europeans to pitch for a greater role.

It will only be in the long run that we will find out whether the ground has shifted or not.

What seems most likely is that the Palestinian statehood issue could easily end up upstaging the Arab Spring… at least within the confines of the UN.

Which is not exactly the way that the original plot might have been envisaged.

If anything will change in effective terms after this weekend’s developments remains one big question mark.

I will end with a quote from French President Sarkozy: “We cannot respond to the aspiration for freedom and democracy, so splendidly and bravely expressed by the Arab peoples, by perpetuating a tragedy, that of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

One will be in self denial to talk of the Arab Spring while downplaying the Middle Eastern developments, the same as would happen were one to reverse the process and treat the Arab Spring as if it was a non event while focusing exclusively on the Middle Eastern chessboard.

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www.leobrincat.com

Mr Brincat is a Labour Party Member of Parliament and a Member of the Standing House Committee on Foreign & European Affairs