Palestinian statehood goes to UN in key moment for peace process

Mahmoud Abbas will postpone security council vote but has broken US hegemony over peace talks, diplomats say
Palestinians fly a kite of their flag in Gaza
Palestinians fly a kite of their flag in Gaza to celebrate Mahmoud Abbas taking Palestinian statehood to the UN security council. Photograph: Majdi Fathi/Corbis

Mahmoud Abbas submits his bid for recognition of Palestine as a state to the UN on Friday. The submission comes at the end of a week that has seen a dramatic diplomatic shift in the Palestinians' favour, even though the request, to the security council, is likely to fail.

The Palestinian leader is expected to hand over a letter asking for Palestine to join the UN as a state shortly before he addresses the general assembly to plead the case for admission.

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to speak shortly afterwards. He is likely to denounce the Palestinian move as destabilising and a threat to the peace process – even though that is largely dormant.

A heavier than usual Israeli security presence will be deployed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem at the end of Friday prayers and around the time of Abbas's speech.

Thousands of Palestinians are expected to gather before open-air screens in West Bank cities to watch their president's address, and the Israeli military is concerned that hardline settlers may try to provoke confrontations.

"We have heightened the security alert to one level below the highest," Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

"Twenty-two thousand police officers have been mobilised, with emphasis on Judaea and Samaria [the West Bank] and East Jerusalem. We hope that any demonstrations will be peaceful."

Expectation among Palestinians has risen over the past week as Abbas has stood firm in the face of strong US opposition to his bid for statehood. It is matched by fury in the West Bank at a speech by Barack Obama to the UN on Wednesday, which was seen by both Palestinians and Israelis as overtly sympathetic to the Jewish state.

Abbas's determination to press ahead has prompted the most serious attempt to revive the peace process in years as Washington, London and Paris seek to avoid a showdown in the security council that could severely damage their standing in a rapidly changing Middle East.

The US said it would veto statehood, while Britain and France were likely to abstain.

The days of diplomatic wrangling – much behind the scenes but some on the open stage of the UN general assembly – have resulted in a compromise. Abbas will submit his application, but any vote will be put on hold to allow for fresh attempts to revive peace talks.

While Abbas has climbed down from an immediate confrontation, some senior Palestinian officials and European diplomats believe he may have won a significant victory because the US grip on the oversight of the peace process – which has been decidedly in Israel's favour – has been weakened, and other countries now want to force the pace of peace negotiations.

Washington's claim to dominate mediation has not only been damaged by its unwavering threat to veto a Palestinian state in the security council, setting up a confrontation that alarmed Britain and France, but also by Obama's speech, which offered no new initiatives.

That has opened the way for Europe to press for a greater role. In a speech to the UN, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, questioned the US leadership, describing it as years of failure.

Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian negotiator who has since been critical of Abbas's leadership, said his insistence on going to the security council had delivered a diplomatic victory of sorts. "Is this a coup for Abbas? Yes, absolutely," she said. "This is the first time since 1974 that Palestine has been able to capture international attention at the United Nations in this way.

"He's managed to get people discussing whether Palestine should be recognised as a state, whether it should get its independence immediately, how we get there. It's been a brilliant move."

A European diplomat said Abbas had changed the diplomatic equation, adding: "The ground has shifted. There's been no peace process to speak of for years. Obama has tried and failed to push Netanyahu in to taking negotiations seriously. There's a feeling that this crisis has created a moment to try a different way.

"It's still negotiations. It's still up to the Israelis and Palestinians, who have to do the deal. But we are all aware that the Arab Spring is changing everything and, while the Americans are always going to play a major role, we may be moving towards a place where they are not the only ones in the game."

Nevertheless, Abbas has been reminded of the blunt force of US power – power no other country is likely to be able to wield.

The Palestinian leader privately retreated from his pledge to seek an immediate security council vote in part because he is no longer sure of winning the necessary majority, which would have given the Palestinians a moral victory even if, as threatened, the US used its veto.

Palestinian sources say they believe Washington has bullied several security council members, including Portugal, into withdrawing their support for the Palestinian move by threatening to withhold support in financial institutions for its stricken economy, and Bosnia, over its opposition to Kosovo being admitted to the UN.

Palestinian officials believe Nigeria is no longer certain to vote in their favour, while there are also questions about the position of Gabon and Colombia.

One senior Palestinian official said the US was "playing a really nasty game".

Abbas was also under pressure from European leaders keen to avoid abstaining in a security council vote on the issue. Abstention would be widely interpreted in the Arab world as implicit support for Israel, although the leaders recognise the need for Abbas to submit the statehood request in order to retain his political credibility at home.

Britain urged the Palestinian leader to back away from a showdown, while Sarkozy met Abbas and pleaded with him to accept a delay in the vote in return for a promise that the French would work to revive peace talks.

Sarkozy, in his UN speech, said the US leadership on the peace process had failed and pressed for greater involvement of European and Arab states in negotiations. "Let us stop believing that a single country or small group of countries can resolve so complex a problem," he said.

"Too many crucial players have been sidelined. After so many failures, who still believes that the peace process can succeed without Europe? Who still believes that it can succeed without the involvement of the Arab states that have already chosen peace?"

Sarkozy proposed negotiations that would adhere to a strict timetable intended to strike an agreement ending occupation and creating an independent Palestine within a year.

The French president's position is in line with proposals put forward by Tony Blair as envoy of the Middle East Quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia to allow Abbas to fulfil his pledge to go to the security council but defer a vote.

Abbas could then claim a victory for the Palestinians by saying he has achieved his principal goal at the UN of breaking the stalemate around the peace process.

Buttu said the challenge for Abbas now was to ensure that the momentum created this week continued in the Palestinians' favour.

"I think the old negotiations process has completely run its tired course. You've got countries around the world recognising that you can't just have this process of endless negotiations with the so-called honest broker who's not so honest at all. This has put the final nail in the coffin of the United States being the honest broker," she said.

"Now it's being seen for what it actually is, which is Israel's lawyer. The next step depends on what Abbas does.

"Is he going to continue to pander to the Americans? Or is he really going to try to build up an international coalition that will deal with this in a very different way to how it's been dealt with in the past?"