Aaron Magid

After the humiliating Palestinian failure to pass a United Nations Security Council Resolution in December setting a timetable for a peace deal and an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, Arab diplomats criticized the Palestinian strategy. 

In an interview, the Lebanese ambassador to the United Nations, Nawaf Salam, and another senior Arab official in New York who insisted on anonymity labeled Palestinian diplomacy as “lacking seriousness,” “ill-prepared,” and characterized by “major mistakes.”

A short time before the resolution was put to a vote at the end of December, the Palestinian ambassador to the U.N., Riyad Mansour, held a closed-door meeting with diplomats from the Arab League. According to someone in the room, the Palestinians faced significant opposition from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya in their insistence on rushing a vote by the end of 2014.

Salam was especially disappointed given the work of the French delegation in promoting a resolution considered favorable to Palestinian interests, according to Arab delegates in December. 

“The whole timeliness of the matter was questionable in view of the progress made by the French on their draft resolution,” Salam noted. Lebanon appreciated French willingness to include a new multilateral mechanism and parameters to solve the conflict. 

“The worry was that the Palestinians, pushing with their draft text, put in jeopardy the French efforts [rather than helped] advance [them],” Salam explained.

In the afternoon of Dec. 30, a vote was finally held. The Palestinians failed to receive a majority of nine votes, absolving the United States from having to use its veto, thus being isolated. Stunned, many Palestinians quickly blamed Nigeria for its last minute abstention, though it serves as a member of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Yet, Salam emphasized that the Palestinians themselves deserved blame for the vote’s failure. “It was not well prepared, proof being that they did not even secure the minimum nine votes,” he said.

The Arab official in New York blamed the Palestinians for months of unprofessionalism and ineffective diplomacy. “You clean the house first,” he said, referring to the Palestinian Authority’s putting the Palestinian draft in “Blue” without properly consulting with domestic factions. Palestinian hastiness led to strong criticism from a prominent Palestinian detainee in Israel, Marwan Barghouti, for not including the issue of prisoners and for the supposed ambiguous language on Jerusalem.

Referring to the Palestinian surprise of Nigeria’s abstention, the Arab official emphasized that the Palestinians need to “take members of the Security Council more seriously. Engage with everyone and don’t just rely on international solidarity with the Palestinians,” he added. “Go talk with members on different levels [in] the capitals [and] have all the work done [in order] for the resolution to be agreed.” 

The poor Palestinian diplomatic planning for the vote meant they had refused to wait another week until 2015, when the Security Council would have had new members more favorable to the Palestinian Authority. Grant Rumley of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted: “This exposes the entire Palestinian internationalization campaign as less a pragmatic path toward statehood than an international full-court press designed to create leverage and pressure Israel.”

Finally, the Arab official noted his delegation’s frustration with Saeb Erekat’s repeated leaks to the media that forced the Palestinian position before cooperating Arab countries were consulted. He explained that at times, Arab government officials learned of Palestinian moves through the media instead of through discrete diplomatic channels.

Khalid Elgindy, a fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution observed that Palestinian strategy at the U.N. is complicated by factors other than diplomacy. “Abbas’ decision-making process on the U.N. is also likely to be shaped by developments on the domestic political front – his standing among the Palestinian, relations with Hamas, developments in Gaza and internal Fatah politics,” he said. “The less comfortable Abbas’ position is in terms of domestic politics, the more likely he will be to pursue action at the U.N.”

When explaining why he needed to remain anonymous when criticizing the Palestinian Authority, the Arab official – whose country is considered friendly toward Palestinian interests – acknowledged, “The Palestinian issue among Arabs is taboo. You cannot disagree with the Palestinians. It will be seen as you are not Arab enough.”

The Palestinians were perhaps correct in their unwillingness to delay too long while the occupation continued. Yet, their rushed and disjointed diplomacy, often for domestic political purposes, did little to help their cause. With the Security Council today dealing with Libya, Ukraine and Yemen, there is little time or appetite in the international community to rectify Palestinian diplomatic blunders.