Last week, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas asked the UN to recognize a Palestinian state. However, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama insisted that only direct negotiations could lead to peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
During his address to the UN, President Obama said that “ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them.” At the same time, Obama said that Palestinians have waited “too long” for a Palestinian state.
GOP candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul expressed his disapproval of the US’s plan to block UN recognition of a Palestinian state in his latest Texas Straight Talk column on Monday. “I do not believe the US should use its position in the UN Security Council to block their membership,” Paul wrote.
Paul also qualified his position on Abbas’ request for UN recognition of a Palestinian state. The Texas Congressman pointed out that he has never been a big fan of the UN. “Personally I wish the United States would de-recognize the United Nations,” Paul admitted. In fact, Paul said that if he were approached by the Palestinians he would “counsel the Palestinians to avoid the United Nations.”
While Paul said he supports the idea behind Abbas’ request because he believes in the “self-determination of peoples,” the Texas Congressman professed that he doesn’t view “UN membership as a particularly productive move for the Palestinian leadership.” Citing examples such as Libya and Iraq, Paul argued that UN membership is “no guarantee that sovereignty will be respected.”
Paul posited that the best approach to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process for the US is to avoid the debate altogether and “end all foreign aid, stop arming foreign countries, encourage peaceful diplomatic resolutions to conflicts, and disengage militarily.”
