Obama's unnuanced "no" to the Palestinians' UN statehood bid is the equivalent of telling them to "stay in the back of the bus," says Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation.
What it boils down to is siding with the status quo, which delegitimizes Palestinian moderates, Mr. Clemons says. It's an approach, he adds, that plays into the hands of extremists by sending the message that compromise and nonviolence don't work.
Instead, the US should find a way, through negotiation and compromise, to vote yes when statehood eventually comes to a UN vote, some argue.
"There's still time to pull this back from the precipice. So the US goal should be to negotiate a package deal that says 'yes, with conditions,' " to a Palestinian state, says Roth of Johns Hopkins. Such a deal, he says, could include barring Palestinians from seeking any kind of military or economic sanctions on Israel for a decade, to allow time for the two states to negotiate outstanding differences.
As problematic as moving ahead on a statehood resolution would be for both the US and Israel, Roth says, the interests of neither will be served if the region – and history – judges the US as "thwarting the aspirations of an Arab people."
