As the Palestinians seek United Nations support for a state of their own, Washington has advanced two arguments to dissuade them: First, that taking the issue of statehood to the U.N. is a unilateral move away from negotiations with Israel; and second, that the effort will be counterproductive because the United States will veto any such U.N. Security Council resolution.
These arguments miss the point. The U.N. may in fact be just the place to invigorate stalled diplomacy. The question should not be what would happen when the U.S. vetoes the U.N. resolution, but what if it doesn't.
Israelis and Palestinians have been in conflict for decades, and Israel has controlled the West Bank and Gaza for 44 years. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians in these territories were born under occupation.