INSS Insight No. 285, October 4, 2011 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference convened on September 19, 2011 in Vienna for its annual meeting. Common to these conferences is the injection of politics into the discussions, i.e., proposals by the Arab nations, headed by Egypt, concerning Israel’s nuclear capabilities. Egypt views the annual conference as a proper forum for advancing its efforts to dismantle these alleged capabilities.

Political commentators have written that although in his September 2011 UN speech Palestinian President Abbas delivered a vitriolic diatribe against Israel, the speech also contained an historic renunciation of Palestinian territorial claims beyond the June 4, 1967 borders. 

Indeed President Abbas stated in his speech that the application for membership in the UN was submitted "on the basis of the 4 June 1967 borders, with Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital." This stipulation was reiterated when President Abbas added, "The goal of the Palestinian people is the realization of their inalienable national rights in their independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, on all the land of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, which Israel occupied in the June 1967 war."

On September 23 the Palestinian move in the UN culminated with the lodging of an appeal to the Security Council, delivered through the Secretary General, to recognize "Palestine" as a full member. The Security Council has begun deliberations, which are likely to take a number of weeks or even months to complete.

While the bill was no longer able to empower the lifting of tax exempt status for foreign funded NGOs and it only addressed foreign funding of NGOs by government entities, it was a major step for foreign funding transparency. The Soros empire had been built on non-transparency, on hidden donor lists and front groups funded by think tanks with money pipelined in grants through a dozen different organizations.                                                                                     

A bipartisan group of lawmakers sent Palestinian Authority officials a powerful message Tuesday: There will be severe consequences for any attempt to have the United Nations recognize an independent Palestinian state based on Israel's June 4, 1967 borders.

That could range from the closing of Palestine Liberation Organization offices in Washington and other diplomatic actions, to a full cutoff of American foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Such a unilateral action violates the 18-year-old Oslo Accords, brokered by the United States, which call for direct negotiations to resolve any conflict.

The Palestinian Authority launched a propaganda campaign to support its appeal to the UN. The campaign is intended to show internal Palestinian support for the move, strengthen international support and calm Israeli apprehensions (by downplaying the issue of the "right of return"). It will probably be reinforced by broad – and potentially violent – popular activities, even though the Palestinians aspire to contain the events. The appeal will be played out on the background of the break-in to the Israeli embassy in Cairo and Turkey's inflammatory declarations.