The United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember state Thursday, in a move that strengthens the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. More than 130 countries voted to recognize Palestine as a nonmember observer state, a stinging defeat for Israel and the United States. Palestinians could use their enhanced status to fuel renewed peace talks or to confront Israel in new ways.
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It’s time for Palestinians to unite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Sunday. People crammed in at a rally in Ramallah, where Abbas spoke after returning from a successful trip to the United Nations, which gave “nonmember observer state” status to the authority. The change puts the Palestinians on the same footing as the Vatican in the eyes of the international organization. The most important divide facing Abbas lies between his own Fatah party, based in the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. Abbas said Sunday that he thinks the two factions can “achieve reconciliation.”
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FRESH AIR
Writing for the New York Review of Books at the beginning of November, Robert Malley, the program director for the Middle East and North Africa with the International Crisis Group, and Hussein Agha described the current situation in the Middle East:
Alliances are topsy-turvy, defy logic, are unfamiliar and shifting. Theocratic regimes back secularists; tyrannies promote democracy; the U.S. forms partnerships with Islamists; Islamists support Western military intervention. Arab nationalists side with regimes they have long combated; liberals side with Islamists with whom they then come to blows. Saudi Arabia backs secularists against the Muslim Brothers and Salafis against secularists. The U.S. is allied with Iraq, which is allied with Iran, which supports the Syrian regime, which the U.S. hopes to help topple. The U.S. is also allied with Qatar, which subsidizes Hamas, and with Saudi Arabia, which funds Salafis who inspire jihadists who kill Americans whenever they can.