People are frustrated. Jews, liberal Christians, Christian Zionists, Muslims and people who couldn’t care about religion at all: all of them have an opinion about who should be beaten about the head right now. Even the pacifists seem to be ready to come to blows.

The left, those on the left who pay some lip-service to caring about Israel at least, say that they only want “justice” for the Palestinians. But justice requires more than more votes in the United Nations, justice requires more than threats of boycotts, or threats of violence. Justice requires caring about the other’s well-being, Israel’s well-being. Justice is defined as “the quality of being fair and reasonable.” There is nothing reasonable about refusing to negotiate and refusing to compromise where necessary.

They shout “Justice!” but there is no justice in this.

Instead as I wrote for We Are For Israel, they are demanding an affirmation of Khartoum, “No negotiations. No recognition. No peace.” Hopefully sanity and not enmity will prevail, but I’m not holding my breath.

Four speeches. Lots of argument and conflict.

The President seemingly said what he did on Thursday in the hope of preparing the stage to go to European leaders and the Palestinians hoping to head off an attempt by the Palestinians to bring a vote for statehood to the UN General Assembly. Some of you may question this motive. I do not. I do think that is exactly what President Obama was trying to do. The Congress of the United States is even working on legislation in which the President is urged to act against such a move.

There was an understanding, I believe based upon the counsel of Samantha Power, one of the President’s advisors, that the Palestinians could invoke UNGA Resolution 377 to go around a Security Council veto by the US.

United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution 377, the “Uniting for Peace” resolution, states that, in cases where the United Nations Security Council fails to act in order to maintain international peace and security, owing to disagreement between its five permanent members, the matter shall be addressed immediately by the General Assembly, using the mechanism of the Emergency Special Session.

Evidently, however, this is not true because, according to a J Post article published yesterday, in order for a vote to recognize statehood to take place at all, it needs to go through the Security Council first which means that absolutely nothing has changed. A US Security Council veto will prevent a vote from being taken. It is not the case that a vote is taken and then approved by the Security Council. There will be no vote if the US vetoes it. Thus, there was and is no need for the US to lobby European governments or for the US to convince the Palestinian leadership not to pursue it. This is a dead issue unless the sole purpose of US lobbying efforts are to get other nations to side with the US veto so that the US in not alone in vetoing the effort.

This is the real purpose of President Obama’s efforts in recent weeks. There is little or no chance that the Administration did not know about the rules in the UN. It is much more likely that the Obama administration was using the confusion about the possibility of the Palestinians utilizing UNGA 337 to pressure Israel to make concessions in order to promote negotiations so that other nations would be more willing to preemptively join the US in declaring opposition to a unilateral declaration of PA statehood in the UN. Now, that the cat is out of the bag, the entire argument is revealed to be a house of cards.

We are now back to where we were and where we were is that the Palestinians both need to negotiate in order to achieve the realization of a state and lack any bargaining chips in those negotiations other than violence or its absence. Because attacking security barriers is by definition an act of hostility, those who claim that “non-violence” may succeed are incorrect. Marching against borders is an act of violence even if done without weaponry or physical conflict. I wrote about this only a couple of weeks ago.

But what is more important now is that the situation is exactly as I wrote about in November, one in which the Palestinians lack any leverage in the negotiations. In fact, they have even less leverage now than they did then and that is saying a whole lot. If you haven’t read my article on Palestinian Leverage from November, you really should. It is all you really need to know about what is going on in the peace process.

Meanwhile, Rafah opened today. More on that to come.

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people.

Conclusions drawn from history and experience are often ignored in favor of the exploration by trial and error of new approaches or even previously tried and rejected ones. The belief that it is the Jews, and specifically the Jewish state, who are intractable in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is exactly such a previously tried and rejected approach. Israel has agreed to final peace agreements at the negotiating table three times, since 1967. Three times!

1. With Egypt
2. With Jordan
3. With the Palestinians at Camp David

The Palestinians have never agreed to peace once, only to interruptions in violence for negotiations through which they might pursue gains that they were unable to obtain through violence. Current attempts to utilize the United Nations to obtain gains are the result of the failure of both violence and negotiations to advance the goal of eventually eradicating the Jewish state, the unrealized goal of the violence.

That reasonable people argue for the creation of a Palestinian state roughly along the 1967 borders has allowed the Palestinian leadership legitimacy in pursuit of a goal not limited to the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but in fact to pursue the destruction of Israel with the creation of a Palestinian state that substantially weakens Israel’s security and viability being a step in that direction.

This is why it is Israel’s security and not the borders of a future Palestinian state that must be discussed first. For those truly pursuing peace, the coexistence of the two states in peace and security must take precedence over the land which they control and it must be clear that all belligerent claims, much less actions, must end with whatever peace agreement is made.

As I wrote recently for We Are For Israel, American advocacy must support Israel in achieving this goal, in achieving security, opposing efforts in the UN advancing territorial claims by the Palestinians without negotiating a permanent peace.