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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/30/palestine-un-israel-deborah-orr
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| Version 4 | Version 5 |
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| Palestine gets a 'birth certificate' | Palestine gets a 'birth certificate' |
| (4 months later) | |
| So what is Palestine, then? Most of the UN thinks it's a state, not just an entity, though not quite stately enough to join the UN. But Israel and the US don't consider Palestine to be, well, Palestine, and they seem furious that the rest of the world should have the temerity to defy them, by voting overwhelmingly for recognition of Palestine as a "non-member observer state" (Palestinians seen celebrating, left). Apparently, only Israel should have the right to say when and how Palestine achieves statehood, via "direct negotiations". | So what is Palestine, then? Most of the UN thinks it's a state, not just an entity, though not quite stately enough to join the UN. But Israel and the US don't consider Palestine to be, well, Palestine, and they seem furious that the rest of the world should have the temerity to defy them, by voting overwhelmingly for recognition of Palestine as a "non-member observer state" (Palestinians seen celebrating, left). Apparently, only Israel should have the right to say when and how Palestine achieves statehood, via "direct negotiations". |
| The slogan is repeated again and again, by all of the US and Israeli officials, as they rush to condemn Palestine's modest recognition. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, greeted the result as the "birth certificate" of a Palestinian state, declaring: "Enough of aggression, settlements and occupation." No one has any difficulty, surely, in condemning aggression, particularly in the form of rockets sent by Hamas into Gaza? A lot of us consider settlements and occupation to be acts of aggression as well, and simply don't understand how Israel can manage to persuade itself that, somehow, some way, they're not. | The slogan is repeated again and again, by all of the US and Israeli officials, as they rush to condemn Palestine's modest recognition. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, greeted the result as the "birth certificate" of a Palestinian state, declaring: "Enough of aggression, settlements and occupation." No one has any difficulty, surely, in condemning aggression, particularly in the form of rockets sent by Hamas into Gaza? A lot of us consider settlements and occupation to be acts of aggression as well, and simply don't understand how Israel can manage to persuade itself that, somehow, some way, they're not. |
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