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How to Block the Palestine Statehood Ploy
(Wall Street Journal) John Bolton - The next Arab-Israeli political flashpoint could be this fall at the UN General Assembly where the Palestinian Authority is lobbying Assembly members to legitimize its claim to international status as a "state." A resolution recognizing a Palestinian "state" could also declare its boundary to be the 1967 borders (in actuality, merely the 1949 armistice lines), with or without President Obama's caveat about "agreed upon swaps" of land. The obvious Palestinian objective is to remove the issues of statehood and boundaries from the realm of bilateral negotiations with Israel, making them fait accompli. Congress should legislate broadly that any UN action that purports to acknowledge or authorize Palestinian statehood will result in a cutoff of all U.S. contributions to the offending agency. If the General Assembly ignored this warning, all funds would be cut off to the bloated Secretariat in New York, but not to separate agencies like the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and others with their own governing bodies and funding mechanisms. Fatah's coalition with Hamas already provides statutory grounds (since the U.S. lists Hamas as a terrorist organization) to eliminate funding for the Palestinian Authority. The writer, who served as U.S. ambassador to the UN from 2005 to 2006, is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.