A mass rally in Ramallah marks the passage of the statehood bid into the UN chambers, 1; a perceptive account of the forces that have brought the Pa to this position by Phyllis Bennis, 2; and for those who have floundered in the mass of material, a clear guide from the Afro-Middle East Centre

Graham Usher analyses the changes in the state of play which may follow from the request for statehood recognition by the UN, including a revival of mass action. Second, Omar Barghouti spells out the hostility felt by many Palestinians to what they see as the weak and appeasing role of the PA, exemplified by their desire for UN recognition and for more negotiations with Israel

The Italian NGO, Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), has published a set of MEDPRO reports on the sustainability of various Mediterranean states Its report on Israel/Palestine, ( below with footnotes etc stripped out) reaches a gloomy judgment because of Israel’s fixation on its status quo, isolation within its own region and failure of political leadership.

Guy Goodwin-Gill, Professor of International Refugee Law at Oxford University, wrote an opinion for the team preparing the Palestinian statehood bid that recognition could deprive the Palestinian diaspora of their right of return (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/238962-final-pdf-plo-statehood-opinionr-arb.html. for the original document) The question depends on the limited authority of the PA as a government, versus the PLO. Here Ma’an collects the opinion of four other experts

Joel Beinin examines the effect, or lack of it, of the Arab Spring on the players in Palestine’s future and concludes the 2-state solution is dead; 2nd, at a forum on Palestinian statehood, Samah Sabawi argued that the PA’s bid is a doomed strategy for resuming negotiations with Israel and will remain symbolic.

Al Haq, the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists with special consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council provides an authoritative guide to the PA’s bid for UN recognition of its statehood

The PA’s bid for statehood has put it in hock to the USA – which is expected to veto recognition. So ‘Palestinians will still need to wage a robust, multi-dimensional, and global campaign to achieve self-determination’.

Caught between acting for the Palestinian national interest – as demanded by the Fatah/Hamas deal and the bid for UN recognition of statehood – and pleasing its hawkish funders, the PA is again paralysed and starved of income and reputation

In Ramallah, ‘revolutionaries have reinvented themselves as power-point professionals’. In this essay, Adam Shatz examines how the PA, the previous intifadas, the village of Bilin, the Nakba day mass movement and the Fatah/Hamas deal are viewed, at a time when Palestinians suddenly no longer expect or fear the US will determine their future

Israel launches a drive through eastern Europe, where the Palestinian voice has hardly been heard through the clouds of history, to pre-empt support at the UN in September for recognition of Palestinian statehood

Palestinians have one tremendous resource in their fight for independence says Jeff Halper. This is civil society – at home, in the Palestinian diaspora, amongst the millions abroad who support their cause. The Palestinian Authority should treat us, not the US, as their greatest ally

WHO attributes Gaza’s acute shortage of medical products to the fear of suppliers they will not be paid because Israel has withheld tax transfers to the PA after the Hamas/Fatah deal

Take an area where traditional heads of household have been dispossessed of all political and economic authority, add guns and drugs, take away any police authority and you are left with the violent chaos that is the Palestinian village in Area B

Jeff Halper looks into a future which coud hold Palestinian statehood and then a bi-national, democratic state from Jordan to the Mediterranean

Obama’s speech underscored ‘that self-government under Israel’s brutal occupation and blackmail is an illusion and it might be better to dissolve the Palestinian Authority that sustains this illusion’ writes Ali Abunimah

This story of an advert for Subaru in which a settler runs over 2 Palestinian children was put out, and translated, by the Chinese news agency Xinhua

An economist with special responsibility for Palestine, Raja Khalidi questions the political wishful thinking about the Palestinian state and the efficacy of market liberalism on which the future is being planned.

A truly shocking report on the use of torture by the Palestinian Authority, published by the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK in association with the Middle East Monitor: “This report is very significant, first for documenting the awful abuses of human rights continuing on a daily basis in the West Bank, and second for illustrating the depths to which the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli occupation forces and the US and EU funders and supporters of the current approach have allowed the situation to sink. There will be shocking consequences if these issues are not addressed, above all by finding a realistic, determined and honourable way to end the occupation.”
Sir Jeremy Greenstock Former British ambassador to the United Nations

Kieron Monks provides a strong critique of aid to Palestine which he characterises as ‘not sustainable development [but...] a permanent life-support system’, a critique he applies both to UNWRA support and widespread foreign aid more generally which is presiding over – and contributing to – a devastating collapse of the Palestinian economy.

Uri Avnery writes: “The Netanyahu Government’s protest against the boycott proclaimed by the Palestinian Authority against settlements products is the epitome of chutzpah which deserves to be registered in the Guinness Book of Records…”