2011 – The year Palestine is born?

By the summer of 2011, Salam Fayyad may finally succeed in totally reforming the Palestinian Authority – and that could spell big trouble for Israel. The summer of 2011. That is when Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has scheduled the unveiling of the new and completely reformed, rebuilt and expected-to-be responsible PA. While the implementation of this program – widely known as the “Fayyad Plan” – is still more than a year away, it already has Israel extremely worried. This is because it may lead to a third intifada, during which Israel would be fighting a 20,000-strong militia, half of which was trained by the US and EU, and not terrorist organizations like Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The scenario is quite simple. Fayyad succeeds in implementing his ambitious plan – ending the PA economy’s dependence on Israel, reforming the security forces, unifying the legal system and downsizing the government – and decides that now is the time for statehood. Work on such a declaration is already being spearheaded by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. The problem though is that Israeli settlements are still located in the West Bank. The solution – an official PA decision to launch a violent terror campaign branded around the world as a war for freedom. The second scenario heard these days in the corridors of the IDF’s Central Command base in Jerusalem is that Fayyad will succeed in implementing his plan and will decide to take his case to the UN Security Council, where he will ask for his newly-formed state of Palestine to be recognized. The Europeans will likely raise their hands, as will the Russians and the Chinese. The US is the wild card. On the one hand, Washington has traditionally used its veto power to thwart anti-Israel resolutions. On the other hand, if the current crisis with the White House continues and even gets worse, President Barack Obama could decide to let the resolution pass. This will automatically lead to calls on Israel to immediately withdraw from the West Bank. When it fails or even just falters, it will come under an unprecedented hail of international criticism and become a pariah state. There is also a third alternative, which is the one the IDF hopes will materialize.