Mahmoud Abbas is right to go ahead with his application for Palestinian statehood at the UN later this week. If there were any doubts about it, the facrt that the US and its protege Israel are so frantically trying to block it suggests it must be the right move. The fact that the US is so fanatically and unreasoningly committed to supporting each and every act of Israeli aggression against the Palestinians, and that Israel is so uncompromisingly opposed to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state within the 1967 borders, really give the Palestinians little choice. Not that it will achieve much except the right to take Israel before the International Criminal Court to put Israel in the dock over the abuses of the occupation and to seek sanctions against both the country and its leaders. Continue reading →