So Palestine has, by a vote in the UN General Assembly, been granted Non-Member Observer status, an indication that there may be a case for recognizing that Palestinians do, indeed, constitute a nation and should be included in discussions of their fate, and of the fate of other nations, to the same extent, perhaps, as their Israeli partners. The fact that Israel, and the US were the only nations of any significance (the other seven are the Pacific Yes-Islands in the US sphere of influence, including the régime currently in power in that rather large US island to the North, Canada) says something not only about the isolation of the Israeli-US war axis, but also about the difference between the General Assembly and the Security Council. The abstainers, including some of the heavy hitters, have shown a lack of spine and an unwillingness to deal openly with one of the World’s most putrid of its long list of festering sores. I have no love for those Palestinians who lob rockets into Israel and who bomb busses in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, but we need to ask ourselves just how long we can expect a nation to submit to the bullying, humiliation, imprisonment, blockade and expropriation visited upon the Palestinians by Bibi and his predecessors without assuming that they are going to get rather exercised and reply in kind? It would be almost funny, were it not so sad, to hear John Baird invoke the 1994 Oslo Accords without mentioning that the first thing Israel did following the signing of that document was to put up several thousand settler homes on Palestinian land in the West Bank. And what was Bibi’s reaction the the acceptance of Palestine as a Non-member Observer? He announced that Israel would build another 3000 settler homes in the West Bank. Doesn’t sound as though he’s all that serious about a just and lasting comprehensive two-state peace solution.