There is some talk in the media, but not enough, about an issue threading its way into the United Nations. The Palestinians are moving towards a push for official recognition of statehood in the international community.
It is important at the outset to recognize the misinformation that has been disseminated as truth. As every schoolchild and most adults "know," the people of the nation of Palestine were attacked and driven from their homeland sometime after the Second World War by radical Zionist Jews who established a new Jewish state in a land where there really had not been a significant Jewish presence for centuries. The Palestinians, as everyone "knows," are merely seeking a bit of their land back so that they may live in peace, away from the attacks they regularly suffer from the Jews in Israel. That, at least, is the media version. To paraphrase President Reagan's comment about liberals, it's not that the people don't know anything, but that they know so much that isn't so, because the media version, while it tugs at the heartstrings and cries out for a righting of wrongs to the poor Palestinians, just isn't so.
It's partly a result of the absurdly biased reporting from the Middle East that anyone believes the Israelis are going out of their way to attack anyone. Think about how many of the stories on Israel are reported. A headline will read: Israeli soldiers kill people in an attack. In the body of the story, there will be a notation that these were counterattacks in response to attacks on Israel. Doesn't happen? What about this headline: "Egypt decries Israeli attack that killed 3 of its soldiers" in the LA Times, August 20, 2011. Israel was defending itself from attacks on its own people, and that just isn't unbiased reporting.
It's also a result of a careful revision of history. The Jew's homeland is the land of Israel; they were forcibly disposessed by the Romans and scattered abroad throughout the world after the Jewish revolts of circa 70 A.D. and 130 A.D. against Roman occupation.
Palestine is an ancient land, and many peoples have been "Palestinians." This is a quote from The Historical Atlas of the Bible, by Dr Ian Barnes,
"The Holy Land has long been a route for invasion and trade, a cockpit of war over which empires have always sought dominance. Conquered by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Alexander the Great, and the Ptolemaic Empire, the region finally fell to Rome in 63 BC. The Persian Sanassid Empire followed, destroying the Byzantine presence. This was in turn overthrown by the Arab Conquests of the Seventh Century, eventually creating the Ottoman Empire. The Crusader states were a minor interim period during this process. Turkish defeat by the Allies during the First World War witnessed the Fertile Crescent becoming the bounty of the Western imperial powers. The Ottoman Empire was carved up into League of Nation mandates. France gained control of Syria and Lebanon.... Britain was awarded Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan.... Meanwhile, Britain promised Jews a national home in Palestine, embodied in the 1920 (sic) Balfour Declaration...."
The Balfour Declaration was included in the "British Mandate for Palestine" approved in the League of Nations in 1922. Under that Mandate, about 23% was set aside for a Jewish state which, including the Golan Heights and Gaza, closely matches modern Israel's borders. The remaining 77% was set aside for a Palestinian state for the Arab population. Under the mandate, the League tried to establish a Nation of Palestine. The Arabs rejected it, apparently for the reason that it allowed the existence of a Jewish state. The entire plan collapsed into an Arab-Jewish conflict, and as a result, there has never really been a nation of Palestine.
In short, the Arabs are going to the UN to vote to get a "nation," which they were offered in 1922. But don't think things have changed. This "Nation of Palestine," being created out of whole cloth and without defined borders, will have standing to go to the World Court with civil and criminal complaints, allowing another forum to attack Israel. Furthermore, when asked about the presence of Jews, the PLO Ambassador said it would be best if there were no Jews in Palestine. Perhaps that's mere hyperbole, but it sounds eerily similar in sentiment to Iran's more vitriolic rhetoric.
This bid for nationhood seems more like a detour around the negotiated peace process than a good faith effort to co-exist with Israel. In that case, the establishment of a nation of Palestine combined with increasing fundamentalism in the neighboring nations may well create a volatile situation. Let's hope this isn't a detour into war.
It is also worth mentioning that the Arabs in the area were offered a state under The United Nations Partition Plan in 1947. They refused the plan because it created a Jewish state as well. This lead directly to the Jewish war of Independence, and the creation of the state of Israel.
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