I WAS pained to watch the helplessness and frustration of 80-year-old Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas while he was speaking at the UN General Assembly annual session.

He was bitter and frank while expressing his tiredness with the mirage of ‘direct peace talks’ and a two-state solution, both of which have led his nation to a cul de sac.

In contrast, Israeli PM Benyamin Netanyahu was in full bloom — excited, angry and threatening. However, he did speak the truth when he said, “when bad behaviour is rewarded, it only gets worse.”

Who doesn’t know who is the stubborn and violent bully of the Middle East. It started as a tiny state and now holds millions of Palestinians under its occupation? Its ever-expanding illegal settlements in the Palestinian Territories have always been rewarded by the West.

President Abbas knows very well that at the UN it’s only the powerful who have a voice, no matter whether they are the aggressors or their supporters. When the aggressor couldn’t justify his occupation morally, he tuned to biblical history to prove his claim over Palestine. If this is the case, then every nation should invade the other on the pretext of ancient historical empires and their boundaries.

Abbas has taken back something to console his people --- his picture raising his ‘country’s’ flag at the United Nations. For the time being, that is all the world can offer him, a country not on the ground but in the air.

Masood Khan

Jubail, Saudi Arabia

Published in Dawn, October 6th , 2015

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