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Yellow Alert Status

September 27, 2011

 

Palestinian UN Vote To Be Delayed

 

The effort by Palestinian leaders to obtain statehood from the UN in September is over except for the shouting. In late breaking developments U.S. diplomats have reportedly won the diplomatic contest to delay any UN vote on the Palestinian request for statehood and submit the bid to a special UN committee for further study on Wednesday, September 28.

The parliamentary move to “table” the Palestinian request and submit the issue to a committee will delay the entire process until at least October. Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told reporters on his flight back to the West Bank, that he expects the UN Security Council to vote on the issue within “weeks and not months.”

Part of the reason for delay is that both the Palestinians and the US want the delay. Why? The Palestinians need 9 “yes” votes on the council  At the moment, they can only count on 6 votes coming from:

Russia, China, India, Brazil, Lebanon and South Africa.

Palestinian delegations will head to three other nations now sitting on the fence. Gabon, Nigeria and Bosnia are nations that have previously expressed support for Palestinian statehood but have so far withheld any indication as to which way their nations would vote on the matter. One other nation, Portugal said it will support a partial member status for now.

For the Palestinians to win recognition, at least 9 Security Council members must approve the petition with none of the 5 permanent Security Council members vetoing the petition. France and Britain have indicated they will not veto the application and only the U.S. stands ready to veto the measure if 9 or more “yes” votes are recorded. A U.S. veto could counter even 14 yes votes out of the 15 council members participating.

With a U.S. veto, the Palestinians stand no chance of recognition but the plan is to press ahead anyway and at least embarrass the United States diplomatically. A U.S. veto could also inflame the entire Arab world and trigger street riots, terrorism and be an excuse for Hamas and other terror groups to launch a war against Israel that could domino into a regional war especially if Turkey were to become involved on behalf of the Palestinians.

Because of the diplomatic uncertainties at the UN, major Middle East news has been very quiet as nations were waiting for something to develop at the UN on Monday or Tuesday. Instead, on Monday, the Security Council took up the Palestinian petition and then proposed to continue consideration on Wednesday. After that decision, the U.S. lobbied hard behind the scenes for moving the matter to the “Membership Committee” for further evaluation - a time delaying tactic. On Wednesday, the U.S. will ask for a motion to turn the matter over to the membership committee and thus give time for diplomacy to restore peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

In the meantime, the Palestinians will lobby hard with the leaders of Gabon, Bosnia and Nigeria for a “yes” vote, forcing the U.S. to cast a veto.

It remains to be seen as to how long the issue will remain in committee but it could be weeks or months according to various diplomatic sources.

 

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Turkey’s War Threats

Against Israel, Cyrpus and Greece

For the past several days, Turkey has kept a low profile in its dispute with Israel, Cyprus and Greece over mineral rights in the Mediterranean Sea. That status changed just hours before this posting when Turkey’s Prime Minister once again declared that Turkey would take all necessary steps to defend its rights over natural resources in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Turkish leader’s remarks once again underscored Turkey’s determination to not allow Israel, Cyprus or Greece conduct natural gas or oil well drilling in international waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This means that the standoff will continue indefinitely, with Turkey continuing a “cold war” of sorts with its neighbors. This situation remains extremely flammable, especially with the Palestinian vote being delayed fo several weeks. Any naval incidents between Turkey and her neighbors could spark a wider conflict in a matter of hours. We’ll keep a watch on this situation.

 

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European Economic Woes

The European economic crisis continued to unfold as the week began as European nations struggled to come up with a reasonable solution to stave off default by Greece on its loans. There was no change in the status quo on the matter until later on Tuesday when European finance ministers found a joint solution to keep Greece from defaulting later this week on its debt.  For the moment, the crisis seems to have abated a bit, but then its been and on and off situation with Greece for the past six months We expect this problem will continue to return like a boomerang once again in a matter of weeks. Again we’ll monitor and keep you advised.

This concludes our YELLOW ALERT Coverage for now as we are standing down with a devolution of tensions in all 3 areas of concern. Keep in mind things could however flare up and turn on a dime within an hour, so we’ll continue to monitor and post breaking news developments and NewsFlashes as needed.

Meanwhile, our Middle East News coverage for the past week was pretty much covered in our various NewsFlash reports. Likewise, our World Round up was pretty much covered by our Newsflashes on the economic developments in Europe. Otherwise it was a rather slow week for World News related to prophetic developments apart from the 3 issues we’ve been monitoring.

We’ll be looking to return to our regular weekly coverage at the end of the week.

Should major breaking news emerge, we’ll post on it promptly without waiting for weekly coverage. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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