The UK Takes a Powder on Palestine

British Foreign Secretary William Hague says that the UK will abstain at the Security Council on the Palestinian Authority's request for recognition as a state.

France has previously said the same.

The British action won't alter the outcome: the US will veto the measure, quashing it as a juridical matter and sending it to the General Assembly for a symbolic vote.

Yet even so, Hague's statement is a disappointment--and not only because it contradicts what so many senior figures in the British Conservative party have been saying to friends of Israel over the past weeks and months.

Hague's statement means that we may see a majority of the permanent and rotating members of the Security Council voting to reward the Palestinian decision to circumvent the peacemaking process with Israel. These members are creating very skewed and dangerous incentives for the Palestinian Authority to seek propaganda victories rather than to make the concessions needed to reach agreement.