Ralph Lombreglia

An arti­cle at Reuters today reports on Pres­i­dent Obama’s remarks at the U.N. regard­ing the Pales­tin­ian U.N. bid for state­hood. But it’s not the arti­cle that Reuters orig­i­nally pub­lished at this URL. The orig­i­nal arti­cle was removed.

I just posted a com­ment there (using the user­name “space­walk”) about the dis­ap­pear­ance of the orig­i­nal arti­cle. My com­ment is repro­duced below because you’ll prob­a­bly never read it in the article’s comment-stream at Reuters. Com­ments on the Reuters site are mod­er­ated (they do not self-publish auto­mat­i­cally; they must be approved, and I have no argu­ment with that prac­tice), and Reuters notes its right to remove com­ments that “do not meet its standards.” 

There are plenty of reader com­ments on the arti­cle that are crit­i­cal of Obama and U.S. pol­icy in this region of the world. Inter­est­ingly, as of 9 PM EDT, almost all of them seem to have been writ­ten in response to the orig­i­nal arti­cle, not the cur­rent arti­cle, to judge by both their tone and their timestamps. 

Here’s the text of my com­ment, which includes the full text of the orig­i­nal Reuters article.

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The arti­cle at this URL was orig­i­nally enti­tled “Obama tries to derail Pales­tin­ian U.N. state­hood bid” and was filed by Alis­tair Lyon with the date­line: Wed Sep 21, 2011 3:26pm EDT. As you can tell from the head­line alone, the orig­i­nal arti­cle had a tone much more crit­i­cal of Obama and U.S. for­eign pol­icy of the last decades; for exam­ple, it con­tained the fol­low­ing paragraph:

“How­ever, it is the fail­ure of 20 years of U.S.-brokered nego­ti­a­tions that has dri­ven Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas to take his quest for a state to the United Nations — a ploy that could embar­rass the United States by forc­ing it to pro­tect its Israeli ally against the tide of world opinion.”

Less than 4 hours later, that arti­cle was com­pletely replaced by this one, filed by Matt Spetal­nick and Laura MacIn­nis, who were listed as con­tribut­ing reporters on the Lyon arti­cle. (Lyon is now listed as a con­tribut­ing reporter for this article.)

I’d like some­one at Reuters to explain why we should not con­clude that the Lyon arti­cle was sup­pressed. 1) The new arti­cle resides at the same URL as the old one; 2) a search of Reuters for the old head­line comes up empty, and 3) the reader comment-stream for the Lyon arti­cle has been retained for the new arti­cle, which of course causes most of the early com­ments to make no sense.

Here’s the full text of the orig­i­nal article:

Obama tries to derail Pales­tin­ian U.N. state­hood bid

By Alis­tair Lyon
UNITED NATIONS | Wed Sep 21, 2011 3:26pm EDT

(Reuters) – Pres­i­dent Barack Obama, try­ing to avert a clash over Pales­tin­ian state­hood, told the United Nations on Wednes­day there was no sub­sti­tute for Israeli-Palestinian nego­ti­a­tions or any short cut to peace.

With U.S. cred­i­bil­ity and influ­ence in the Mid­dle East at stake, Obama wants to dis­suade the Pales­tini­ans from ask­ing the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil for state­hood in the teeth of Israeli anger and a U.S. threat to use its veto if it came to a vote.

But a senior Pales­tin­ian offi­cial, Nabil Shaath, said, “We will cor­dially and respect­fully tell him ‘no’.”

The Pales­tini­ans, how­ever, would give the Secu­rity Coun­cil “some time” to mull the state­hood claim before they took it to the U.N. Gen­eral Assem­bly, he told a news conference.

Flag-waving Pales­tini­ans filled the squares of West Bank cities to rally behind the ini­tia­tive at the United Nations.

A year after telling the Gen­eral Assem­bly he hoped to see a Pales­tin­ian state born by now, the U.S. pres­i­dent said cre­at­ing such a state along­side Israel remained his goal.

“But the ques­tion isn’t the goal we seek — the ques­tion is how to reach it. And I am con­vinced that there is no short cut to the end of a con­flict that has endured for decades,” he said.

“Peace will not come through state­ments and res­o­lu­tions at the U.N. — if it were that easy, it would have been accom­plished by now,” Obama said.

“Ulti­mately, it is Israelis and Pales­tini­ans who must live side by side. Ulti­mately, it is Israelis and Pales­tini­ans — not us — who must reach agree­ment on the issues that divide them: on bor­ders and secu­rity; on refugees and Jerusalem,” he added.

How­ever, it is the fail­ure of 20 years of U.S.-brokered nego­ti­a­tions that has dri­ven Pales­tin­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Abbas to take his quest for a state to the United Nations — a ploy that could embar­rass the United States by forc­ing it to pro­tect its Israeli ally against the tide of world opinion.

BLEAK PROSPECTS
And although Obama said he had set out a new basis for nego­ti­a­tions in May, chances of reviv­ing peace talks look bleak.

The two sides are far apart. The Pales­tini­ans are divided inter­nally and Obama will not want to risk alien­at­ing Israel’s pow­er­ful U.S. sup­port base by press­ing for Israeli con­ces­sions as he enters a tough bat­tle for re-election next year.

The Pales­tini­ans see state­hood as open­ing the way for nego­ti­a­tions between equals. Israel says the Pales­tin­ian move aims at de-legitimizing the Jew­ish state.

The drama at the United Nations is play­ing out as Arab upris­ings are trans­form­ing the Mid­dle East­ern landscape.

Obama pledged sup­port for Arab demo­c­ra­tic change, called for more U.N. sanc­tions against Syr­ian leader Bashar al-Assad and urged Iran and North Korea to meet their nuclear oblig­a­tions — twin stand­offs that have eluded his efforts at resolution.

“There is a future of greater oppor­tu­nity for the peo­ple of these nations if their gov­ern­ments meet their oblig­a­tions. But if they con­tinue down a path that is out­side inter­na­tional law, they must be met with greater pres­sure and iso­la­tion,” he said.

Iran freed two Amer­i­cans held for spy­ing, a day before Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad addresses the United Nations. The Iran­ian leader has described it as a com­pas­sion­ate release.

Obama later met Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu and assured him of unwa­ver­ing U.S. sup­port. Netanyahu said the Pales­tin­ian action at the United Nations was doomed to fail.

Obama was also due to appeal to Abbas in per­son not to present U.N. Sec­re­tary Gen­eral Ban Ki-moon with an appli­ca­tion for full mem­ber­ship of the world body on Friday.

DIPLOMATIC DISASTER
In one of sev­eral fran­tic efforts to avert a diplo­matic. dis­as­ter, French Pres­i­dent Nico­las Sarkozy urged the United Nations to grant the Pales­tini­ans the sta­tus of observer state, like the Vat­i­can, while out­lin­ing a one-year roadmap to peace.

“Each of us knows that Pales­tine can­not imme­di­ately obtain full and com­plete recog­ni­tion of the sta­tus of United Nations mem­ber state,” he said, adding that a veto in the Secu­rity Coun­cil could start a new cycle of vio­lence in the Mid­dle East.

The coun­cil could delay action on Abbas’ request, giv­ing the United States, Rus­sia, the Euro­pean Union and the United Nations — the “Quar­tet” of Mid­dle East medi­a­tors — more time to craft a state­ment that could coax both sides back to the table.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Pales­tin­ian offi­cial, said Obama’s speech was a real dis­ap­point­ment.
“You would think that the Pales­tini­ans are occu­py­ing Israel,” she said in a con­fer­ence call with reporters, accus­ing Obama of show­ing empa­thy with Israelis, but not Palestinians.

She also com­plained that his approval of prin­ci­ples of free­dom and self-determination appeared to be selective.

“They apply to every Arab indi­vid­ual, but when it comes to Pales­tini­ans suf­fer­ing from an oppres­sive for­eign mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, some­how … these prin­ci­ples do not apply. They only apply when Arabs rebel against their own oppres­sive régime.”

What­ever hap­pens at the United Nations, Pales­tini­ans will remain under Israeli occu­pa­tion and any nom­i­nal state would lack rec­og­nized bor­ders or real inde­pen­dence and sovereignty.

It is a mea­sure of their des­per­a­tion that they seem deter­mined to press on with an ini­tia­tive that could incur finan­cial ret­ri­bu­tion from Israel and the United States.

In his speech to the annual U.N. Gen­eral Assem­bly, Ban asked gov­ern­ments to show sol­i­dar­ity in meet­ing “extra­or­di­nary chal­lenges” for the world body, rang­ing from devel­op­ment and cli­mate change to peace­keep­ing and human­i­tar­ian relief.

“With­out resources, we can­not deliver. Today, I ask gov­ern­ments that have tra­di­tion­ally borne the lion’s share of the costs to not flag in their gen­eros­ity,” he declared, pledg­ing to stream­line U.N. bud­gets to “do more with less.”

(Addi­tional report­ing by Ali Sawafta, Andrew Quinn, Lou Char­bon­neau, Matt Spetal­nick, Laura MacIn­nis, John Irish, Emmanuel Jarry, Daniel Bases and Patrick Worsnip at United Nations, Tom Perry in Ramal­lah; Edit­ing by Doina Chiacu)