Abbas: “The Palestinian Spring Is Here”

Upon his return to Ramallah after asking the U.N. to recognize Palestinian statehood on Friday, President Mahmoud Abbas told a crowd of supporters that “the Palestinian spring is here. A popular spring, a populist spring, a spring of peaceful struggle that will reach its goal.” In the wake of Arab Spring uprisings across the region, Bill Spindle of The Wall Street Journal writes that “many Palestinians, especially youths who make up the majority of the population, see the U.N. bid as something else: a sharp break with a peace process and the beginning of a new era.”

Meanwhile, Michael Singh, writing at Foreign Policy, contends that the focus on the Palestinian bid for statehood before the U.N. has “overshadowed the real historic drama that is playing out in the Middle East today,” where “tumult seems to be the rule.” Singh argues that the region has been irrevocably altered, and that U.S. policy makers must sift the fundamental changes from the cosmetic. He outlines three shifts that characterize the region writ large, regardless of where each country’s respective uprising currently stands: internal politics in Arab countries matter, new governments will likely be less amenable to the “West” and Israel, and the region will likely be more “dangerous and volatile” in the future.