The UN, Israel, and Palestine

I must admit, I don’t know much about the Israel/Palestine conflict. From what I hear my leaders in Canada say, we want a peace deal and a two-state solution.

 

So why is the UN giving Palestine recognition as a state a bad thing?  Call this arm-chair foreign policy, but this is how it seems to me.

 

Israel has no intention of allowing Palestine to be a separate state, but since the majority of the world seems to be in favour of a Palestinian state, Israel must pay lip service to the rest of the world by saying that are working towards peace and a two-state solution.

 

However, during this time of negation between Israel and Palestine, the Israelis kept building settlements in land that was disputed.

 

This would be like if my neighbour and I  had an argument over who owned some shared land between our houses, and every day that we meet to talk about it, my neighbour would move his fence a little closer to my house. So after years of talking and negotiating, even if we can come to an agreement, all the land is already behind my neighbour fence and I have a feeling he won’t give it back easily.

 

Are the peace talks that Israel and Canada and the USA all want just nothing more than a stall tactic to give Israel enough time to build enough settlements that there is no land left for a two-state solution?

 

And all this talk from Canada and the USA at the UN about how bad giving Palestine statehood seems very hollow to me. Peace talks have been broke off for years now, so Palestine decided to force the issue with the UN and now Canada and the USA among a few others started to threaten the UN with loss of funding and other various threats if they voted for Palestine.

 

What is so bad about giving Palestine statehood at the UN? It seems like the only major change would be that Palestine can now access the International Criminal Court, but why would the USA and Canada and Israel want to block Palestine from the ICC?

 

If my neighbour is stealing my land, why is so bad for me to get a lawyer on my side?

 

Is the Israeli end game to back Palestine in a corner so they have no choice but to sign a peace agreement that favours Israel, and now that Palestine has the UN and ICC in there corner, Israel might have to actually capitulate and negotiate on a level playing field?

 

Maybe I am way off the mark here, but it seems like the US, Canada, and Israel would be very happy to have Palestine just go away  and under the cover of unending peace talks, Israel is taking away Palestine one settlement at a time.