Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas in a New York Times op-ed back in May said part of the reason the Palestinians are seeking full U.N. membership is that they’ve lost faith in the negotiations toward a two-state solution. “Negotiations remain our first option, but due to their failure we are now compelled to turn to the international community to assist us,” he wrote. A main obstacle to negotiations is the continuation of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank. In an interview with Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren this weekend on CNN, host Candy Crowley wondered why the Israelis don’t “just stop the settlements and come to the table.” Oren responded:

OREN: Well, we’ve stopped the settlements. We’ve stopped the settlements for ten months and the Palestinians didn’t come to the table. We’re willing to extend that for another three months. And the Obama administration determined that they still weren’t going to come to the table, the Palestinians.

Watch it:

Oren is right. The Israelis did initiate a temporary 10-month settlement freeze which expired nearly one year ago. However, Oren is wrong to say “the Palestinians didn’t come to the table.” Months after the settlement freeze took effect, the Israelis and Palestinians agreed to start direct talks, which began in early September, 2010 in Washington and continued until the Palestinians ended the negotiations after the Israel’s settlement freeze expired weeks later.

In order to keep the direct negotiations alive, President Obama proposed a two-month freeze extension in return for U.S. concessions, including military aid and support for an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley after the Palestinians establish their state. The Palestinians wanted a renewed settlement moratorium to include building in East Jerusalem, which was excluded from the original moratorium. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state in return for the extended settlement freeze, an offer the Palestinians declined.

Why would the Palestinians decline? “Palestinian leaders worry about the ways in which this could prejudice some key final-status issues, notably refugees,” wrote American Task Force on Palestine senior research fellow Hussien Ibish. “Moreover,” Ibish adds, “Palestinians are concerned that recognizing Israel as a Jewish state might be seen as endorsing discrimination against the Palestinian minority in Israel, which is approximately 20 percent of the population.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank have expanded 660 percent since the settlement freeze expired and since then, there has been “nearly 2 times more construction in the settlements than in Israel.”

The New York Times, in an editorial timed to coincide with this week’s meeting of the United Nations’ General Aseembly, asserted that the U.N. Security Council must impose “tougher punishments” in order to dissuade Iran’s nuclear ambitions and “[get] Tehran’s attention.” The editorial read:

The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency is a chilling reminder of both the scale of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the lengths it will go to cover up the truth. The agency expressed strong concern about Iran’s “past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities” with “possible military dimensions.”

Indeed, the IAEA did report those findings but the Times editorial board, it would seem, is also interested in maximizing its readership’s concerns about the Iranian nuclear program. An Atlantic Council report released one day before the Times published its editorial, found that Iran is pushing forward with its nuclear program but that progress has been slow. Report author Babara Slavin pointed out, “Iran used to be able to exploit loopholes, but now they’re running into brick walls. [The U.N. sanctions] are difficult to implement, but they’re slowly being implemented”.

The report weighs the possible Iranian intentions for its nuclear program and, although reasonably good intelligence on Iranian capabilities and nuclear facilities development exists, the report concludes that it is unclear whether Tehran plans to build a weapon or stop short at an earlier stage. Regardless, the report emphasizes that Iran is still in a very early stage if, as the New York Times suggests, it intends to build a nuclear weapon.

Slavin put these questions to Olli Heinonen, the former deputy director of the IAEA. She writes:

Heinonen speaks of a “nuclear ladder” with three steps: producing sufficient fissile material for a weapon; making a nuclear device; and finally, developing the means to deliver it. It is still possible, he believes, to stop Iran on the first rung.

“The genie is out of the bottle but it is not yet wandering around,” he said. In other words, it may be a duck, but it’s not certain that it will ever fly.

While the Atlantic Council’s report acknowledges that sanctions are serving a valuable role, it doesn’t endorse additional sanctions and, unlike the NYT’s editorial board, Slavin has a different emphasis on what U.S. policymakers should do to maximize the potential for Iranian cooperation with the non-proliferation treaty and the IAEA. It reads:

To produce an atmosphere more conducive to a diplomatic solution, the United States and other NPT-recognized nuclear powers must keep their own commitments to ban nuclear testing and accelerate nuclear disarmament. They should also try harder to convince India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel to curb their programs—although Israel, which does not acknowledge its arsenal, should not be expected to do so until Iran takes the suggested steps to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons.

The hawkish NYT editorial asserts that “tougher punishments” are “the only chance of getting Tehran’s attention,” but it might be useful to examine the Atlantic Council’s report for a more nuanced discussion of the various diplomatic levers available to the U.S. and its allies.

On Friday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas laid out his plans to seek full membership at the United Nations Security Council this week. In order for the vote to succeed, it needs nine votes and no veto, and then approval by a two-thirds majority of members of the General Assembly. Alternatively, the Palestinians can seek to win only limited membership as a non-voting member in the General Assembly as a fallback option.

ThinkProgress has reviewed the positions of the 13 Security Council members. Five members are firm supporters of the Palestinian bid, while two, like the United States are opposed. The largest group of countries is the undecided:

FOR THE PALESTINIAN BID

CHINA: The Chinese government announced early this month that it “respects, understands and supports” the Palestinian bid.

INDIA: India, “the first non-Arab state to recognise Palestine in 1988,” announced last week that it would support the Palestinian bid.

LEBANON: Lebanon has announced that it will vote in support of the Palestinian bid.

RUSSIA: Russia announced last week that it will support the Palestinian bid. “We will, of course, vote for any of the Palestinian proposals. But I must say that we did not push them toward this,” said envoy Vitaly Churkin.

SOUTH AFRICA: South Africa announced earlier this month that it will support the Palestinian bid. It will also be actively lobbying African Union member countries to throw their support behind the Palestinians.

UNDECIDED ON THE BID

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: Bosnia and Herzegovina is at this time undecided on how it will vote. The Palestinian delegation has been lobbying them heavily since last week.

BRAZIL: Brazil has not announced an official position on the vote yet. However, a spokesman for Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff did note that the country already recognizes Palestine as a state and that there will be “no change in that position,” signaling that the Brazilians are leaning toward a “yes” vote.

COLOMBIA: Colombia has not announced a strong position on the bid, but they are being heavily lobbied by Israeli officials to oppose the Palestinian move. Colombia has been seeking closer ties with Israel lately.

FRANCE: France has not announced how it will vote on Abbas’ move for full membership. It has offered, however, to support Palestinian efforts to seek limited membership, which they could achieve by going to the General Assembly.

GABON: The Palestinians are currently lobbying Gabon’s government to support their bid. Foreign Policy’s David Bosco argues that they are “on the fence.”

NIGERIA: Israeli officials still consider Nigeria to be “in play” as it is undecided.

PORTUGAL: Portugal remains undecided. Some European Union diplomats expect Portugal to vote in favor.

UNITED KINGDOM: The United Kingdom is “still refusing to clarify exactly how it will vote when Palestinians” bid for full membership. A majority of the British public support the bid.

OPPOSED TO THE BID

GERMANY: Germany is one of the few European Union members who have firmly committed to voting against full membership for Palestine.

UNITED STATES: The United States is strongly opposed to the Palestinian bid. American diplomats and public officials have said that the move would be counterproductive and derail negotiations with Israel. Polling shows that a plurality of Americans support the bid.

While the Palestinians lobby world governments to support their move for membership, a new poll released by the BBC and Globescan finds that global public opinion is leaning in their favor. Forty-nine percent of people in 19 countries polled supported the Palestinian bid and 21 percent were opposed. Support was highest in Egypt with 90 percent of people in favor and 9 percent opposed, and lowest in India, with 32 percent in favor and 25 percent opposed.

Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, during a Knesset debate ahead of the Palestinian statehood bid at the UN, characterized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition as engaging in “diplomatic stupidity” and warned that government’s position is putting “the United States into a corner.” She placed blame for the current predicament at Netanyahu’s feet, observing:

The United States is making sure it won’t be singled out but how are we helping ourselves? We now need to initiate the political process. (Prime Minster Benjamin) Netanyahu tried to prevent this and now the Palestinians are at the United Nations.

Livni emphasized the importance of Israel’s friendship with the U.S., especially in light of the growing regional isolation faced by the Jewish state. She warned:

Next to all these enemies Israel has friends, and at the top of that list is United States, who is willing to guarantee Israel’s security. They don’t understand Israel’s policy, they don’t understand why the stubbornness over settlements, they don’t believe the prime minister of Israel when he says ‘two states’ but doesn’t do anything about it. And this saddens me because I am a citizen of the state.

While blasting Netanyahu’s policies and his intransigence in the peace process, she urged him to reverse course and save an increasingly untenable Israeli position. She said:

It is not yet too late to stop the process. It demands understanding of what happens when there is no process, and it also demands bravery to make a decision. I am skeptic, but perhaps this week you will succeed in rising above this terrible coalition.

Her comments, which roundly denounced Netanyahu’s failure to freeze settlement expansion or enter into good-faith negotiations with Palestinian negotiators, challenged the Likud party led government’s “story it is selling regarding the current reality” facing Israel in the Middle East. She said:

The first part [of the story] says everything is alright. The second part says that everyone is against us: (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) Abu Mazen joined forces with Hamas, (Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip) Erdogan is an Islamist and in Egypt it is impossible to know what will happen, everyone is anti-Semitic and all that’s left [for Israel] to do is to wait and see what will happen. Israel is indeed correct, but the government is mistaken.

Abbas has made clear his intentions to seek a recognition of a Palestinian state, and the Obama administration has all but guaranteed a U.S. veto of the resolution. But Livni’s remarks give voice to a segment of the Israeli political and security establishment who have run out of patience with Netanyahu’s hard-line policies and lack of progress in the all-but completely stalled peace process.