It’s official: Abbas presents Palestinian statehood bid to Ban

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas formally presented U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon an application for Palestinian membership as a state in the United Nations, setting the stage for the certain defeat of the measure in the U.N. Security Council, where the United States has threatened to block it.

The move marked the culmination of several months of a high-stakes diplomatic drive to secure Palestinian recognition at the United Nations. It set the Palestinian leadership on a collision course with Israel and the United States, which have insisted that the only path to Palestinian statehood is through direct negotiations.

As the drama played out U.N. headquarters, U.S. European diplomats engaged in intensive negotiations with the Palestinians and Israelis on a compromise deal that could lead to the resumption of negotiations between the two sides.

A compromise proposal, which has been hammered out by the European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, would permit the Palestinians to secure recognition by the U.N. General Assembly as an observer state, giving it roughly the same status as the Vatican, but not making it a full fledged U.N. member state.

The European proposal — which was outlined in a speech this week by French President Nicolas Sarkozy — would also set the stage for resumption of political talks within a month, and set a one-year timeline for the talks to be completed. It would also require the Palestinians not to mount a concerted effort to press the Security Council in the coming weeks to vote on the initiative it just presented to the United Nations today.

It remains unclear whether the Israelis or the Palestinians are prepared to accept the deal.