Will Palestinian leadership keep the ball rolling toward statehood?

The day after the UN vote on recognizing Palestine as a nonmember observer state, the leadership of the PLO/Palestinian Authority will discover that it's easier to convince a few more European states to vote "yes" than it is to meet the high expectations it has created around this move and convince its own public that it's capable of changing its modus operandi.

To keep the "yes" vote from being a merely symbolic gesture, a temporary boost for outmoded political organizations and the hedonist elites that comprise them, will require vast internal changes that are hard to envision. The PLO claims it is preparing plans for the day after, both to exploit the opportunities created by its new UN status and to cope with possible sanctions by Israel and its allies. But this too, will have to be seen to be believed.

Until very recently, it seemed many Palestinians didn't believe their leadership would stand up to the threats and pressure of those whom Hanan Ashrawi terms Israel's "proxies": America, Canada and Britain. For almost 20 years, this leadership has explained repeated concessions and capitulations to Israel as stemming from such pressure.

But as the day of the vote neared, it seemed that the excitement of those behind the move was finally beginning to percolate downward. For a moment, it seemed as if the PLO had stopped thinking like a ruling organization bent on preserving the status quo and was once again thinking like a national liberation organization capable of imagining change and effecting it through the balance of international forces. The conclusion that the leadership was standing up to the heavy American pressure above all aroused cautious admiration for it. For years, PA President Mahmoud Abbas put his trust in the American government, but even he has finally been compelled to admit that he bet on the wrong horse.

The PLO and Fatah, its principal component, are promising that the day after the vote, they will embark on reconciliation talks to form a national unity government with Hamas. The ground has already been prepared. During a discussion at Bir Zeit University on Tuesday, Dr. Sabri Saidam, a member of Fatah's Revolutionary Council, said that after New York, Abbas would go to Gaza. In Gaza, the ruling Hamas party allowed Fatah members to demonstrate, and expressions of mutual hostility have vanished from the media.

Still, the PLO and Fatah are exaggerating when they say Hamas supports the UN vote. Listening to Hamas' various spokesmen leads to the conclusion that this is more non-opposition than support, and that it is purely tactical.It remains to be seen what will happen when the move fails to produce immediate positive results, and how that will affect relations within the unity government, if it is ever established.

To the countries whose votes they sought, the PLO and Fatah presented the UN bid as part of their overall ethos of nonviolent struggle, which emphasizes diplomacy and international law. But as the Bir Zeit discussion made clear, most of the public doesn't draw the same distinction between armed and unarmed struggle. Saidam didn't join the other speakers who said that every form of struggle is legitimate. But he also didn't say what one of his Fatah colleagues told Haaretz: that the public must be convinced that military victories are reversible, and the next round could end in defeat, whereas a diplomatic-political victory at the UN is irreversible and will open up new options.

So what will happen if and when the diplomatic achievement isn't accompanied by surprising new moves on the part of other countries, who won't protect the Palestinians against the continued Israeli occupation? The popular struggles in various West Bank villages, which have been presented as the proper alternative to armed struggle, haven't taken off into a mass movement. Consumerism and the false sense of normalcy created by the PA's policy of "building state institutions," along with the emerging middle class' desire for comfort, stability and the status quo, have gained more traction. Will a united leadership be capable of leading this public into a frontal, popular confrontation with whatever Israel is preparing?