Peace talks with the Israelis may have collapsed, but that doesn't mean Palestinians are no longer moving toward statehood. If anything, that process is picking up momentum. Recent days have brought a flurry of nations upgrading the diplomatic status of Palestinian delegations, and the man in charge of building the institutional infrastructure of an independent, functioning Palestine says the West Bank, at least, is on track to achieve sovereignty next summer.
"To tell you the truth, every day I say the point of inflection is upon us. It's going to happen," Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad tells TIME. "What's going to trigger that I really do not know."
One reasonable guess, torn from the headlines: a groundswell of endorsements from existing nations that creates both momentum and a credible political context for a Palestine state. Not the notional state declared in Algiers in 1988, which Yasser Arafat persuaded scores of countries to endorse, helping to establish the idea, if not the reality, of Palestinian sovereignty in the family of nations. This one would reside in the institutions — police, courts, schools, road repairs and water department — that Fayyad has been building over the last 18 months. His goal has been to establish sovereignty in the Palestinian territories captured by Israel in 1967: the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.
Never mind that Gaza has its own government, run by Hamas, and that the terms of office of both President Abbas and the Hamas-dominated Palestinian legislature have expired with no prospect of an election any time soon; the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank run by Abbas and Fayyad is a favorite of Western donors, who lavish funding on it in the hope of creating a peaceful prosperous order that will persuade Gazans to ditch Hamas.
Fayyad, a former World Bank official usually described as a technocrat, can sound like an evangelist with his talk of "transforming Palestinian statehood from the realm of the abstract concept into the realm of the possible, and then hopefully into the realm of the inevitable. And that's really the cure of all forms of hesitation," he says. "When you really think of something as inevitable, then you have to deal with it, you have to get ready for it."
And much of the international community seeks to concur: Just days after the Obama Administration announced that direct peace talks had collapsed, Norway upgraded the Palestinian representative in Oslo to ambassadorial status. As Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia followed, Israel's foreign ministry sent out an urgent alert to its diplomats across the globe, fearing a contagion. A foreign ministry spokesman said the promotions encouraged a Palestinian "illusion" that it could achieve statehood without negotiating with Israel.
"This is not about state declaration; this is about building a state," says Fayyad, in what has become a mantra since he announced a two-year plan to create the institutions of a state by August 2011. The timetable puts the effort in "the home stretch to freedom," Fayyad says. It also brings closer the inevitable question of how to turn this vision into reality unless Israel first agrees to end the occupation, which would require some form of negotiation — a question the prime minister routinely deflects by pointing out that President Abbas, as chairman of the PLO which negotiates for the Palestinians, is in charge of the "political track."
"From the very beginning the thinking was of these two tracks, the building and getting ready track, and the political track," he explains. There is far from unanimity about the quality of Fayyad's government, and it is viewed with suspicion by Hamas and even some in President Abbas' Fatah movement, of which he's not a member. The U.S.-trained security forces, while widely praised for subduing terror and lawlessness, have resumed abusing prisoners, according to human rights activists. The writ of courts appears limited; elections are overdue; and tolerance for public expressions of dissent appears limited. Still, after the chaos of the Second Intifadah, no one denies the "building track " has gained significant traction, while the political track has produced the whine of wheels spinning on a path worn smooth by 17 years of inconclusive negotiations.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists talks will be revived, with each side negotiating separately with U.S. mediators. But with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu constrained by his right-wing coalition and his own demonstrated ambivalence, the Palestinian side is showing an appetite for seeking alternate routes. The PLO leadership has worked with the Arab League to prepare a U.N. Security Council resolutions demanding an immediate halt to all Israeli's settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — which has been booming since the expiration of the Israeli government's partial moratorium last September. They are also floating the idea of seeking U.N. recognition for Palestinian statehood. But if the goal is clear, Fayyad grows misty on the question of route. He speaks of reactions as much chemical as mechanical, and the mystery of creation.
"As we move you begin to create a new dynamic," he says. "And enough, or a critical mass for this change will take place just as things happen in natural birth. Exactly what will happen I honestly cannot tell you. I'm just leaving it in the hands of the Almighty for now. It's above my pay grade."
But something is afoot, the technocrat says. His appraising eye knows as much by watching his own self. "From the beginning my thinking about this was evolutionary," Fayyad says. "But now I find myself thinking birth. You know, birth. There is something happening, a thought process. Language is reflective of thought processes. It comes out a lot in my speeches, and they are most of the time not written: I will just say, 'birth' as this concept. 'Inevitable.' 'Term.' The time will come. Sometime next year."