Obama: Palestinian UN bid not short cut to peace

Updated at 11:05 a.m. ET

UNITED NATIONS - President Obama declared Wednesday that there could be no short cut to peace between Israel and the Palestinians, as he sought to head off a looming diplomatic crisis for the Middle East and U.S. policy there.

"Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N. — if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now," the president said. "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians — not us — who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them."

But in the speech before the U.N. General Assembly, Mr. Obama stopped short of directly calling on the Palestinians to drop their plan to seek statehood recognition from the U.N. Security Council. U.S. officials were working furiously behind the scenes to persuade the Palestinians. With the limits of U.S. influence on the moribund peace process never more clear, Mr. Obama had no new demands for the Israelis, either, beyond saying that both sides deserved their own state and security.

"Peace depends upon compromise among peoples who must live together long after our speeches are over, and our votes have been counted," Mr. Obama said.

"That is the path to a Palestinian state."

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The White House's inability to dissuade the Palestinians from their bid for statehood is doubly embarrassing for the president because of the vision that he laid out at the United Nations last year, CBS News correspondent Bill Plante reports.

"When we gather back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel," Mr. Obama told the world body in 2010.

But a year later, the president's vision of Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace, is still just a dream, and the administration says that's not his fault, Plante reports.

"The point that the president will make is at the end of the day, peace is going to have to be made between the parties, that it can't be imposed from the outside, that it can't be accomplished through actions at the United Nations," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said.

"The reality is there's no short cut to statehood," Rice told "Early Show" co-anchor Erica Hill. "It's not going to happen at the United Nations unless and until there's a negotiated settlement between the two parties so that the borders are sorted out, security is sorted out, the capital is sorted out, refugees are sorted out, water issues, all these critical things.

"So, our view is not that the Palestinians shouldn't have a state; indeed, they should, living side-by-side in peace and security with the Jewish state of Israel," Rice told Hill, "but that can only happen through negotiations."

U.S. officials conceded they cannot stop Abbas from officially launching his case for the Security Council's approval of the statehood effort, but also make the case for the Palestinian leader to essentially drop the move for statehood recognition after delivering his letter of intent to the U.N.

Abbas was expected to deliver a formal request for statehood recognition on Friday when he speaks to the General Assembly. But it could take weeks or months for the U.N. to act on the Palestinians' request.

And while Mr. Obama will formally ask Abbas not to pursue the statehood bid, the mission is actually directed at containing the fallout by urging the Palestinian leader not to push for an actual vote in the Council, where the U.S. has promised a veto. A delay would give international peacemakers time to produce a statement that would be the basis for resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Mr. Obama will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who arrived in New York early on Wednesday.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French leader, met with Abbas on Tuesday, and diplomats close to the talks said Sarkozy told the Palestinian leader that he would outline a proposal for the Palestinians to seek upgraded status with the General Assembly, where no member holds a veto. The resolution would be designed to make Palestine a nonmember observer state, raising its status from that of permanent observer. The diplomats spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.

In carefully orchestrated demonstrations, thousands of flag-waving Palestinians rallied Wednesday in towns across the West Bank to show support for their president's bid for U.N. recognition.

Civil servants and schoolchildren were given time off to participate. Despite the largely low-key mood, a new poll indicated an overwhelming majority supports Abbas' quest for U.N. recognition of a state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War.

A British minister insisted Tuesday that U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, Foreign Secretary William Hague and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg would make a final decision on how to respond to the Palestinian's demands.

"You don't show your hand at the beginning of the negotiations when you may wish to keep your hand back for later in the negotiations," junior Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne said.

"I think we should have some confidence that the British government is taking a studied and considered approach," Browne told a rally of his Liberal Democrat party in Birmingham, central England.

With Abbas determined to seek membership rather than upgraded status, the Palestinian delegation relentlessly knocked on diplomatic doors at the U.N. trying to sell their case for international recognition.

Netanyahu issued dire warnings against hasty action as he boarded his jet for New York. Mr. Obama plans to meet with Netanyahu as well as Abbas.

The issue of the unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood, born of decades of frustration and failed negotiations with Israel, has consumed diplomats who are gathering for Wednesday's opening of the annual U.N. General Assembly ministerial meeting.

Abbas has rejected all attempts to steer him away from formally submitting an application for full U.N. membership.

For his part, Netanyahu, in a meeting with members of his hardline Likud Party before leaving Jerusalem late Tuesday, vowed to speak "the truth" in New York — "the truth of a people that wants peace, a nation that was attacked time after time and that is being attacked time after time by those that don't oppose our policies but rather our very existence."He said he would warn world leaders against prematurely establishing a Palestinian state when many issues in the conflict must still be resolved. He did not elaborate, saying this would be the focus of his speech to the U.N. on Friday, scheduled shortly after Abbas speaks.

With the Palestinian issue nearing a diplomatic and political crisis, American diplomats have worked at a furious pace to lure the Palestinians back to negotiations, knowing a U.S. veto was certain to inflame anti-American sentiment in the Arab world.

Under a new approach that has been pulled together in three days of meetings in New York, the Quartet of Mideast peace mediators — the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia — would issue a statement addressing both Palestinian and Israeli concerns and setting a timetable for a return to the long-stalled peace talks, U.S. officials said.

Israel would have to accept its pre-1967 Mideast War borders with land exchanges as the basis for a two-state solution, and the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel's Jewish character if they were to reach a deal quickly, officials close to the talks said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing diplomacy.

European officials, supported by the United States, were outlining the compromise agreement to the Israeli and Palestinian governments, and asking for tough concessions from each. That was creating undertones of pessimism that mediators would be able to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. The goal would be a comprehensive agreement.

The Palestinians would be allowed to deliver their letter of request Friday to the United Nations, but would agree not to act on it for a year or withdraw it at a later point. That would allow Abbas to save face and prevent an embarrassing defeat that might empower his Fatah party's rival faction, the militant Islamic group Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by Israel and the United States.

The Palestinians could also go to the U.N. General Assembly, where they have overwhelming support, but would have to seek instead some form of intermediate upgrade of their status that would stop short of a full recognition of statehood.

And the quartet, with Israel and the Palestinians' advance approval, would give the two sides a year to reach a framework agreement, based on Mr. Obama's vision of borders fashioned from Israel's pre-1967 boundary, with agreed land swaps. The statement would also endorse the idea of "two states for two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian," which would be a slightly amended version of Israel's demand for recognition specifically as a "Jewish state."

Were the Palestinians to bow to the ideas of Mr. Obama and Sarkozy, they would become a nonmember observer state, a status similar to that of the Holy See. That would give them an opportunity to seek membership in U.N. agencies and join treaties, including the Rome statute that established the International Criminal Court.

But Mohammed Ishtayeh, an Abbas aide, said Lebanon's President Michel Suleiman, whose country holds the Security Council presidency this month, urged the Palestinian leader at a meeting Tuesday to proceed with the application for U.N. membership.

Ishtayeh said Abbas' discussions Tuesday with Sarkozy and British Foreign Secretary William Hague "focused on what can be done to avoid going to the Security Council," adding that "some still believe that a way out can be found." But he said Abbas made it clear that the discussions should be focused on the aftermath of the Palestinian application for recognition to the Security Council.