i have written an article on Palestines bid to join the un

satansbed

For my Universtys new politics and business paper, its meant to be a news article so my opinion one way or another doesn't matter in it but i would like ye to read it and see if there is any mistakes etc i have made

Palestinian U.N bid puts Europe and the United States under pressure

Palestine looks to press ahead with its bid to become a United Nations member despite pressure from E.U. And U.S. Diplomats to modify or abandon their bid. At a press conference. Thursday Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Maliki told journalists the Palestinians will ask the Security Council next week to accept them as a full member of the United Nations. The bid is likely to be vetoed by the United States at Security Council level while a French-Spanish led initiative is looking for a comprise in which Palestine becomes a non-member observer state. This status is granted by a General Assembly resolution, and does not require the prior consent of the Security Council. Such an initiative would likely pass as the Palestinians believe at least 130 out of the 193 U.N member states would support it.

The United States is intent of finding a compromise to avert a confrontation at the United Nations, as such a confrontation would put them in a no-win situation. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Sunday, Sept 11th Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States said the U.S. “risk(s) losing the little credibility it has in the Arab world” if it vetoes the application by Palestine. Not vetoing also would be disastrous for the the Obama administration because of the powerful Pro-Israel lobby within the United States especially given the shock special election result in New York’s largely Jewish 9th Congressional District where the Republican Bob Turner won a seat held by democrats for 88 years was largely viewed as a referendum on Obama’s Jewish policy.

Meanwhile There are contradictory messages coming out of Europe, where most members including France and the U.K. Are likely to vote in favor of the measures at least at the general assembly level while Germany prefers a peace agreement with Israel before there is any recognition at a United Nations level and the Netherlands and the Czech Republic oppose the Palestinian efforts. With out agreement it puts the E.U in danger of having no official stance before the resolution is submitted and is likely to have a damaging effect to the E.U’s credibility in the middle east. The EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in the Middle East in order to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to gauge Israeli opinion on the French-Spanish plan but Netanyahu only supported a compromise as long as it resulted in Palestine still being regarded as less than a state by the united nations.

If a compromise is not reached and the Palestinians end up bringing the resolution to the Security council it could lead to embarrassing results domestically and internationally for both the E.U. And the U.S. While a compromise is still possible it seems that the Palestinians will play hardball with idea until it to gains them a meaningful compromise. It has yet to be seen if what the Palestinians regard as meaningful compromise will be acceptable to to the Israelis however and the pressure is firmly on the United States and Europe to bring the two sided together

Idris

What are your feelings towards the bid? Just curious.
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MotoDC

You need to do a read-through for grammar, punctuation, and word choice, but overall it reads fairly well. In particular you should reconsider the wording in the closing sentences (just my opinion, I'm no professor of journalism):

"Not vetoing also would be disastrous for the the Obama administration because of the powerful Pro-Israel lobby within the United States especially given the shock special election result in New York’s largely Jewish 9th Congressional District where the Republican Bob Turner won a seat held by democrats for 88 years was largely viewed as a referendum on Obama’s Jewish policy."

- Very long sentence (with nary a comma or otherwise forced pause)

- Following "where", your structure gets confused...you effectively use the phrase "the Republican Bob Turner won a seat held by democrats for 88 years" as the subject of that clause, which isn't correct. Need to say something like "...where the Republican win of a seat held by demos for 88 years was largely viewed..."

- Finally, I wouldn't call it "Jewish policy". "Middle Eastern policy" or even "policy on Israel" would be better I think.

"It has yet to be seen if what the Palestinians regard as meaningful compromise will be acceptable to to the Israelis however and the pressure is firmly on the United States and Europe to bring the two sided together"

- Again, bit of a run-on sentence with really long subjective clauses that are difficult to pick out (e.g., "what the Palestinians regard as meaningful compromise" is the subject of the second clause)

- Change the aforementioned subjective clause to something like "the Palestinian notion of meaningful compromise" or simply "this meaningful compromise", since you've only used "meaningful compromise" once before and it was specifically in regard to the Palestinian perspective. If you go that route (or in any case), it might behoove you to include a blurb on what the Palestinians mean by "meaningful compromise"

- Get rid of "however"

- This may just be my preference (not sure), but I don't like "if" used that way. Generally I prefer "whether" in that context.

satansbed

MotoDC wrote:

You need to do a read-through for grammar, punctuation, and word choice, but overall it reads fairly well. In particular you should reconsider the wording in the closing sentences (just my opinion, I'm no professor of journalism):

"Not vetoing also would be disastrous for the the Obama administration because of the powerful Pro-Israel lobby within the United States especially given the shock special election result in New York’s largely Jewish 9th Congressional District where the Republican Bob Turner won a seat held by democrats for 88 years was largely viewed as a referendum on Obama’s Jewish policy."

- Very long sentence (with nary a comma or otherwise forced pause)

- Following "where", your structure gets confused...you effectively use the phrase "the Republican Bob Turner won a seat held by democrats for 88 years" as the subject of that clause, which isn't correct. Need to say something like "...where the Republican win of a seat held by demos for 88 years was largely viewed..."

- Finally, I wouldn't call it "Jewish policy". "Middle Eastern policy" or even "policy on Israel" would be better I think.

"It has yet to be seen if what the Palestinians regard as meaningful compromise will be acceptable to to the Israelis however and the pressure is firmly on the United States and Europe to bring the two sided together"

- Again, bit of a run-on sentence with really long subjective clauses that are difficult to pick out (e.g., "what the Palestinians regard as meaningful compromise" is the subject of the second clause)

- Change the aforementioned subjective clause to something like "the Palestinian notion of meaningful compromise" or simply "this meaningful compromise", since you've only used "meaningful compromise" once before and it was specifically in regard to the Palestinian perspective. If you go that route (or in any case), it might behoove you to include a blurb on what the Palestinians mean by "meaningful compromise"

- Get rid of "however"

- This may just be my preference (not sure), but I don't like "if" used that way. Generally I prefer "whether" in that context.

thanks this is really good critical feed back, unfortunatly my article didn't get printed because of lack of space but i will use this feedback in any future work i do