“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed,” the Old Testament Book of Proverbs (15:22) states, attributed to King Solomon. "For by stratagems/scheming thou shalt make thy war” (Proverbs 24:6), the wisest of men is said to have counseled. The PLO conducted a military war against Israel that was sorely lacking in council and ended in failure. On the other hand, since the organization exchanged the military front for the diplomatic one, it has displayed fairly impressive planning and scheming capabilities. The dramatic turnaround came in 1988, when Chairman Yasser Arafat convinced the Palestinian National Council to adopt UN Security Council Resolution 242 and to accept a Palestinian state in accordance with the 1967 borderlines with Israel. That was when the road was paved to the 1991 Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid, the 1993 Oslo Accord between Israel and the Palestinians, international recognition of the Palestinians’ right to a state and sweeping rejection of Israel’s settlement enterprise.

The struggle for implementation of the Palestinian people’s right to become a full member of the family of nations is nearing a decisive stage. In the coming weeks, US President Barack Obama will decide whether to bring Palestine into the United Nations through the narrow window between the Nov. 8 presidential elections and the changing of the guard at the White House. If the Palestinians lose this round, they risk losing their diplomatic achievements of the past 28 years.

Unfortunately for him, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas finds himself facing off against an Israeli champion — if not a world champion — in diplomatic deviousness. Netanyahu lies in wait constantly for his rival to slip up. He knows how to control the international public agenda and to divert any criticism of Israel from the front pages to the back of the book. There’s nothing he will not do to keep Israel out of what he perceives as harm’s way. In September, he accused the Palestinians of “ethnic cleansing” against Jewish West Bank settlers, even as one of his Cabinet ministers, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, heads a party that advocates forcibly moving Israeli citizens of Arab origin to another sovereign state.

On the last day of the Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles) Jewish festival on Oct. 23, Netanyahu had a field day with a report that the Palestinian Authority (PA) had arrested four Palestinians who came to celebrate as guests at the traditional Tabernacle hut of a known West Bank settler. The PA understood at once that it had made a foolish decision and rushed to free the four. But for the leader of a state that has been jailing thousands of Palestinians for 49 years without bringing them before a judge, the detention of the four Palestinians “is additional proof of Palestinian recalcitrance.” Netanyahu’s ace is the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. That, he argues, is the obstacle to peace, not the occupation and the settlements.