In reply, Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the UN, gave the speech of his life. "Today I stand before you tall and proud because I represent the world's one and only Jewish state," he began in his deep bass voice, "a state built in the Jewish people's ancient homeland, with its eternal capital Jerusalem as its beating heart. We are a nation with deep roots in the past and bright hopes for the future. We are a nation that values idealism, but acts with pragmatism. Israel is a nation that never hesitates to defend itself, but will always extend its hand for peace." He spoke of the importance of peace in Jewish history and culture, of the peace treaties that Israel had made with Anwar Sadat and King Hussein, and then pointed out how neither the resolution nor Abbas said anything at all about Israel's right to exist.

"None of these vital interests, these vital interests of peace, none of them appear in the resolution that will be put forward before the General Assembly today and that is why Israel cannot accept it," he said. The real way for Abbas to advance peace would be to go to Jerusalem and negotiate bilaterally, but instead he preferred to go to New York to grandstand and push through what Prosor rightly called "UN resolutions that completely ignore Israel's vital security and national interests. And because this resolution is so one-sided, it doesn't advance peace, it pushes it backwards." Prosor continued: "No decision by the UN can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel."

The rest of the speech was a passionate but logical explanation of why Palestinian statehood would prove utterly counter-productive at this point. It was a tour de force, and its focused rationality reminded me of Margaret Thatcher's speeches against the Maastricht treaty in the House of Lords in the mid-Nineties. "The truth is that Israel wants peace, and the Palestinians are avoiding peace," he concluded. "Those who are supporting the resolution today are not advancing peace. They are undermining peace. The UN was founded to advance the cause of peace. Today the Palestinians are turning their back on peace. Don't let history record that today the UN helped them along on their march of folly."

The next speaker, the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, also made reference to history, speaking about "the inhuman treatment of the Palestinians from the First World War to today", and the "inalienable rights" of peoples to states of their own. That would be the same Turkey whose brutal suppression of the Armenian and Kurdish peoples has continued from, well, the First World War to today.