Photograph by Saif Sahlah/AFP via Getty Images

Palestinians wave national flags during a gathering in the West Bank city of Jenin on Nov. 29, 2012 to support Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas who is heading to the United Nations General Assembly today with huge backing for his bid for UN recognition of statehood.

Just because a United Nations name plate calls you a state, that doesn’t make you one.

Still, at the world body, any entity, state or non-state can name itself.

Following a largely symbolic vote in the UN’s 193-member General Assembly, the Palestinians changed their name to “State of Palestine” on all their stationery and asked UN protocol to go along with that. The UN’s etiquette office agreed on Dec. 17: “Pursuant to your request, the designation of `State of Palestine’ shall be used by the Secretariat in all official United Nations documents.”

The Americans were not pleased. U.S. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice today took exception to the rebranding, even if it’s confined to the 17 acres occupied by the world body in New York’s Midtown:

“Any reference to the `State of Palestine’ in the United Nations, including the use of the term `State of Palestine’ on the placard in the Security Council or the use of the term `State of Palestine’ in the invitation to this meeting or other arrangements for participation in this meeting, do not reflect acquiescence that `Palestine’ is a state.”

The Palestinians were quick to respond.

“It doesn’t matter if any country voted against” the designation,’ said Riad Malki, introduced at a Security Council meeting on the Palestinian question as foreign minister to the State of Palestine. `We expect all member states of the United Nations to respect, to adhere, the decision that was taken by the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 29th of November of 2012.”

Nine nations voted against this: the U.S., Israel, Canada, Czech Republic, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and Panama.

Original post is Rice Riled by Palestine Placard by Political Capital.

Photograph by Gianluigi Guercua/AFP via Getty Images

A Libyan woman raises her ink stained finger as she leaves a polling station after voting for Libya's General National Assembly in Tripoli on July 7, 2012.

Written by Flavia Krause-Jackson in New York

Even after a bruising week on Capitol Hill ducking cameras, Susan Rice has kept her voice alive on Twitter.

Today was no exception.

As @ambassadorrice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations branded the world body’s recognition of Palestine as an observer state “unfortunate & counterproductive.” With her trademark bluntness, she typed:

“Progress towards a just & lasting two-state solution cannot be made by pressing a green voting button in NY.’

and: “Long after the votes have been cast & speeches forgotten, it’s the Palestinians & Israelis who must still talk – and listen – to each other. ”
At one time disdainful of Twitter, the aspiring secretary of  state is a convert to the micro-blogging site, where she has more followers than  @VP Joe Biden and three times the number of that other famous Rice, Condoleezza.

The controversy surrounding her infamous Sept. 16 comments about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Beghazi, Libya,  has only boosted her popularity, and she now is edging toward the 230,000 mark.

Online — as in real life — she has fans as well as haters.

The 140-character limit on Twitter lends itself to Rice’s own personal style.

“I guess you could say I’m plainspoken,” she  told her Stanford alumni magazine in an interview in January 2000. “I can be diplomatic when I have to be. But I don’t have a lot of patience for B.S.”

Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the #UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose, she typed furiously off her BlackBerry after a double veto on Syria. The so-called referendum yesterday in #Syria was clearly a sham, she wrote about President Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to address the unrest.

She has tweeted around the world. On a surprise visit to Libya, she said: #Libyan #women kick butt. On a trip to Kenya with colleagues from the Security Council, she told the Somali president: “get your act together.”

Still, her missives are not all about work.

At the end of the Jazz Day concert at the UN with Stevie Wonder, she mused:

“The General Assembly Hall has never been so cool and may never be again. #JazzDay”

Some are even intensely personal, such as the message on Jan. 27, when she gave her deceased father, Emmett Rice, a shout-out about a movie night. She tweeted: “My family & I saw #RedTails last weekend. Riveting, action-packed & moving film. Made me even more proud of my late Dad, a Tuskegee Airman.”

Original post is Rice Tweets: Libyan Women Kick… by Political Capital.