In travel to the Middle East in June and to London last week I found a wide consensus among officials and analysts that the planned Palestinian statehood initiative at the United Nations is a very bad idea. That is not surprising: in pursuing this bid for Security Council or General Assembly recognition of Palestinian statehood, the PLO will have walked away from the negotiating table, embittered relations with Washington, and risked violence. The melodrama in New York will turn attention away from both the need for serious negotiations and the hard work of building state institutions on the ground in the West Bank. It is not the right approach, and most policymakers know it, so it time for leaders in the UK and Europe to speak up and say so.