(Jon Donnison, BBC) A year ago on a warm September evening in Ramallah, Palestinians were dancing in the streets.
Car horns blared as people craned out of their sunroofs waving red, black, green and white Palestinian flags.
The crowds had just watched President Mahmoud Abbas, live on a giant screen from New York, as he told the United Nations he was heading to the Security Council to ask for Palestine to be admitted as a member state.
Although the move was unlikely to change facts on the ground for Palestinians, or end Israel’s occupation, Mr Abbas saw it as a way of putting diplomatic pressure on the Israeli government.
A loud cheer went up as the president brandished his formal application papers in front of the UN delegates.
In nearby Manara Square, the Piccadilly Circus of this small West Bank town, a huge blue wooden chair had been erected, 8 or 9 metres (26-30ft) high to symbolise the UN seat the Palestinians were seeking.
For a few months afterwards it provided a novelty, or some would say an eyesore, for passing shoppers.
The chair in a Ramallah that was once a symbol of hopeBut midway through the winter, the chair collapsed during a sudden storm.
The analogy with the Palestinian UN bid is not hard to make.
The bid came to nothing, blocked largely by diplomatic pressure from the United States, Israel’s strongest ally.
The US had threatened to use its veto power in the Security Council if necessary.
It never got to that stage.
We have heard relatively little of the Palestinians since.
‘Blackmail’
“Latest developments whether they be global or regional have led to the marginalisation and sidelining of the Palestinian question,” says Dr Hanan Ashrawi, a senior figure in the political leadership in the West Bank
Dr Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s Executive Committee, says the Palestinian issue has been squeezed out of the news by bigger global headlines.
“The Arab Spring is one. Then there is the financial crisis, and thirdly there is the American Presidential election. The whole world has to be put on hold. Nobody can do anything that would affect the candidates’ chances of re-election or election. All these things have led to our dematerialisation.”
Dr Ashrawi says President Abbas has been put under massive pressure by the US administration to keep quiet before the US election and not to make another attempt to upgrade Palestine’s UN state this year
“Blackmail is how I’d put it impolitely,” says Dr Ashrawi.
“I don’t know what else to call it when you are told Congress will suspend all funding for the Palestinians, suspend all relations with us and close our representative’s office in Washington.”
Dr Ashrawi says the Palestinians will at some point go the UN General Assembly, where the US does not have veto power, and take the less ambitious step of seeking to become a non-member observer state.
But she says no decision has been taken as to when this will happen.
Over the past year little has moved for the Palestinians.
Fresh elections, long overdue, never happened and despite many promises the two rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas failed to patch up their differences and are still bitterly divided.
President Abbas’s Fatah faction is in power in the West Bank. Hamas governs in Gaza.
If and when Mr Abbas does renew his UN bid, he would not be speaking for all Palestinians. Hamas says going to the UN is a waste of time…
Faded hopes of Palestinian place at UN: