http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/Border+Trap/5283703/story.html

Imagine that the UN General Assembly voted last month -- as opposed to next month -- to recognize a state of Palestine. What would the world look like this morning, in the wake of the deadly terror attacks in southern Israel?

A UNGA vote to declare a Palestinian state would have no legal effect, of course. The UN's own rules lodge the power of state creation in the Security Council, not the General Assembly. That's why the 1988 vote in the General Assembly to recognize "Palestine" had no juridical effect -- and why the 1999 vote in the Security Council to create East Timor did have effect.

But a UN action does not need to have legal effect to have practical effect. Propaganda has a power of its own. Israel responded to Thursday's terror attacks with air strikes against seven targets inside Gaza. The international reaction? Quiet. There are many reasons for the quiet. But one important contributor: Israel's air strikes crossed no internationally accepted border.

To understand how important borders are, contrast Israel's willingness to act in Gaza against its extreme reluctance to cross the Israel-Egypt border.

The terrorists who struck Israel Thursday crossed into Israel not from Gaza, but from Egyptian-ruled Sinai. Israel's Ynet news agency is reporting that the terrorists actually emerged from underneath an Egyptian army border outpost --and in broad daylight, too.

Yet Israel has gone out of its way to deny that any of its forces ever crossed the border. Egypt has claimed that three Egyptian soldiers were killed in the aftermath of the terrorist attack. Israel insists that any Egyptian casualties must have occurred in clashes with the terrorists, not at the hands of Israeli warplanes in hot pursuit.

Who knows what the truth is? The one thing we do know: Israel is determined not to be seen intruding upon Egyptian territory. It feels no such reluctance about the non-sovereign state of Gaza.

But what if Gaza were regarded as sovereign, not necessarily by the United States and Canada, but by the Islamic countries and some European countries? The dilemma Israel faces on its Egyptian border would be joined by a similar dilemma on the boundary lines with Gaza and the West Bank.

This is precisely the dilemma the Palestinian push for UN recognition is intended to create.

Sovereign states have duties as well as rights. Sovereign states are expected to control their own territory, to prevent violent individuals from launching attacks on citizens of other countries. They are expected to provide for the welfare of their populations. They are expected to refrain from planning aggressive war against their neighbours.

Nobody in his or her right mind expects a post-UN-vote "Palestine" to do any of the above things. Quite the contrary: A post-UN-vote "Palestine" will be even less likely to suppress terrorism, even more dependent on international charity and even less committed to seeking peace with Israel.

The point of the exercise is not to gain the responsibilities of statehood, but to gain greater immunity for acts of irresponsibility -- such as the heinous acts that claimed the lives of eight Israelis on Thursday and Friday.

Those acts left Israeli families grieving their loss. The families of the three slain Israeli soldiers mourn no less than the families of the five murdered Israeli civilians. It is always misplaced to speak of any "good" coming from the appalling fact of terrorist violence. But we can at least take this wisdom:

On Thursday and Friday, terrorist killers not only snatched away eight innocent lives. They also shoved the Arab world's biggest state, Egypt, closer toward conflict with Israel. Such conflict would in turn raise the already-too-high risk of Islamic extremists taking power in the Egyptian state and army.

Palestinian radicalism can have frightening large-scale geopolitical implications. The whole region has an interest in dissuading the Palestinian leadership from adventurism and provocation. The push for a September UN vote on Palestinian statehood creates exactly the most perverse possible incentives for even relatively responsible Palestinian leaders. The world's answer to the push must be a firm and unequivocal "no" -- backed by a credible threat to end international assistance to the Palestinian Authority if the PA leaders are reckless enough to proceed.