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An emergency UN Security Council meeting was held on Wednesday, as tensions intensified¹ over Israel's announcement to build some 1,000 new settlement units in it occupied East Jerusalem, the part of the city Palestinians demand for their future state. The UN is the current political battleground of choice for Palestinian leaders who say they have nothing left to lose in the face of continued Israel occupation of Palestinian land.

When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN in September, the subtext of his message was: Deliver the goods or get ready for a fight.

Palestinians are fed up with Israeli occupation, with U.S. fostered peace efforts that dead ended after nine months, with continued settlement building on Palestinian land.

A bid for unilaterally declared statehood via the UN bypasses negotiations² with Israel and will, with near certainty, be vetoed by the U.S.

Palestinian leaders accept that prospect³ saying: We have a plan B.

Which is, to sign onto hundreds of UN bodies, including the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute⁴ where membership provides a conduit for filing war crimes charges against an Israeli government held in disdain⁵ by Palestinian leaders.

"I don't think that Mr. Netanyahu's policies, Mr.Netanyahu and his hooligans, have the right to keep leading the whole world from the nose," Fatah Central Committee's Major General Jibril Rajoub said.

Palestinian leaders are not holding back from using harsh words and from condemning⁶ Israel's government. Beyond those harsh words and a potential bid to the UN, they are more than intimating that if the situation here does not change soon, it is liable to spin out of control.

Islam's third holiest sight, Al Aqsa Mosque⁷, has become a flashpoint of conflict as Israel's government threatens to grab sovereignty over the compound prompting international alarm.

Even staunch Israel ally, the U.S.,says the status quo is untenable.

Is Israel's government on a misguided mission headed into downward spiral?

"We have both sides that have understood, in the coming years we shall not have agreement by negotiations and therefore let the people, let the street, let the ground dictate⁸ the solution or the reality," Israeli analyst⁹ Boaz Bismuth said. "That is something that is of course very scary."

An uprising in Jerusalem threatens to upend not only the immediate¹⁰ vicinity but also an already unstable¹¹ Middle East.