Only once before has a U.S. President applied overt diplomatic pressure on Palestinians the way President Obama did this week at the United Nations, as he pressured Palestine to rescind its request from the U.N. Security Council for immediate full membership status. Unfortunately, the precedent for this type of overt pressure is not particularly encouraging, neither for Israel, nor for the United States.

It was in 2006 that President George W. Bush demanded that Hamas be allowed to participate in Palestinian general elections without it first having renounced the use of terrorism. It was an initiative that not only met resistance from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, but also, in a rare meeting of minds, Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert. All of them eventually surrendered to the diktat of the U.S. President. The immediate result was that Hamas won the election; the long-term aftermath, of course, has yet to be resolved. There is currently no end in sight to the deadly confrontation between Hamas and Israel.

The short term benefactors of this most recent presidential intervention seems pretty clearly to be Israel. But the victory may soon prove pyrrhic. The sad truth is that the ultimate winner is likely to turn out again to be Hamas.

It’s worth remarking that Obama’s speech before the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday was the most spirited pro Israeli speech he has ever made—indeed, one of the most pro-Israeli from a U.S. President in memory. Obama told Palestine in no uncertain terms that its diplomatic strategy will prove fruitless. Abbas still seems determined to try and muster the necessary votes in the Security Council, but he knows that an American veto awaits. Israel, which has rarely received such fulsome public support for its positions, was quick to celebrate it as a diplomatic coup.

But Israelis should not confuse a Palestinian defeat for an Israeli success. Yes, it is clear that Abbas’s leadership is now fatally weakened. Nothing will erase the effect of this public defeat: Abbas has staked his reputation on this diplomatic ploy, fashioned and promoted it around the world over the past year. The result is that he has ended up a disgraced loser, in the eyes of the world, and of his own people.