By Isaac Yetiv, Ph.D.
LA JOLLA, California– Early in the 1950’s , in a speech in Haifa , David Hacohen , the Israeli representative at the U.N., astonished the public when he said, “Don’t expect the United Nations to be a Court of Justice; it is an organization guided by the competing interests of the nations, especially the five members of the Security Council.” I said “astonished” because this international body, born in San Francisco in 1945 on the ruins of the second world war and the Holocaust, filled humanity with hope for a new and just and peaceful world.
The passage of time, the admission as members of non-democracies with a horrible record on human rights, the formation of groups that are automatically anti-Israel, anti-US and anti-West, have radically transformed the organization to the point that many now question the need for such an expensive and useless, even harmful, entity.
No nation has suffered more from the U.N. than the State of its Israel since its inception in 1948. This tiny country, the size of New Jersey, has taken a huge part of the UN deliberations, accusations, and humiliations. With a group of 57 Islamic nations ( out of 192 members) and many other nations atavistically antisemitic or animated by sordid interests, there is always an automatic “majority” in the General Assembly to blame or condemn the Jewish State. As Abba Eban once said: ” If Algeria declares that the earth is flat, flattened by the Israeli army, it will be supported by a majority of the UN General Assembly.”
Israel is the victim of a constant attempt to deligitimize it. Israel , the vibrant only democracy in the Middle-East, is vilified as a rogue state , and accused of apartheid and violation of human rights when the REAL violators are not even reprimanded but rewarded. As an example, despite the genocide in Sudan with ethnic cleansing in Darfur, Sudan was elected to a three-year term on the UN Human Rights Commission,of all things. As Melanie Phillips once wrote: “Faced with this obscene parody of a world body that is supposed to promote and uphold peac e and justice but actually ignores, promotes and upholds genocide, mass murder, tyranny, terrorism and endemic corruption, the democracies of the west not only ignore such evidence but profess to believe that the UN is a moral exemplar without whose imprimatur wars are illegitimate and whose every utterance or action possesses unchallengeable moral authority.
The recent resolution of the UN General Assembly, to elevate the status of the “Palestinian Authority” to “Non-member observer STATE, ” carried with 139 votes with 9 against and 41 abstentions. It not only violates the UN Charter itself and the norms of international laws, but also deals a heavy blow to the credibility and usefulness of the UN itself and , more than anything, it makes peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a very difficult proposition, now impossible.
The UN is now an accomplice to the breach of the Oslo Accords that clearly prohibit both sides from “changing the status, ” which can “only be achieved through negotiations.” Any declaration of “statehood,” whether by the Palestinians or by the UN, contradict the agreement because they skip the negotiations and the participation of Israel.
Besides, the Montevideo Convention of 1933 required four criteria for statehood: 1)a territory well-defined, 2)a permanent population, 3) a functional government, and 4) the capacity to enter relations with other states. Some scholars even add a fifth: the practice of tolerance and living together with other nations in peace.
The Palestinians may fulfill 2 and 4 but they certainly flunk 1 and 3 and 5. This is why:
1) The territories now called “West Bank” and “Gaza” are the results of two wars, 1948 and 1967. In 1948, they were occupied by force by Jordan and Egypt respectively in a war of aggression agaist nascent Israel ; and in 1967, Israel conquered them in another defensive war. Their present status is that of “occupied territories.” Their borders will be “well-defined” only after negotiations.
3) The “government” is very dysfunctional. It is divided in two: The “West Bank” ruled by former PLO -Fatah , now the “Palestinian Authority,” and “Gaza,” a minuscule enclave which Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, took manu militari when it evicted Fatah in a bloody battle, and which it now rules as a practically independent principality we call “Hamastan;” Both sides hate and fear each other. They pay lip-service to “Unity” which has never been ,and will never be achieved. Which “government” will Israel negotiate with? None is ready. This is why there are no “negotiations,” ergo no peace. And that explains the Palestinian subterfuge of going to the UN rather than “negotiate” with Israel, and the criminal acquiescence of this international body to this dirty trick for political expediency.
5) Living together (with Israel ) in peace? The facts on the grounds testify to exactly the opposite: The last 1500 rockets that
rained on Israel from Gaza are not the only violations of international law and the UN charter. Even the “moderate” PLO Representative to the US declared that “any Palestinian state will be judenrein , i.e. “clean of Jews,” forgetting that 20 % of Israel’s population are Arab citizens enjoying civil rights unheard of in the Arab world.
Moreover, Art.2.3 of the UN Charter requires “to settle international disputes by peaceful means, and Art. 2.4 says that “Members shall refrain from the use ,or threat of use, of force” (except in self-defense.)And that includes “inciting to violence.” Needless to say that the behavior of all Palestinian factions, by word and by deed, violates these principles.
There is another serious flaw in the disgraceful decision of the UN General Assembly : the creation of a precedent that will come to haunt it. The world is full of separatist parties in perpetual bloody conflicts with this or that state, member of the UN. To cite just a few: the Tibetans, the Tamils, the Basques, the Kurds, and more recently, the Catalans, all historically more deserving than the Palestinians (the Kurds, for example, 25 to 30 million people spread over five countries). What if these entities claim the same “statehood” from the UN? Will the General Assembly oblige and antagonize member states? I don’t believe so. Israel is the only anvil the UN feels free to hit at will with its heavy hammer of the automatic anti-Israel majority. But the separatist movements demands will still lead to a chaotic and dangerous international situation.
In conclusion: The UN decision will change nothing on the ground. The Palestinians are not closer now to getting their state, and peace has been delayed sine die. The UN has lost the little credibility it had left (in the fifties, Ben Gurion called it “oom-shmoom” (oom is the Hebrew acronym for UN) and in the sixties, De Gaulle called it “le machin”= that thing). Only the hypocrites in the West and the beneficiaries in the Third World continue to believe in its usefulness.
As I wrote many years ago, and as many are claiming now, “we should take the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US” and replace it with ODN, the Organization of Democratic Nations, which will be a huge incentive for autocracies and dictatorships to “democratize” if they want to join the new international body.
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Yetiv is a freelance writer and lecturer based in La Jolla, California. He may be contacted at isaac.yetiv@sdjewishworld.com