Palestinian UN bid fails

Three weeks ago on this page, I ended an article suggesting that “it is much better for the Palestinians to present a good text, even if it is going to be refused, than to end up with an approved bad text”.

I was referring to the UN Security Council draft resolution under consideration at the time.

What eventually transpired after the much acclaimed Arab-backed Palestinian  diplomatic effort was neither a good text refused, nor a bad text approved, but a bad text refused.

The Palestinian Authority presented a very diluted position, casting away Palestinian rights like ballast from a sinking ship, yet were unable to avoid defeat.

The negative outcome was inevitable, not just because the draft was supported by eight votes only — Nigeria surprised many by abstaining — and not because the text was not vague enough for those Security Council members who only endorse meaningless and evasive language, but because the US was planning to veto the text regardless.

Even if the 14 other council members backed it, the US would not have allowed any measure that Israel did not support to pass.

Both Israelis and Americans repeatedly and openly declared their objection to the Palestinian move and committed to aborting it.

It would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a reasonable, let alone legally correct, resolution affirming Palestinian rights to be adopted by the Security Council.

That does not, however, mean that the Palestinians were wrong to go to the United Nations.

They should have done that a long time ago.

Neither the Arab states nor the Palestinians should have accepted any handling of this historic question and the massive injustice it continues to cause outside the scope of the UN.

For Israel, the UN environment has never been conducive to maintaining the initiative all along in its hands. Right from the beginning, Israel disliked the UN, disagreed with its rulings and resolutions, respected them only in the very rare cases they were in its favour and never cooperated with UN bodies investigating occupation crimes and practices.

That is why the “Quartet” (the UN, the EU, the US and Russia) was invented, to provide convenient cover for officially distancing the UN.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan humiliated the UN by reducing its prestigious standing as an organisation representing all world’s states to a mere partner in an ad hoc committee made up of some of the states the UN supposedly represents.

But the Quartet allowed for a fig leaf of international involvement while actually placing matters in the hands of the US, and through the US, in Israel’s hands.

This question of Palestine should only be handled by the UN and its appropriate bodies because the primary duty of the UN is, as provided by article 1, paragraph 1, of the UN charter, “[T]o maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression, and other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of Justice and international law ...”.

The regional conflict caused by the creation of Israel on Palestinian land is the perfect example for what the UN should uniquely address.

Accordingly, the so-called peace process should not remain, as Israel wishes, an American monopoly, to ensure that only actions and decisions accepted to Israel can be approved.

That is why all UN resolutions rejecting Israeli occupation, Israeli settlements on occupied Arab territories, Israeli annexation of Jerusalem, Israeli violations of the rules of international conventions, Israeli practices against the Palestinians and the Israeli apartheid wall are being ignored.

Instead, they have been replaced by sterile open-ended negotiations meant to buy Israel additional time to proceed with its colonisation of the entire West Bank and Jerusalem, while everyone is led to believe that a “two-state solution” is just another round or two of negotiations away.

The Palestinians are being harshly blamed by Israel and a chorus of its international supporters for deserting the course of negotiations and going to the UN as if 24 years of negotiations have gained the Palestinians anything but adverse results.

The Palestinians were not wrong to return to the UN after such undue delay. 

They were wrong to go with such a meagre resolution that, if passed, would have undermined many previous Security Council resolutions that recognised Palestinian rights in far stronger and clearer terms than the recent failed resolution.

Ironically, the rejection of the resolution was the only exit from a bad strategy, although all those who voted against or abstained, did that either under Israeli or American pressure or just out of the usual and the convenient evasiveness.

As it was obvious that the US would veto the resolution, the text should have been very clear in demanding the implementation of all previous relevant UN resolutions: ending the occupation up to the last inch of the June 4, 1967, lines including East Jerusalem; removing all illegally built settlements on Palestinian land; dismantling the wall; implementing the right of return of the Palestinian refugees; and ending all forms of racial discrimination and apartheid by Israel.

The Palestinians should also pursue their private and other rights in the rest of Palestine as much as the law permits.

There should be no ban or time limit on such claims. Jews are rightly pursuing their claims in Europe and elsewhere and the Palestinians should do the same.

Such language, nevertheless, will not pass at the Security Council under the prevailing circumstances. 

But if there were a new Palestinian strategy, freed from the Oslo entanglement and genuinely supported by a united Arab position, things at the UN would start to change.

The Palestinian UN project failed because it was weak, hesitant, grovelling, unimaginative and probably more tactical than serious.

It was tailored to offer Israel and its supporters department store style “further reductions” in the hope of being accepted.

But why should the Israelis take that as a final offer when they have only been receiving “improved” Arab and Palestinian offers and concessions over the past few decades?

Let us hope that the late PA decision to accede to a number of international organisations is serious.

Let us hope that it does not, once more, evolve within the same tactical game of mild pressure in the hope of some empathy.

Because the Arab League is powerless, it had to go along with the bad PA text rather than advise the Palestinians to insist on appropriate language. The problem therefore is bigger than the Palestinian scope.

Sadly, unless and until the Arab states collectively determine to revise their strategy towards Israel, they will have no effective role in the struggle for Palestinian rights.

If the stalemate continues, indeed the deterioration, it is likely that in 2015 the momentum will continue to shift towards renewed forms of Palestinian struggle, including resistance, and of the international movement to boycott Israel as an apartheid state.