Opinion: How Gaza war is helping revive two-state plan
Palestinian-Israeli conflict
MOST Muslims living across the planet have completely lost faith in the United Nations’ ability to deliver justice to them in matters involving international disputes; they (rightly) think the world body is overwhelmingly dominated by Western powers, whose interests it is designed to protect. The one factor that has served to solidify that feeling is the dismal — no dubious — role played by the UN in, firstly, establishing a Jewish state in the Middle East, and secondly, perpetuating the injustices meted out to Palestinians since then.
According to numerous history books, destruction caused by the two world wars had led many people to yearn for an international organisation dedicated to maintaining peace. The UN’s own website says leaders from 50 countries gathered in the city of San Francisco in 1945 where they decided to rid the world of wars. They subsequently agreed upon what was termed the UN Charter; this document unambiguously pledged to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.
The charter was signed on June 26 and came into force on October 24, 1945. However, despite the tall claims made prior to the establishment of UN, it was this very body that was used to establish a Jewish state in the Middle East, that too within two years of its inception. The establishment of Israel after setting aside all principles of justice and norms of decency simply robbed the region of the peace and tranquility it deserved.
According to credible estimates, in the latter half of 19th century more than 99 per cent of the world’s Jews lived outside Palestine, with their proportion in the holy land coming to only 2-5 per cent of its total population. Troubles, however, began in the 1880s when Jewish migrants began arriving in Palestine, which was under Ottoman rule then. As a result, tensions began to rise between the Jewish migrants and the natives.
In World War I (1914-1918) the Ottomans were defeated, after which Palestine came under British rule. In the period leading up to 1945-46, Britain and other European countries continued to facilitate Jewish migration to Palestine and the migrants’ settlement in the ‘holy land’, all in the face of peaceful opposition by the natives.
In time the continued use of unacceptable and obnoxious tactics by the Zionists and the British gave rise to an armed resistance movement as well. The armed resistance was, however, dealt a severe blow when renowned freedom fighter Izz ad-Din al-Qassam and his comrades were gunned down in a gunfight on Nov 20, 1935.
Claiming to have been fed up with clashes between the Palestinians and Jews, Britain ultimately asked the UN to propose a solution to the problem. And in November of 1947 the world body came up with the proposal for partitioning Palestine, but its terms unabashedly favoured the Jews. Under this utterly one-sided proposal more than half of Palestinian territory was to be given to Jews although the proportion of their population, despite their rapid and non-stop influx into the region, had grown by that time to only 30 per cent of the total of about 1.8 million. As expected the Palestinian natives and the neighbouring Arab countries rejected the proposal, although they were never formally asked to vote on it.
Due in great part to the support extended by Western powers, and despite opposition from the Palestinians and the neighbouring Arab countries, the Jewish leaders finally proclaimed the creation of a Jewish state on May 14, 1948. In the war that broke out immediately afterwards, the better-equipped Jewish troops and irregulars managed to defeat the Palestinian as well as Arab fighters, with only the Gaza Strip being retained by Egyptian forces and the West Bank by the Jordanian military. The rest of the Palestinian territories, therefore, came under Israeli control.
Over 750,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes and settlements by the Israeli occupation forces, which tragedy was termed “The Nakba (The Catastrophe)” by the Arabs. Ilan Pappe, a well-known Israeli historian, has written a book on this issue, which is titled ‘The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine’. So, these are documented facts, not hearsay or guesswork. In the wars that came years later, the Israeli forces managed to wrest even the West Bank and Gaza Strip from the control of neighbouring Arab countries, thus bringing all of the territories that were once called Palestine under Jewish control.
The upshot of the above narration is this: the UN played a key role in the establishment of Israel on Palestinian lands. In defence of the UN officials, including its secretary general, it must be stated that they hardly matter in the larger scheme of things. The world body will always remain only as good or as bad as its member states, especially those that sit on its Security Council where most of its major decisions are made. Therefore, any criticism of the UN for, say, an injustice done to a people should not be seen as an attack on its officials but on its member states, particularly those sitting on the Security Council that manipulate the system in such a manner that certain people are victimized while others are not.
However, amid the ongoing, months-long Israeli offensive in Occupied Gaza Strip the situation is changing in that members of the UN General Assembly are no longer looking on helplessly as the world powers do whatever they want to do with Palestinians. They have surely begun to weigh in on vital matters and launch moves of some consequence. And in response, the UN agencies are beginning to flex their muscles while remaining within the rules and regulations prescribed.
A case in point is the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in which its judges have said that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is against international law. According to some analysts, this ruling has again brought to the fore the well-known two-state plan as a possible means of bringing about permanent peace between the Palestinians and Israelis.
The UN court gave its ruling in response to a request made early last year by the General Assembly. According to the BBC, the court was asked to give its view on Israel’s policies and practices towards the Palestinians, and on the legal status of the occupation.
To be sure, the court’s opinion is advisory, which means it is not legally binding. However, it carries considerable weight, especially because it represents the opinion of eminent judges having deep understanding of international law. The ruling incidentally marks the first time the ICJ has delivered a position on the legality of the 57-year occupation of Palestinian territories.
In its ruling the ICJ specifically said that Israel should stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem and also end its illegal occupation of those areas plus the Gaza Strip, as soon as possible. The BBC quoted ICJ President Nawaf Salam as declaring: “Israel’s... continued presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is illegal. The State of Israel is under the obligation to bring an end to its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible.”
He said Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 did not bring Israel’s occupation of that area to an end because it still exercises effective control over it. The court also said that Israel should evacuate all of its settlers from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and pay reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by the occupation.
Israel has built about 160 settlements housing some 700,000 Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, according to the BBC. The court said the settlements were illegal.
The world court went on to say that Israel’s “policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory”, adding that Israel was “not entitled to sovereignty” over any part of the occupied territories. Mind you, Israel claims sovereignty over the whole of Jerusalem, the eastern half of which it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
The news of the landmark ICJ ruling came as a breath of fresh air, just as did South Africa’s act of moving the same court in an effort to stop genocidal and deadly military operations in Gaza more than seven months ago. Also, the judgment seemed just as sweet as the decision by three European countries — Spain, Ireland and Norway — to recognise (creation of) a Palestinian state.
According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, few parties to a case before the ICJ have failed to carry out the court’s decisions, even if these are mostly non-binding. Two exceptions are Albania, which failed to pay £843,947 in damages to the United Kingdom in the Corfu Channel case (1949), and the US, which refused to pay reparations to the Sandinista government of Nicaragua (1986). Israel too will probably ignore the ICJ ruling, so haughty has it become due to the constant support it gets from the western powers.
Having said that, the ICJ ruling has made it difficult for Israel to usurp the Occupied Territories or put the two-state plan on the backburner for long. But it is utterly heart-wrenching that the recent few “diplomatic, legal and other successes” on the question of Palestine have come at a time when the Gazans are being made to suffer untold atrocities on a daily basis. One only wishes that Israel agrees to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza soon, so that Gazans finally get a respite after nine months of non-stop atrocities committed by the brutal and murderous regime of Benjamin Netanyahu.
What lessons should we draw from the entire episode? Well, keeping in mind that joint as well as individual moves made by members of the General Assembly can and do bring about positive results, all the states desirous of seeing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict come to an end should set up a committee charged with the task of formulating joint plans for trying to revive the two-state plan. Three decades on from the First Oslo Accord of 1993, the time for relaunching efforts for implementation of the plan has come back.
Each member of the General Assembly should realise that finding a way to make their chamber (assembly) more effective as compared to the Security Council is in their common interest. They should also push for a reform of the council. Until such time as the reforms aimed at loosening the grip of the permanent members over the UN system are implemented, they will have to make do with what they can achieve through joint moves at the assembly level.
The only hitch, of course, is likely to be Israel’s reluctance, even refusal, to listen to reason. So the country is going to resist creation of a separate state for Palestinians at all costs. But what an overwhelming majority of Israelis probably don’t realise is that Israel’s image has been badly tarnished in the last several months due to the ongoing atrocities in Gaza. So the more the Zionists will dig in their heels, and refuse to do what seems logical, the more they will come across as the only hurdle to the resolution of the long-lasting conflict.—MNS