israel, the united states, and the united nations

A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture & Society
>
> May/June 2003 || http://www.tikkun.org
>
>
> Israel, the United States, and the United Nations
>
> Stephen Zunes
>
> In attempting to justify its invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration
> claimed that the credibility of the United Nations Security Council
> and its resolutions would be at stake if the enforcement arm of the
> world body did not authorize the use of force against Saddam
> Hussein's regime. Critics, however, correctly pointed out that Iraq
> was not the only Middle Eastern state to defy such resolutions.
> Israel, it was noted, by even the most conservative interpretation, is
> in violation of no less than thirty-five UN Security Council
> resolutions, more than any other nation. These critics observed how
> the Bush administration was not only not threatening an invasion of
> Israel, but had pledged to block the imposition of sanctions and
> other measures to ensure Israeli compliance with these resolutions
> and to continue to provide Israel with large-scale military and
> economic assistance despite its ongoing violations.
>
> How valid is such criticism? And is Israel indeed the world's number
> one international outlaw?
>
> Israel owes its very existence to the United Nations, which
> partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into a proposed Jewish
> and Arab state in 1947 through General Assembly Resolution 194.
> And yet the United Nations has been seen for at least three
> decades to be hostile to Israel.
>
> The two main bodies of the United Nations are the General
> Assembly and the Security Council.
>
> The General Assembly consists of all member states of the United
> Nations, which was made up of just 51 nations at the UN's founding
> in 1945 and now totals 191 countries. Each member has one vote
> and most decisions are made by a simple majority. Though the
> General Assembly's recommendations are an important indication
> of world opinion and can represent the moral authority of the
> community of nations, it does not have the power to enforce its
> resolutions on other nations. As a result, most resolutions are
> largely symbolic in nature.
>
> The Security Council is a fifteen-member body. This includes the
> five permanent members, which were the major victorious allies of
> World War II: the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, and
> China. Each has the power to veto any Security Council resolution.
> There are ten nonpermanent members representing regional blocs
> that serve two-year terms and do not have the ability to veto. The
> Security Council, unlike the General Assembly, has the power to
> enforce its resolutions through sanctions, military force, and other
> measures if they deem there is a threat to international peace and
> security. As a result, Security Council resolutions are taken far more
> seriously.
>
> As decolonization led to a Third World majority in the General
> Assembly by the 1970s, these former colonies=97in alliance with the
> Soviet Union and its Communist allies=97passed a series of
> resolutions that focused upon the major grievances of the world's
> poor majority, particularly the maldistribution of global wealth and
> other legacies of colonialism. Also of concern was what was largely
> seen as contemporary manifestations of colonialism, particularly the
> apartheid system then in effect in South Africa and the ongoing
> Israeli occupation of Arab land since the 1967 war. A series of
> resolutions critical of Israel were pushed through the General
> Assembly, some of which were based on well-documented Israeli
> violations of the Fourth Geneva Convention and related international
> covenants on human rights, and others which were largely based on
> ideological opposition to Israel's very existence. The most notorious
> was a resolution passed in October 1975 as an amendment to a
> General Assembly resolution establishing the Decade to Combat
> Racism and Racial Discrimination, which claimed that Zionism was
> a form of racism and racial discrimination. Other initiatives of the
> General Assembly included the 1974 decision to grant observer
> status to the Palestine Liberation Organization, (similar status was
> granted to the Southwest Africa People's Organization [SWAPO],
> which was fighting for the independence of Namibia, then occupied
> by South Africa). The General Assembly at this time also
> established the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the
> Palestinian People to advance the Palestinian cause, and invited
> PLO leader Yasir Arafat to address the General Assembly.
>
> While many of the concerns raised by the General Assembly
> regarding Israeli violations of international law and internationally
> recognized human rights were valid, the fact that Israel received far
> more attention than any other member of the United Nations, and
> that the majority of Israel's most vocal critics were among the
> world's more serious human rights violators, raised the specter of
> anti-Semitism. On the one hand, as an occupying power, Israel was
> legitimately subjected to more intense scrutiny by the United Nations
> than most human rights violators who are legally protected by their
> right of sovereignty from most criticisms of domestic repression.
> This does not mean, however, that there were not egregious double
> standards. I recall witnessing an impassioned speech on the subject
> of Palestine by one UN delegate stressing the fundamental right to
> self-determination and the deplorable human rights situation in the
> occupied territories. While there was nothing in the speech that was
> in itself unreasonable, the delegate happened to represent the
> government of Indonesia, which had invaded, annexed, and
> colonized the island nation of East Timor in violation of a series of
> UN Security Council resolutions, resulting in the deaths of 200,000
> East Timorese civilians.
>
> In more recent years, anti-Israel rhetoric in the General Assembly
> has dramatically decreased. The resolution equating Zionism with
> racism was overwhelmingly repealed in 1991. Still, the United
> Nations has yet to live down its anti-Israel reputation.
>
> In contrast to the General Assembly, the Security
> Council=97dominated by Western democracies and with a firmer
> commitment to international law and the United Nations
> Charter=97has generally not displayed an anti-Israel bias. For
> example, the UN Charter is explicit in its recognition of the
> inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war. As a result,
Iraq'=
> s
> 1990 invasion and occupation of Kuwait was not allowed to stand,
> with the Security Council authorizing the use of force to enforce its
> resolutions demanding Iraqi withdrawal. When Morocco invaded
> Western Sahara in 1975 and Indonesia invaded East Timor that
> same year, the UN demanded the withdrawal of the occupying
> armies and underscored the right to self-determination. Similar
> demands were made of Turkey when it seized the northern third of
> Cyprus the previous year. Though none of these resolutions were
> enforced=97in part as a result of the United States' close strategic
> relationship with the invaders=97the Security Council did reiterate
> basic legal principles against such territorial expansion.
>
> By contrast, UN Security Council resolution 242=97passed after the
> 1967 war when Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, the
> Golan Heights of Syria, the West Bank (including East Jerusalem),
> and the Gaza Strip=97did not include demands comparable to these
> other resolutions for the occupying army to withdraw unconditionally
> and grant the right of self-determination. Instead, Israeli withdrawal
> was made conditional on neighboring states recognizing Israel's
> right to exist within secure and recognized borders, free from acts or
> threats of force. This principle=97reiterated in UNSC resolution 338
> passed after the October 1973 war=97became known as "land for
> peace."
>
> Supporters of the Israeli Occupation sometimes claim that the
> resolution spoke of "territories" rather than "the territories," implying
> that there is no obligation for a full withdrawal. By this
interpretation,=
>
> the return of the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1981 thereby fulfilled
> Israel's obligations. However, the resolution's text in French (the
> other official language of the United Nations) does use the definite
> article. Furthermore, the authors of the original resolution=97the
> American and British ambassadors=97explicitly stated that they were
> thinking only in terms of very minor and reciprocal adjustments of
> the jagged border that was based upon cease-fire lines in the 1949
> armistice agreement.
>
> The Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization initially
> rejected these resolutions, though there were indications that some
> of them were moderating this rejectionist stance as far back as the
> mid-1970s. By the early 1990s, it appeared that the PLO and
> virtually every Arab state was ready to accept the principle of land
> for peace. In March 2002, at the Beirut summit of the League of
> Arab States, a resolution endorsing a peace plan by Saudi Prince
> Abdullah that essentially reiterated 242 and 338 was adopted
> unanimously.
>
> As the Arabs became more open to accepting the formula of land
> for peace, the Israelis and the United States became more
> intransigent. For example, the United States barred the PLO from
> participating in the U.S.-sponsored peace process for nearly twenty
> years in part because the PLO refused to accept UN Security
> Council resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis of negotiation. Since
> the resolutions did not recognize Palestinian national rights,
> however, the PLO initially rejected them. A proposed UN Security
> Council resolution quietly supported by the PLO and several
> prominent Arab governments that reiterated 242 and 338 with the
> proviso that a Palestinian state be established on the West Bank
> and Gaza Strip was vetoed by the United States in 1976. When the
> Palestinians formally accepted the resolutions without the proviso as
> the basis for peace talks in 1988 and were finally allowed into the
> peace process five years later, the U.S. essentially dropped these
> resolutions as the basis of the peace talks. The U.S. has not
> formally rejected them, but has called on the Arab parties=97after
> they accepted them=97to be "flexible" and to be open to "new ideas."
>
> The security guarantees called for in the resolutions were generally
> interpreted to mean promises of non-aggression by neighboring
> states, presumably enforced by some kind of combination of arms
> control, demilitarized zones, early warning systems, and
> international peacekeeping forces. The United States and Israel
> have dramatically expanded this interpretation, however, now
> insisting that the resolution essentially requires that the physical
> safety of every Israeli citizen must be somehow guaranteed. In
> effect, the Israeli and U.S. governments argue that Israel is under
> no obligation to withdraw from the occupied territories unless there
> is a total halt of attacks by suicide bombers or other terrorists. Since
> most of these come from underground terrorist cells that are beyond
> the effective control of any government (particularly a
> disempowered Palestinian Authority under siege by Israeli
> occupation forces) and who explicitly want to sabotage the peace
> process through violence, this effectively means that the Israelis
> need not be obliged to withdraw. Ironically, it is the Occupation itself
> that is largely responsible for the suicide bombing campaign, as the
> failure of Israel to abide by Security Council resolutions and the
> failure of the United States to insist upon their enforcement has led
> many Palestinians to give up on peaceful means of resolving the
> conflict.
>
> Indeed, there are other Security Council resolutions that the Israeli
> government is undeniably violating. These include resolutions 446,
> 452, and 465, which require Israel to cease its colonization of the
> occupied territories through the establishment of Jewish
> settlements, which are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention,
> which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian
> population onto lands seized by military force. Despite this, the
> Clinton and Bush administrations have declared that the fate of the
> settlements must be determined through negotiations between
> Israel and the Palestinian Authority. President Bill Clinton's
> December 2000 peace plan=97like Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
> Barak's plan presented at Camp David in July of that year=97allowed
> Israel to annex huge swaths of occupied West Bank land so to
> incorporate 80% of the settlers, even though every one of them was
> living in these settlements in violation of a series of UN Security
> Council resolutions. Given the asymmetry in power between the
> Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers, it is not surprising that not
> only has Israel refused to withdraw from these illegal settlements
> but has nearly doubled them since the signing of the Oslo Accords
> in 1993. The attempt to annex these illegal settlements into Israel
> through the Clinton and Barak plans effectively divided up the West
> Bank into a series of non-contiguous cantons which made the
> prospective Palestinian "state" so unviable that Arafat was forced to
> reject it. The result has been the horrific violence that has been
> ongoing ever since.
>
> Significantly, Article 7 of UN Security Council resolution 465 forbids
> all member states from facilitating Israel's colonization drive. Given
> that the United States has largely been funding the construction of
> the so-called "bypass" roads and other infrastructure that reinforces
> Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, one could make the
> case that the United States is also in violation of this resolution.
>
> Another series of UN Security Council resolutions deal with another
> sticking point in the peace process: the status of Jerusalem. Israel
> is currently violating UN Security Council resolutions 262, 267, 476,
> and 478 which call upon Israel to rescind its annexation of Arab
> East Jerusalem and surrounding areas seized in the early days of
> the 1967 war, and to cease other activities which attempt to change
> the city's status. Article 5 of Resolution 478 calls upon all member
> states of the UN to accept this decision, yet through a series of
> executive orders and Congressional resolutions over the past
> decade, the United States has effectively recognized Israeli
> sovereignty over all of greater East Jerusalem.
>
> Other resolutions currently being violated by Israel include UNSC
> resolution 487, which calls upon Israel to place its nuclear facilities
> under the safeguard of the UN's International Atomic Energy
> Agency; UNSC resolution 497, which demands that Israel rescind its
> decision to impose its domestic laws in the occupied Syrian Golan
> region; UNSC resolution 573, which calls on Israel to pay
> compensation for human and material losses from its 1985 attack
> against Tunisia; and, resolutions 1402, 1403, and 1405 which
> require Israel to withdraw from occupied Palestinian cities on the
> West Bank. There are also well over a dozen resolutions currently
> being violated which insist that Israel abide by the Fourth Geneva
> Conventions regarding the occupied territories, including ceasing its
> deportations and assassinations of Palestinians, its demolitions of
> Palestinian homes, and other forms of collective punishment as well
> as controlling violence by settlers against the Palestinian population.
>
> For twenty-two years, Israel remained in violation of UNSC
> resolution 425 and nine subsequent resolutions demanding its
> unconditional withdrawal from southern Lebanon. Even as a sizable
> majority of Israeli public opinion supported such a unilateral
> withdrawal by the late 1990s, U.S. ambassador to Israel Martin
> Indyk told the Israeli media that the United States supported Israel's
> continued occupation anyway. When the radical Lebanese Islamist
> group known as Hizbullah finally drove the Israelis out of Lebanon in
> a hasty retreat in May 2000, it demonstrated to many Palestinians
> that reliance on UN Security Council resolutions was fruitless. By
> contrast, the military victory by Hizbullah led many Palestinians to
> believe that the only way to free themselves from Israeli control is,
> like the Lebanese, to wage a sustained armed resistance led by an
> extremist Islamic movement. Indeed, there are few Palestinians
> engaged in the ongoing anti-Israeli violence who do not cite
> Lebanon as their model. For a number of reasons=97particularly the
> great difference in Israeli perspectives regarding the significance of
> the occupied Palestinian territories as compared with southern
> Lebanon=97it is a very inappropriate comparison. Still, the United
> States' effort to undermine UN Security Council resolutions
> regarding Israel and Lebanon is largely to blame for this radicalizing
> shift in Palestinian attitudes.
>
> Having renounced armed struggle and unilaterally recognized Israeli
> control of most of Palestine in the 1993 Oslo Accords, the strongest
> tool left at the Palestinians' disposal was these outstanding UN
> Security Council resolutions dealing with settlements, Jerusalem,
> and other matters. The Palestinians assumed that, as guarantor of
> the Declaration of Principles, the United States would pressure
> Israel to make needed compromises later, based upon UN Security
> Council resolutions that the United States, as a Security Council
> member, was obliged to uphold. However, both the Clinton
> administration and the current Bush administration claim that the
> United Nations no longer has any standing in the Israeli-Palestinian
> conflict, arguing that the UN resolutions have been superseded by
> the Oslo Accords. According to Madeleine Albright, when she
> served as Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations, "resolution
> language referring to 'final status' issues should be dropped, since
> these issues are now under negotiations by the parties themselves.
> These include refugees, settlements, territorial sovereignty, and the
> status of Jerusalem."
>
> This attempt to unilaterally negate the authority of the United
> Nations, however, has not been shared by the international
> community. No UN resolution can be rescinded without a vote of the
> body in question. Neither the UN Secretary General nor any other
> member of the Security Council agrees with the U.S. assessment,
> which discounts the relevance of the resolutions. Furthermore, no
> bilateral agreement between two parties can supersede the
> authority of the United Nations Security Council. This is especially
> true when one of the two parties (in this case, the Palestinians) has
> made it clear that such resolutions are still very relevant.
>
> Non-enforcement of existing UN Security Council resolutions is only
> one part of the perceived U.S. bias. Since the early 1970s, the
> United States has used its veto power in the Security Council forty
> times to block resolutions critical of Israeli policies in the occupied
> territories, more than all other countries have used their veto on all
> other issues during this period combined. Most recently, this has
> included vetoing a 2001 resolution calling for the stationing of
> unarmed human rights monitors in the occupied territories and a
> resolution this past December criticizing Israel's slaying of three
> United Nations workers. In addition, there have been scores of
> occasions when threat of a U.S. veto has led to a weakening of a
> resolution's language or the withdrawal of the proposed resolution
> prior to the vote. For example, in March 2001, the United States
> scuttled a series of proposed resolutions by European nations by
> threatening to veto any resolution that used the term "siege" in
> reference to Israeli occupation forces surrounding Palestinian
> towns, or said anything in relation to Israel's illegal settlements, the
> Geneva Conventions, international law, or the principle of land-for-
> peace.
>
> It is not surprising, therefore, that the United States insistence that
> an invasion of Iraq is necessary to maintain the integrity of the
> United Nations and its resolutions comes across as hypocritical in
> the extreme.
>
> Defenders of the Israeli and American position point out that the
> resolutions dealing with Israel fall under Chapter VI of the UN
> Charter regarding the "Pacific Settlement of Disputes" while most of
> those dealing with Iraq fall under Chapter VII, "Action with Respect
> to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of
> Aggression." While technically true, this ignores the fact that the
> choice of which resolutions fall into which category has nothing to
> do with the severity of a given nation's violations of international law
> or the human impact of the country's transgressions as much as it
> does with the violator's relationship with major powers on the
> Security Council. For example, resolutions dealing with Indonesia's
> invasion and massacres in East Timor were placed under Chapter
> VI while a resolution addressing an extradition dispute between the
> United States and Libya was placed under Chapter VII.
>
> This flagrant politicization of the UN Security Council by the United
> States on behalf of Israel=97as well as other allies such as Morocco
> and Turkey=97has seriously undermined the legitimacy of the United
> Nations, the international legal system, and basic principles of
> multilateralism. Combined with the U.S. invasion of Iraq, it threatens
> the very legitimacy of twentieth century concepts of an international
> system based on agreed-upon legal principles and replaces it with a
> nineteenth century notion of power politics. Such an anarchic world
> that could result cannot be good for the Israel, the United States, or
> anyone else.
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
=
> -------
>
> Stephen Zunes is chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at
> the University of San Francisco. He is the author of the recently-
> released Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of