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Yves here. Even though the UN mechanism described below, a Uniting For Peace resolution, may seem quixotic, it is not unprecedented. And it does allow the UN to impose real sanctions, such as economic sanctions or an arms embargo. Note that the “shock and awe” sanctions imposed on Russia for its Ukraine invasion are not legal under international law because they were not approved by the UN.
However, even if the UN takes a first step that could then lead to a Uniting for Peace resolution coming before the General Assembly, Israel has six months to come into compliance with the ICJ ruling that found that the Israel settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem are illegal and the settlers need to leave. Needless to say, hell will freeze over or Israel will cease to exist as a state before that will happen. However, the prospect of the US losing that vote and potentially being exposed to sanctions for violating any UN measures could focus some minds in the US.
But a lot of Palestinians will die in Gaza in the six months plus for this procedure to be rolled out, even if it does proceed as Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies outline below. And under a Trump Administration, one could see that hyper Zionist administration halting payment of UN dues and even trying to expel the UN from New York City.
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, the authors ofWar in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books in November 2022. Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq
A moment of prayer and meditation at the opening of the UN General Assembly, September 10, 2024. Photo credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
On September 18th, the UN General Assembly is scheduled to debate and vote on a resolution calling on Israel to end “its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” within six months. Given that the General Assembly, unlike the exclusive 15-member UN Security Council, allows all UN members to vote and there is no veto in the General Assembly, this is an opportunity for the world community to clearly express its opposition to Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.
If Israel predictably fails to heed a General Assembly resolution calling on it to withdraw its occupation forces and settlers from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the United States then vetoes or threatens to veto a Security Council resolution to enforce the ICJ ruling, then the General Assembly could go a step further.
It could convene an Emergency Session to take up what is called a Uniting For Peace resolution, which could call for an arms embargo, an economic boycott or other UN sanctions against Israel – or even call for actions against the United States. Uniting for Peace resolutions have only been passed by the General Assembly five times since the procedure was first adopted in 1950.
The September 18 resolution comes in response to an historic ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on July 19, which found that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”
The court ruled that Israel’s obligations under international law include “the evacuation of all settlers from existing settlements” and the payment of restitution to all who have been harmed by its illegal occupation. The passage of the General Assembly resolution by a large majority of members would demonstrate that countries all over the world support the ICJ ruling, and would be a small but important first step toward ensuring that Israel must live up to those obligations.
Israel’s President Netanyahu cavalierly dismissed the court ruling with a claim that, “The Jewish nation cannot be an occupier in its own land.” This is exactly the position that the court had rejected, ruling that Israel’s 1967 military invasion and occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territories did not give it the right to settle its own people there, annex those territories, or make them part of Israel.
While Israel used its hotly disputed account of the October 7th events as a pretext to declare open season for the mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, Israeli forces in the West Bank and East Jerusalem used it as a pretext to distribute assault rifles and other military-grade weapons to illegal Israeli settlers and unleash a new wave of violence there, too.
Armed settlers immediately started seizing more Palestinian land and shooting Palestinians. Israeli occupation forces either stood by and watched or joined in the violence, but did not intervene to defend Palestinians or hold their Israeli attackers accountable.
Since last October, occupation forces and armed settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have nowkilled at least 700 people, including 159 children.
The escalation of violence and land seizures has been so flagrant that even the U.S. and European governments have felt obligated to impose sanctions on a small number of violent settlers and their organizations.
In Gaza, the Israeli military has been murdering Palestinians day after day for the past 11 months. The Palestinian Health Ministry has counted over 41,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, but with the destruction of the hospitals that it relies on to identify and count the dead, this is now only a partial death toll. Medical researchers estimate that the total number of deaths in Gaza from the direct and indirect results of Israeli actions will be in the hundreds of thousands, even if the massacre were to end soon.
Israel and the United States are undoubtedly more and more isolated as a result of their roles in this genocide. Whether the United States can still coerce or browbeat a few of its traditional allies into rejecting or abstaining from the General Assembly resolution on September 18 will be a test of its residual “soft power.”
President Biden can claim to be exercising a certain kind of international leadership, but it is not the kind of leadership that any American can be proud of. The United States has muscled its way into a pivotal role in the ceasefire negotiations begun by Qatar and Egypt, and it has used that position to skillfully and repeatedly undermine any chance of a ceasefire, the release of hostages or an end to the genocide.
By failing to use any of its substantial leverage to pressure Israel, and disingenuously blaming Hamas for every failure in the negotiations, U.S. officials are ensuring that the genocide will continue for as long as they and and their Israeli allies want, while many Americans remain confused about their own government’s responsibility for the continuing bloodshed.
This is a continuation of the strategy by which the United States has stymied and prevented peace since 1967, falsely posing as an honest broker, while in fact remaining Israel’s staunchest ally and the critical diplomatic obstacle to a free Palestine.
In addition to cynically undermining any chance of a ceasefire, the United States has injected itself into debates over the future of Gaza, promoting the idea that a post-war government could be led by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, which many Palestinians view as hopelessly corrupt and compromised by subservience to Israel and the United States.
China has taken a more constructive approach to resolving differences between Palestinian political groupings. It invited Hamas, Fatah and 12 other Palestinian groups to a three-day meeting in Beijing in July, where they all agreed to a “national unity” plan to form a post-war “interim national reconciliation government,” which would oversee relief and rebuilding in Gaza and organize a national Palestinian election to seat a new elected government.
Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the political movement called the Palestinian National Initiative, hailed the Beijing Declaration as going “much further” than previous reconciliation efforts, and said that the plan for a unity government “blocks Israeli efforts to create some kind of collaborative structure against Palestinian interests.” China has also called for an international peace conference to try to end the war.
As the world comes together in the General Assembly on September 18, it faces both a serious challenge and an unprecedented opportunity. Each time the General Assembly has met in recent years, a succession of leaders from the Global South has risen to lament the breakdown of the peaceful and just international order that the UN is supposed to represent, from the failure to end the war in Ukraine to inaction against the climate crisis to the persistence of neocolonialism in Africa.
Perhaps no crisis more clearly embodies the failure of the UN and the international system than the 57-year-old Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories it invaded in 1967. At the same time that the United States has armed Israel to the teeth, it has vetoed 46 UN Security Council resolutions that either required Israel to comply with international law, called for an end to the occupation or for Palestinian statehood, or held Israel accountable for war crimes or illegal settlement building.
The ability of one Permanent Member of the Security Council to use its veto to block the rule of international law and the will of the rest of the world has always been widely recognized as the fatal flaw in the existing structure of the UN system.
When this structure was first announced in 1945, French writer Albert Camus wrote in Combat, the French Resistance newspaper he edited, that the veto would “effectively put an end to any idea of international democracy… The Five would thus retain forever the freedom of maneuver that would be forever denied the others.”
The General Assembly and the Security Council have debated a series of resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and each debate has pitted the United States, Israel, and occasionally the United Kingdom or another U.S. ally, against the voices of the rest of the world calling in unison for peace in Gaza.
Of the UN’s 193 nations, 145 have now recognized Palestine as a sovereign nation comprising Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and even more countries have voted for resolutions to end the occupation, prohibit Israeli settlements and support Palestinian self-determination and human rights.
For many decades, the United States’ unique position of unconditional support for Israel has been a critical factor in enabling Israeli war crimes and prolonging the intolerable plight of the Palestinian people.
In the crisis in Gaza, the U.S. military alliance with Israel involves the U.S. directly in the crime of genocide, as the United States provides the warplanes and bombs that are killing the largest numbers of Palestinians and literally destroying Gaza. The United States also deploys military liaison officers to assist Israel inplanning its operations, special operations forces to provide intelligence and satellite communications, and trainers and technicians to teach Israeli forces to use and maintain new American weapons, such as F-35 warplanes.
The supply chain for the U.S. arsenal of genocide criss-crosses America, from weapons factories to military bases to procurement offices at the Pentagon and Central Command in Tampa. It feeds plane loads of weapons flying to military bases in Israel, from where these endless tons of steel and high explosives rain down on Gaza to shatter buildings, flesh and bones.
The U.S. role is greater than complicity – it is essential, active participation, without which the Israelis could not conduct this genocide in its present form, any more than the Germans could have run Auschwitz without gas chambers and poison gas.
And it is precisely because of the essential U.S. role in this genocide that the United States has the power to end it, not by pretending to plead with the Israelis to be more “careful” about civilian casualties, but by ending its own instrumental role in the genocide.
Every American of conscience should keep applying all kinds of pressure on our own government, but as long as it keeps ignoring the will of its own people, sending more weapons, vetoing Security Council resolutions and undermining peace negotiations, it is by default up to our neighbors around the world to muster the unity and political will to end the genocide.
It would certainly be unprecedented for the world to unite, in opposition to Israel and the United States, to save Palestine and enforce the ICJ ruling that Israel must withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The world has rarely come together so unanimously since the founding of the United Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War in 1945. Even the catastrophic U.S.-British invasion and destruction of Iraq failed to provoke such united action.
But the lesson of that crisis, indeed the lesson of our time, is that this kind of unity is essential if we are ever to bring sanity, humanity and peace to our world. That can start with a decisive vote in the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, September 18, 2024.
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Someone pointed out on X, back in October 2023, that no country was willing to send its people to die, in order to save the life of the people in Gaza.
So the genocide will continue unabated, whatever the talk in UNGA, the ICC or the ICJ.
But this signals also the infinite hypocrisy of the West, the end of Israel as a state, and the end of the US Empire.
So I think about Gramsci – “the old world is dying and the new cannot be born. In between monsters arise”, and consider that the extermination in Gaza is the monster that the world accepts to get into a new world order.
[By the way, looking at the number of refugees, and the number of civilians* being killed on a daily basis in Ukraine, one could make the point that NATO started a genocide in Ukraine.
*civilians, because boys, girls, elderly people, people with Down Syndrome, men welded in tanks, … with only a fews days of training, are not really military personnel, even if they wear fatigues and a gun. ]
Isrhael has subs with nukes and will not shy away from using them, “in self defense”… Or pre-emptive strikes… Cancer on the face of nowadays humanity.
Can UN enforce laws? Doubtful. America under Bush declared “you are with us or against us…” to the world after 9/11. I think this sentiment still rules foreign policy. Iraw war underscored this and the world already knows this. Gaza is another Iraq. The only thing is Israel’s mask is removed and what is underneath is there for the whole world to see.
This is not about enforcing laws. The UN can impose sanctions. This would give all member states air cover for ending or limiting arms supplies and other exports. Israel’s economy is already in bad shape. It would not take much more in the way of damage to accelerate the downward trajectory. The premise of Israel is that it offers European living standards and safety for Jews. Both are coming under pressure. We ran a post recently where an expert in Israel said if 300,000 of the elite workers (bureaucrats, tech and other skilled employees) left, Israel would implode.
The problem is that the timetable for this to bite is slower than the progress of the genocide. I have mentioned that I had two college roommates who were deeply involved in South Africa divestiture activism. That was 1976. Regime change happened 15 years later.
The answer is that the UN exists these days as a means to enforce US hegemony. The US is the largest donor of the UN. It’s also why the UN is losing credibility.
At the end of the day, any UN sanctions would be subject to Western veto. The US and its Western proxies would veto any measure that would sanction Israel. They have permanent seats on the Security Council. In that regard, any votes in the UN against Israel would be entirely symbolic. The UN will see its veto used.
In the long run, this is going to further isolate the US from the rest of the world. The majority of the world is isolated from the West on this issue and sees the West as enabling a genocide in Palestine.
The US is creating a lot of global animosity when it supplies Israel the weapons it needs to continue the war and has provided diplomatic cover for Israel. This is not the first time – the UN was unable to do anything about the US invading Iraq in 2003, for example.
Keep in mind that the US is decline on a global scale. A lot of nations are going to be very bitter with the US as it continues its decline. The irony is that this is a time when the US should be trying to increase its diplomatic capabilities to ensure that on the way down, the US is not isolated and there isn’t a lot of anti-American sentiment. Instead it is doing the opposite.
The US has angered most of the non-Western world. That’s going to be a bigger issue in the future when the US is even weaker than it is today.
I think China should put some of its money where its mouth is and beef up the funding and demand more positions in the secretariat apparatus. And push aside some of the present staff behlden to US interest.
Slowly seems it is doing it: https://www.stimson.org/2022/chinas-emerging-financial-influence-at-the-un/
And US resents it for this…
https://x.com/upholdreality/status/1835979913679036548
COMBATE @upholdreality
China at the UN: “Israel must immediately lift the blockade, open all border crossings, remove restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid, cease attacks on the UN and other humanitarian agencies, and offer safe and unimpeded access for humanitarian efforts.”
https://x.com/i/status/1835979913679036548
5:51 AM · Sep 17, 2024
I’m afraid that if you take away the (understandable) anger and criticism of Israel and the US, there’s not a lot here except a pious hope that a UNGA resolution will somehow weigh so heavily on those two countries that they will … do something. But that’s missing the point. In many ways, voting for such a resolution (which has no legal force) would be a cheap and easy option to avoid actually having to do anything. The UN building is stuffed with reports and resolutions about such subjects on which no action has ever been taken.
Indeed, the big complaint from those sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians is that fellow Arab and Islamic states talk a good game (including at the UN) but don’t actually do anything. In part, this is because most states in the region regard the Palestinians as a nuisance, and wish they would just disappear. Nothing prevents states from sanctioning Israel in any way they like (no state can be legally obliged to trade with another) or organising some more muscular kind of intervention. But that’s not going to happen, and in a part of the world where brute force is the only recognised currency, unfortunately talk like this is a waste of time.
The biggest effect would be putting the final nail in the coffin of peace negotiations under US mediation. Israel would have no incentive to continue with the sham and is likely to move towards annexation of the whole West Bank and full on ethnic cleansing.
I think you are right, it wouldn’t lead to any sort concrete action (like military intervention), but my guess is that it would create a perpetual state of low-grade war/insurrection on Israeli borders that would drain Israeli economy. While short-term Israel would not be greatly affected, I think it would create long term conditions for decline of Israeli state through population flight and increased radicalization, mirroring South Africa in 1960′ and 70’s. We are already seeing formation of extra-judicial armed settler groups and it’s only a question of time before these move from violence against Palestinians to violence against political opponents, further alienating world and US public opinion.
While US aid may slow down the economic decline, it’s questionable how long will that last. US public opinion is turning against Israel and I think we are close to a point where AIPAC loses its ability to influence elections. Even in this election cycle they had to hide their financial support of candidates under the guises of non-AIPAC organizations, because open AIPAC support is already toxic.
A not-insignificant development I think has also been the way the word “anti-Semitic” has been stripped of its formerly nuclear level explosive power. The grip of the accusation holds way less power to paralyse well-meaning people.
To find Greta Thunberg called anti-Semitic all over the internet by supposed human rights organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League was fiercely saddening:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GXnQYjbWUAAJQ0z?format=jpg&name=small
Of course, the nobel Jeremy Corbyn was ruined by the same name-calling.
Brute violence is not just the currency in West Asia. You might want to tweak that claim just a tad.
Also, public opinion can be ignored with impunity in the US, this is well documented. The Bipartisan Consensus always prevails
Looking at the very careful and calculated manner that Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran has responded to Israeli provocation, I would say that brute force is not the only currency in West Asia. Yes, the US and Western back regimes in the region traffic in disproportionate and counterproductive brutality, mostly against defenseless civilians, but Iran and Hezbollah have tried their utmost to maintain deterrence and largely let the Israeli frog boil itself.
Yes indeed, that is clear to me as well. I
The Cradle noted that Germany, which had been the second largest and supplier to Israel, basically stopped their arms shipment in 2024, likely in response to the ICJ preliminary opinion on Gaza and advisory opinion on the West Bank.
For countries with some sort of representative electoral system and/or functioning judicial system in place, the UN votes can lend support towards the anti-Zionist side. Palestinian victims of Israeli violence and theft could start suing Israeli and American companies and individuals in say Russia or Spain. Getting local judges to issue arrest warrants against Blinken or Jerry Seinfeld or Steven Spielberg for their support of Zionist terrorism. Subject TikToking Israeli soldiers to arrests for documented crimes against humanity.
The last 11 months have been an absurdity in abuse of passive voice, high officials lying about what happened and didn’t happen, and brazen cruelty that’s turned the bulk of the RoW population against Israel and the US/EU, and the domestic populations in Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey against their ostensible governments. Even Western installed puppets can be toppled, as we see in the case of Mubarak and the Iranian Shah, and they’re all recognizing that Israel cannot behave in a “reasonable” way. Even the regimes are all cozying up to BRICS, nevermind the populace.
So why assume that what’s been maintained for the past several decades, largely at the cost of millions of lives and tens of millions of refugees, can just keep going on, when US power and prestige is on steep decline?
Would Trump ejecting the UN from New York actually be a bad thing? It would hasten the global bifurcation into two blocks – the rules-based (whatever the US wants today) order (RBO) and a law-based order for the rest in a new and improved UN.
Given that most of the global resources and production capacity are not in the RBO, this would lead, IMO, to the RBO’s collapse, and one can pray, a different order that actually follows the interests of the 99%.
I largely agree with Aurelien’s take above. Although ever-skeptical, I do welcome any action that has even a remote possibility of curtailing Israel/US/UK atrocities, BDS included. The slow-but-steady further erosion of the Israeli economy will be welcome, but it is early days still.
What is clear however, since the US offers no meaningful democratic choice, both candidate-clowns have expressed their unconditional support of the Genocide of Palestine. Even “progressives” in Congress like AOC, and Bernard Sanders are fundraising for the status-quo, and are just fine with the genocide, despite the intelligence-insulting hypocrisy. I don’t expect any change in US policy, in fact, we may see more threats from Warshiton against anyone who tries to interfere with the genocide, no matter which freak wins the so-called election.
Speaking as a South African normie unbelievably proud of the ICJ case (despite the devastating legacy of corruption in the governing ANC) even if the UN is seen as having no teeth, there really is a sense of solidarity and shared humanity that many of us feel just from the symbolic public declarations and support from other nations. I’m no politician, but as a human, it still means something. Formalities have a place of meaning still for many of us exposed to and in touch with non-western cultures. Ritual means something, it’s not always empty gestures. And for many who have known and seen the monstrousity of US+allies foreign power, but always felt like part of the minority opinion, it matters. Here in SA my fellow whites are somewhat divided over the issue (sadly) although my guess is more than half are against Israel’s violence. The international support for Palestine helps to disable most of the negative effects of gaslighting. It might not mean much but I find the ICJ declarations/opinions profoundly emotional each time.
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/20/world/mandela-visits-israel-with-praise-but-rifts-linger.html
October 20, 1999
Mandela Visits Israel With Praise but Rifts Linger
By William A. Orme Jr.
It was a trip intended to heal old wounds, and as Nelson Mandela concluded his first visit to Israel today, he took pains to praise ”my friends” — Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Ezer Weisman — for their regional peacemaking efforts and the ”warmth” of their reception.
The 81-year-old South African leader called Mr. Barak ”a man of vision” for his pursuit of a settlement with Syria. And Mr. Mandela made it clear that he understands Israel’s need ”for Arab recognition of its existence within secure boundaries.” Without such recognition a regional armistice would be ”foolhardy,” he said.
Yet the visit was marked by continuing undercurrents of distrust between Mr. Mandela, a staunch champion of the Palestinian cause, and a country that once helped arm the apartheid Government that Mr. Mandela drove out of power.
Before traveling on to Gaza for an afternoon meeting with another ”good friend” — Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader — Mr. Mandela reiterated his unwavering opposition to Israeli control of Gaza, the West Bank, the Golan Heights and southern Lebanon.
”Talk of peace will remain hollow if Israel continues to occupy Arab territories,” he said, sitting at a conference table in Israel’s Foreign Ministry, where such sentiments are rarely heard. ”I understand completely well why Israel occupies these lands. There was a war. But if there is going to be peace, there must be complete withdrawal from all of these areas.”
And, leaving little doubt about his lingering resentment of Israel’s diplomatic and military ties to his former jailers, he tartly noted that upon his release from prison in 1990, he received invitations to visit ”almost every country in the world, except Israel.” …
Absolutely. I feel the same way. Its also undeniable that Israel also feels it. They no longer get to set the narrative. It gives us the power to tell the story from our side.