October 30, 2023 - 1:30pm
As tanks today reach the outskirts of Gaza, the spat that emerged last week between Israel and the United Nations shows no sign of abating. UN officials explicitly criticised Israel’s assault on Gaza, while Israel’s UN Representative Gilad Erdan called for the resignation of Secretary-General António Guterres after Guterres said that the Hamas atrocities of 7 October did not “occur in a vacuum” and drew attention to Israel’s continued occupation of Palestinian land.
Relations between Israel and the UN are unlikely to improve anytime soon, as diplomats and resolutions strive to contain and limit the conflict. Meanwhile, UN agencies are struggling to supply relief to Gaza, with thousands breaking into aid depots at the weekend in what the organisation described as a “worrying sign of civil order starting to break down”.
Israel’s tempestuous relationship with the UN is usually linked to the notorious “Zionism is racism” resolution adopted by the General Assembly in 1975, but really it stretches deeper, reaching even into the pre-history of the Jewish state.
However fraught Israel’s relations and membership within the UN may be, it is unlikely to disintegrate completely. This is not only because both the history and fate of Israel and Palestine are so intertwined with the history of international organisation, but also because the end of the conflict is likely to deepen the UN’s role in Gaza and perhaps the region more widely.
When the British Empire took over the government of Palestine following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, it was as a mandate territory of the world’s first global inter-state organisation, the League of Nations, on whose behalf Britain committed to steer Palestine as a “sacred trust of civilisation”.
The League mandate system was part of the slow process by which functions of imperial ordering in international affairs were slowly but steadily transferred from national capitals to international organisations over the course of the last century. On the eve of Israel’s independence and the first Arab-Israeli war of 1948, Palestine was a trust territory — the UN version of the League’s earlier mandate system.
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Subscribe“Palestinians may have plenty more international aid and support, but they will be no more free under a revived UN trusteeship than they are beneath the assault of Israeli bombs”
What an extraordinarily absurd statement,
Israeli attacks on Gaza only follow Hamas’s indiscriminate rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and events such as the recent barbarous murder of over 1500 Israelis and taking of over 200 hostages.
No more rockets, no more attacks on Israel ,and not one Israeli missile will ever fall on Gaza again. With Hamas gone, Palestinians will have the choice they had in 2006. Then they chose to elect a terrorist organisation committed to the destruction of Israel. Everything that has happened subsequently: the control of shipments in and out of Gaza, Israel’s responses to Hamas’s rocket attacks on its civilians, stem from that foolish choice in 2006
With Hamas gone, under the control of the UN Gazans can rebuild. Then they can hold elections and elect leaders who accept the right of Israel to exist and who are committed to spending international assistance on building infrastructure, establishing commerce. In time, Israel could be assured that the Palestinians in Gaza no longer pose a threat to them and the controls on imports and exports could be done away with. Egypt and other Arab countries could similarly relax or remove their border controls.
But none of this can happen without the elimination of Hamas, Palestinians acceptance of Israel’s right to exist and to a commitment to peaceful coexistence,
Unfortunately that sounds quite unlikely, no matter what happens to Hamas. Was it not that that scuppered the Land-for-peace deal – the Palestinian people refusing to give up the right (and hope) of return?
It is funny how we accept “white people” to be herded into a single group even though we have so many different languages, dialects, customs, countries, ethnicities (Celtic, Germanic, Slavic etc) and so forth. It really is a very diversified grouping of people that have been grouped together by the rabid left as an excuse to treat someone like dirt and generally be the horrible people that they naturally are.
Back on point, the “Palestinians” (which was never, ever a country by the way) are in fact Arabs, just like the Egyptians who share a boarder with the Gaza strip. They share the same language, their culture is close, their basic belief system is the same, the food is the same. They could slot into Egypt quicker and easier as an Arab into Britain could and yet the West is expected to take everyone in and give ground to everyone.
It is time to let go of idiotic lefty ideas and guilt. This is the reason all of this happens. The Gaza strip should be given to Egypt and the Gazans be given Egyptian citizenship. The Arabs need to be made more responsible for the jihadists.
[This needs to thought and refinement but the gist is there for those that are willing to read between the lines. I am just out of time.]
Whether Palestinians are ‘in fact’ Arabs is beyond my ken – though they surely see themselves as a people and have 75 years of disctinctive anbd sorrowful history to bind them together. But it is worth noticing that when the PLO was in Jordan they were threatening to overthrow Kong Hussein and take over the country, and it took a civil war where other countries intervened (Black September) to expel the PLO. The PLO then went to Lebanon where they had a big role in starting the Lebanese civil war, and were ultimately expelled after the Israeli invasion. If Egypt does not want them you can sort of see why.
So what is more important here? 75 years or sorrowful history?
As you have outlined, this is a group of people who seem to cause trouble everywhere they go. There is a thread there and we seriously need to stop seeing them as poor little bastards who cannot help themselves. This attitude just enables bad behaviour.
As for the 75 years. So many MSM define the Palestinians as indigenous (pause for everyone to laugh themselves silly). So many other people have been where they are for much longer and don’t have this anointed status.
If we truly reflect on how we see various peoples around the world, some we only see on their worst day and others on their best day. We are all held to varying standards and this is the root cause of so much trouble.
So what is more important here? 75 years or sorrowful history?
As you have outlined, this is a group of people who seem to cause trouble everywhere they go. There is a thread there and we seriously need to stop seeing them as poor little bastards who cannot help themselves. This attitude just enables bad behaviour.
As for the 75 years. So many MSM define the Palestinians as indigenous (pause for everyone to laugh themselves silly). So many other people have been where they are for much longer and don’t have this anointed status.
If we truly reflect on how we see various peoples around the world, some we only see on their worst day and others on their best day. We are all held to varying standards and this is the root cause of so much trouble.
(Help me out here guys, what is so wrong with this post?)
Opinion polls even in Gaza show majority support for a two-state solution. Only a minority there refuse to give up the right of return. Unfortunately, they have power. But of them, even only a smaller minority support terror.
That is hopeful. The hard part will hen be to get there while the violent minority is around to push for war. Afterr all, the majority of Yugoslavs were probably all for peaceful co-existsnce with their neighbours – and it still was not enough.
Hmmm. What would be likely to happen if Gaza is a UN protectorate, but Hamas is still there, and still firing rockets at Israel? Will the UN take on the responsibility of suppressing Hamas?? Will the UN protect Gaza from Israeli reprisals, while allowing Hamas to keep firing?
Will the UN protect Gaza from Israeli reprisals, while allowing Hamas to keep firing?
No. The UN will pack up its toy guns and fly to Europe on the first flight from Ben Gurion
It seems wilfully and intentionally naive to sate “The Palestinian solidarity movement might sloganeer about Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea”, but the thrust of their political demands are essentially humanitarian — a ceasefire, aid corridors and the provision of relief.”
The immediate political objectives may indeed be a pause, but the end state of the sloganeers requires genocide.
You won’t believe it, but the author really thinks so. And this is the saddest thing
Do you really think the sloganeers are protesting for the Israeli assault on Gaza to continue?
Your comment is a fun inversion, however, there is a difference between genocide as a stated (and celebrated) method to achieve a political aim, and collateral casualties due to legal acts of war.
I should think Gaza will head towards another fruitless UN ” peacekeeping” mission which only leads to waste of resources on a massive scale.
It’ll be like Kosovo, drawing in resources, endlessly providing flash points and never ever reaching any sort of resolution.
In 1948 Britain submitted to the UN the question of what should happen to Palestine upon its giving up of the Mandate, which gave the UN the opportunity under its Charter to establish a UN trusteeship over the territory. The Arab countries blocked any such solution (several different plans were proposed) in the General Assembly, believing that once the Mandate expired the territory would swiftly fall under Arab control by conquest. As Abba Eban writes in “My Country” (1972):
” Knowing that a British Act of Parliament ending the Mandate would take effect in a matter of minutes, the General Assembly refused to step into the breach and to interpose even a theoretical barrier against Arab invasion. The result in law was that Jerusalem lost its Mandatory Government on 14 May 1948 at 6 pm and the General Assembly decided not to give it an international regime or to offer it any protection. It was an active reliquishment of responsibility in face of danger. At six o’clock, when the Mandate expired, the Iraqi representative ran exultantly to the podium and cried: “The game is up!”. The General Assembly, repudiating its own claim of succession, had abandoned the Holy City to its fate; it had, in effect, decided to leave its destiny to the fortunes of war”.
Its about 75 years too late to revisit that decision.
Your ideas for a solution are?
One state solution
Diversity is Israels strength
The way I see it Israel doesn’t want a two state solution because it would involve losing vast swathes of territory and military control of the south, whilst simultaneously doesn’t want a one state solution because they don’t want Palestinians having too much political leverage in Israel. They therefore have one state but deny basic rights such as voting and freedom of movement to a subset of the population in Gaza and the West Bank
You forget the other part: The Palestinians want to get back the land their ancestors came from, and live in a Muslim Palestine; they do not want to share it with a lot of Jews. Until that changes, any solution – two-state or one-state – will be used as merely a starting point for the Palestinians having another war they can win. This is why it is a tragedy. Both sides want all the land, and neither trusts the other enough (with good reson) to believe a shared solution can hold. The Jews might well accept a solution if it guaranteed them peace (‘land for peace’ remember?), but as long as they cannot trust the Palestinians to stick to the peace part, they cannot risk giving concessions (and have little to win from them in any case).
There was a Jewish minority there for a long time before Israel came into being, with both sides seemingly rubbing along in relative peace. Why couldn’t it happen again?
Several reasons. All variants of the fact that a in a nation state the people insists on having the nation reflect their mores, prioriteies and being under their control.
First, there was inter-community fighting in the twenties and thirties, when Jews started coming in peacefully, but in large numbers. They were not ‘rubbing along’.
Second, back then Palestine was a British mandate, and had recently been part of the Ottoman empire. By experience it is *much* easier for different ethnic groups to manage alongside each other when they are all subjects of an authoritarian regine. Change over to a more or less democratic nation-state, and every group wants to own the state and keep down competitors.
Third, the enormous enmity and resentment (and hate) that is now built up between the two peoples. Not to mention the anti-jewish sentiment that is all through Islam by now.
Fourth, Jews have been forced out from just about every Muslim country since 1948 – and moved to Israel. They are not rubbing along any more in North Africa, Syria, or a lot of other places. In fact you could make a good case for Israel being a successor state to the Ottoman Empire, with the Jewish subjects of said empire congregating there.
Fifth, you would need to reduce the Jews to a small minority before they were weak enough that the Palestinians did not see them as a threat (and they were not tempted to stand up for their rights too much). That means expelling (ethnic cleansing) of millions of Jews.
Sixth, after the Holocaust and the experience of having had Israel, I’d venture that Jews are both more fearful and less tolerant of living as a threatened minority, always vulnerable to another pogrom if the majority happens to get upset. It would be hard to force them back to living as dhimmi – and ill-protected dhimmi at that. And I cannot see any Muslim country giving them a better offer. For sure they would never get as good a deal as they themselves give Arabs with Israeli passports, nor likely as good as what they give the population of the West Bank today.
Fair enough that you would prefer the Palestinains to win. But why would it be good in the abstract just swapping places, to get a Muslim Palestine oppressing the Jews? Do you really think Muslim-dominated Apartheid would be more humane than what Israel does today?
Too much water under the bridge.
It could happen again. Easily. The Palestinians have been cursed with weak and corrupt leaders. Had they had the leadership the Israelis were blessed with (flawed though they were), they might have flourished. If they got that leadership now, they might still flourish.
Most Muslims prefer peace. We in the West have mucked up the region, more recently with the stupid invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. It’s not out of the question that peace may be possible if we can calm down the tension instead of racheting it up.
Unfortunately the “education” of Palestinian youth , funded by UNRWA, has brainwashed them to hate and to kill Israelis, Jews, and other infidels. Their chosen leaders and their imams spew the same venom. UNRWA provides these materials under the humanitarian guide of “education”. Israel has long made their objections known about the dangers of educating for jihad, yet it continues. The world has seen the end result of this education on October 7th. Aid money has long been used to pay terrorists and their families for killing innocent civilians. If the terrorist dies in the act, the family gets the money. Debriefing of October 7th terrorists revealed this to be true: pay for slay and pay for hostage taking.
Between the jihadi education and the cash rewards, any wonder then that Palestinians chose the genocidal Hamas as their leaders? Indeed, look at the map: one tiny Israel and 21 huge Arab states, and not one will take in their brethren?
The dispute is not about land. It is about eliminating Jews from their ancestral homeland, about refusing to coexist with Jews. Period.
In Lebanon and Syria they keep Palestinians in miserable conditions in refugee camps. The majority Palestinian Jordan refuses to take them. Why?
Without massive reprogramming it is naive to think that magically Palestinians will become peace loving people and good neighbors. When Israel withdrew from Gaza they left orchards and businesses intact for the Gazans, who immediately destroyed them. Why? It’s our western bias to assume people will naturally choose the outcome that leads to peace and prosperity. Not so if you have been trained only for violent jihad.
This is documented at palwatch.org
Palestinian Media Watch.
Wake up- the problem and the solution have nothing to do with two states, And if Israel were to magically disappear, how would an Iranian Palestine lead to peace in the region any more than an Iranian Lebanon has?
The relative peace of eternal dhimmihood. How easily you concede the freedom of jews. Want to try living in an islamic paradise yourself?
Except diversity is not Islam’s forte. Islamic states are often proud of being 100% muslim. Minorities are genocided or driven out in these countries.
In a horrific terrorist attack Islamic terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade towers in New York City on September 11, 2001 and killed nearly 3,000 Americans. In response, the United States invaded Afghanistan, which it then occupied for decades. That longest war in American history cost the United States trillions of dollars and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and untold misery.
And for what? Afghanistan was not even behind the attacks.
In a horrific terrorist attack Islamic terrorists stormed out of Gaza on October 7, 2023 to murder over 1,400 Israelis and to rape, torture and take hostages. In response, Israel has bombed and is now invading Gaza. No one knows how long the war will last, how much it will cost, and how many deaths and how much misery it will cause. But it will be a lot.
And what will be gained? Will it be worth it? History tells us no.
And the common denominator is…..? Don’t say it, just think it.
You’re joking, right? The UN? That nest of vipers with the worst violators on the planet sitting on its human rights commission? What in God’s name does that body actually do for anyone? Remember the Blue Helmets in Kosovo? There was a reason they were dubbed Smurfs and laughed at the world over. Or perhaps they can be sent to Gaza to exchange food for sex, like they do all over war-torn Africa.
The UN. Good bl**dy grief.
The dilemma is what to do with Gaza and to a larger extent, the Palestinian people entirely. The best thing would have been for the Arab neighbors whom they shared a heritage and religion with to accept them as refugees and integrate them into their respective societies. Had that happened, there would be a lot fewer Palestinians today and this problem wouldn’t seem nearly as intractable. Instead, the refugees were kept separate and herded into refugee camps that still exist to this day and now house generations of descendants of the original refugees in 1949. The largest of these was Gaza, where Egypt crammed all the refugees from 1949-1967 while they controlled it. Rather than annex the territory, Egypt ran it basically the same way Israel did, as an open air prison under martial law. Very seldom is it mentioned that the Arab neighbors who claim to champion the Palestinian cause refused to ever accept the Palestinians, even those who might have wanted to give up fighting and start new lives in other places.
In 1949, had they been able to see the future, my guess is that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and others would have just accepted the refugees and hope they assimilated, but they didn’t. At the time, they still believed they had a chance to destroy Israel entirely and push the Zionists out of the area for good, so they held the Palestinians as useful tools for this purpose.
Unfortunately, those decisions resulted in worse problems down the road. This status quo has existed since basically 1949. We’re talking about entire generations of people who have no country, no economy, no skills, no industry to speak of living off foreign aid and charity. It should be no surprise that nobody wants these people. Israel doesn’t want to annex Gaza because it would tilt their demographics in unacceptable directions, and they can’t simply deport the people because it would create a massive international backlash, assuming anyone would be willing to take them, individually or collectively. Egypt doesn’t want to annex Gaza because they already saw the danger of radical Islam during the Arab Spring and don’t want to add any fuel to that fire, nor do they want to get into a conflict with Iran, who has infiltrated Gaza with spies and terrorists.
This was already an issue in 1917, at the end of WWI, with many Zionists already there and already clashing with Arab populations. At the time, the British were called upon to handle the problem because they were the foremost world power at the time and had the capability. Something similar is going to have to happen now with the UN, but it won’t be the US. The domestic political situation in the US would preclude any possibility of the US assuming direct responsibility, nor would they be accepted as a neutral party. A generic UN peacekeeping mission would be viable, but the fact is that the project would be hideously expensive and would almost require the backing of a large nation or coalition of nations. Given the state of the world elsewhere, it’s difficult to imagine where such funding would come from. The US and Europe are already supporting the Ukraine conflict. Russia is of course busy as well.
I wonder if China might graciously offer to step in and administer Gaza. They would be accepted as a neutral party. They have enough influence in Tehran to get the Iranians to play nice. Israel would probably accept anything or anyone that could deliver on the promise of security. It would be an opportunity to score political points on the global stage and embarrass the US by succeeding where the Americans have repeatedly failed.
Why do the Zionists always offer ethnic cleansing and the displacement of Palestinians as a solution to the conflict? The area was Muslim for millennia before Israel existed, so why do they never suggest moving the Jewish population elsewhere as a means to securing peace?
They want to send the Palestinians to Europe and the US
Israel was a nation in the land of Judea 900BC before Islam ever darkened the world with its violence, falsehood, and hate.
The Zionists have never offered ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of Palestinians as a solution to the conflict. About one in five Israelis is Palestinian. And Israel has always agreed to two states, with Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
It is the Palestinians who want to cleanse the region of Jews from the river to the sea, despite the fact that the Jews have occupied the land for millennia more than the Palestinians.
BB is delusional. Believing the world is flat and arguing the point ad nauseum is a sign of being beyond repair.
How does an area become ‘muslim’? India was “muslim” for millennia by dint of invasion and mass murder – would you return the land to the invaders?
Give it a rest man! It’s one thing criticising how Israel has handled the attacks and the problem of the Palestinians, it’s a whole other thing spouting lies. The Arabs conquered the Middle East and forcibly spread Islam. The Jews were far more successfully cleansed from Arab nations and made persona non grata in other muslim states than the Palestinians who have grown from a few hundred thousand in 1947 to now over 5 million.
The Zionists did no such thing. They simply moved into an uncivilized and underpopulated area, first under the auspices of the Ottoman Empire, and later the British Mandate. The Ottomans and later the British were well aware of what was going on. The Israelis bought the land through entirely legal means with the knowledge of those governments. They proceeded to develop the land and build a country there.
There had never really been a fully realized state in that area. The area now comprising Israel has changed hands so many times it is arguably the most unstable and conflicted area in human history. It was usually controlled by various outside Empires, such as the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Crusaders, the Caliphates, the Ottomans, and so on. The only time the area ever had a native population and native nation was during the brief period between the rule of the Egyptians and the Assyrians when the Jewish kingdoms of Israel and Judah were formed. The Jews have as much claim to those lands being their ancestral lands as anybody else, a few millennia of various imperial overlords notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, as I stated before, they did not take the land by conquest. They simply moved there in such numbers that they soon outnumbered the resident population, who were no more native to Palestine than anybody else, but rather a polyglot of all the empires and peoples who had controlled the area over a few thousand years.
Israel has never attempted to ethnically cleanse anybody. The only people making that claim are the people who actually are trying to exterminate the Jews and push them out of Israel. The notion is just preposterous. Israel’s population would no more support such a policy than would America’s or the UK’s. They have, however, been in constant warfare and conflict with the so-called but not really ‘native’ Palestinians whose original gripe is basically that some non-Muslims moved into the area. Islam as it presently exists is rife with extremism, jihadism, and violence. The problem is that too many of the Palestinians hate anyone who is non-Muslim and the Jews specifically, and they don’t want ‘those people’ in their neck of the woods. It’s racism and antisemitism pure and simple, and it always was.
I would not be optimistic about CCP in Gaza. It would be downright dangerous for the US to have a challenger right on its doorstep. And Israel would be in existential danger of the highest kind.
It would immediately embolden Erdogan. Akin to what CCP has tried to do to India by encirclement with hostile forces.And if you get Gavin Newsom as President then it will be dark times indeed for Chinese imperialistic unipolarity will definitely threaten the rest of us who may not agree with it..
I’m not optimistic about it. I was simply speculating on possible strategic developments without moral/ethical judgement. Your assessment is correct, but then that’s precisely why they might make such a move. I personally wouldn’t support it, but I’m not getting rockets lobbed indiscriminately at me on a daily basis while the Israelis are. The CCP are brutal, but their brutality and harsh control might be more effective governing Gaza than anything the US or Israel has attempted. That said, the US would undoubtedly oppose it, hypocrisy notwithstanding.
Also, Gavin Newsom will not be President. That’s a democrat pipe dream reliably repeated by the usual MSM suspects (NYT, Washington Post, etc.) with no chance of happening politically. California is objectively a mess, and everyone in America knows it. The state is actually losing population and businesses to places like Texas and Florida. No California democrat will be elected to the presidency, period. California is too far out of sync with the rest of the nation. That media outlets keep putting forward the idea just speaks to how far out of touch they are. Even if Newsom ran in 2024 against Trump, he’d lose, maybe worse than Hillary did. Biden is a better candidate, despite his obvious incompetence and near senility. He’s basically an empty suit, and an empty suit is better than one filled with dog crap, which is what a lot of Americans see in candidates like Trump and Clinton. The trick in American politics these days is to find not the best candidate, but the least objectionable. Biden checks that box. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and all the other California democrats do not.
Xi would never get directly involved in Gaza. That sort of noble intention doesn’t make CCP foreign policy which is based on allowing proxies to do so. It would possibly be Turkey – Pakistan- Iran to be the convenient puppets while CCP thrives on Western business schemes like IMEI being smashed
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Fair enough point about the Israeli assault being a necessary evil that will eventually “free” Gaza of Israel (or the other way round). However, I don’t really understand what the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza won’t “free” them from — does the author have a specific philosophical conception of freedom that he is referring to here? Or is he saying that Gaza will just be under the control of another entity, i.e. the UN? This is a little confusing as you’ve mentioned that Gaza is already essetially under the protectorate of the UNRWA . Another post with more clarity on this point would be helpful.
…in it’s moment of triumph, the Democratic West created the UN…and decolonised…in the idealistic and optimistic belief that if we did so, a decent and civilized world will come into being, based largely on the way we understood things and did things…
…but we were utterly wrong at every level, and that hope has failed in the face of a World majority (of both nations and peoples) who prefer autocracy, imperialism,kleptocracy, tribalism…and downright barbarism…to anything that we had to offer.
It is time for us to abandon the whole useless business…and organise and arm ourselves to the teeth…for the inevitable war of “All against All” that is very clearly imminent…and which we can probably still win if we drop all our hopeful delusions and set ourselves to the task…
…within which, our support to Israel needs to be overwhelming and remorseless…because, like Outremer of old…they are the vital Garrison-Fortress in the heart of our enemy’s realms…
The Palestinian people have quite a sizeable homeland on the West Bank. I believe what will become is a slow process of finding a new home for this population in Gaza while progressively pushing the West Bank towards statehood should those people and their representatives choose the path of peace. Gaza could ultimately become a new experiment in the Jews and Arabs living side by side.
So Israel plans to flatten Gaza then hand it over to others to pay for the rebuild?
Yes, since so many mugs for palestine exist, that’s a smart move.