Moral Clarity part 16: The dirty little secret

I'm still reeling from the disgraceful 'emergency' UN General Assembly vote demanding an immediate  'humanitarian' ceasefire in Gaza, a resolution supported by Canada, along with other paragons of international 'humanitarian' conduct and concern Russia and Iran. In a rare move, Canada broke with the United States, one of only 10 countries having the guts (moral clarity) to dissent.     

I've always been a supporter of the UN. I have argued to anyone who would listen that no organization in human history has done more good for humanity than the UN. And we need it to work more than ever. From nuclear weapons and climate change, to trade and worldwide pandemics, our problems are global and the future of humanity has never been more interdependent. Nations will either cooperate internationally to solve these problems within a stable and orderly system of discussion, negotiation and cooperation according to conventions, norms and values such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or we will let the chips of conflict and chaos fall where they may, at our peril. The UN should (and I believe could still) offer our best hope for a safe and secure future. It has been relatively successful since the end of World War 2 on many accounts, ushering in an era of unprecedented global peace and prosperity. This doesn't mean there hasn't been international conflict and crises - that's guaranteed - which is precisely why we need a functioning UN. But as we've seen in the past few years, especially during our recent once-in-hundred-year pandemic, the UN's record has been a pretty dismal failure in several respects. 

Perhaps the worst of it, consistently so, has been its longstanding deplorable record on Israel. It's as if the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, when the UN played an important role specifically with Resolution 181 the so-called Partition Plan, is the organization's dirty little secret, an episode from its past for which it carries deep regret and shame, and would bury or reverse, if it could. The irony is that in helping to midwife the State of Israel out of the ashes of the Holocaust, Israel should represent a laudatory achievement of the UN. The realization of its universal humanitarian goals based on a consensus-building approach (72% of members voted in favour of Resolution 181, more than the required two-thirds). Instead, the UN has acted to undermine Israel's sovereignty continuously, not in spite of the way it came into existence, but seemingly because of it. Israel is like the pebble in the UN's shoe. The annoying emblem of everything wrong with the way the UN works (or rather doesn't work). The failure of the UN to accept Israel - and by 'accept' I mean simply to apply to Israel the standards it applies to all other member states, the foundational principle on which the UN exists, namely Article 2 of the Charter which calls on all members to equally respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of other states - has been a primary reason for the perpetuation of conflict in the region. 

The original sin of Israel is that it won a War of Independence. Palestinian Jews didn't want a war. They accepted the Partition Plan promoted by the UN. The Palestinian Arabs didn't. Israel declared its Independence and the Arabs responded by attacking it, which contravenes the UN Charter. The war resulted in the nascent State of Israel successfully establishing its Independence and also in approximately 750,000 Arabs becoming displaced, which is unfortunately not an unusual consequence of war. What is unusual, however, is that the UN felt it was responsible for what happened, so it created an agency devoted to the Palestinian Arab refugees called UNRWA (The UN Relief and Works Agency), separate from the UNHCR (The High Commission for Refugees) the agency that addresses the needs of all other refugees around the world. In addition to having their own permanent exclusive agency, Palestinians are unique in that they are the only refugees in the world who pass down their status as international refugees from generation to generation. As a result, the original 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war has now grown to approximately 6 million refugees. According to UNRWA's website nearly one-third of the registered Palestinian refugees, more than 1.5 million individuals, live in 58 recognized refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. From their own website: "Socioeconomic conditions in the camps are generally poor, with high population density, cramped living conditions and inadequate basic infrastructure such as roads and sewers." It's not terribly surprising that the Palestinian refugee camps have become the principle breeding grounds for hatred, resentment, and radical political and religious ideologies, as well as factories for the creation and recruitment of terrorist organizations.

You might ask, what was the alternative? What else could the Palestinians who were displaced do after the 1948 war with Israel? Well, what happens to any other group of people who are displaced as a result of war (and not necessarily one they started)? They are typically absorbed by other countries. For example, before the founding of Israel, millions and millions of Jewish refugees fled war and persecution in Europe for decades and were eventually absorbed by other countries all over the world (after also being rejected by many countries). In fact, Palestinian Arabs could have been absorbed by Israel, and 160,000 of them were. Today, approximately 1.6 million 'Palestinian' Arabs are now citizens of Israel, roughly 20% of the country's total population. UNRWA is literally an artificial life-support system for people in limbo. People who exist outside, and in the case of Israel, in opposition to, the UN's own stated purpose to ensure the territorial integrity of sovereign member states. It's a system that legitimizes Palestinian claims at the expense of Israel, a member state.  

How unique is the case of the Palestinians with respect to Israel? In a word: Singular. Palestine is not a member of the UN but it has non-member observer status. It can make speeches but cannot vote. It is the only 'political' group with such status. The other non-member observer at the UN is the Vatican (called the Holy See). The natural question is, why haven't the Palestinians declared statehood just as Israel did? The answer: They did, on the 15th of November 1988, a state comprised of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. But at the time it did not exercise control over any territory. That changed with the negotiations of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Palestinian representatives recognised Israel's right to exist, and Israel recognised the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people, and the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established to govern their territory. The State of Palestine has already been recognized by 139 of the 193 UN members. The two-state solution de facto exists right now which means Palestinians in Gaza are not refugees, they've just been subject to dysfunctional (and outlaw) governance since Hamas took over in 2006. UNRWA should be dissolved immediately as a step toward peace.