Imperialist complicity fuels ongoing genocide in Palestine, revealing the UN’s failure to uphold justice and liberation.
By SORAYA MISLEH
The UN once again has shown its true face and who is in charge. In a shameful vote in its Security Council, on Nov. 17, Resolution 2803 was approved, which creates the so-called “International Stabilization Force in Gaza” and mandates the disarmament of the Palestinian resistance. In this way, foreign control of Palestinian territory is endorsed under Trump’s leadership. The genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine is allowed to continue.
With the resistance correctly refuting this insulting, unacceptable resolution, Israel now finds the ideal excuse to continue its efforts towards a final solution to the Palestinian people amidst the ongoing Nakba, a catastrophe whose centerpiece was the violent formation of this racist and colonial state in 78% of historic Palestine on May 15, 1948.
It is emblematic that Resolution 2803 was approved in the same month as two initiatives that historically supported the racist and colonial Zionist project. Then as now, they do so without consulting the original inhabitants, the Palestinian Arabs, who are excluded from deciding their own destiny. The first was the Balfour Declaration, in which on Nov. 2, 1917, Great Britain, the imperial power of the time that would hold the mandate over Palestine after World War I, declared itself in favor of establishing a Jewish national home in Palestine. The second took place in the first Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Nov. 29, 1947, which recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state (56% of the land) and an Arab state (43%).
Despite gathering a rich collection of documents that serve to expose the genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and the colonization of Palestine, as well as assembling a group of serious experts in its committees and agencies, such as the special rapporteur on human rights for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, the UN will not bring peace with liberation and justice. It will bring only the peace of the cemetery.
The function of the UN is to maintain imperialist order, honoring the legacy of the League of Nations, which emerged after the Treaty of Versailles following World War I. The UN, formally created on Oct. 24, 1945, at the end of World War II, operated under the same aegis. Therefore, the era of illusions must come to an end. The largest funder of the UN is the United States, which, according to official information, represents 22% of the total regular budget, followed by China (20%), the United Kingdom (3.9%), France (3.85%) and Russia (2%). These are precisely the five countries that are permanent members of the UN Security Council and have veto power on issues of peace and security.
The lie of the ceasefire
The Resolution 2803 refers to the progress of the so-called “Comprehensive U.S. Plan to End the Conflict in Gaza,” whose objective is to promote the second phase of the deceptive ceasefire. The United States, which presents itself as a herald of peace, provides billions of dollars and the necessary weapons to Israel for genocide and ethnic cleansing, along with the European powers. To pretend any of this has to do with peace is a sick joke.
While the pause in the mass bombardment represented some relief for the Palestinian people of Gaza in the face of a genocide, on the other hand, it reveals what Francesca Albanese made clear from the beginning: in the Israeli dictionary, ceasefire means “you stop, I shoot.”
Since the first stage of the prisoner exchange was implemented on Oct. 10, Israel has violated the ceasefire about 500 times, killing more than 340 Palestinians and injuring over 800, mostly women, children, and the elderly. The imposition of hunger by Israel and the abysmal living conditions continue. The genocidal state has advanced its borders as, unfortunately, the resistance was forced to accept their temporary direct control of 53% of the territory of Gaza. The criminal limits on the entry of humanitarian aid persists, whether food, supplies and medical equipment, or temporary housing materials to provide shelter until reconstruction can occur following the mass devastation of the area. More than 288,000 families live on the streets or in makeshift and precarious tents in the midst of a harsh winter and rain, with nearly 90% of the infrastructure destroyed by the Zionist bombings, while Israel continues to block access, even for tents and mobile homes.
UN experts have repeatedly condemned these violations, stating that they threaten the “fragile ceasefire,” a ceasefire that, in reality, contributes to the ongoing Israeli genocide in a covert manner, as not a single day has passed without new massacres of Palestinians in Gaza nor without the accelerated ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, Palestinian territories that remained after the Nakba of 1948 and which Israel militarily occupied in 1967.
A shameful resolution
This situation did not prevent the UN Security Council from approving its resolution. The Resolution 2803, it should be noted, gives the green light to the resumption of the mass genocide in Gaza at any moment, which is clearly demonstrated by the increasingly frequent bombings that kill dozens of Palestinians in a single day.
The resolution in question was approved by 13 votes in favor and two abstentions: that of China and that of Russia, which had veto power but did not exercise it.
Two days earlier, according to press reports, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke by phone about the progress of the ceasefire agreement negotiated by Trump. Both are subject to arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes, respectively, in Ukraine and Gaza. Crimes that continue to be committed with impunity.
Russia even presented an alternative plan to Trump’s, stating that the text of the approved resolution did not promote the creation of a Palestinian state. But nothing prevented the approval of Trump’s plan, which shows that his only concern was to position himself apart in the narrative game of the imperialist dispute, not to prevent the extermination of the Palestinian people. China, one of Israel’s main trading partners, complained about the resolution, but also stood aside.
It is not surprising to see the nefarious role played by the various Arab regimes in supporting the resolution, as did the occupation itself––the Palestinian Authority (PA), which shamefully welcomed Trump’s plan for Gaza. In this way, it puts a Palestinian stamp onto the international pact in favor of implementing Israel’s final solution.
The PA, which emerged under the auspices of the disastrous Oslo Accords of 1993 and aspires to be the reliable partner of these enemies in order to be able to manage Gaza in the future, controls the West Bank without any autonomy and with total economic dependence on Israel for tax transfers. It has effectively collaborated with the Zionist occupation and facilitated aggressive colonial expansion, maintaining security cooperation with the racist state of Israel even amid the ongoing genocide and accelerated ethnic cleansing. The repression of protests and resistance, with arrests of Palestinians and even their extradition to Israel, is a well-known practice that has led to a lack of credibility and popularity for the PA among the majority of Palestinians.
The result, according to a survey conducted in the West Bank and Gaza between Oct. 22 and 25 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR), is “a deep and ongoing dissatisfaction with President Mahmoud Abbas [of the Palestinian Authority], with three-quarters of the population disapproving of his management and 80% wishing for his resignation.”
Beyond the UN itself, all of this demonstrates that the enemies of the Palestinian cause today are those that were identified by the revolutionary Ghassan Kanafani, even if their exact names have changed a little. They are: imperialism, Zionism, the Arab autocracies, and their reactionary elites.
Strengthening solidarity
These villains are powerful, but the crisis imposed upon them by the unprecedented level of international solidarity with the Palestinian people in the midst of a holocaust demonstrates that they are not invincible.
This crisis also explains the deceitful ceasefire used to continue the genocide and, as part of this, the approval of the shameful UN resolution on foreign trusteeship.
In light of all this, the actions called globally for Nov. 28 and 29, International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, take on a sense of urgency. In addition to promoting the central BDS campaign (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) against Israel to internationally isolate the genocidal state and, therefore, threaten its material base, these dates should serve to motivate mobilizations that will weaken imperialism and defeat Zionism, ensuring the Palestinian people better conditions to resist.
Preventing a final solution to the ongoing Nakba does not depend on the UN, but on the commitment to the Palestinian cause, given its centrality to the internationalist, anti-imperialist, and anti-colonial struggle. As Kanafani taught, “the Palestinian cause is not just a cause of the Palestinians, but of the revolutionaries, of the oppressed and exploited masses of our era.” Therefore, to the streets, until a free Palestine, from the river to the sea!
Photo: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks at UN Security Council on Feb. 11, 2020. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)