US, Israel Destroying
The UN System
By Hasan Abu
Nimah
The
Electronic Intifada
16 October 2003
When
the League of Nations was created less than a century ago, in the aftermath
of World War I, the principal purpose of its founders was to settle
international conflicts peacefully. It was the first attempt towards
establishing an international system capable of resolving conflicts
in accordance with agreed upon rules and regulations, and that system,
henceforth known as international law, was meant to be the alternative
to war. The League had failed for a number of accumulating reasons,
but the breakout of World War II rendered, in the end, killed it.
The United Nations,
which rose from the debris of a war-torn world, was supposed to be an
improved version of its abandoned predecessor, since its founders at
the time stood to benefit greatly from the lessons of the failed experiment
of the League and because their resolve for creating a better order
for international peace and security was evidently hardened by the wholesale
suffering, the vast destruction and the many millions who had perished
in that total war.
But reality has
fallen far short of noble ideals. The UN has inherited the same built-in
defects that caused the demise of the League, and the veto power which
the "victors" carved for themselves turned out to be a destructive
privilege and tool for serving illegitimate superpower interests. The
depressing outcome is a self-contradicting UN system, protecting aggression
and injustice, deepening international discord, spreading despair and
frustration and, therefore, threatening rather than protecting world
peace and security -- the exact opposite of what it was supposed to
do.
Gradually, and with
the collapse of the bi-polar balance between the US and former USSR,
which was by no means ideal but served a purpose, the situation at the
UN, the behaviour of the Security Council in particular, has become
so scandalous that action is urgently required to restore some of the
lost balance to a disintegrating international system.
These days, if a
member state that has been a victim of aggression appeals for help to
the Security Council, in accordance with the charter's provision that
peaceful means for settling conflicts should be sought first, or simply
because that state does not possess the necessary power to defend itself,
neither help nor justice can necessarily be guaranteed. Recent examples,
and of course a large number of previous ones, clearly attest to that.
The Arab group at
the UN has three times in less than a month requested Council action
to deal with ongoing Israeli aggression in the region. In no case was
the Council able to properly discharge its essential duties or offer
any meaningful help.
The Arab group first
went to the Council about the Israeli decision to deport or kill the
democratically-elected Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, and to request
Council action to stop the threat. The Israeli action had already been
rejected and condemned by almost every other member state, including
the United States itself. And every condemnation was accompanied by
a call on Israel to desist from carrying out its threat.
This should have
erased any doubt in the Arab group that the Council would endorse what
had already been declared, and that it would approve the proposed resolution
condemning the Israeli threat, in line with the unanimous international
consensus on this issue. To the contrary, and in full defiance not only
of common sense and logic but also of international legality and justice,
an American veto blocked Council action, leaving Israel to infer, perversely,
tacit international support for its criminal threats. How could there
be a greater threat to regional peace and security than such a flagrant
failure by the Security Council to discharge its basic duties?
Second was the recent
Syrian complaint to the Council against a completely unjustified Israeli
air raid on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, in "retaliation"
(according to Israeli justification) for a suicide attack in Haifa,
carried out by the Palestinian resistance, with no proven Syrian link
whatsoever. Again, in this case, the Syrians and their Arab backers
at the UN must have been greatly encouraged by the widespread condemnation
of the provocative Israeli aggression on the Syrian territory and by
the numerous descriptions of such aggression as an unnecessary escalation
and a dangerous widening of the scope of raging violence. Yet, despite
the fact that Syrian territory has been occupied and settled by Israel
since June 1967, in open violation of previous Security Council resolutions
and despite the fact that the Syrians do not now, and did not before,
resist the 36-year occupation by force, Council action is yet to come,
and the possibility of another obstructive American veto is the most
likely conclusion.
If Israel has any
proof that Syria does indeed train "terrorists", it should
present such proof to the Security Council first, as international law
requires. But because the Israeli government has no such proof and no
valid case against Syria, and because it is in desperate need for an
urgent distraction from its mounting failures, it benefited from the
recent American precedent of avoiding the UN altogether, taking the
law into its own hands, and attacking at will in the name of fighting
terrorism. How could the Council's failure to condemn such an attack
on Syria not be seen as an endorsement of the law of the jungle and
the end of the already battered UN system?
Last was the Arab
group's complaint to the Council, late last week, against Israel's construction
of the apartheid wall, mostly on occupied Palestinian territory, creating
immense human tragedy and unprecedented cruelty for the occupied Palestinians.
The wall was also opposed by the United States, becoming one of the
thorniest issues between the two governments. It has also been condemned
by most other nations, because in addition to violating international
law, it further annexes what little is left of Palestinian territory
and destroys any possibility for future reconciliation.
And yet, right on
cue, the United States used its veto to block a resolution. The great
risk, again, is that Israel will read the veto as an endorsement of
yet another aggressive violation of anything lawful and constructive,
as well as a cancellation of any previous condemnations and objections.
The United States
considers it audacious when a member state takes its case against Israel
to the Security Council, because such action continues to expose American
bias and double standards. The United States drifts further on the side
of lawlessness as it is constantly defends and protects Israeli aggression
and violations of UN resolutions and international law.
When the United
States cannot block all UN action on an Israeli breach of the peace,
its standard response has been either to dilute the language of any
tabled resolution censuring Israeli behaviour, to the extent of rendering
it completely meaningless and pointless, or killing it by the veto.
On top of the failure to get a resolution, any complainant would reap
American wrath if not hostility for merely daring to bring the issue
forward.
If the UN continues
to degenerate at this speed, the message to all members is to be prepared
to revert to individual action for settling their disputes and protecting
their interests, as was the case before the international system emerged;
that is, to go back to the law of the jungle.
The writer is former
ambassador of Jordan to the UN.