U.N. Discourse on Gaza: A Harbinger of Change?
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at a press briefing in 2012. Photo courtesy of Eric Bridiers.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ comments on the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip raise a challenge for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. In a pivotal press conference on October 9th, Guterres claimed that the violence of the Islamist militant movement Hamas “does not come in a vacuum” and that Israel’s increasing assaults on the civilian population in Gaza do not follow the international legal principle of proportionality, undermining the legitimacy of Israel’s use of force.
In a similar fashion, the director of the New York office of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Craig Mokhiber, recently resigned from his post to express his opposition to the organization’s unwillingness to act in the spirit of international law regarding the protection of human rights in Gaza, writing that Israel’s actions constitute “a text-book case of genocide.”
Will this pressure prompt a shift in Israel’s geopolitical stance or the international support it receives?
Most likely not. Due to an irreconcilable duality of claims for territorial sovereignty, international law’s intrinsic inability for enforcement, and the continued institutional suppression of outrage over Israel’s military campaign in the public sphere, there is no visible ceasefire in the immediate future. One need only look at the past to reach a similar conclusion: while the U.N. has historically defended policies against escalating military violence in the region, member-states have never fully implemented them.
Still, there is hope for redirection in figures like Mokhiber who openly voice a perspective perpetually ignored and often outwardly rejected by the Western status quo: that the actions of the State of Israel are in outright breach of international law and that the international legal system is failing—and has historically failed—to protect the rights of Palestinians. It is a challenge, from within, to the legitimacy of the U.N. and the state actors that claim to uphold its values.
From Zionism to the U.N.’s Involvement in the Creation of the State of Israel
In his resignation letter, Mokhiber recalls the creation of the State of Israel, which he dubs “the original sin” of the U.N. In spite of his nonconformist language, legal and political scholarship have a valid basis for labeling it as a case of ethno-racial settler colonialism directed by European powers. Israel’s legal and historical foundation is a necessary but neglected component of the case for Palestinian rights.
It was in 1894 that the first academic argument for Zionism emerged in the seminal work of Jewish Austrian journalist Theodor Herzl titled Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State. The text contemplates the creation of a sovereign Jewish state in Palestine or Argentina, stating that “important experiments in colonization” had been made in both regions. Herzl notes that the possibility of a “gradual infiltration” to either area would cause the “native population [to feel] itself threatened,” leading to the potential state’s ultimate collapse. Thus, he claims that “immigration is consequently futile unless based on an assured supremacy.” The notion of an exclusive colonial hierarchy based on settler status is thereby openly expressed.
Given a historical attachment to the geographic location of Palestine—Jewish populations had inhabited the area until approximately 135 CE—growing support for the creation of a Jewish state channeled its efforts in that direction, formalized in the first Zionist Congress at Basel, Switzerland in 1897.
With the outbreak of the First World War, the United Kingdom promised Arab independence, including within its boundaries the territory of Palestine, in exchange for rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence, a series of letters between the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McHahon, and the Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn Ali. Despite their promise, the U.K. simultaneously connived with France in the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret treaty, to divide Ottoman territory under their rule instead. In further contradiction, British Foreign Secretary Lord Balfour assured British support for Zionist claims over Palestine in the Balfour Declaration in 1917. Balfour’s stance engendered mass Jewish immigration towards Palestine, sparking civil unrest among a principally Arab population infuriated by the U.K.’s betrayal.
Causing greater indignation, in the immediate aftermath of the war, the Council of the League of Nations, the U.N.’s predecessor, used the mandate instrument on Palestine, a legal tool that transferred control of a German or Turkish territory to a member of the League. This entrusted the territory’s sovereignty to the U.K. The British mandate solidified Europe’s stance by including within it the sentiment of the Balfour Declaration. Article 2 of the text made the U.K. responsible for ensuring “political, administrative, and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home.”
As a result, tensions flared between the Jewish and Arab populations of Palestine. By 1935, Arab political parties demanded a reduction in immigration, a cease to land transferral, and the establishment of democratic institutions. In response, the British attempted to create a representative legislative council with an Arab (Christian and Muslim) majority. Although their member allocation was smaller in proportion to their numbers, Arab leaders accepted the proposal; Zionists rejected it. Encyclopedia Britannica states that they believed it to be a “constitutional Arab stranglehold” that would “freeze the national home.” London denied the creation of the democratic body. Growing tensions ultimately led Palestinians to mobilize to an unprecedented degree in the Arab Revolt of 1936-39.
Shortly after, the atrocities committed against the Jewish population of Europe during the Holocaust inspired a profound sense of regret among European powers that propelled the creation of the United Nations as an international body for the promotion of peace, dignity, and security and presented them with the insurmountable challenge of providing reparations for the endured trauma. In this climate, Britain relegated the Palestine question to the U.N., and the General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Arab and Jewish states—a decision unfavorable to the native Arab citizenry. Resolution 181 ascribed 56 percent of the territory to the Jewish state, despite the fact that, at the time, Jewish citizens accounted for a total of 30 percent of the population. Clashes broke out immediately.
The Security Council was never able to ratify the resolution, for, on May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared the creation of Israel as a Jewish state. Within minutes, U.S. President Harry Truman publicly recognized Israel, and, on the following day, Colonial Secretary Arthur Creech Jones announced a complete British withdrawal. In the words of former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, “thirty-one years after British promises of independence for Palestine, the Arabs witnessed the ultimate betrayal–the establishment in their midst, of a new colony by the world’s big powers, controlled, not by Middle Eastern natives, but by Europeans.”
U.N. Mediation Since 1948
In light of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and British retreat, the conflict intensified into the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. By its end, the newly established Israeli forces had massively dispossessed and displaced more than 700,000 Palestinians from historic Palestine. This event, in violation of the U.N. Charter, is referred to by Palestinians as the Nakba, the “catastrophe.”
15 years later, the Security Council adopted Resolution 194, calling for the repatriation of Palestinian refugees and setting a precedent interpreted as the right of return for Palestinians. The resolution had no effective implementation.
Israel had gained a stronghold in the region with the exception of the Gaza Strip (controlled by Egypt), and the West Bank and East Jerusalem (controlled by Jordan). The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) countered Arab resistance guerrillas, in part by conducting undercover operations in neighboring countries, which notably included the Lavon Affair, where Israeli military intelligence sought to disparage Egypt’s reputation by staging assaults on its American facilities and blaming Arab extremists. Simmering tensions between Israel and neighboring Arab nations sympathetic to the Palestinian cause finally erupted in the Six-Day War of 1967.
Israel emerged victorious after having fully occupied Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank. The Security Council passed Resolution 242, urging Israel to withdraw its troops from the occupied territories. Motivated by this, U.S. President Jimmy Carter pushed for Nobel Prize-awarded mediation in the Camp David Accords of 1978, a peace treaty in favor of regional reconciliation. Nonetheless, Resolution 242 was overwhelmingly ignored.
Frustration bolstered by the inaction of the international community festered into a growing unease among Palestinians in the Israeli occupied territories, leading to the First Intifada (uprising) in 1987. It was at this time and in this conflictive environment that Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (the Islamic Resistance Movement)—Hamas—appeared in Gaza.
In the hopes of peace-making in a perpetually tense atmosphere, the 1993 Oslo Accords, a set of U.N.-regulated agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), negotiated a new two-state solution allowing some Palestinian self-governance by creating the Palestinian Authority (P.A.). The accords placed 18 percent of the occupied Gaza Strip and West Bank under complete Palestinian jurisdiction, 20 percent under joint control, and the rest under Israeli administration, leaving much of the occupied territories’ agricultural land and water sources under Israeli rule. The accords additionally insisted on Resolution 242.
Nevertheless, political fragmentation and anti-Oslo sentiment in Israel made Palestinians concerned that self-rule might never occur. Peace talks grew heated on the matter of Jerusalem, and, when Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited Temple Mount, the holy site of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Palestinians rose in the Second Intifada in 2000. Once again, U.N. mediation had failed.
Under the pretense of security, the uprising bolstered Israel’s Closure Policy, an effort to restrict the freedom of movement of civilians in Palestinian territories through the building of walls and military checkpoints, violating Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the West Bank blockade installed in 2002 “cut deep into West Bank territory to protect settlements,” asserting “some Palestinian villages [were] sliced in half, and some Palestinians are unable to get to work or school as a result of the security barrier’s path.”
Further efforts for intervention took place in 2002 with the creation of the Quartet, a cooperative alliance between the U.N., the European Union, the U.S., and Russia. The group’s intentions had been outlined in a speech by U.S. President George W. Bush, where he remarked that Israeli “settlement activity in the occupied territories must end” and that “the Arab states must oppose terrorism.” The Quartet’s “road map for peace,” outlining a timeline with concrete steps toward a two-state solution, never fully materialized.
Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, after which Hamas gained full control during the P.A. legislative elections (Palestinians in Gaza have been denied their right to vote for this body ever since). The outcome took place amid popular opposition to the incumbent Fatah, which citizens thought to be corrupt and operating for the PLO, neglecting Palestinian interests in negotiations with Israel. Still, the rise and consequent military takeover of Hamas provided Israel with a justification to impose a land, sea, and air blockade of Gaza starting in 2007.
Claiming that they may be used to fabricate weaponry, Israel has since restricted the import of goods such as medical equipment, construction materials, and computers. According to a U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report analyzing the impacts of the blockade after 15 years, 62 percent of Palestinians in Gaza require food assistance, 80 percent of piped water in Gaza is unfit for drinking, and Israeli restrictions on access to the coast “only allow fishermen to access 50 percent of the fishing waters allocated for this purpose under the Oslo Accords.” The living conditions of Gaza have severely worsened since the blockade in a manner that violates the guarantees enshrined in Article 25 (1) of the UDHR.
Mokhiber’s Reflections
The removal of Palestinian civilians, forced migration and subsequent occupation of their territory has absconded official discourse—especially that of the U.S., which has contributed over $300 billion USD in aid to Israel. Nevertheless, although the U.N.’s attempts to mediate the territorial dispute and defend the rights of the refugee populations that migrated to Gaza and the West Bank in 1948 have been ineffective, they provide a legal background for the defense of the human rights of Palestinians.
Israel’s imposition of a full “siege” and escalation of militarized violence in Gaza since October, at the time of writing having caused over 10,000 deaths (of which most were civilian, a large proportion were children, and 89 were staff of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency), have pushed the U.N.’s stilted resistance toward outspoken criticism, even when the organization is incapable of exerting influence over its most powerful member-states.
The urgent tone of Craig Mokhiber’s resignation letter resounds with legally-grounded sincerity. His seniority and direct involvement with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) grant him the authority to validate mistrust in the resistance to acknowledge the human rights violations—historic and current—perpetrated against Palestinian civilians. Very publicly, he has urged for self-reflection within the peace-making international mechanisms that society fundamentally relies on. He has shown that there exists intra-institutional disagreement in Western governing structures and that there is real and legitimate opposition to increased U.S.-funded militarization in the region.
Still, it is with pessimism that he highlights the obvious barrier to the U.N.’s ability to act: its powerlessness. He notes that it was only after its failures during previous genocides to intervene in a timely manner to protect the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya that international law was verily employed.
Furthermore, the existence of institutional opposition opens a debate regarding the credibility, neutrality, and influence of public media in a polarized political landscape. Mokhiber’s analysis is alarming. He evokes an issue of worrying recurrence in the technological age: the proliferation of political propaganda in a commodified market for soft power. He additionally describes Western corporate media outlets as becoming “increasingly captured and state-adjacent” and accuses them of violating Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), publishing pro-war propaganda, and continuously dehumanizing Palestinians in a way that “constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence.”
Despite silencing efforts, the U.N.’s critiques have been echoed in protests across the globe.
Growing skepticism now impresses two questions on the observer: Will critiques of the State of Israel’s recent actions shatter their collective public acceptance? Or, distressingly, will the narrative divulged by Netanyahu and Western instigators only be questioned once it has evolved to justify the extermination of the inhabitants of Gaza?
Sofía Prado Arenzana (GS ’25) is a staff writer at CPR and a third-year student in the Dual BA Program with the Paris Institute of Political Science, Sciences Po Paris, majoring in economics-mathematics and political science.