As Einstein (or whomever) said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If that's true, the UN is insane.
Another UN resolution, another exercise in futility
From 1947 to today, every chance for Palestinian statehood
has been rejected. No declaration in New York will change that reality.
The U.N. General Assembly has once again stepped onto the
stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with grand declarations and
high-minded pronouncements. Just last week, it voted to endorse a seven-page
declaration that outlines “tangible, timebound and irreversible steps” toward a
two-state solution.
The resolution was backed by Gulf Arab states and European
powers, boycotted by the United States and Israel, and condemned by Jerusalem
as a “publicity stunt.”
And a stunt it is.
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| Seal of the United Nations |
It is worth reminding ourselves—and the diplomats in New
York—that this is hardly the first time that the United Nations has promised to
deliver a Palestinian state. In fact, the very body that gathered this past
Friday voted for just that in 1947. Resolution 181, known as the Partition
Plan, proposed the division of British-ruled Palestine into a Jewish state and
an Arab state, with Jerusalem under international control.
The Jewish leadership reluctantly accepted the plan,
understanding that it was far from perfect but represented a historic
opportunity. The Arab world, on the other hand, rejected it outright and chose
war instead.
The Jewish state was born. The Arab state never was.
Seventy-seven years later, that international body is still
talking about creating one. What does that say about the seriousness of these
resolutions?
The fundamental fact that diplomats prefer to ignore is that
the Palestinians have had multiple opportunities to establish their own state,
and each time they have chosen rejectionism and violence. The 1947 partition
plan. The 2000 Camp David talks, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered
Yasser Arafat nearly everything he claimed to want. The 2008 Annapolis process,
when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further.
In each case, the answer from the Palestinian leadership was
“no”—or worse, a new wave of terrorism.
The current resolution, like so many before it, tries to
skirt this history. Instead, it pretends that peace is only a matter of more
conferences, more paperwork and more signatures on symbolic declarations. But
there is nothing tangible, time-bound or irreversible about demanding
concessions from Israel while holding the Palestinians to no standard of
accountability whatsoever.
Consider the grotesque irony of the United Nations
condemning both Hamas’s atrocities and Israel’s defensive actions in the same
breath. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the
Holocaust, massacring civilians, kidnapping children and burning entire
families alive in their homes. Yet somehow, in the halls of Turtle Bay,
Israel’s efforts to dismantle the Hamas terror organization are given equal
moral standing with the terrorists’ crimes. That moral equivalence alone should
disqualify the United Nations from being taken seriously as an arbiter of
peace.
The United States and Israel rightly boycotted the July
conference that produced this declaration, co-hosted by Saudi Arabia and
France. It was clear from the outset that it would be another round of
diplomatic theater, aimed not at resolving the conflict but at isolating
Israel. No one in Riyadh or Paris truly believes that a U.N. vote will erase
decades of Palestinian rejectionism. But it plays well in Arab capitals and
provides European leaders with a chance to posture as peacemakers without
dealing with the hard truths.
The hard truth is this: Palestinian statehood cannot be
willed into existence by international resolutions. It can only come about
through direct negotiations with Israel, based on recognition of the Jewish
nation’s legitimacy and a commitment to peaceful coexistence.
Neither of those preconditions exists today. The Palestinian
Authority glorifies terrorists, pays stipends to murderers in Israeli jails and
rejects recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Hamas
and Palestinian Islamic Jihad openly declare their goal to destroy Israel and
its people. How, then, can any serious person talk about “irreversible steps”
toward a two-state solution?
U.N. diplomats love to use the language of inevitability.
They speak as though history bends inexorably toward their preferred outcome.
But history has already spoken. The Arabs could have had a state in 1947, but
they chose war. They could have had a state in 2000 and 2008, but they chose
terrorism. Even today, the Palestinian leadership refuses to make peace,
preferring to keep its people in perpetual grievance.
What the world body is really doing with resolutions like
this one is perpetuating that grievance. Each new declaration tells the
Palestinians that they don’t have to compromise, don’t have to reform, don’t
have to recognize Israel. Just sit back, and the world will deliver you a state
on a silver platter. That message is not just misguided. It is dangerous. It
fuels more rejectionism, more extremism and more violence.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to build a thriving, democratic
society under constant threat. It has made peace with Egypt, with Jordan, and
through the Abraham Accords, with several Arab states. Those breakthroughs
happened not because of U.N. resolutions but because leaders in Cairo, Amman,
Abu Dhabi and Manama decided that peace and progress were preferable to endless
war.
If Palestinian leaders ever make the same decision, peace
with Israel will follow. Until then, the United Nations can churn out as many
declarations as it likes. They will be as meaningless as the ones that came
before.
The United Nations loves words like “tangible,” “timebound”
and “irreversible.” But for nearly eight decades, its resolutions on Israel and
the Palestinians have been anything but. What is truly irreversible is the
reality that Israel exists, will continue to exist and will defend itself
against those who seek its destruction. That is the one fact the United Nations
should accept—if it truly wishes to be relevant.
(This column first appeared on jns.org. To read it on line go here.)
Stephen M. Flatow
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