{"id":246404,"date":"2023-10-23T12:01:03","date_gmt":"2023-10-23T11:01:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=246404"},"modified":"2023-10-19T06:08:03","modified_gmt":"2023-10-19T05:08:03","slug":"saving-israel-and-palestine-through-the-united-nations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/10\/saving-israel-and-palestine-through-the-united-nations\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Israel and Palestine through the United Nations"},"content":{"rendered":"

16 Oct <\/em>2023 – Following Hamas\u2019s heinous attack on innocent Israeli civilians, senior Israeli military strategists\u00a0are threatening<\/a>\u00a0the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This would be another Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), akin to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. If Israel commits massive war crimes in Gaza in the face of global calls for restraint, Israel would put its fundamental national security at risk.<\/p>\n

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has spoken clearly, persuasively, and eloquently about the need for a cease fire, the release of hostages, the protection of the civilians of Gaza, support for Israel\u2019s security, and the decisive move to a Palestinian state in line with previous UN agreements.\u00a0 In this he speaks for the great preponderance of humanity and the vast majority of UN member states, who seek peace and justice for both Israelis and Palestinians.<\/p>\n

All five permanent members (P5) of the UN Security Council \u2013 the US, UK, France, Russia, and China \u2014 have a common interest in a cease fire followed by a comprehensive agreement including Palestinian statehood.\u00a0 All the P5 nations desire good relations with both Israel and the Arab world.\u00a0 All have a strong national interest in peace, including security for Israel and statehood for Palestine.
\nThis is true even of the United States.\u00a0 If the US backs ethnic cleansing in Gaza, American influence in the Muslim world, already in decline in recent years, will irrevocably collapse.<\/p>\n

Secretary-General Guterres has charted the framework for peace:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have approached a moment of calamitous escalation, and find ourselves at a critical crossroads. It is imperative that all parties \u2014 and those with influence over them \u2014 do everything possible to avoid fresh violence or spillover of the conflict to the West Bank and the wider region\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cAll hostages in Gaza must be released. Civilians must not be used as human shields. International humanitarian law \u2014 including the Geneva Conventions \u2014 must be respected and upheld. Civilians on both sides must be protected at all times. Hospitals, schools, clinics and United Nations premises must never be targeted\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cBut any solution to this tragic, decades-long ordeal of death and destruction requires full recognition of the circumstances of both Israelis and Palestinians, of both their realities and both their perspectives\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael must see its legitimate needs for security materialized, and Palestinians must see a clear perspective for the establishment of their own state realized, in line with United Nations resolutions, international law and previous agreements. If the international community truly believes in these two objectives, we need to find a way to work together to find real, lasting solutions \u2014 solutions that are based on our common humanity and that recognize the need for people to live together, despite histories and circumstances that tear them apart.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There should be no geopolitical divide among the major powers with regard to this crisis. Russia has very strong ties with Israel, not least because of the hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews living in Israel.\u00a0 The UK, EU, and US also have strong economic, technological, cultural, and historical ties with Israel.\u00a0 China too has long and solid relations with Israel, albeit with fewer cultural and historical ties.<\/p>\n

Yet none of these major power wants to alienate the Arab and Muslim worlds.\u00a0 Every major power has a significant Muslim population: 1-2 percent in the US and China, around 7 percent in the UK and EU, and approximately 10 percent in Russia.\u00a0 Moreover, all have significant economic, security, and cultural ties with the Arab and Muslim worlds.<\/p>\n

The P5 should work urgently together towards a UN Security Council resolution charting the path to peace and a Palestinian state (or even to one state based on equality and democracy, if the Israelis and Palestinians prefer that to a division of the land.). Russia is reportedly on the verge of submitting a peace resolution.\u00a0 The US should resist a knee-jerk reaction of opposing a Russian initiative, and work with Russia and other P5 members in the common cause of peace.<\/p>\n

Israelis and Palestinians, alas, are each deeply divided into three camps, which might be called the peacemakers, the skeptics, and the fundamentalists.\u00a0 The peacemakers believe that peace is possible through negotiation.\u00a0 The skeptics are so deeply distrustful of the other side that they do not believe in peace.\u00a0 The fundamentalists, a decided minority on both sides, believe that God granted them the land \u2013 whether to the Jews or the Muslims \u2013 so the other side has no rights at all.<\/p>\n

The peacemakers are ready for peace.\u00a0 The skeptics can be won over with sufficient respect, diplomacy, and realism in the negotiations, and UN Security Council backing for a negotiated peace (including peacekeepers, financing, and other instruments of enforceability).\u00a0 Fundamentalists on both sides will be disappointed.\u00a0 Yet they should be reminded that human rights and dignity for all are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and backed by the UN Charter.<\/p>\n

From time to time, brave leaders have arisen who have convinced the skeptics to try for peace, and who have told the fundamentalists that both sides deserve respect and justice.\u00a0 Egypt\u2019s Anwar Sadat was such a remarkable figure.\u00a0 So too was Israel\u2019s Yitzhak Rabin.\u00a0 Both were assassinated by fundamentalists of their own nation, martyred like other great peacemakers of our time, including Mahatma Gandhi, John and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr.<\/p>\n

As Jesus, himself martyred, taught, \u201cBlessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, before the current \u201cunity\u201d government, was the most right-wing in its history.\u00a0 Several extreme right-wingers are in the current cabinet.\u00a0 The Israeli media carry\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0to make Gaza a place where \u201cno human being can live.\u201d\u00a0 There must no place in the affairs of nations, least of all at the United Nations, for ideologies of hate.<\/p>\n

The nations of the world, operating under the UN Charter and defending the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, must move urgently to help save both Israel and Palestine.\u00a0 If Israel attempts another Nakba, it would suffer horrendous deaths of its own young men and women in the fighting, kill thousands and displace hundreds of thousands of innocent Palestinians, and stain the name of Israel for future generations.\u00a0 The UN Security Council should head off this calamity by giving urgent and timely support to the millions of Israeli and Palestinian people who yearn for a lasting peace with security and justice for all.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jeffrey D. Sachs, Professor of Sustainable Development and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, is Director of Columbia\u2019s Center for Sustainable Development and the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He has served as Special Adviser to three UN Secretaries-General [Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres. His books include <\/em>The End of Poverty<\/a>, Common Wealth<\/a>, The Age of Sustainable Development<\/a>, Building the New American Economy<\/a>, and most recently,<\/em> A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism<\/a>. Sachs was also an advisor to the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as to the first president of the Russian Federation, Boris Yeltsin.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join the<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span> <\/b><\/i>BDS-BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, SANCTIONS <\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span>campaign<\/b><\/i><\/span><\/span> to protest the Israeli barbaric siege of Gaza, illegal occupation of the Palestine nation\u2019s territory, the apartheid wall, its inhuman and degrading treatment of the Palestinian people, and the more than 7,000 Palestinian men, women, elderly and children arbitrarily locked up in Israeli prisons.<\/span><\/p>\n

DON’T BUY<\/b><\/span><\/span> PRODUCTS WHOSE<\/b><\/span><\/span> BARCODE<\/b><\/span><\/span> STARTS WITH<\/b><\/span><\/span> 729<\/b><\/span><\/span>, which indicates that it is produced in Israel. <\/span>DO YOUR PART! MAKE A DIFFERENCE!<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

7 2 9:<\/b><\/span><\/span> BOYCOTT FOR JUSTICE!<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

16 Oct 2023 – Following Hamas\u2019 attacks on Israeli civilians, Israeli military strategists\u00a0are threatening\u00a0the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. This would be another Nakba, akin to the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homes and land in 1948. If Israel commits war crimes in Gaza in the face of global calls for restraint, Israel would put its fundamental national security at risk. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":233181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[1036,87,1029,85,124,1888],"class_list":["post-246404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-nations","tag-antonio-guterres","tag-gaza","tag-hamas","tag-palestine-israel","tag-united-nations","tag-unsc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246404"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":246468,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246404\/revisions\/246468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}