{"id":80586,"date":"2016-10-03T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-10-03T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=80586"},"modified":"2016-10-01T16:16:47","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T15:16:47","slug":"ban-ki-moons-legacy-in-palestine-failure-in-words-and-deeds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/10\/ban-ki-moons-legacy-in-palestine-failure-in-words-and-deeds\/","title":{"rendered":"Ban Ki-moon\u2019s Legacy in Palestine: Failure in Words and Deeds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ramzy-baroud-logo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

29 Sep 2016 – <\/em>Ban Ki-moon\u2019s second term as UN secretary-general is ending this December, he was the most ideal man for the job as far as the United States and its allies are concerned.<\/p>\n

Of course, there will always be other Ban Ki-moons. In fact, the man himself was a modified version of his predecessor, Kofi Annan.<\/p>\n

The unspoken but unmistakable rule about UN secretary-generals is that they must come across as affable enough so as not to be the cause of international controversies, but also flexible enough to accommodate the US\u2019 disproportionate influence over the United Nations, particularly the Security Council.<\/p>\n

At the end of their terms, the \u201csuccess\u201d or \u201cfailure\u201d of these secretaries has been largely determined by their willingness to play by the aforementioned rule: Boutros Boutros-Ghali had his fallout with the US, as did Kurt Waldheim. But both Annan and Ban learned their lessons well and followed the script to the end of their terms.<\/p>\n

It would be utterly unfair to pin the blame for the UN\u2019s unmitigated failure to solve world conflicts or obtain any real global achievement on a single individual. But Ban was particularly \u201cgood\u201d at this job. It would be quite a challenge to produce another with his exact qualities.<\/p>\n

His admonishment of Israel, for example, can come across as strong-worded and makes for a good media quote, yet his inaction to confront Israel\u2019s illegal violations of numerous resolutions passed by the very UN he headed, is unmatched.<\/p>\n

Even his purportedly strong words of censure were often cleverly coded, which, ultimately, meant very little.<\/p>\n

When Israel carried out its longest and most devastating war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, a large number of international law experts and civil society organisations signed a letter<\/a> accusing the UN chief of failing to clearly condemn Israel\u2019s unlawful action in the Occupied Territories, its targeting of civilian homes and even the bombing of UN facilities which killed and wounded hundreds.<\/p>\n

The signatories included former UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk who, along with the others, called on Ban to either stand for justice or resign. He did neither.<\/p>\n

The signatories criticised him, specifically, about the Israeli shelling of a school managed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in which ten civilians were killed.<\/p>\n

In his \u201ccondemnation\u201d of the Israeli attack, Ban even failed to mention Israel by name as the attacker, and called on \u201cboth parties\u201d to provide protection for Palestinian civilians and UN staff.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour statements have been either misleading, because they endorse and further Israeli false versions of facts, or contrary to the provisions established by international law and to the interests of its defenders, or because your words justify Israel\u2019s violations and crimes,\u201d they wrote.<\/p>\n

And they were right. This is Ban Ki-Moon\u2019s signature policy \u2013 his ability to sidestep having to criticise Israel so cleverly (and, of course, the US and others) when that criticism could have, when needed most, at least given a pause to those who violate international law at will.<\/p>\n

Considering this, many have perceived Ban\u2019s farewell speech<\/a> at the 71st session of the UN General Assembly on 15 September as a departure from his old reserved self. It was understood that it was the end of his term and he was ready to show some backbone, however belatedly. Sadly, this was not the case.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt pains me that this past decade has been lost to peace. Ten years lost to illegal settlement expansion. Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarisation and hopelessness,\u201d he surmised, as if both parties \u2013 the occupied and the military occupier \u2013 were equally responsible for the bloodshed and that Palestinians are equally blamed for their own military occupation by Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is madness,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cReplacing a two-state solution with a one-state construct would spell doom: denying Palestinians their freedom and rightful future, and pushing Israel further from its vision of a Jewish democracy towards greater global isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

But again, no solid commitment either way. Who is \u201creplacing a two-state solution?\u201d Why would a \u201cone state reality\u201d \u2013 which incidentally happens to be the most humane and logical solution to the conflict \u2013 \u201cspell doom\u201d? And why is Ban so keen on the ethnic status of Israel\u2019s \u201cJewish democracy\u201d vision, considering that it was Israel\u2019s demographic obsession that pushed Palestinians to live under military occupation or live under perpetual racial discrimination in Israel itself?<\/p>\n

The fact is that there is more to Ban\u2019s muddled language than a UN chief who is desperately trying to find the balance in his words, so that he may end his mission without registering any serious controversies, or raise the ire of Israel and the US.<\/p>\n

(Incidentally, Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, still ranted<\/a> against the UN chief for calling Israel\u2019s illegal Jewish settlements \u201cillegal\u201d in his address. Other Israeli commentators raged against<\/a> him for being a \u201cliar\u201d. Strange that even repeating old, irrefutable facts is still a cause of anger in Israel.)<\/p>\n

Yet again, this is not the matter of the choice of words. A WikiLeaks document from August 2014<\/a> is an excellent case in point.<\/p>\n

According to the document released by WikiLeaks, Ban collaborated secretly with the US to undermine a report issued by the UN\u2019s own Board of Inquiry\u2019s report on Israeli bombing of UN schools in Gaza during the war of December 2008 \u2013 January 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cCollaborated\u201d is actually a soft reference to that event, where Susan Rice \u2013 then the White House national security adviser \u2013 called on him repeatedly to bury the report, not to bring it to the council for discussion and, eventually, to remove the strongly-phrased recommendations of \u201cdeeper\u201d and \u201cimpartial\u201d investigations into the bombing of the UN facilities.<\/p>\n

When Ban explained to Rice that he was constrained by the fact that the Board of Inquiry is an independent body, she told him to provide a cover letter that practically disowns the recommendations as ones that \u201cexceeded the scope of the terms of reference and (that) no further action is needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ban Ki-moon obliged.<\/p>\n

When the UN chief is gone, he will be missed \u2013 but certainly not by Palestinians in Gaza<\/a> or refugees in Syria, or war victims in Afghanistan. But by the likes of Susan Rice, whose job was made very easy when all she needed to do was merely instruct the chief of the largest international organisation on earth to do exactly as she wished and for him to gladly do so.<\/p>\n

In his last visit to Palestine in June, Ban Ki-Moon told distraught Gazans<\/a> that the \u201cUN will always be with you.\u201d<\/p>\n

As tens of thousands there still stand on the rubble of their own homes, denied freedom to move or rebuild, his statement is as forgettable as the man\u2019s legacy at the UN.<\/p>\n

________________________________________<\/p>\n

Ramzy Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter. He has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books, and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include <\/em>Searching Jenin, <\/em>The Second Palestinian Intifada, and his latest, <\/em>My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza\u2019s Untold Story.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ramzybaroud.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the UN chief is gone, he will be missed \u2013 but certainly not by Palestinians in Gaza or refugees in Syria, or war victims in Afghanistan. In his last visit to Palestine in June, Ban Ki-Moon told distraught Gazans that the \u201cUN will always be with you.\u201d As tens of thousands there still stand on the rubble of their own homes, denied freedom to move or rebuild, his statement is as forgettable as the man\u2019s legacy at the UN.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-palestine-israel-gaza-genocide"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80586","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=80586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}