It was refreshing to hear Prime Minister Freundel Stuart in his address to the United Nations last week calling for an end to the economic boycott of Cuba and urging the acceptance of a sovereign state of Palestine.
Today, as we return to the vexed question of Palestinian Authority membership of the UN, we wholeheartedly support Mr Stuart’s call and reiterate the views of one official that one would think the Palestinian Authority was applying for membership of al-Qaeda.
Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has chosen the path of UN recognition rather than continuing with the useless charade of direct talks. This strategy has struck a raw nerve with Israel and frustrated the United States.
To be able to fully appreciate the difficulty, it must be remembered that the idea of Palestine becoming a permanent member of the UN was given impetus by none other than United States’ President Barack Obama.
Some history might help. In 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. Today’s Israelis are rejecting recognition of Palestinian statehood on a much smaller territory than that assigned to Arabs by the original partition.
Further, the International Court of Justice at The Hague has ruled that the wall built inside Palestinian territory is illegal under international law; yet nothing has been done to enforce that ruling.
In 1967, it should be recalled, Israel occupied the remainder of historic Palestine and other Arab territories following the June War. Shortly after the war, the UN Security Council declared in the preamble to Resolution 242 that “it is inadmissible to occupy land by force”.
In more recent history, since the 1991 Madrid Conference, direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians have taken place in various formats. Palestinians made one compromise after another, hoping that partial agreements would lead to statehood.
The 1993 Oslo accords set in motion a peace process that was supposed to last five years, with the end goal being an independent Palestinian state and a safe, secure, and recognized Israel. But the peace process has exposed a permanent inability to agree on anything of real substance.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly during September last year, Mr Obama expressed the hope that “when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the UN – an independent, sovereign state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel”.
In May, Mr Obama made another effort to kick-start the talks, saying the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines. Arrayed against this more than 60-year journey, the inevitable United States veto at the Security Council gives little comfort to democratic ideals.
The UN faces an ugly truth: it cannot allow countries to choose which resolutions they abide by. The dichotomy is that you honour its decisions and international law or you don’t.
