ISRAEL - IRAN - SYRIA - HAMAS - HEZBOLLAH - WWWIII?

Here is an excellent piece regarding Israel's alleged failure to comply with UN resolutions, particularly 242.



UN Resolutions - Israel versus Iraq

By Chuck Chriss

IHC Abstract
This article shows the fallacy of squaring Iraq�s defiance of binding UN resolutions with Israel�s alleged defiance of non-binding UN resolutions.


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Israel Doesn�t Follow UN Resolutions, So Why Attack Iraq?

That question is being heard frequently during the debate on US policy and plans against Iraq. The full question seeks to know why the US supports Israel with aid and military cooperation and the US does not condemn Israeli "violations of international law". Yet the US wants to attack Iraq for such violations. If both countries are in violation of UN resolutions, what is the difference?

The real agenda with such questions is to try to focus attention on Israel's alleged "violations of international law" and to undermine US support for Israel. The answer requires a review of what UN resolutions have been passed on the subject of Israel and its neighbors, what is their actual content, and what have been the actions of the parties involved, not just Israel?

In the 1940s, the United Nations was formed by the victors in World War II. The new body explicitly took over the existing agreements made by the League of Nations, including the British-administered Mandate for Palestine. When the war-exhausted British decided to abandon the Mandate in 1947, the UN General Assembly voted for a plan that would partition the 22% of the Mandate for Palestine that was west of the Jordan River into a Palestinian Jewish state and a Palestinian Arab state, each in a shape that attempted to encompass most of their respective populations. Jerusalem was left out, to be a separate internationally-administered area. The 78% of the Mandate for Palestine that was east of the Jordan was left as the British had decided -- to be the Arab country of Jordan, no Jews allowed.

[See http://palestinefacts.org/pf_independence.php Events Surrounding the Independence of the State of Israel (1947-1949) ]

[ See http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0dt70 The Partition Plan, UN Resolution 181 Map ]

Notwithstanding the manifestly unfair nature of this division, against the Jews -- especially in light of the thousands of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who had nowhere to go but Palestine -- the Jews accepted the division and declared the State of Israel within the UN-determined borders on May 15, 1948. Palestinian Arabs could have done the same and had a State of Palestine right then and there. But the Arab leadership rejected the plan, solely on the basis that they wanted no Jewish state at all. That is, it was not a dispute about the details of borders or any other issue. They rejected any Jewish presence in the region and went immediately to war to destroy the newborn Israel. The Arab actions were in defiance of the UN partition plan and all other international laws against aggression.

When the Arab war of aggression failed, armistice agreements (not peace treaties) were negotiated with UN help and the long, twilight, underground war of the Arab countries and the Palestinian Arabs against Israel began. Israel's borders were not permanent, internationally recognized limits but only lines where troops happened to be when the cease-fire was arranged. This fact made them hard to defend and allowed terrorist operations against Israel from day one. Jordan occupied the areas of the Mandate called Judea and Samaria (renaming the area "the West Bank", a name that only makes sense if you are in Jordan). And Egypt occupied the strip of coastal land called Gaza. These occupations were not internationally recognized, but were not condemned either. Palestinian Arabs did not object or demand a state.

UN Resolution 194 of November 12, 1948 dealt with the issues of the then-in-progress War of Independence. It set up an international Conciliation Commission to mediate between the parties and made provisions for the return or resettlement of refugees. The resolution says nothing solely about "Arab refugees" and clearly applies to both Arab and Jewish refugees of the Arab-instigated war. But Resolution 194 is only mentioned when demanding rights for Arabs to return to Israel, something that is neither in the wording of Resolution 194 nor would be considered rational except in a different world, a world in which Jews could freely return to Arab lands and live there in peace.

The pattern was established:


1. Israel is attacked.


2. Israel defends itself.


3. The UN or other international group steps in to end the violence, calling for both sides to take certain actions to resolve the situation.


4. Israel attempts to comply but the intransigence and non-compliance of Israel's enemies delays any resolution.


5. Israel is blamed for failing to comply and the failures of Israel's enemies are ignored.

This pattern repeats over the decades: Sinai, 1967 war, 1973 war, Lebanon, and recently with Israeli actions in the territories, action taken in reaction to the wave of homicide bombings.

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 997 passed on November 2, 1956 in response to the Sinai Campaign, calls for all parties "to desist from raids across the [1949] armistice lines into neighboring territory", specifically referring to the hundreds of fedayeen attacks carried out against Israel in the early 1950s. But even though Israel withdrew from Sinai as required, Egyptian violations of this provision continued through the years, eventually one of the causes leading to the 1967 Six Day War.

[See http://palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_sixday_backgd.php What led to the Six Day War in 1967? ]

When Israel has been subject to a "UN Resolution" you first have to ask what type of resolution it was. Resolutions of the General Assembly are merely recommendations and many Security Council actions are too. There is no force of law and Israel cannot be accused of anything more than deciding the resolution is not in Israel's national interest. Resolutions of the Security Council that are meant to be implemented are more serious matters. Israel has been very good on compliance when the entire resolution is taken into account, not just the sentence the pro-Palestinian advocate wants you to look at.

The most famous example is UN Security Council Resolution 242 (UNSCR 242) -- the "land for peace" resolution passed after the Six Day War. Palestinian advocates consistently maintain that Israel has to pull out of the West Bank based on 242, but UNSCR 242 doesn't say that. UNSCR 242 actually calls for a dual requirement, Israeli withdrawal coupled with:

"Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;"

Since there are no "secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force", Israel is under no obligation to withdraw.

[ See http://palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_un_242.php What was United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and what does it say? ]

On March 30, 2002 in response to Israel's Operation Defensive Shield against terrorist bases and operatives in the territories, the UN passed UNSCR 1402. One line of that Resolution "calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Palestinian cities, including Ramallah" -- that is the line you hear about. But another, equally valid line calls for "an immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror, provocation, incitement and destruction." Why should Israel withdraw until the acts of the latter sentence have ceased, including provocation and incitement that continue among Palestinian Arabs at a fever pitch?

[See: http://usinfo.state.gov/regional/nea/summit/text/0401unres1402.htm UNSC Adopts Resolution 1402 on Middle East ]

In response to accusations against Israel based on UN Resolutions, the question must be asked: "Exactly what UN Resolution is Israel violating?" It is certainly true that many of the UN Resolutions have not been implemented, but is Israel at fault? Does Israel have to implement its obligations before others implement theirs? And what about resolutions where Israel has complied? What have been the results? Resolutions 425/426 regarding Lebanon led to Israel's withdrawal and Israel has been certified by the UN as being in full compliance. But attacks against Israel across that border continue to this day.

[ See http://palestinefacts.org/pf_1991to_now_lebanon_withdraw_2000.php Why did Israel withdraw from the security zone in Lebanon in May 2000?]

Contrasted with Iraq's defiant and evasive performance, Israel is a model international citizen. This is true despite the fact that Israel has been subject to a barrage of attacks by its enemies using the UN as a platform.

[See http://palestinefacts.org/pf_faq_palestine_un_anti_israel_bias.php What is the evidence that the United Nations is biased against Israel?]

It is my opinion that the refusal by the Palestinian Arabs to abide by the UN's 1947 resolution advocating establishment of an independent Arab state and an independent Jewish state in Palestine, the Israelies under those conditions would be damn fools to abide by any of the UN's subsequent resolutions that the Israelis think--not you or anyone else thinks--will probably increase the risk to their existence as an independent Palestinian state.

The UN's failure to pass repeated resolutions demanding the Arabs first comply with the UN's 1947 resolution before the Jews comply with the 1967 resolutions, is at best a huge UN hypocricy and at worst a horrendous UN fraud.

The crux of the matter is not that Israel thinks UN resolutions subsequent to 181 "will probably increase the risk to their existence as an independent Palestinian state," it's that Israel thinks UN resolutions subsequent to 181 will probably increase the risk to their existence as an ethnocentric Palestinian state whose very existence is necessarily discriminatory and oppressive against the majority people in Palestine in the name of the perceived benefit of its minority people.

The UN's fraud was the acceptance of Britain's discriminatory and repressive separation plan to the detriment of the ideals of equality, plurality and democracy in Palestine.

InfraBlue, You got that right! Some people would allow discrimination in a so-called democracy based on unfounded fears - and oftentimes can't see the forest for the trees - such as the case with Bush. He thinks torture is justified to keep Americans safe; they've lost all concept of international and US laws.

This is just another baseless assertion, which goes against a massive amount of facts in the matter.

If they are "baseless assertions," then you can provide us with the facts? Yes?

They have been provided in this thread ad nauseam, but some of you are so biased that they don't sink in.

You oppose an ethnocentric culture for Israel, but don't appear to oppose the same for Arabs.

The acceptance of an ethnocentric Arab culture is what the Arabs have been seeking and murdering for more than 27 years prior to and more than 60 years subsequent to the UN's 1947 resolution advocating the establishment of an independent Arab state and an independent Jewish state in Palestine. Ethnocentric cultures are in fact what the UN advocated for both cultures, but neither for all of Palestine.

The Arabs who live in Israel are not murdering Israelis to end Israel's culture. So that seems to suggest the very real probability that the only practical way to sove the Palestinian Arab problem is for Israel to conquer all of Palestine and thereafter govern all its inhabitants the same.

Remember, neither the Arabs or the Jews governed any part of the Palestine they inhabited since the 11th century.

ican: You oppose an ethnocentric culture for Israel, but don't appear to oppose the same for Arabs.


What are you talking about? Which Arab country had another majority where a minority came in and declared war on the majority?

Under the guise of "democracy."

What the Palestinians have been fighting for since the incursion of the Zionist Ashkenazim is the right to self-determination in all of Palestine, their homeland. The British, along with the Zionists, had thwarted those efforts, denying the Palestinians democratic institutions and representation in the name of advancing the ethnocentric ends of the Zionists, the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.

That the Palestinians were subjugated by other powers since the 11th century does not negate their moral right to equal and pluralistic democratic self-determination in all of Palestine.

Do you have any proof that, before 1948, the Pals were pushing for democracy and self rule? Other than Israel, there is not a real democracy anywhere in the ME. Please show also how these efforts were stymied.

From the time after the first world war that the British began to implement its promise to the Zionists to establish a national homeland for Jews in Palestine through their mandate, Palestinian endeavors to build national democratic institutions as the preliminary steps to statehood were thwarted by the British as the latter gave precedence to the Zionists' nationalist endeavors in Palestine. The British had hardly considered Palestinian nationalist aspirations at all, merely referring to them in its Balfour Declaration as "existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," and in its Palestine Mandate simply as "other sections of the population." The thrust of Britain's involvement in Palestine was from the start detrimentally prejudiced against the very peoples indigenous to Palestine in favor of a people from Central and Eastern Europe.

Palestinian efforts to establish a parliament along democratic electorial lines were rebuffed by the British colonial secretary Lord Passfield who in a May 1930 meeting with Palestinian delegates responded thusly:

Of course, this Parliament as you call it that you ask for, would have to have as its duty the carrying out of the Mandate . . . the Mandatory power, that is the British government, could not create any council except within which the terms of the Mandate and for the purpose of carrying out the Mandate. This is the limit of our power . . . Would you mind considering our difficulty that we cannot create a Parliament which would not be responsible and feel itself responsible for carrying out the Mandate?

In effect Passfield was asking the Palestinian majority to put aside its own nationalist aspirations for the nationalist aspirations of the tiny minority of Zionist immigrants in Palestine.

In terms of external support for Palestinian efforts to build pre-state institutions, the colonialist powers in the area largely thwarted the efforts of the Arab populations under their control from supporting and contributing to the Palestinians. Rashid Khalidi in his book, "The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood," describes how France through its Foreign Ministry in Paris and its colonial officials in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia prevented the sending of funds from these countries' peoples to the people of Palestine. France also prevented the travel of emissaries from the Maghribi community in Palestine to North Africa to request aid for the Palestinians such as after the 1929 Wailing Wall disturbances. In contrast France enabled the flow of large sums of capital to the yishuv from the Jewish communities of those selfsame North African countries whose non-Jewish populations it had blocked from sending aid to the Palestinians, and it facilitated the traveling of Palestinian Zionists to these North African countries under its control.

Another aspect of colonialist repression of the Palestinian's quest for self-determination is Britain's time worn policy of divide and conquer that it would implement against the peoples in the lands it would subjugate. Britain created al -Majlis al-Islami al-A'la or the Supreme Muslim Council to which was given unprecedented authority over the traditional religio-political offices in Palestine such as the qadis the judges in the sharia court of appeal, the local muftis--Islamic scholar who are interpreters or expounders of Islamic law--and the employees of various other institutions such as schools, orphanages and religious centers. Britain also created the title of mufti filastin al-akbar or Grand Mufti out of the traditional office of mufti for Jerusalem of the Hanafi rite which, as Khalidi explains, "of the four Sunni legal and religious rites had the largest following in Palestine, and had been the official rite of the Ottoman state). The new position of 'Grand Mufti' was given authority over other religio-political offices which had until then been either of equal standing such as the na'ib or the chief secretary of the shaira court of appeal, or superior to the position of mufti such as the qadis the judges in the sharia court of appeal. As a requisite of these various positions, all of the appointees were obligated to refrain from opposing Britain's Mandate in Palestine and it's goal of creating a Zionist homeland at the expense of Palestinian self-determination. Britain played these institutions newly created by itself against organizations formed by other Palestinians of their own volition such as the Palestine Arab Congress which was a countrywide movement organized to oppose Britain's occupation of Palestine, and it's plan to impose a Zionist state therein. Needless to say, Britain refused to recognize the legitimacy and representative nature of the congress. This playing of Palestinians against each other was a major factor in the infighting that plagued the early Palestinian leadership and kept it weak and ultimately ineffective and ineffectual.

By the time the British dropped the problem it had created in Palestine onto the lap of the UN, and the latter's infamous recommendation to partition the country along ethnic lines, the Palestinians had no real or firm state structures through which to operate as a polity. After the 1948 war the territory that the UN recommended for allotment to the Palestinians was divided between Israel, Jordan and Egypt. After the 1967 war Israel arrogated and occupied the territories that Jordan and Egypt had previously controlled (the West Bank and Gaza Strip respectively). Today the Palestinians have a weak, quasi-national jurisdiction, the Palestinian National Authority, which operates under the utter stricture of the state of Israel.

Keep in mind that Khalidi is Palestinian and has written a one-sided pro-Pal book. Further, this is, of course, ancient history, and there must be progress in the present world.

True enough - it is ancient history. However in that respect it is not different from the ancient history Zionists employ to rationalize their insistence on a permanently jewish State in the Middle East - in defiance of the obvious facts clearly indicating that this is the real, enduring barrier to peace and reconciliation among the peoples there.

I agree, though - there must be progress in the modern world. The U.S. should now confine its support in the region to parties that embrace the same principles of individual equality that animate our own system (no matter how imperfectly we have implemented it). We should clearly reject the racist, socially and religiously intolerant institutions on both sides of this dispute.

That Khalidi is Palestinian and wrote a book about the Palestinians' struggle for statehood does not negate the fact that the Palestinians fought for their right to democratic self-determination against the Zionists and their British abettors who refused them that right.

The history that you attempt to off-handedly wave is at the heart of the conflict in Palestine. There cannot be "progress in the present world" if you obstinately refuse to accept the very reasons for it's present lack therein.

What are you talking about? I'm talking about the Palestine problem and the history of both the Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The Arabs in Palestine have pursued an ethnocentric Arab culture in all of Palestine at least since 1920. You ignore or say nothing about that fact, while you criticise the Jews for pursuing an ethnocentric Jewish culture in only a part of Palestine. Strangely, you also ignore the fact that Israel is not even close to an ethnocentric Jewish culture. There are over a million Arabs today inside Israel living their own culture.

In 1948, the Arabs, a majority at that time, not only declared war against a minority of Jews at that time, they waged war against a minority of Jews at that time. After that, the Jews in Palestine behaved as if they feared Arabs might do that again. The Arabs did that several times since. The Jews fears have been validated many times.

Now if I were a Jew living in Palestine, I'd fear that the Arabs will any time they can wage war against Israel, will wage war against Israel. Consequently, I would also conclude that the Arabs are the ethnocentric devils in Palestine, and not the Jews. In Palestine, it is an ethnocentric majority waging war against a somewhat ethnocentric minority. Along came 1967, and that partially ethnocentric minority was afraid the Arabs were about to be at it again. So they launch pre-emptive strikes against the countries whose troops are massing on their borders. It wasn't paranoid fear that governed the Jews' fears then. It was reality fear that governed the Jews fear in 1967 and ever since.

You speak from total ignorance. Look back on Palestine's history when the Zionists waged war against the Palestinians to chase them out of their own country.

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"The Arabs are Donkeys and Beasts"
"The nation of Israel is pure and the Arabs are a nation of donkeys. They are an evil disaster, an evil devil, and a nasty affliction. The Arabs are donkeys and beasts. They want to take our girls. They are endowed with true filthiness. There is pure and there is impure and they are impure."

--Rabbi David Batzri, head of the Magen David Yeshiva in Jerusalem [Israeli newspaper Haaretz, March 21, 2006]

"One million Arabs are not worth a Jewish fingernail."
Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, Feb. 27, 1994 [N.Y. Times, Feb. 28, 1994, p. 1]

We are getting the claim that the Pals were strongly nationalistic and democratic. However, when Jordan controlled the WB, the Pals did nothing to expel Jordan and form a democracy.