May 14, 2024
“I find it rather difficult to make it
clear to my children why we are not eligible, for from one point of view it
isn’t quite clear to me.”
– X, “The Jew and the Club,” The
Atlantic, October 1924.
It must surely
make certain ethnic and religious groups reflect, notably those languishing in
minority status for decades, if not centuries.
There was a time when the rental advertisements in London had such
caustic couplings as “Irish and Blacks need not apply.” Oxbridge bursaries and scholarships, in all
their variety, reveal a tapestry of personal prejudice and lively bigotry. In terms of recreational clubs, the east
coast, moneyed establishment in the United States prided itself from keeping
Jews out of the membership circle, notably in such mind destroying facilities
as golfing establishments. The wall was
impervious, idiotic, resistant.
The United
Nations, yet another, albeit larger club, functions on similar principles. Do you have the right credentials to natter,
moan and partake in the body’s constituent parts? Do you satisfy the seemingly elementary
criteria proposed in the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of
States? (These are: a permanent
population, a defined territory, an identifiable government and a capacity to
enter into relations with other states.)
Meeting that threshold, the assumption of recognised statehood and, it
follows membership, should be a matter of minor controversy.
What is not
mentioned in the United Nations Charter is the political dimension that boils
beneath the text: states who are refused admission, let alone recognition, on
grounds petty or substantial. All clubs,
it follows, are institutions oiled by the tenacity of small minds and rarely
troubled by actual principle.
For
Palestinians, the still incomplete road to recognition, let alone UN
membership, has been particularly potholed.
In November 1988, the Palestine National Council, the legislative wing
of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, declared the existence of the State
of Palestine. In 2011, an application
was made for admission to the United Nations.
All the way, their claims have been challenged. Israel, having pinched
Palestinian land, guards the door to admission with zeal, and confident, for
the most part, that a viable Palestinian state will never come into being.
On May 10, the
UN General Assembly resolved (143 votes in favour, nine against, including the
drearily predictable US and Israel, iced with 25 abstentions) to sanitise the
Palestinian application to become a member of the club. The significantly diluted resolution throbs
with enormous condescension, more a nod and wink than anything significant.
The summary from
the UN does little to dispel this assumption, suggesting an “upgrade” to “the
rights of the State of Palestine within the world body, but not the right to
vote or put forward its candidature to such organs as the Security Council or
the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).”
The Assembly merely found Palestine a suitable candidate for full
membership, recommending the Security Council “reconsider the matter
favourably”.
What, then, can
the Palestinian delegation actually do with its revised status? From September, delegates will be ableto
make, for instance, statements on behalf of a group, submitting proposals and
amendments and their introduction. They
will qualify for election as officers in the plenary and Main Committees of the
General Assembly. They will also be able
to fully participate “in UN conferences and international conferences and
meetings convened under the auspices of the General Assembly or, as appropriate,
of other UN organs.” Hardly
breathtaking, though an improvement on the current “observer status” which
should be designated “spectator status”.
Like an
applicant to the Garrick Club in London or the Savage Club in Melbourne,
private institutions long in tooth and vanity, their membership heavy with
colostomy bags and short of females, the Palestinians were found to be
partially deserving. In other words,
they had, in circumstances absurd and crude, been deemed by the UN’s largest
forum to be potentially clubbable.
Exercising all rights of membership will ultimately depend on what the
big boys and gals on the Security Council, notably the permanent five, say.
Some clue of
what will happen when the matter comes up for discussion in the Security
Council can already be gathered by the sinking of a previous resolution for
Palestinian admission last month. The
Algerian sponsored resolution was quashed by the United States as a matter of
course, despite receiving 12 approvals.
The grounds for doing so were familiar: recognised statehood could only
spring from “a comprehensive peace agreement.”
Sustainable peace was only possible “via a two-State solution with Israel’s
security guaranteed.” All other matters,
including the debate on admission, were “premature”.
All of this
makes the reaction from Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, all the more
absurd. Before fellow delegates, the
intemperate representative sported a miniature shredder in which he placed a
copy of the UN Charter, declaring that granting Palestinians greater rights of
representation entailed the following message: “you are telling the
child-murdering Hamas rapists that terror pays off.” In that statement can be detected the echoes
of such founding representatives of Israel as Ben Gurion and Menachim Begin,
all of whom were well-versed in the calculus of violence and its ill-gotten
rewards.
The unhinged
Erdan, perhaps unwittingly, revealed a perspective many had suspected: that
Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is one of conflation, denigration and
the eradication of distinctions. All are
terrorists of the animal variety, as Israel’s Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant,
would have it, and all are, at best, only suitable for playing a subservient
role on the international stage.
“We always knew
that Hamas hides in schools,” moaned Erdan.
“We just didn’t realise that it’s not only in schools in Gaza. It’s also Harvard, Colombia and many elite
universities.” If all that was, indeed,
true, then any improvement in the Palestinian situation, culminating in the UN
General Assembly vote, must surely be regarded as pitifully modest. Palestine remains, at the end of the day,
ineligible for full club membership.
Al
Jazeera
The
United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has overwhelmingly voted to support a
Palestinian bid to become a full UN member by recognising it as qualified to
join and recommending the UN Security Council “reconsider the matter
favourably”.
Memberships
can only be decided by the UN Security Council, and last month, the US vetoed a
bid for full membership.
The
current resolution does not give Palestinians full membership, but recognises
them as qualified to join, and it gives Palestine more participation and some
rights within the UNGA.
Here
is a breakdown of how each country voted in the UNGA in New York City on
Friday:
For
(143):
A:
Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Australia, Azerbaijan
B:
Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin,
Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Burkina
Faso, Burundi
C:
Cabo Verde, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia,
Comoros, Costa Rica, Cuba, Cyprus
D:
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic
E:
East Timor, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia
F:
France
G:
Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Guyana
H:
Haiti, Honduras
I:
Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Ivory Coast
J:
Jamaica, Japan, Jordan
K:
Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan
L:
Laos, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg
M:
Madagascar, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico,
Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar
N:
Namibia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway
O:
Oman
P:
Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal
Q:
Qatar
R:
Republic of Korea (South Korea), Russia, Rwanda
S:
Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San
Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore,
Slovakia, Slovenia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname,
Syria
T:
Tajikistan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Turkey
U:
Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan
V:
Vietnam
Y:
Yemen
Z:
Zambia, Zimbabwe
Against
(9):
A:
Argentina
C:
Czech Republic
H:
Hungary
I:
Israel
M:
Micronesia
N:
Nauru
P:
Palau, Papua New Guinea
U:
United States
Abstained
(25):
A:
Albania, Austria
B:
Bulgaria
C:
Canada, Croatia
F:
Fiji, Finland
G:
Georgia, Germany
I:
Italy
L:
Latvia, Lithuania
M:
Malawi, Marshall Islands, Monaco
N:
Netherlands, North Macedonia
P:
Paraguay
R:
Republic of Moldova, Romania
S:
Sweden, Switzeland
U:
Ukraine, United Kingdom
V:
Vanuatu
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