June 17, 2024
On June 13, Hamas responded to persistent needling
by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the U.S. proposal for a pause in
the Israeli massacre in Gaza. The group said it has “dealt positively... with
the latest proposal and all proposals to reach a cease-fire agreement.” Hamas
added, by contrast, that, "while Blinken continues to talk about 'Israel’s
approval of the latest proposal, we have not heard any Israeli official voicing
approval."
The full details of the U.S. proposal have yet to be
made public, but the pause in Israeli attacks and release of hostages in the
first phase would reportedly lead to further negotiations for a more lasting
cease-fire and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the second phase. But there
is no guarantee that the second round of negotiations would succeed.
As former Israeli Labor Party prime minister Ehud
Barak told Israel Radio on June 3rd, “How do you think [Gaza military
commander] Sinwar will react when he is told: but be quick, because we still
have to kill you, after you return all the hostages?”
Meanwhile, as Hamas pointed out, Israel has not
publicly accepted the terms of the latest U.S. cease-fire proposal, so it has
only the word of U.S. officials that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has
privately agreed to it. In public, Netanyahu still insists that he is committed
to the complete destruction of Hamas and its governing authority in Gaza, and
has actually stepped up Israel’s vicious attacks in central and southern Gaza.
The basic disagreement that President Joe Biden and
Secretary Blinken’s smoke and mirrors cannot hide is that Hamas, like every
Palestinian, wants a real end to the genocide, while the Israeli and U.S.
governments do not.
Biden or Netanyahu could end the slaughter very
quickly if they wanted to—Netanyahu by agreeing to a permanent cease-fire, or
Biden by ending or suspending U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel. Israel could
not carry out this war without U.S. military and diplomatic support. But Biden
refuses to use his leverage, even though he has admitted in an interview that
it was “reasonable” to conclude that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his
own political benefit.
The U.S. is still sending weapons to Israel to
continue the massacre in violation of a cease-fire order by the International
Court of Justice. Bipartisan U.S. leaders have invited Netanyahu to address a
joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 24, even as the International
Criminal Court reviews a request by its chief prosecutor for an arrest warrant
for Netanyahu for war crimes, crimes against humanity and murder.
The United States seems determined to share Israel’s
self-inflicted isolation from voices calling for peace from all over the world,
including large majorities of countries in the UN General Assembly and Security
Council.
But perhaps this is appropriate, as the United
States bears a great deal of responsibility for that isolation. By its decades
of unconditional support for Israel, and by using its UN Security Council veto
dozens of times to shield Israel from international accountability, the United
States has enabled successive Israeli governments to pursue flagrantly criminal
policies and to thumb their noses at the growing outrage of people and
countries across the world.
Israel’s de facto expansion has been facilitated by
the United States’ monopoly over mediation between Israel and Palestine, which
it has aggressively staked out and defended against the UN and other countries.
The irreconcilable contradiction between the U.S.’s conflicting roles as
Israel’s most powerful military ally and the principal mediator between Israel
and Palestine is obvious to the whole world.
But as we see even in the midst of the genocide in
Gaza, the rest of the world and the UN have failed to break this U.S. monopoly
and establish legitimate, impartial mediation by the UN or neutral countries
that respect the lives of Palestinians and their human and civil rights.
Qatar mediated a temporary cease-fire between Israel
and Hamas in November 2023, but it has since been upstaged by U.S. moves to
prolong the massacre through deceptive proposals, cynical posturing and
Security Council vetoes. The U.S. consistently vetoes all but its own proposals
on Israel and Palestine in the UN Security Council, even when its own proposals
are deliberately meaningless, ineffective or counterproductive.
The UN General Assembly is united in support of
Palestine, voting almost unanimously year after year to demand an end to the
Israeli occupation. A hundred and forty-four countries have recognized
Palestine as a country, and only the U.S. veto denies it full UN membership.
The Israeli genocide in Gaza has even shamed the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) into suspending their
ingrained pro-Western bias and pursuing cases against Israel.
One way that the nations of the world could come
together to apply greater pressure on Israel to end its assault on Gaza would
be a “Uniting for Peace” resolution in the UN General Assembly. This is a
measure the General Assembly can take when the Security Council is prevented
from acting to restore peace and security by the veto of a permanent member.
Israel has demonstrated that it is prepared to
ignore cease-fire resolutions by the General Assembly and the Security Council,
and an order by the ICJ, but a Uniting for Peace resolution could impose
penalties on Israel for its actions, such as an arms embargo or an economic
boycott. If the United States still insists on continuing its complicity in
Israel’s international crimes, the General Assembly could take action against
the U.S. too.
A General Assembly resolution would change the terms
of the international debate and shift the focus back from Biden and Blinken’s
diversionary tactics to the urgency of enforcing the lasting cease-fire that
the whole world is calling for.
It is time for the United Nations and neutral
countries to push Israel’s U.S. partner in genocide to the side, and for
legitimate international authorities and mediators to take responsibility for
enforcing international law, ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and
bringing peace to the Middle East.
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