Basem Naim
The Electronic Intifada / September 25, 2024
The mooted appearance by Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the 79th annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly is a serious test of the world body’s fidelity to its original mission of pursuing global security and peace.
How can the UN convince the world and its peoples of its sincerity when it receives a war criminal who has enacted a genocide against unarmed civilians, women and children for nearly a year?
The General Assembly is one of the world’s most important international forums. It embodies the principle of equality, allowing every country equal weight regardless of size or power. All countries have the right to speak, participate and vote, from the very big and powerful to the very small.
The meeting also attempts to nudge the international compass toward the UN’s five underlying goals of maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, supporting sustainable; development and climate action and upholding international law.
All of these goals require preventing a war criminal like Netanyahu from appearing before such an assembly.
Since its founding in 1945, the General Assembly has always pursued, but only sometimes achieved, its main aim of “international peace and security.” The international scene is complex, and achieving these goals has never been an easy matter.
The UN, as an institution that expresses international consensus, has not always been the most important factor in any success or failure. This is for many reasons, not the least of which is that the institution does not have the tools to impose its decisions except in exceptional cases.
Moreover, largely organized by the victorious powers after World War II, the UN has been designed in a way to serve these powers and their interests, or at least not serve as an obstacle to those interests.
Epic failure
Since 7 October, the international community has faced a serious test of its ability to impose the international will to stop the genocide in the Gaza Strip, pursue war criminals, prevent regional conflagration and even go beyond that to implement UN resolutions related to Palestinian rights.
Inherent rights such as the right to self-determination, return and even our right as a people under occupation to resist in all its forms, including armed resistance, are not – or should not be – controversial.
But as the first anniversary of Al-Aqsa Flood approaches and the implementation of the genocidal campaign against our people in the Gaza Strip continues, it can be said with certainty that the biggest victims of this fascist aggression after the Palestinian people are the United Nations, international law and international humanitarian law.
Indeed, having failed so signally to bring security and peace to Gaza over the past 11 months or indeed to uphold Palestinian rights for the past 76 years, how can representatives of international institutions even begin to lecture countries around the world about the importance of adhering to international law?
UN bodies have met repeatedly since 7 October. Each time, majorities have supported an immediate end to Israel’s aggression, the unfettered delivery of humanitarian aid, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in a state of their own.
Each time, the international community failed miserably to impose its will, with the US administration the main factor, using its veto power four times in the Security Council and dominating ceasefire negotiations.
Perhaps worse, the US allowed two Security Council resolutions to pass, in March and June. Israel roundly ignored both, and neither led to any forceful implementation by any party.
Such failure will only be compounded if the United Nations decides to welcome Netanyahu to pontificate about law, peace and coexistence from the lectern at the General Assembly.
Netanyahu stands accused of the worst war crimes at the International Court of Justice, while the International Criminal Court is seeking to pursue him with arrest warrants. These are UN institutions and therefore the institutional expression of its legal will.
Blatant and systematic
What will remain of the United Nations’ legitimacy and moral standing should it receive a war criminal who is up to his neck in the blood of women and children?
How will the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres – who otherwise holds clear positions regarding Gaza and Palestinian rights generally – face the people who look to him and his institution to implement international law and punish this fascist entity and its racist leadership?
The participation of war criminal Netanyahu in the United Nations is a disgrace that must be prevented immediately. It would do irreparable harm to what remains of the “global rules-based” order. It will usher in an era of international relations answering only to the law of the jungle.
Imagine Netanyahu in handcuffs as soon as he sets foot on the grounds of the United Nations General Assembly. Imagine him appearing at the ICC in The Hague. That would serve as a lesson for every war criminal who believes that he can escape punishment that, no matter how long it takes and regardless of who supports you, there is no such thing as immunity or impunity.
The criminal record of the racist entity Netanyahu leads should be – and has already been – a central topic in the speeches of state leaders at the United Nations.
The bombing of hospitals and schools, the imposed famine on children, the killing of journalists, the mass killings of civilians, the abuse of prisoners, the desecration of Islamic and Christian holy sites, and the theft of Palestinian lands through annexation and settlement in the West Bank are all crimes.
Israel blatantly and systematically violates international law and has been censured numerous times in numerous international resolutions over decades of conflict. It is time to enforce these resolutions, including by invoking Chapter VII of the UN charter.
No one should be above the law. If they are, force and constant unrest will be the law. That way lies only chaos and destruction, not only in Palestine, but everywhere.
And everyone will pay the price.
Dr Basem Naim is a former Palestinian minister of health and a member of the political bureau of Hamas
