The Palestinian Authority and the Security Council

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

Following the habit of Arab regimes, the Palestinian Authority frequently rushes to the United Nations, hoping some ray of hope might lead to a settlement of the Palestinian cause. And like the Arabs, the Palestinian Authority emerges from its efforts with disappointment and frustration, either because the United Nations does not adopt the desired resolution, or because it is incapable of enforcement even if it does adopt a resolution favoring the Palestinians.

As is well known in the corridors of the United Nations, Arabs and the Palestinian Authority have made themselves an object of mockery and ridicule among the nations, given that Arabs number in the hundreds of millions and are spread across a vast geographic area, yet have no recourse against Israel except complaints, weeping, and wailing.

Arab complaints and Arab affairs generally constitute a high proportion of the volume of the United Nations’ operations, and were it not for their constant griping, many UN employees would find themselves out on the street without jobs. The latest of these complaints took the form of the Palestinian Authority’s proposal to the Security Council to set a deadline for ending the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but the proposal failed to obtain the votes necessary to bring it before the Council.

The Improvised Nature of the Palestinian Move

The Palestinian Authority faced three obstacles that had to be overcome for it to achieve its goal:

1. The first involved clearing the hurdle of the nine votes necessary for the Palestinian proposal to even be brought before the Security Council, and it was known these votes were not guaranteed, especially since the United States stood watchful, resorting to pressuring the Council’s member states to dissuade them from voting in favor of the proposal — and it succeeded in this.

2. The second obstacle took the form of the American veto, should the proposal manage to pass to the Council. America informed the Palestinian Authority on more than one occasion that it would veto the proposal. But the United States avoided using the veto by pressuring the concerned states to withhold their votes instead.

3. Israel constituted the third obstacle, since it was not expected to comply even if a resolution favoring the Authority were issued, and there is no international enforcement body to compel Israel to comply, and it is likely that great powers would incite Israel not to comply.

The Palestinian Authority was fully aware of all these matters, but never explained to the Palestinian people why it went to the United Nations while seeing failure staring it in the face.

The Security Council as Cover for the Authority’s Failures

Over more than twenty years, the Palestinian Authority has proven its failure at various social, political, educational, economic, moral, and security levels, has proven entirely incapable of preserving the unity of the Palestinian people, has ruined the social and moral fabric, and has kept the people’s daily bread in the hands of enemies who have stolen the free will of the people of Palestine and turned it into a mere tool in the hands of others.

It seems those running the Authority do not understand the scale of the destruction they have caused in the body of the Palestinian people and in the Palestinian cause, and do not realize they must turn the horse’s neck to change its direction toward a new vision for addressing the internal Palestinian collapse. It is clear that those who call themselves the leaders of this people lack the necessary understanding to grasp the extent of the decline the people of Palestine has suffered, and cannot address matters, despite their occasional stubbornness and their painting of rosy pictures over ugly realities.

Because of the Palestinian Authority’s and PLO’s leadership’s inability to move the Palestinian people upward, the Authority resorts to escaping outside the occupied territory of 1967 to raise Palestinian concerns that have no cure except within Palestine itself.

The Authority flees abroad because it is neither concerned with, nor capable of, devising appropriate solutions to internal concerns, and tries thereby to tell the people it is roaming the world, moving from airport to airport, searching for support and for states to pressure Israel, hoping this might bring a solution to the cause. And every time, the Authority returns empty-handed and failed. It occupied the people for two years with pursuing “non-member state” status at the United Nations, and obtained it, but failed to translate the resolution into the Palestinian people’s actual reality, such that the Palestinian never felt his conditions had changed because of this resolution.

International Institutions Are Colonial Institutions

It is the great colonial states — the United States, France, and Britain foremost among them — that established the international institutions, the United Nations chief among them, and they exist to serve the interests of these states. States like Russia and China participated in drafting these institutions’ goals and programs, but they are not the ones exerting great influence in the international arena, and when the colonial states speak of the “international community,” they mean themselves and no one else, leaving Russia, China, and India outside the concept of the “international community” they intend.

For this reason, Arabs, Palestinians especially, must be cautious in dealing with these institutions. The point here is not to refuse dealing with international institutions altogether — we must maintain a presence within them, and we, as Arabs, must not leave them as a playground for Israel — but we must not rely on them too heavily, since they will certainly never liberate Palestine for us.

It is well known that the United Nations is the cause of Palestine’s catastrophe, because it was merely a tool in the hands of Britain and America, and it is what established Israel and displaced the Palestinian people. The UN General Assembly voted in 1948 in favor of the return of Palestinian refugees, but has done nothing since then to return the refugees to their homeland. Many resolutions have been issued by the UN General Assembly in favor of Palestinians, but enforcement is absent, and no one pushes for it.

Since international institutions are the offspring of the colonial states’ efforts — states that still, to this day, hold the greatest influence on the international stage — they constitute tools of colonialism. And if these institutions were to adopt resolutions not serving these states’ interests, the possibility of enforcement is very slim, and the colonial states usually work through procrastination, stalling, and pressure to prevent a resolution from being issued that would cause them scandals and embarrassment, just as America did by pressuring Security Council members to avoid having to use the veto.

Activity within international institutions is important, but we must not limit ourselves to it. And for Arabs to be able to build on this activity, they must work to accumulate strength so they have a voice on the international stage. The international stage is a playground for the strong, while the weak have no recourse but to watch, if even that much is permitted them. The problem is that Arabs are determined in their own weakness and do not search for strength, preferring to remain a gentle lamb in a forest dominated by wolves.

Strategic Palestinian Mistakes

Palestinians went to the United Nations bearing major strategic mistakes that make it impossible to obtain what they seek. Here I point to the following points:

1. The Palestinian Authority dropped the right of return, even though it is difficult for any state — including the colonial states — to dispute this right, since they have entangled themselves in international covenants and charters explicitly stipulating the refugee’s return to his homeland. The refugee issue is the essence of the Palestinian cause, not the matter of establishing a Palestinian state — establishing a state constitutes the second step after return, and is part of the right to self-determination recognized by most of the world’s states.

The crime of the Palestinian Authority — and of the PLO before it — is that both search for a Palestinian state without the Palestinian people, and this is a fruitless search that cannot lead to a solution to the Palestinian cause. It would be more appropriate for the people wanting to establish a state to actually exist there — and most of the Palestinian people is found in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, and it is intellectual and political sterility to search for a state whose people is not within its borders.

The Authority abandoned the substantive cause it could have actively pursued on the international and popular stages in favor of the idea of statehood — an idea of colonial origin aimed at diluting the Palestinian cause. The PLO — and after it the Palestinian Authority — sacrificed two extremely important Palestinian cards: the right of return and the refusal to recognize Israel, in exchange for Palestinians becoming servants of Israeli security.

2. The Palestinian Authority goes out to the world while the Palestinian people is divided against itself, unable to achieve national unity, its ranks dominated by bickering, quarrels, grudges, and resentments. The internal Palestinian situation does not give a good impression to the outside world, and when states realize this, they will hesitate greatly to respond to Palestinian demands.

If we add to this the fact that the leaderships of both the Authority and the organization are illegitimate, the Palestinian people loses the world’s respect. The president of the Palestinian Authority is illegitimate because his popular mandate ended in 2009, yet he still clings to his position, imposing himself by force on the Palestinian people. The leaderships of the PLO are likewise illegitimate, because all the organization’s councils violate its own internal bylaws. The loss of respect does not bring sympathy and solidarity — it ends up in mockery of the Palestinian people and its leaderships, and does not encourage states to support failures.

3. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority is despotic and tyrannical, involving only a small handful of its inner circle in decision-making, while the Palestinian factions and the general public have no room for participation, forced to wait for the Authority president’s decisions to fall like thunderbolts on their heads. The decision to go to the United Nations rested on four people out of about twelve million Palestinians. A despotic leadership is, by definition and inevitably, a failed leadership, incapable of mobilizing people’s energies and insistent on sidelining them. And if a leadership is a failure internally, it is certainly a failure externally as well.

4. The Palestinian Authority went to the United Nations defying and challenging those who feed it and provide it its daily bread — over more than twenty years, the Palestinian Authority never arranged the economy of the West Bank and Gaza in a way that would lead to freeing the Palestinian people, even partially, from Israeli and American food enslavement, preferring instead to remain dependent on others, extending its hand to beg.

Logically, how can the Authority possibly succeed in defying the very masters of its own sustenance? It chose not to pursue economic development or program away consumer culture, keeping itself within the circle of Western and Israeli food despotism, and fought against those who pressed for a search for means of self-reliance.

With these strategic mistakes, how can a negotiator or diplomat possibly succeed? The Palestinian Authority, and the negotiators acting on its behalf, have gathered together every cause of failure, working continuously to weaken themselves before Israel and before the world as a whole. Did this happen by coincidence, or by ill fate? Of course not.

The Palestinian Authority’s internal policies have been, and remain, focused on weakening people and tearing apart society, striking at the moral system, degrading education at both the school and university levels, and perpetuating poverty and ignorance. As long as this is the situation, the Palestinian people faces a dual responsibility: internal liberation from the yoke of despotism, injustice, and oppression, and liberation from the Zionist occupation.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “السلطة الفلسطينية ومجلس الأمن” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.