The Palestinian Authority's Trips to the United Nations

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

For years now, the Palestinian Authority has traveled to the United Nations in New York to obtain recognition of what it longs to achieve: an independent Palestinian state. And every year, it returns empty-handed, preparing for a new tour the following year. The United Nations has not yet recognized it, the Palestinian people in the West Bank has not gained independence, media reports keep repeating themselves, and it does not seem despair will strike the Authority.

In 1973, Arabs thought the United Nations would resolve the Palestinian cause, mobilized their forces with the Soviet Union, and obtained observer member status for the PLO at the UN’s 1974 session, but this changed nothing in the Palestinian people’s life, nor did it roll forward toward a final solution to the cause. Since then, the unspoken message of Palestinian officials has been: “Maybe this time it will work.”

The United Nations and the Partition of Palestine

The League of Nations decided, in 1922, to divide the land of Greater Syria into four fiefdoms, in order to tear it apart, weaken it, and turn Palestine into a national homeland for the Zionists. This is why the Mandate instrument granted to Britain over Palestine stipulated that this state must abide by its international promises to the Jews — that is, implement what became historically known as the Balfour Declaration, issued by Britain’s foreign secretary in the name of His Majesty’s Government, addressed to Rothschild, one of the wealthy French Jews.

The United Nations came to complete the League of Nations’ journey, deciding in 1947 to divide Palestine into seven parts, comprising two states — one Jewish, one Arab — and an internationalized zone. The Arab state’s share was about 44% of the area of Mandatory Palestine. Arabs rejected the partition resolution, which the United States and the Soviet Union approved at the time, while the Zionists accepted it. The Zionist state was established, and the Arab state was not.

In 1948, the United Nations watched the process of displacing Palestinians and the Zionists’ expansion to control about 77% of the land, and did nothing but issue a nearly sterile resolution — Resolution 194 — demanding that Israel allow Palestinians to return to their homes as soon as possible, and compensate those who did not wish to return. The point here is that the United Nations recognized Israel on land larger in area than what the partition resolution had allocated, without conditioning recognition and membership on the return of Palestinians and the establishment of the Arab state. In this, the United Nations was a partner in the displacement of the Palestinian people, and a tool in the hands of the colonial powers conspiring against Palestine. Afterward, Jordan ceded part of what remained of Palestine, raising Israel’s area by about 1%.

The Declaration of the State of Palestine

In response, the Palestinian National Council, convened in Gaza in 1948, declared Palestine an independent state, and formed the All-Palestine Government, a representative government headed by Ahmed Hilmi Abd al-Baqi. Palestinians did not recognize the Zionist state, nor did they recognize the UN resolution.

Then another declaration of the establishment of the State of Palestine followed in 1988, but according to the aforementioned partition resolution — that is, on 44% of the land — which the Palestinian Authority celebrates every year on November 15.

The Authority Shrinks the Area Demanded

The Palestinian Authority is now trying to obtain recognition of a state from the United Nations, through both the Security Council and the General Assembly, over a geographic area smaller than what the various Palestinian charters stipulated. It failed to achieve any breakthrough in the Security Council, and it is quite likely to succeed in the General Assembly if it decides to continue seeking a vote. The Authority now demands international recognition of a Palestinian non-member state over about 22% of the area of Mandatory Palestine — that is, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It seems the Authority is engaging in a discount sale on Palestine’s area, shrinking it as it pleases without consulting the Palestinian people wherever they may be. It is relinquishing the 1948 declaration of statehood, the percentage set by the 1988 Declaration of Independence, and every resolution of the Palestinian National Council of the PLO issued over the years — as though Palestine were a sprawling country that could bear such discounts, discounts not subject to any standard of popular participation.

Adhering to UN Resolutions

If there is no escaping adherence to UN resolutions such as Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, why not adhere to the partition resolution, which gives Palestinians 44% of the land’s area? Isn’t it easier for the Palestinian Authority to demand implementation of the partition resolution than to seek a new resolution that negatively affects the standing and legality of the earlier resolution? If the Palestinian people is incapable of renewing its youth and its revolution, it would be more correct to demand implementation of what the UN General Assembly already ratified. It is true Palestinians rejected the resolution at the time, but their rejection did not affect the resolution’s legality from the angle of what the Authority calls “international legitimacy.”

The great powers approved the resolution at the time, and it is possible to work toward convincing them to respect this “legitimacy.” Note that it is puzzling that the Authority requests a new resolution that annuls what the General Assembly had previously granted the Palestinian people.

On another note, the UN General Assembly issued a resolution in 1974 recognizing the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination — a resolution far more important than a resolution recognizing statehood. The right to self-determination encompasses the entire Palestinian people everywhere, includes the return of Palestinian refugees, and also the choice between establishing a state or union with another Arab state. The resolution recognizing statehood, by contrast, covers only the people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, does not include the refugees’ right of return, and makes the West Bank and Gaza Strip all of Palestine.

So if the UN resolution is as important as the Palestinian Authority makes it out to be, it would be more worthwhile to demand implementation of the right-to-self-determination resolution.

Bypassing PLO Representation

Perhaps the Palestinian Authority believes the General Assembly’s recognition of a non-member Palestinian state will lead to Palestinians being represented twice at the United Nations. The PLO has been represented in the General Assembly as an observer since 1974, carrying out its usual work of representing the entire Palestinian people. So will the General Assembly’s recognition of a non-member state lead to this state gaining a standing similar to the Vatican’s, while preserving the PLO’s standing? I do not believe this will happen, but its not happening, and the replacement of the PLO by the recognized state, will lead to a shrinking of Palestinian representation. Theoretically, the PLO represents the entire Palestinian people, and ending its role in favor of the Authority would mean representation is limited only to the people in the West Bank and Gaza. In other words, through this proposal, the Authority demands shrinking the geographic area from 44% to 22%, and shrinking representation from 100% of Palestinians to about 33%.

The United Nations and Power

The portion related to establishing the Jewish state under the partition resolution was implemented because the powerful states supported its establishment, even though General Assembly resolutions are not binding. It is power that decides, and legal frameworks are tools for lending legitimacy to the powerful’s policies. This is why Israel never implemented Security Council Resolution 425, even though it is binding. Arabs have not yet possessed the power to force enforcement action on the United Nations, and will not be able to do so until the powerful nations become convinced they have no choice but to comply.

Palestinians declared their state in 1948, and no one recognized it. Instead of Arab states standing behind their decision and supporting it, Egypt summoned Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the chief Palestinian leader at the time, and detained him, and sent its forces to Gaza and arrested the members of the Palestinian cabinet, marching them off to Cairo. History bears witness that the United Nations is not the nations’ tool for establishing peace and justice, but rather the tool of the powerful for imposing their own visions of what peace and justice ought to be. This is why the Palestinian Authority must search for sources of strength for itself before going to the United Nations, otherwise it wastes its time and effort and drains the Palestinian people with misleading, useless media material.

Perhaps the Palestinian Authority believes it can win the sympathy of the United States, which might pressure Israel and agree to establish some kind of Palestinian entity. But this belief has been proven false by time — twenty-four years have passed since 1988, when the PLO decided to recognize Israel without gaining any sympathy in return. This belief is not supposed to exist in the first place, because the one holding the lower hand cannot win the sympathy of the one holding the upper hand unless he begins to feel his own dignity and self-respect, and as long as the Authority awaits its salaries from those it asks for statehood, statehood will remain a mere illusion. Note that financial aid does not fall under the banner of sympathy, but under the banner of buying up and liquidating the Palestinian cause.

Cooking Stones

The West Bank and Gaza Strip are teeming with many important and substantive issues that the Palestinian Authority could attend to and address in order to improve the immediate and strategic conditions of the Palestinian people — issues far more important than the annual dash to the United Nations. There are corruption cases whose files are handed to a Fatah committee and never given media attention, cases of security coordination, and the pursuit of resistance weapons. There are the issues of settlement construction and the Judaization of Jerusalem, assaults on farmers, the destruction of homes and villages, refugee issues, and the tragedies of Palestinians displaced from Arab countries, and issues of the people’s unity and rebuilding the Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian economy, and so on. These are urgent, very important issues, and without addressing them, the internal Palestinian situation will continue to deteriorate, heading toward further weakness in confronting the Zionists.

It appears that going to the United Nations is a way of fleeing responsibility toward the Palestinian people wherever they are, and that the Palestinian leadership is trying to escape its own reality, its own incapacity, and its unwillingness to search for ways out of the people’s concerns, by roaming the world in pursuit of a resolution that will change nothing about the Palestinian people’s condition. In this, it resembles a mother trying to help her children endure their hunger by making them believe she is cooking something, while the pot is actually filled with stones.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “رحلات السلطة الفلسطينية إلى الأمم المتحدة” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.