MERIP Primer on the UPRISING IN PALESTINE

The "Honest Broker" and the UN

Since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, there has been a nearly unanimous international consensus on how to resolve the crisis: an international conference based on international law and United Nations resolutions. But Israel disagreed, and the US backed Israel's rejection.

After the Cold War, the US has often relied on the UN to negotiate agreements and provide peacekeepers to end regional wars and crises: in Cambodia, Angola and Guatemala and more recently in East Timor, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

But the US, while mentioning one or two UN resolutions in passing, kept Israel-Palestine diplomacy under its own control. Washington -- Israel's major financial, diplomatic and military backer -- claimed the role of the "honest broker." The actual requirements of international law (like Israel's obligations as an occupying power to protect civilians and to prohibit settling Israeli citizens in occupied territory) and existing UN resolutions (such as 194, ensuring the right of Palestinian refugees to return and receive compensation) were sidelined in favor of US-brokered talks between Israel, the strongest military power in the Middle East and the 17th wealthiest country in the world, and the stateless Palestinians living under occupation or in exile.

In the 1991 Madrid talks, the US-Israeli Memorandum of Understanding stated explicitly that the UN would have no role. In the 1993 Oslo process, the UN was ignored. In 1999 when over 100 signatories of the Geneva Conventions met to assess Israeli compliance with the Conventions, the meeting lasted only ten minutes in order to "avert friction" with Israel. The failed 2000 Camp David summit ignored the UN altogether.

In October 2000, as Palestinians continued to die, the Israeli government insisted that any UN fact-finding commission would be nothing but a "kangaroo court," and that it would accept only separate Israeli and Palestinian investigations under overall US authority. When 14 out of 15 members of the UN Security Council voted to condemn Israel's excessive force against civilians, it was the US alone that abstained. US Ambassador Richard Holbrooke threatened to veto any further resolution, stating that the virtually unanimous current resolution had taken the UN "out of the running" to play a role in negotiations.

The September-October 2000 occupation crisis ushered in an unprecedented, albeit significantly limited, role for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

A special session of the UN's High Commission for Human Rights passed a strong resolution condemning the "grave and massive violations of the human rights of the Palestinian people by Israel," and establishing a "human rights inquiry commission." An enormous US lobbying campaign resulted in Washington's Western allies opposing the vote, and many non-aligned countries abstaining. When the General Assembly convened, US diplomats again went into high gear to dampen the language of the resolution. Only six countries -- the US, Israel and four Polynesian island states -- voted no, though nearly a third of the General Assembly abstained.

On October 25, the US House of Representatives voted 365-30 to call on Arafat to stop the violence. Congressional leaders said the House felt compelled to pass the resolution to counter the UN resolutions that are "biased against Israel." The same day, the House passed a new foreign aid bill. Israel will receive $2.82 billion in the next fiscal year -- 18.9 percent of the total and the largest aid amount of any country.

In November 2000, the UN Security Council tabled a British-backed proposal to send 2000 unarmed UN observers to the Occupied Territories to reduce the scale of confrontations. The US had blocked the proposal because Israel insisted that it would not admit the observers. At the Sharm al-Sheikh summit in October, US President Bill Clinton secured the agreement of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to a US-led inquiry into the causes of the violence. The UN has appointed its own fact-finding team, which is due to report in February 2001.

After almost four months of clashes, over 330 Palestinians and 44 Israelis dead, and a military occupation and siege tighter than ever, the best hope for peace is a return to UN resolutions, international law and direct UN involvement in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. The Clinton "bridging proposals" of December 2000 fall far short of this goal.

Click to go to page 7 of the Primer, The Diplomatic Front

Click here to view all sections of the Primer on a single page