NEWS & VIEWS

Israel's Rejection of United Nations Investigations and America's Complicity

News Update

3 December 2020

Israel has consistently rejected United Nations investigations into alleged human rights violations in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories that often encompassed grave violations of international law. Historically, Israel had frequently expressed blunt animosity towards the United Nations echoed by the country’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion’s famous phrase “Um Shmum” (the United Nations is void).

With few exceptions, the United States has actively shielded Israel particularly through the veto prerogative at the United Nations Security Council from attempts to hold the country diplomatically accountable for its consistent violations of international law. This behavior by the United States has been vigorously maintained during the last two American administrations: Obama’s and Trump’s. There are no indications that the Biden administration will change course from blatant support for Israel and undermining internationally guaranteed rights for the Palestinian people. What governs the approach of the current and preceding American administrations are domestic political considerations, not international law, human rights, and other admirable values.

Israel has opposed the mandates of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission and subsequently that of the organization’s Human Rights Council alleging that they are biased, unbalanced and politicized.[1] As such the country barred international law and human rights experts from entering the occupied Palestinian territories to examine the human rights condition on behalf of the United Nations, including John Dugard,[2] Richard Falk,[3] Makarim Wibisono,[4] and Michael Lynk.[5]

In one of his visits Richard Falk was expelled and detained for one night in unpleasant prison conditions:

It was unfortunate that Israel refused even minimal cooperation with this mandate to the extent of allowing the Special Rapporteur to have access to occupied Palestine during the past six years or of responding to several urgent appeals addressing specific situations of immediate concern that fell within the purview of the mandate. This Special Rapporteur was expelled in December 2008 when attempting to enter Israel to carry out a mission of the mandate to visit occupied Palestine, and detained overnight in unpleasant prison conditions. Such humiliating non-cooperation represents a breach of the legal duty of States Members of the United Nations to facilitate all official undertakings of the organization. Although it has been possible to gain information needed to report on the situation confronting Palestinians living under occupation, non- cooperation deprives the mandate of direct interaction, including the receipt of testimony bearing on international law grievances from representatives of the Palestinian people.[6]

Makarim Wibisono resigned given Israel’s obstruction of his United Nation’s mandate:

The independent expert expressed deep regret that, throughout his mandate, Israel failed to grant him access to the Occupied Palestinian Territory. ‘Unfortunately, my efforts to help improve the lives of Palestinian victims of violations under the Israeli occupation have been frustrated every step of the way,’ said Mr. Wibisono.[7]

Israel’s lack of cooperation with United Nations human rights envoys was not limited to the work of the Special Rapporteurs on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Country’s rejection of United Nations human rights mechanisms was not less forceful regarding commissions of inquiries established by the U.N.’s Human Rights Council to investigate alleged violations of international law during Israeli military operations.

The U.N.’s Fact Finding Mission to the Conflict in Gaza (December 2008 – January 2009) also chronicled Israel’s insistence on lack of cooperation with an international investigation:

The Mission repeatedly sought to obtain the cooperation of the Government of Israel. After numerous attempts had failed, the Mission sought and obtained the assistance of the Government of Egypt to enable it to enter the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing.[8]

The same Israeli rejectionist approach raised serious obstacles before the United Nations’ investigations of the aggressive capture of the Turkish humanitarian flotilla to Gaza (31 May 2010),[9] the 2014 conflict in Gaza (13 June 2014 to 26 August 2014),[10] and the lethal shootings at demonstrators also in Gaza (30 March 2018 to 31 December 2018).[11]

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voiced Israel’s opposition to United Nations’ inquires while relating to the investigation of the 2014 conflict in Gaza (13 June 2014 – 26 August 2014) mandated by the international organization’s Human Rights Council. After blaming Palestinians’ for intentionally targeting civilians Netanyahu asserted that:

The report was commissioned by a notoriously biased institution; it was given an obviously biased mandate…the United Nations Human Rights Council has a singular obsession with Israel…So Israel treats this report as flawed and biased, and it urges all fair-minded observers to do the same. Such fair-minded observers recently investigated Israel’s conduct in the Gaza campaign. They include senior generals from the United States and NATO countries. They found that not only Israel uphold the highest standards of international law, and the laws of armed conflict, they said that Israel exceeded the highest standards.[12]

Successive American administrations have actively shielded Israel’s defiance of elementary transparency and its excessive and illegal use of force. The Obama administration pressured the Palestinian Authority’s representatives to abandon the Goldstone report’s recommendations regarding Israel’s grave violations of international law during operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2009[13] and twice opposed attempts by this authority to gain statehood status at the United Nations Security Council.[14]

A major aspect of the American performance internationally regarding Palestine is the disproportionate influence that Israel’s allies exert within the American political framework which generates blind and unreasonable support for Israel’s unjustified conduct. Nowhere was this obvious than during Samantha Power’s efforts to gain confirmation by the American Congress for her appointment as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations. A celebrated human rights advocate Americanly, Power pursued every path to please Israel’s supporters in the United States:

In a 2002 interview on “Conversations with History,” a television series filmed in Berkeley, Power described a hypothetical need for a “mammoth protection force” to police a peace accord between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But after she began working as an adviser on Barack Obama’s Presidential campaign, in 2007, his critics quoted that interview in accusing him of harboring hostility toward Israel, and Power disavowed her comments. In a departure for a journalist, she quietly asked the host of the interview to remove the video from the Web, though portions of it still circulate online. To repair the damage, she subsequently approached Shmuley Boteach, a celebrity rabbi who ran for Congress in New Jersey, Abraham Foxman, of the Anti- Defamation League, and other prominent defenders of Israel, who endorsed her U.N. nomination. She knew that during her confirmation hearing her record, her vision of America’s role in the world, and her transformation from an activist to a political figure would receive intense scrutiny. Tom Nides, a former Deputy Secretary of State, told her that her chance of being confirmed was twenty per cent, at best.[15]

The Biden administration is unlikely to perform any different on the issue of Israel’s grave violations of Palestinians’ rights. On the contrary, there is clear evidence that the Biden administration will adopt Trump’s unlawful approach[16] to isolate Palestinians in order to secure Israel’s illegitimate ambitions.

Biden’s repetitive speeches at AIPAC’s conferences expressing unconditional support for Israel’s myths and unlawfulness require no interpretation. In the organization’s 2009 conference his introducer described him as a ‘Zionist’ and an American politician who signed every pro-Israel legislation that passed his desk since 1973. Biden also played a key role in facilitating the illegal American invasion of Iraq in 2003. As chair of the Senate committee on foreign relations he had “enormous influence and argued strongly in favour of the 2002 resolution granting President Bush the authority to invade Iraq”.[17]