Departing Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Gilad Erdan, has clearly had an unpleasant experience at the world’s largest international institution. In an interview published in the Israeli newspaper Maariv on 20 August, the disgruntled envoy said that, “The UN building should be closed and wiped off from the face of the earth.” Whether Erdan realized it or not, his aggressive statement is an admission that his four-year career as Israel’s top UN diplomat was a failure.
In the interview, Erdan expressed his wish to become the head of Likud, the right-wing party of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His choice of words could have been his way of appealing to the right and far-right constituencies that feed on such aggressive rhetoric.
However, there is more to Erdan’s hatred for the UN than the mere frustration of a disappointed diplomat. Israel has had a long and troubled history with the UN and its associated institutions. According to Israel’s political discourse and victim narrative, the UN is an “anti-Semitic” organization, a label often invoked when Israel faced even the slightest criticism.
Israel’s relationship with the UN is particularly odd because the occupation state was created by a UN resolution.
That resolution itself was a direct outcome of UN political intrigues and western pressure. On 29 November, 1947, the UN passed Resolution 181, calling for the partition of historic Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. It assigned most of the land, 56 per cent, to the Jewish population, then a minority, and the rest to the Palestinian Arab indigenous people. Shortly afterwards, the Jewish Zionist leadership began a military campaign that saw the nascent state occupy most of Palestine and ethnically cleanse most of its population.
Israel was admitted as a full UN member on 11 May, 1949, while Palestinians native to the land remain stateless. Although Israel’s admission to the international body was conditional upon the acceptance of Resolutions 181 and 194 — covering the status of Jerusalem as an international body, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees — Israel’s violations of these and other resolutions have not been punished thanks to strong backing from Washington and other western powers.
In June 1967, the rest of historic Palestine was conquered. Again, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed and, ever since, the Palestinians remaining in their land as either “Arab Israelis” or refugees have lived under a draconian system of military occupation, apartheid, siege and a constant state of war.
The ongoing Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip is the culmination of all the injustices inflicted on the Palestinian people over the past eight decades and more. The war did not start on 7 October, 2023, nor will it end when a ceasefire is finally declared.
Aside from the November 1917 Balfour Declaration, wherein Britain pledged support for a “Jewish national home” in historic Palestine, UN Resolution 181, which allowed the establishment of Israel, could arguably be considered the genesis of ongoing Palestinian suffering.
Throughout this bloody, unjust history, the UN has neither penalized Israel for its violations of UN resolutions and other pillars of international law, nor granted Palestinians their long overdue justice. It has failed to implement or enforce any of its resolutions recognizing the illegality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Nevertheless, Palestinians continue to resort to the UN, since it is their only international platform that could constantly remind Israel, and the world, that Tel Aviv is an Occupying Power, and that international and humanitarian laws must apply to Palestinians as an occupied people. Such reminders were made frequently in the past, at the UN General Assembly and even at the Security Council, always to the annoyance of Israel and its western benefactors, especially the United States.
The latest solid legal position was articulated through an Advisory Opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 19 July. After the testimonies and interventions made by at least 52 countries and countless experts, the ICJ resolved that
Israel’s occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is unlawful, along with the associated settlement regime, annexation and use of natural resources.
Although the UN has not made any difference in forcing Israel to end its occupation, dismantle illegal settlements or respect the basic human rights of Palestinians, the international institution remains a source of frustration for the occupation state.
Ever since its establishment on the ruins of Palestinian homes, Israel has worked to change the status of Palestine and Palestinian refugees, and constantly challenged the very term “occupation”. It has done its utmost to rewrite history, illegally annex Palestinian and Arab land, and build illegal settlements to establish permanent “facts on the ground”.
In 2017, it looked as if Israel was succeeding in its quest to cancel the Palestinian cause altogether when Washington recognized Israel’s fraudulent claims to Occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. The international community, though, did not follow suit, as demonstrated in the ICJ’s recent legal ruling. As far as the UN is concerned, Israel remains an Occupying Power, bound to international laws and norms.
For Palestinians, however, such facts remain devoid of practical meaning, while for Israel, the UN position is a major obstacle in the face of its blatant settler-colonial project. And this is why Erdan wants the UN “wiped off from the face of the earth”. Even if the angry Israeli diplomat gets his wish, nothing will alter this historic truth: Israel is and will remain a settler-colonial regime, and Palestine and its people will continue to resist, until justice is finally served.
-Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of the Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of five books. His latest is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) and also at the Afro-Middle East Center (AMEC).
