UN vote affirms humanitarian law

U.S. abstention on vote on settlements offers Israel the last chance to remain a Jewish state

On Dec. 23, two days after the winter solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, the UN Security Council made a historic vote regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In an unusual synchronicity, Christmas Eve and the first night of Chanukah coincided.

Christians were celebrating the birth of a holy baby who would bring love and redemption to a suffering humankind. Jews were remembering the Macabees, a fierce band of warriors who defeated a powerful army. In spite of being outnumbered and outgunned, they reclaimed and rededicated their temple in Jerusalem. Miracles are not everyday events, but when they happen, they must be acknowledged and celebrated.

In a break with our country’s longstanding position to veto UN Security Council resolutions that “seek to impose solutions to final status issues,” the United States abstained. Resolution 2334 declares that Israel’s Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank are a “violation of international law and have no legal validity,” and that the settlements are “a major obstacle to the possibility of an Israeli and a Palestinian State living side-by-side in peace and security.”

The resolution demands that Israel stop all settlement building, including in East Jerusalem and fulfill its obligation under the Fourth Geneva Convention as an occupying power.

Negotiated in the aftermath of World War II, Israel and the United States, along with 194 other countries, are signatories.

None of this is new information, nor was this the UN’s first call for justice for the Palestinians. From 1967 to 1989 the UN Security Council adopted 131 resolutions addressing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Although the resolutions are nonbinding and unenforceable, they are an affirmation of international law from the world community. The vote was 14-0.

With the U.S. abstention, President Obama, who still believes in the viability of two states living side by side, was offering Israel the last chance to remain a Jewish state. The UN resolution passed at a time when the Israeli Knesset was poised to retroactively legalize all the Jewish settlements built on privately owned Palestinian land.

If the internationally recognized border known as the Green Line is officially erased, the more than 4.5 million Palestinians living in the West bank and Gaza will be inhabitants of Israel and will demand the full rights of citizenship. Currently they live under military law and are a people without an officially recognized country.

Many people have begun to take another look at this complex conflict — before June 1967 when Israel conquered Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Desert and the West Bank, including the Old City of Jerusalem; before 1947 when the UN Partitioned Historic Palestine into “two states for two peoples — Jewish and Arab”; before 1922 when the League of Nations created British Mandate Palestine. Back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, often cited as the legal impetus for a Jewish state; and the lesser known, 1916 Sykes-Picot secret agreement between Great Britain, France and Russia that carved up southwest Asia into spheres of influence.

Although history is fraught with conflicting promises, secret agreements and divergent narratives, there is something that we can stand with — international humanitarian law.

On Jan. 5th, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the UN resolution as “an obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.” Under the mistaken belief that she was supporting Israel, Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham voted to approve this resolution.

Unbridled Jewish-settlement expansion makes a two-state solution impossible. And with this possibility gone, we might be witnessing the final phase of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — Israel’s painful transformation into a secular pluralistic democracy for all the people who live between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River — a government similar to the United States.

As Secretary of State John Kerry said to the angry Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “Friends need to tell each other the hard truths.”