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Natural Resources and Palestinian Sovereignty: Israel’s Further Isolation

Two more United Nations committee resolutions. Both concerning the conduct of Israel past and current. While disease, hunger and death continue to stalk the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank remains under the thick thumb of occupation, deliberations in foreign fora continue to take place about how to address this hideous state of affairs. While these international matters can often seem like insipid gestures marked by ineffectual chatter, they are increasingly bulking a file that is making Israel more isolated than ever. And this is not an isolation of virtue or admiration.

On November 13, the Second Committee (Economic and Financial) of the UN approved two resolutions. The first focused on requesting that Israel assume responsibility for prompt and adequate compensation to Lebanon and any associated countries, including Syria, affected by an oil slick on their shores arising from the destruction of storage tanks near the Lebanese Jiyah electric power plant. The strike took place in July 2006 during Israel’s previous war against Hezbollah, resulting in, to quote the words of Lebanon’s thenEnvironment Ministry director general Berge Hatjian, “a catastrophe of the highest order for a country as small as Lebanon”. According to Lebanon’s UN representative, the damage arising from the oil spill had hampered the country’s efforts to pursue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.

Israel’s representative gruffly rejected the premise of the resolution, which received 160 votes in its favour, citing the usual argument that it has been unfairly targeted. Other current adversaries – here, the Houthis, who had been attacking ships in international watershad been left unscrutinised by the committee. The issue of environmental damage had been appropriated “as a political weapon against Israel”.

The second resolution, introduced by the Ugandan representative, was of particular interest to the Palestinians. Entitled “Permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources”, it expressed pointed concerns about Israel’s continued efforts to exercise, with brute force, control over the territories. There was concern for “the exploitation by Israel, the occupying Power, of the natural resources of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and other Arab territories occupied by Israel since 1967”. Ditto the “extensive destruction by Israel […] of agricultural land and orchards in the Occupied Territory” and “widespread destruction” inflicted upon “vital infrastructure, including water pipelines, sewage networks and electricity networks” in those territories.

Concerns also abounded about unexploded ordnance, a situation that despoiled the environment while hampering reconstruction, and the “chronic energy shortage in the Gaza Strip and its detrimental impact on the operation of water and sanitation facilities”. The Israeli settlements come in for special mention, given their “detrimental impact on Palestinian and other Arab natural resources, especially as a result of the confiscation of land and the forced diversion of water resources, including the destruction of orchards and crops and the seizure of the water wells by Israeli settlers, and the dire socioeconomic consequences in this regard.”

There are also stern remarks about needing to respect and preserve “the territory unity, contiguity and integrity of all Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”, a situation increasingly compromised by the rampant, unchecked zealotry of thuggish Israeli settlers, emboldened by lawmakers and authorities.

The vote on this occasion – 158 in favour – was unusual for featuring a number of countries that would normally be more guarded in adding their names, notably in the context of Palestinian sovereignty. Their mantra is that backing an initiative openly favouring Palestinian self-determination over any specific subject would do little to advance the broader goals of the peace process in the absence of Israeli participation.

Australia, for instance, backed the resolution, despite opposition from the United States and Canada. It marked the first time the country had favoured a “permanent sovereignty” resolution since being introduced in a resolution. This was done despite disappointment by the Australian delegation that the resolution made no reference to other participants in the conflict such as Hezbollah. A spokesperson for Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong stated that the vote reflected international concerns about Israel’s “ongoing settlement activity, land dispossession, demolitions and settler violence against Palestinians”. Such conduct undermined “stability and prospects for a two-state solution.”

As for Israel’s firmest sponsor in arms, inexplicable good will and dubious legal padding, the words “Palestinian” and “sovereignty” continued to grate. The fiction of equality and parity between Israel and the Palestinians, a device long used to snuff out the independent aspirations of the latter, had to be maintained.

In remarks made by Nicholas Koval of the US Mission to the UN, it was clear that Washington was “disappointed that this body has again taken up this unbalanced resolution that is unfairly critical of Israel, demonstrating a clear and persistent institutional bias directed against one member state.” The resolution, in its “one-sided” way, would not advance peace. “Not when they ignore the facts on the ground.

While Koval is not wrong that the claimed facts in these resolutions are often matters of conceit, illusion and even omission, the events unfolding since October last year have shown, in their biblical ferocity, that the Palestinians are no longer merely subjects of derision by the Israeli state. They are to be subjugated, preferably by some international authority that will guard against any future claims to autonomy. Their vetted leaders are to be treated as amenable collaborators, happy to yield territory that Israel has no right to.

Eventually, it is hoped by the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, that the Palestinian problem will vanish before forcible annexation, erasure and eviction. At the very least, resolutions such as those passed on November 14 provide some record of resistance, however seemingly remote, against the historical amnesia that governs Israeli Palestinian relations.

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4 comments

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  1. Kerri

    But how does the world constrain such a bigoted self important peoples?

  2. JulianP

    I thank you Binoy for your summary and note your conclusion that “resolutions such as those passed on November 14” serve in effect to admit a faint light of hope in the gathering darkness.

    While I don’t doubt your conclusion; there’s one aspect of your summary that intrigues me, and you refer to this in your concluding paragraphs – which I hope I have understood correctly.

    You mention Mr. Koval of the US Mission to the UN and his reference to “this unbalanced resolution that is unfairly critical of Israel”. Mr. Koval had earlier said (in part): “The United States is firmly committed to supporting the path to a two-state solution through constructive measures.”
    [ https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-at-the-second-committee-resolution-adoption-on-permanent-sovereignty-of-the-palestinian-people-in-the-occupied-palestinian-territory/ ]

    And so it is that in the midst of unparalleled destruction and murder in Gaza and now in Lebanon we hear yet again of that persistent chimera: the “two-state solution” – so much so there’s no longer any point talking about the duplicity surrounding this so-called solution; except perhaps to say that in July this year the Israeli Parliament “ voted overwhelmingly to pass a resolution rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state.”
    [ https://www.timesofisrael.com/knesset-votes-overwhelmingly-against-palestinian-statehood-days-before-pms-us-trip/ ]

    The only time such a “solution” was possible was at the time of Partition in November 1947 when UN resolution 181 provided for two independent but economically linked States. wherein approximately 53% of the Mandated-land was allocated to the emergent State of Israel and 47% to Palestine. (Wikipedia). Given the subsequent history of land-theft and dispossession by the Israelis, it should come as no surprise that of the initial grant of 47% to Palestine, about 17% remains.

    Consequently the “two-state solution” becomes a very convenient fiction on which to hang all manner of “official” statements, plans and resolutions that hint at rights and privileges and perhaps even an ultimate resolution, but all the while doing so in the full knowledge by all involved that nothing will change. Put simply: who or what is to stop Israel?

    So far as the UN is concerned, there’s an aura of helplessness and perhaps an element of cynicism involved in the passage of Resolutions that, as Binoy correctly notes, will “do little to advance the broader goals of the peace process in the absence of Israeli participation.”, and thus will the Palestinians remain subjugated and be told what to accept.

    Despite this seeming impasse, Binoy is right to conclude that even so, such Resolutions “provide some record of resistance, however seemingly remote, against the historical amnesia that governs Israeli Palestinian relations.” That has to be worth something – at least.

  3. paul walter

    At last, honesty from Sen. Wong, but the Americans remain as offensive, obdurate and denialist as ever, don’t they?

  4. paul walter

    Until the American body politic becomes willing to take on the Zionist Lobby there, there will no change, even from absurdities like Gaza and East Europe..

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