UN Debated, Darfur Decimated

Time is a precious commodity. So are people's lives. Let's see how the UN are prioritising their precious time to save lives.

From the ABC News Online article:

The UN General Assembly on Friday capped a three-day debate on the rights of the Palestinians in a series of resolutions reaffirming the need for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied Palestinian and Syrian lands.

By a vote of 157 in favour, seven against and 10 abstentions, the 192-member Assembly "reiterates its demand for the complete cessation of all Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan (Heights)."

Now let's switch to a Reuters article:

The top United Nations human rights body will debate sending an "urgent assessment mission" to Sudan's Darfur region in an emergency meeting later this month, according to a draft resolution circulated on Friday.
...
The six-month-old Council has come under pressure from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others to confront atrocities in Darfur, where some 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes since early 2003.

And they were Reuters' words.

Now that we know genocidal crises will be dealt urgently and as a matter of priority by the UN, we can focus in more detail on some of the UN's conclusions from the three-day talkfest.

Here are some useful points that apply here (though the author discloses he is not an international law expert):

...

5. In 1967 Israel was attacked by Jordan, which at the time ruled the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israel had no obligation, under international to vacate any territories until its foes entered into a meaningful peace agreement.

6. Later in 1967, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242, Notably, the resolution calls for Israel to withdraw from "territories" (not "all territories" or "the territories") as part of a peace agreement by which Arab states would end their belligerence against Israel. Today, most Arab states remain in a declared state of war against Israel.

7. Having acquired the West Bank in a defensive war, Israel later began building settlements on the West Bank. The settlements were built solely on land belonging to the Jordanian government, and not land belonging to individual Arab owners.

8. As a general rule, international law forbids the permanent annexation of territory, even after a defensive war. However, Israel's settlements did not violate this rule, because they were built in areas where no internationally-agreed international border existed. (See points 4 and 6).

9. Later, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, and renounced all claims to the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Jordan's renunciation of the West Bank necessarily included a renunciation of all claim to West Bank land which had been owned by the Jordanian government. The renunciation therefore perfected Israel's legal ownership of the former Jordanian government lands in the West Bank.

10. Even if the last sentence of point 9 is incorrect, a nation has no obligation under international law to surrender control of territory to an entity which is in a state of war with the nation. The constitution of the PLO and the Hamas charter both explicitly call for the destruction of the state of Israel. Accordingly, Israel has no international law obligation to give any territory to a government controlled by the PLO or Hamas. (Had the PLO followed through on its promises in the Oslo Accords, and actually ended its war against Israel, the legal situation might be different.)

Some further thoughts from yours truly:

1. The "Palestinian land" is from a legal standpoint "disputed territory". This is because there are equally valid claims to the land by two sets of indigenous peoples: the Jews who inhabited the land thousands of years ago, and Arabs more recently.

Practically speaking, it is a different story. The overwhelming majority of Israelis support a two-state solution, which accepts that indigenous Arabs can have their own state. Recent polls confirm that a slight majority of Palestinians do not support a two-state solution, and a solid majority support the so-called "right of return", thereby rejecting the right of Jews to live in the Jewish state of Israel.

2. Is the UN contradicting Resolution 242? The new resolution "stresses the need for (a) The withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967;" which is similar to the words in UN Resolution 242:

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict

Most striking is the omission from the new resolution of the line that appeared next in UN Resolution 242. Here is the full excerpt (emphasis added):

Affirms that the fulfillment of Charter principles requires the establishment of a just and lasting peace in the Middle East which should include the application of both the following principles:

Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict;

Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgement of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force;

Notice the word both and the second principle. These are now absent from the new resolution.

3. In an earlier post, I predicted that Canada would be joining the US, Australia and a small group of micro-nations in voting against anti-Israel resolutions. In a series of six resolutions, Canada voted Against three times, abstaining twice and voting For only once. The Canadian migration to moral clarity and fortitude continues.