1 week Ago
ANOTHER VIEW | LONDON GUARDIAN The United Nations is sup-posed to be above the fray — a forum for and facilitator of peaceful resolutions or, at the least, the minimization of harm. Yet for the past year, Israel has treated it as an inconvenience at best and adversary at worst. U.
N. peacekeepers are literally in the path of Israel's offensive in Lebanon and are refusing to leave as it has urged. The Israel Defense Forces forcibly entered a base and have repeatedly fired on U.
N. positions, injuring five. Nearly 230 aid workers for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) have been killed in Gaza.
Earlier this month, Israel declared the U.N.'s secretary-general, António Guterres, persona non grata.
In May, its outgoing ambassador to the U.N. shredded a copy of the charter.
The relationship has long been fraught. Israel says it is singled out unfairly by the large number of (nonbinding) General Assembly resolutions criticizing it. The country's alliance with the U.
S. has meant that more consequential Security Council resolutions have almost always been vetoed by Washington. Israel has long lobbied against UNRWA, objecting to its recognition of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and is now in the process of banning it as a terrorist organization.
The U.N. says that nine of its 13,000 employees in Gaza might have been involved in the Oct.
7, 2023, Hamas attack: disturbing findings that do not negate the value of the agency, on which millions depend for basic supplies and services. The agency's head, Philippe Lazzarini, says that the intent is ultimately to undermine the Palestinian aspiration for self-determination. Only four years ago, when the World Jewish Congress honored Guterres, it described him as "the voice of fairness and equity that the state of Israel and the Jewish people have been hoping for at the United Nations for a long, long time.
" His remark that the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 "did not happen in a vacuum," made as he condemned them, provoked anger in Israel. But the government also knew that its all-out assault on Gaza would inevitably bring intense criticism at the U.
N. Its attacks on the institution, and the man who represents it, have sought to undercut and delegitimize the censure. They are also a sign of the times.
The U.N. is now a beleaguered institution, stuck on the sidelines of recent major conflicts.
The Security Council has repeatedly been deadlocked, with the U.S., the U.
K. and France on one side and Russia and China on the other. Western leaders have wrung their hands about this weakness and paralysis contributing to the decline of the rules-based international order.
They must confront any attempt to further undermine it. The U.S.
is likely to regret allowing further weakening of the U.N. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues' refusal to respect it makes it all the more important that others do so .
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