old_n_grumpy
19th February 2003, 02:31 AM
The following excerpt is from an analysis by The Economist of the supposed double standards in enforcement of UN resolutions applying to Iraq and Israel. It is very instructive.
See full article at: <a href="http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1378577" target="_blank">http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1378577</a>
The UN distinguishes between two sorts of Security Council resolution. Those passed under Chapter Six deal with the peaceful resolution of disputes and entitle the council to make non-binding recommendations. Those under Chapter Seven give the council broad powers to take action, including warlike action, to deal with “threats to the peace, breaches of the peace, or acts of aggression”. Such resolutions, binding on all UN members, were rare during the cold war. But they were used against Iraq after its invasion of Kuwait. None of the resolutions relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict comes under Chapter Seven. By imposing sanctions—including military ones—against Iraq but not against Israel, the UN is merely acting in accordance with its own rules.
The distinctiveness of Chapter Seven resolutions, and the fact that none has been passed in relation to Israel, is acknowledged by Palestinian diplomats. It is, indeed, one of their main complaints. A Palestine Liberation Organisation report, entitled “Double Standards” and published at the end of September, pointed out that, over the years, the UN has upheld the Palestinians' right to statehood, condemned Israel's settlements and called for Israel to withdraw. But “no enforcement action or any other action to implement UN resolutions and international law has been ordered by the Security Council.”
But what if, for the sake of argument, the main Security Council resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict had been Chapter Seven resolutions? The problem would then arise that <b>Resolution 242 of 1967, passed after the six-day war and frequently cited in the double-standards argument, does not say what a lot of the people who quote it think it says. It does not instruct Israel to withdraw unilaterally from the territories occupied in 1967. It does not condemn Israel's conquest, for the good reason that most western powers at that time thought it the result of a justifiable pre-emptive war. It calls for a negotiated settlement, based on the principle of exchanging land for peace. This is a very different matter.</b>
In the case of Iraq, the Security Council has instructed Mr Hussein to take various unilateral actions that he is perfectly capable of taking. Resolution 242 cannot be implemented unilaterally, even if Israel wanted to do so.
Why? First is the question of borders. Some of the diplomats who drafted Resolution 242 said afterwards that they intended to allow for some changes in the armistice lines that separated Israel and its Arab neighbours before the war of 1967. There has been a dreary argument for three decades over the meaning of the absence of a definite article (in the English text) before the phrase “territories occupied in the recent conflict”. The Arabs maintain that the resolution requires a complete withdrawal from every inch. But even if this were so, the resolution cannot be implemented without arriving at a negotiated agreement.
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It is commonly asserted that Israel's occupation is “illegal”. This is questionable. In March, for the first time ever, Kofi Annan, the UN's secretary-general, called Israel's occupation illegal, but it is no accident that he has not repeated this claim. In the view of Sir Adam Roberts, professor of international relations at the University of Oxford, it was a “serious mistake” to describe the occupation itself, as opposed to some of Israel's actions as an occupier, in this way. In a subsequent letter to the New York Times, Mr Annan's spokesman admitted as much. The secretary-general, he said, had not intended to refer to the legality of Israel's occupation of the territories during the war of 1967, only to breaches of its obligations as an occupying power.
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Legal or not, the occupation has lasted a terribly long time. But this is not solely Israel's fault. In 1967, it was the Arabs who rejected Resolution 242. They certainly did not accept Israel's new post-war borders, but nor did they recognise its pre-war borders. They did not, in fact, acknowledge Israel's right to exist at all. This posture persisted for a dozen years after 1967, until Egypt alone made peace. The Palestinians, pledging still to “liberate” all Palestine and dissolve the Jewish state, waited longer. Not until the late 1980s, some 40 years after Israel's birth and 20 years after the 1967 war, did Mr Arafat's PLO indicate an interest in a two-state solution. Under the rules of “belligerent occupation”, Israel should not have mucked about during those 20 years with the status of the captured lands. But it is not wholly surprising, given the continuing rejection and siege, that it did.
When the Palestinians decided that they were no longer bent on its extirpation, Israel responded. In 1993 it signed an agreement with the PLO under which the two sides undertook to implement Resolution 242 by negotiation, thus putting all the contentious issues—Jerusalem, the settlements and the refugees—on the bargaining table. Two years ago the talks failed, to be followed by a new Palestinian intifada and the election of the unyielding Mr Sharon. The Israelis claim that their agreement to negotiate the thorny issues with the Palestinians supersedes the relevant UN resolutions on settlements and the rest, a view which the Security Council might accept if the negotiations got back on track. In the meantime, the council's rulings on Jerusalem and the settlements stand.