Israel and UN Reform

...In the fall of 2001, a slew of one-sided resolutions chastising Israel passed the General Assembly, opposed by only Israel, the United States, and—at times—Micronesia and the Marshall Islands...

...Abbas should curtail the stream of letters that flow regularly to the secretary-general denouncing Israel...

...Relations between Israel and the UN began to sour seven years later...

...The impetus is the press for reform, rather than the need to defend Israel from any particular assault...

...If Not Now, When...

...Although Annan's proposals do not directly address Israel's anomalous position, they do get at certain conditions that have contributed to the ostracizing of Israel...

...The Palestinians are fully aware of how well the DISSENT / Summer 2005 n 27 UN has served them and may fight hard to keep things as they are until a final settlement with Israel is reached...

...The High-Level Panel's report proposes a grand bargain of sorts: under the guise of collective security, North and South will address one another's concerns...

...Given the precarious standing of the United States in the Muslim world, Washington would face difficulties in tackling the problem of Arab anti-Semitism head-on...

...The reforms should go hand in hand with a political push led by the United States to put Israel on an equal footing with the organization's 190 other states...

...Annan has called for a consensus definition of terrorism and rejects the idea that terrorism may be defined so as to encompass state action against civilians...

...Though "Zionism is Racism" was repealed in 1991, the organization began to take an even harder line on Israel than the Palestinians did, holding back approval of the 1991 Oslo peace process because the talks were not preconditioned on complete Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territories...

...The final conference documents were toned down, but still targeted Israel alone among all countries...

...Otherwise, the UN REFORM AND ISRAEL institution may end up reconfiguring its committees and commissions, only to witness the reemergence of tired and destructive patterns in new shapes and sizes...

...He has been weakened by the scandals and serves at the pleasure of the same member states he must prod...

...Annan wants the entire UN membership to elect directly the countries seated on a (revamped) Human Rights Council...

...The Council's decisions have often been less than consistent, less than persuasive and less than fully responsive to very real State and human security needs...

...Annan has proposed a Peacebuilding Commission in addition to a revivified Human Rights Council and the new terrorism treaty...

...Fourth, Washington should press into the lobbying effort the Europeans and other countries with ties to Israel as well as all co-signers of the request to convene the Special Session on the Holocaust...

...The report calls for changes in the Security Council and General Assembly because "[t] he credibility of any system of collective security also depends on how well it promotes security for all its members, without regard to the nature of would-be beneficiaries, their location, resources or relationship to great Powers...

...It would necessitate a new pact among Security Council members on how they approach threats, and how regional and political loyalties play into deliberations and decision-making...

...Consequently, egregious human rights violators such as Libya or Cuba are seated when their turns come, providing fodder for outraged American diplomats and editorialists...

...influence, the UN's posture toward Israel makes this a nonstarter...

...There was, however, a hopeful sign—the first in years—in January 2005, when Israel initiated successfully a UN Special Session to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps...

...Ostracism of Israel hurts not only the Jewish state, but the UN...

...First, diplomats should undertake this effort at a moment of relative quiet in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict at the UN, that is, when no specific resolution is under debate...

...In the long run, this will be a mistake...

...The attacks of September 11 did not change things...

...The EU is for a transformation of the UN, and its members are well aware of the organization's anti-Western currents...

...The United States and Israel pulled out of Durban in protest, though no other states followed...

...There's an old saying that a nation's greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest citizens...

...The Palestinian leadership—along with other delegations, including Cuba—has had a vested interest in maintaining outmoded alliances...

...perceptions of the UN membership as anti-Western, unprincipled, motivated by petty biases, and dominated by a herd mentality stem largely from—and are given continuing basis by—the body's history of anti-Israel conduct...

...If so, it is vital to ensure that the UN enhance reform and modernization in the region rather than undermine them with a continuation of old patterns of anti-Semitism and hostility toward Israel...

...This enlisted support of 135 countries, including a fair number that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel, despite griping behind the scenes by Arab ambassadors who branded the meeting a waste of time and resources...

...Complex History Israel became a state with the blessing of the UN...

...In March he issued a set of recommendations based on the work of the High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change he set up to propose reforms...

...doing so would have rendered them dead on arrival...

...Given its isolation at the world body, it is hard to foresee a situation in which Israel would seek Council imprimatur for any such action...

...Annan himself says the UN has reached a fork in the road...

...In 1974, the PLO obtained official observer status at the United Nations and began intense lobbying to ostracize Israel there...

...The isolation of Israel at the UN has strained the U.S.-UN relationship and undercut the legitimacy of the global body in the eyes of many Americans...

...The UN-sponsored World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, in 2001 turned into a hate-fest...

...Breaking events in the Middle East have the potential to derail all this, but that doesn't mean that the effort isn't vital...

...But given the amount of debate and documentation devoted to Israel, it was as if its actions were worse than those actions of all the dictators of the second half of the twentieth century combined...

...UN secretary-general Kofi Annan is seeking to restore the UN's credibility after an era of scandal and paralysis...

...Sixth, the lobbying effort should focus on prying away the dozens of countries who vote against Israel by rote—countries such as Chile, Colombia, Mexico, India, Thailand, and South Africa—who have no particular ill will against Israel, but vote out of solidarity to developingworld blocs...

...But when the peace process broke down in 2000, Israel's standing deteriorated quickly...

...Regional strategic and economic ties may trump pro forma North versus South alignments...

...Israel is not named, but these passages touch directly on Jerusalem's repeated mistreatment at the hands of this body...

...But at the world body, the poorest and most powerless nations fall under big tents of regional and developing24 n DISSENT / Summer 2005 country blocs that protect their interests...

...The Palestinian leader and his deputies have more important things to do than battle over the wording of yet another UN resolution, and they can reinforce their own image as a new type of Palestinian leadership...

...Blocs of developing countries— including the "Group of 77" and the Non-Aligned Movement—were created at the UN in the 1960s to give the numerically large but economically poorer nations some leverage against the traditionally powerful North...

...Achieving that would require something more than structural reform...

...An organization that has been too fractured and passive to confront the moral challenges of our time—including Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur—has managed to adopt more than twenty resolutions chastising Israel each year since 1985...

...Longstanding U.S...

...It is not a big step to the recognition that Israel's treatment at the UN is anachronistic...

...If Israel's standing does not improve after a major reform effort, Secretary-General Annan and the High-Level Panel will have failed to check the organization's worst impulses, and the UN's credibility crisis will persist...

...If implemented, these measures should begin to show that the organization is serious about reform...

...Israel did not approach the Security Council before its 1981 attack against the Osirak reactor in Iraq...

...The debate over UN reform centers mostly on whether and how to create new institutions and instruments...

...The PLO enjoyed a ready-made majority in the General Assembly thanks to the third world blocs...

...American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal and positively inclined toward multilateral causes, but have become wary of the UN because of its behavior toward Israel...

...entreaties to abstain...

...It will also, practically speaking, allow the UN to devote more time to matters that truly serve a range DISSENT / Summer 2005 n 23 UN REFORM AND ISRAEL of member states...

...Hostility toward Israel often unites American liberals and conservatives in their distrust of and exasperation with the UN...

...As the peace process broke down, the pace of anti-Israel resolutions accelerated...

...It was Yasir Arafat, with a 1974 speech before the UN General Assembly delivered with a pistol visible on his hip, who galvanized the world organization against the Jewish state...

...28 n DISSENT / Summer 2005...

...The High-Level Panel's discussion of preventive self-defense—among the most controversial issues since the Iraq War—also pertains 26 n DISSENT / Summer 2005 to Israel...

...Consequently, the United States needs to take the lead...

...Annan, the United States, and like-minded countries can rally the many delegations that have no great stake in Arab-Israeli antagonism yet reflexively gang up on Israel out of a vestigial sense of third world solidarity...

...The problem, of course, is that although the United States often fixates on missteps of other member states (such as the accession of Zimbabwe to the Commission on Human Rights this spring) many other UN members view Washington as the organization's chief abuser...

...Addressing the Problems Annan's reform efforts can open the way to a change...

...Annan's reforms seek above all to address the North-South rift...

...For the last half-century, the industrialized world has stressed its traditional security concerns at the UN, while developing countries have emphasized aid for socioeconomic development...

...In these circles, Israel was seen as a Western (or, in these terms, Northern) state whose claims to self-determination merely masked its sympathy with American or, at times, European, priorities...

...At the same time, simply enacting the Annan reforms will not root out entrenched patterns...

...Their loyalty is premised on a longstanding sense that poorer countries need to band together to counter Western might...

...Israel became something like the proverbial friendless kid in a schoolyard, always attacked and in need of constant help from his big UN REFORM AND ISRAEL brother, the United States...

...Needed: a Political Push In short, the reform proposals provide a good starting point—but only a starting point...

...ISRAEL IS ALSO at the crux of the panel's pronouncements on terrorism...

...To achieve that would require improving Israel's standing within the UN membership at large, so that countries cannot be voted in on an anti-Israel platform...

...To succeed, then, before the United States can make an effort to tackle Israel's situation—and to look more broadly at how UN nations fulfill the rights and responsibilities of membership—it may need first to look in the mirror...

...Until now, this interpretation has prevented the Security Council from adopting a definition of terrorism to guide its deliberations...

...Amelioration of Israel's situation at the UN is timely, achievable, and can help the Mideast peace process...

...Heads of state will debate his recommendations at a summit meeting this September...

...Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the General Assembly regularly criticized Israeli raids on Palestinian Liberation Organization bases in Jordan and Lebanon, but never mentioned the violent Palestinian provocations, such as hijackings, killing schoolchildren, and murdering Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics...

...The international organization is in turmoil thanks to scandals surrounding its Oil for Food program and allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers...

...But, in tandem with progress in the Mideast peace process, Security Council members might be prepared to rethink how they deal with Israel...

...It poisons the organization's relationship with its host country and largest contributor...

...Here again the end goal of the proposed reforms—restoring credibility and eliminating double standards— will be fully realized only if Israel's status is addressed along with them...

...Third, discussions on Israel's situation at the UN should first take place behind the scenes, through retail diplomacy on a country-by-country basis...

...It cites as an example the organization's failure to stop the Rwandan genocide...

...Kofi Annan's situation is difficult...

...Even recent efforts by Jordan to normalize Arab-Israeli relations were rebuffed by the Arab League...

...Second, stress should be placed on how past one-sided resolutions at the UN have inflamed and exacerbated Mideast peacemaking...

...Fifth, the United States should also seek to persuade Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas that the current cease-fire on the ground in the Mideast should be extended to the UN...

...If it is adopted, it will clear the way for the first UN resolution condemning terror against Israel and thereby balance resolutions criticizing Israel for, say, its construction of a barrier in Palestinian territory...

...The EU, presumably, would prefer not to deal routinely with such divisive resolutions, and this alone may be grounds to obtain its support...

...Because Annan and the HighLevel Panel hope to break the destructive dynamic of North-South antagonism, they should realize that resolving Israel's status can heal or at least palliate a long-standing sore...

...The High-Level Panel report DISSENT / Summer 2005 n 25 UN REFORM AND ISRAEL noted, "Too often, the United Nations and its member states have discriminated in responding to threats to international security...

...he also spurns the idea that violent acts—however heinous—by an occupied people cannot constitute terrorism...

...They may do away with some important structural problems, but broader dynamics must be reshaped, and that is why a concerted political push is needed to recalibrate Israel's relationship with the UN...

...In 1967, the UN gave in to Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser's demand to remove peacekeepers from the Sinai, resulting in a rapid slide toward war...

...More significantly, Israel won partial membership in the organization's Western Europe and Other regional group, making it eligible to participate in a variety of UN forums and committees...

...Calls for radical reform and Annan's removal have forced changes, including the ouster of some of the organization's longtime leaders...

...But his substantive recommendations do address several key problems...

...This should prevent gross human rights violators from serving, but it won't necessarily forestall seating countries with a one-sided, anti-Israel UN REFORM AND ISRAEL agenda...

...Convincing what should be disinterested delegations to deal squarely with Israel will help improve the UN's image as an unrestrained schoolyard playground...

...This is not to say that Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip gave rise to no abuses or misdeeds meriting UN attention...

...A few guidelines (though not necessarily implemented in this order) will enhance the chance of success...

...His death and succession by the moderate Mahmoud Abbas, the planned Israeli pullout from Gaza, and the resumption of direct Palestinian-Israeli talks represent the first thaw in relations since the late 1990s and should carry over to the UN...

...It is better to start with their superiors—the foreign ministers and other senior officials who are more detached from UN politics and more likely to entertain a change in behavior...

...During the Suez War, the General Assembly condemned Israeli military aggression against Egypt without acknowledging any Egyptian provocations, including the closure of the Suez Canal...

...It also spoke of France and Britain, Israel's partners in the action, but in gentler terms...

...In 1947, the General Assembly endorsed a partition plan for Palestine that its Arab residents and neighboring Arab states rejected...

...Genuine acceptance of the principle of non-discriminatory treatment of member states requires an end to repeated, one-sided resolutions on the Israel-Palestine issue...

...These deliberations are expected to produce a series of proposals on matters ranging from the composition of the Security Council to the functioning of the General Assembly to combating terrorism and nuclear proliferation...

...Members of the commission are chosen by regional groups that often apportion seats on the basis of a strict rotation...

...Curtailing antiIsrael measures should be portrayed less as a campaign on Israel's behalf than as a strategy to shield the peace process (as well as the UN itself) from these destructive intrusions...

...To achieve meaningful reform, UN members will have to take a hard look at their own role in undermining an organization they claim to value...

...Elevation of the debate in the Security Council will not happen overnight, and may not happen at all...

...This tense split has been a feature of the UN since its founding...

...The low point came in 1975, when the General Assembly resolved that "Zionism is Racism...

...As fundamentalist Christian support for Israel strengthens, a community that should otherwise be strongly supportive of the UN's humanitarian efforts has reason to distance itself...

...Israel always stood at the fault line of the North-South divide...

...The United States should make clear that improvements to Israel's status will be a telling test of whether or not general reform is working...

...Germany typically backs Israel, but this just underscores disagreements among the Europeans...

...Instead, his definition covers any act "intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or noncombatants, when the purpose of such an act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act...

...Until recently, Israel, the only country that was part of no regional group, was more isolated and had less of a voice within UN politics than virtually any other country...

...These crises make previously unimaginable changes possible, even if history warns us that the UN can easily settle back into relative complacency once the dust settles...

...Developing countries will do more to clamp down on terrorists, and wealthy countries will step up development assistance...

...Hadassah, the Jewish women's organization, won consultative status at the UN despite long-standing Arab opposition...

...Only after reformers have secured broad commitments of support from several governments should the matter be raised at the UN itself...

...The General Assembly convened a series of "emergency special sessions," solely to criticize Israel...

...Events in Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt suggest that the Mideast as a whole may be entering a new phase of reform and modernization...

...Israel's case shows what has gone wrong in the past and what must be fixed...

...Arab states pushed draft declarations that singled out Israel as a "racist, apartheid state" guilty of "ethnic cleansing...

...The panel report acknowledges the problem: "[O]ne of the reasons why States may want to bypass the Security Council is a lack of confidence in the quality and objectivity of its decision-making...

...Here the panel falls short, professing that the solution is "not to reduce the Council to impotence and irrelevance: it is to work from within to reform it...

...The secretary-general did not address Israel by name in his proposals...

...These systems and processes may make some difference, but their success will, in the end, depend on the behavior of member states and on overcoming prejudices, passivity, and the penchant for score-settling and placing narrowly defined self-interests above the UN's loftiest goals...

...Although this general idea still resonates, there is also growing recognition that socioeconomic, political, and religious diversity among the some 125 developing countries makes it impossible to formulate uniform positions on all issues...

...But when it comes to discrimination—as opposed to indifference, paralysis, or passivity—relentless anti-Israel resolutions provide the most systemic example of bias...

...Then, in the late 1970s, the UN declined to endorse the IsraelEgypt peace process because Palestinian representatives had not participated...

...The UN's ability to advance the peace process has been limited partly because it is not viewed as an honest broker...

...Israel's isolation at the UN also damages Palestinian interests...

...If change in the Middle East makes this an auspicious moment to remedy Israel's position at the UN, so have events at the organization itself...

...Suicide bombings that target civilians are patently within this definition...

...Israel's tortured history at the UN is emblematic of much (though by no means all) of what is wrong with the world organization...

...In this sense, the UN's treatment of Israel is a revealing test of whether the organization can live up to its ideals...

...A high point for Israeli-Palestinian relations, the late 1990s, did bring dribs and drabs of progress at the UN...

...The same is true for the UN...

...These should occur in capitals rather than on the East River, because delegates who vote regularly there against Israel will be the hardest to win over...

...The panel also addresses the perennial problems at the UN's Commission on Human Rights...

...Israel accepted it, prevailed in an ensuing war, and gained admission to the UN in 1949...

...But the UN offers a forum where the issue can be addressed indirectly...

...The UN could go a long way to reestablishing itself as an interlocutor trusted by all parties if it shows that it fully respects Israel's existence—just as it would an autonomous Palestinian state...

...Abba Eban's old joke that Palestinian leaders "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity" did not hold true at the UN, which was turned into a highly effective vehicle for the PLO's purposes...

...The reforms it proposes—including new Security Council seats—would not in themselves ensure greater quality of debate or objectivity in decision-making...

...SUZANNE NOSSEL is a Senior Fellow at the Security and Peace Institute, a joint initiative of the Center for American Progress and the Century Foundation, and a founder of the democracyarsenal.org weblog...

...Although many Europeans would like greater UN involvement in the process in order to counterbalance U.S...

...many of the participating countries, which customarily voted together, had experienced colonial and foreign domination and were sympathetic to Palestinian grievances...

...A change in Israel's situation needs to be seen as part of the push to modernize and legitimize the UN...

...The panel highlights the Commission's "eroding credibility and professionalism" and its "double standards in addressing human rights...

...this will allow it to play a more constructive role in the Mideast peace process, which will benefit all parties...

...But other countries, at least in private, acknowledge that these blocs have outlived much of their usefulness and tend to be dominated by extremist delegates...

...The European Union as a whole says it recognizes Israel's right to defend itself, yet it has repeatedly backed one-sided resolutions, often declining Israeli and U.S...

...Here Annan has rejected the view of the fifty-six-member Organization of the Islamic Conference, which has long insisted that terrorism in the name of national liberation is not really terrorism...