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"Peace will not be achieved at the expense of our rights but by upholding them," said Riyad Mansour. "That is the only path to peace. Let us finally collectively embark on it."
Ahead of the International Court of Justice's expected advisory opinion on legal consequences for Israel's occupation of the Palestinian territories, Palestine's permanent observer at the United Nations reminded other diplomats at a U.N. Security Council meeting on Wednesday that the slaughter of more than 38,000 people in Gaza has been broadcast for nine months—while Israel has claimed it is acting in self-defense and is targeting Hamas.
"What is happening in Gaza is going down as the most documented genocide in history," Riyad Mansour said. "When will the world denounce the crimes and stop tolerating their reoccurrence?"
In addition to the daily news of aerial and ground attacks on schools, homes, and places of worship in Gaza, Mansour pointed to Israeli soldiers' filming of their own attacks in the enclave, leaving no doubt that innocent civilians are being targeted.
Members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have "openly, brazenly, and repeatedly" shared its "crimes" on social media, said Mansour.
Since the IDF began its bombardment of Gaza in October with political and material support from the United States and other Western countries, videos taken by Israeli soldiers themselves have shown the controlled detonation of Israa University, a soldier blowing up a mosque, and another IDF fighter giving a thumbs up while driving a bulldozer into a destroyed car, accompanied by the caption, "I stopped counting how many neighborhoods I've erased."
In a segment produced by Al Jazeera in March, Sarah Leah Whitson of Democracy for the Arab World Now said that "there have been a remarkable number of videos posted by Israeli soldiers on social media, depicting themselves pillaging property, mocking the death and destruction that they are causing, and most egregiously, torturing, humiliating, and mocking detained Palestinian prisoners."
Meanwhile, human rights experts and aid groups have amplified images of the results of Israel's use of what Mansour called "the ultimate weapon": a near-total blockade on humanitarian relief. Last month, the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights documented the deaths from starvation of five-month-old Fayez Attaya and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi—two of more than two dozen children who have perished as U.N. experts have warned famine has taken hold in Gaza.
"Two million people who were subjected to a 17-year-old blockade are now confronted with a hermetic siege, dying of hunger and disease while food and medicine are available only meters away," said Mansour on Wednesday.
Palestinians including Bisan Owda, a journalist who won a Peabody Award for her coverage, have also documented their own forced displacement, the destruction of their homes, and the loss of loved ones.
Mansour on Wednesday asked the Security Council—which only voted in favor of a cease-fire in Gaza in June, after U.S. officials had vetoed several resolutions—why it has allowed Israel to violate international laws and norms.
"What is a rule that's not enforced? What do these rules mean anymore when for nine months Israel has bombed the homes, hospitals, schools—including those designated as U.N. shelters—and now people in tents as is the case in al-Mawasi?" he asked.
Mansour emphasized that Israeli soldiers have good reason to think they can film themselves committing potential war crimes.
"Everything in [Israel's] history tells it it will get away with it," said the envoy. "It is betting this time will be no exception. But, this time must be the exception, and change must start right now."
Mansour added that the ICJ's pending ruling on the occupation of Palestine "should serve as basis for our collective action in the days to come."
"As all your nations have refused to forego their rights, the Palestinian people will never accept to relinquish theirs," he said. "Peace will not be achieved at the expense of our rights but by upholding them. The right to life, to liberty, and to dignity. That is the only path to peace. Let us finally collectively embark on it."
Diplomats and analysts should give thought to whether they could in the future provide the beginning of negotiations leading to an eventual compromise.
The international community has before it two official proposals—Ukrainian and Russian—for a peace settlement to end the war in Ukraine. Both as they stand, and in present circumstances, are absurd. Diplomats and analysts should however give thought to whether they could nonetheless in the future provide the starting point for negotiations leading to an eventual compromise.
The Ukrainian government’s 10-Point “peace plan” demands complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all the Ukrainian territory that Russia has occupied since 2014 as a precondition for holding talks at all. Presumably those talks would then deal with other Ukrainian points, including war crimes trials for the Russian leadership, and Russian compensation for the damage caused by the Russian invasion.
In addition, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other Ukrainian officials have declared that Ukrainian neutrality is also a priori unacceptable—though it should be noted that an invitation to join NATO is a matter not for Ukraine but for existing NATO members, and can be blocked by one national veto.
If however Ukraine is defeated and suffers much greater loss of territory, then future generations of Ukrainians may regret that Kyiv did not treat Putin’s proposal at least as a starting point for negotiation and bargaining.
As revealed this week by The New York Times, these Ukrainian demands are radically different from Ukraine’s positions in peace talks with Russia that took place in Istanbul in the first weeks of Russia’s February, 2022 invasion. The paper quotes one of the Ukrainian negotiators, Oleksandr Chalyi: “We managed to find a very real compromise… We were very close in the middle of April, in the end of April, to finalize our war with some peaceful settlement.”
At that point, the Ukrainian government was prepared to agree to a permanent treaty of neutrality (allowing for membership of the European Union but not for NATO) in return for security guarantees from all members of the U.N. Security Council. The Ukrainians refused to recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea or the independence of the Russian-occupied areas of the Donbas, but were prepared to leave these under de facto Russian control pending future negotiations at an indeterminate date.
There were however some serious sticking points. Russia demanded that actions by the U.N. Security Council in defense of Ukraine would have to be agreed unanimously—which would have given Russia the right of veto. Russia also demanded that Ukrainian missiles be limited to a 25-mile range, while no such limits were to be placed on Russian weapons. These conditions were obviously unacceptable to the Ukrainians. It is impossible to say whether these disagreements could have been overcome or nuanced in some way, because the Ukrainian side broke off the talks, for reasons that are hotly contested.
If Ukrainian conditions have hardened enormously in the subsequent two years of war, so too have those of Russia. In a statement in response to the “Peace Summit” convened by the West in Switzerland, President Vladimir Putin demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the whole of the four Ukrainian provinces that Russia claims to have annexed since the start of the war (in addition to Crimea, annexed in 2014)—although Russia does not occupy the whole of any of them, and did not manage even to capture or hold the provincial capitals of Kherson and Zaporizhia.
Putin said that as soon as Ukraine begins to withdraw its troops, Russia would cease its military operations. However, he added that as part of a final peace settlement, Ukraine would have to recognize Russian sovereignty over these four provinces and Crimea, sign a treaty of neutrality, guarantee the rights of Russian speakers in Ukraine, and engage in “demilitarization” and “denazification,” though he did not say what these last terms would involve.
These Russian terms were naturally at once rejected out of hand by the Ukrainian government and the West.
In the end however, the terms of an end to the fighting, whether in the form of a formal peace agreement or a cease-fire pending future talks, will be determined by the military situation on the ground. From this point of view, Ukraine’s demand for complete Russian withdrawal as a precondition of talks is completely impossible. It would require the total defeat of the Russian military, which is far beyond Ukraine’s capacity at present or in any rationally foreseeable future.
Putin’s conditions for peace by contrast, while they require that Russia inflicts significant further defeats on Ukraine, do not require that these defeats be total. To achieve this position on the ground, Russia only has to capture the remainder of these four provinces, or conquer other areas and then offer to exchange them.
As sensible Russian analysts recognize, Ukraine and the West will never agree formally to recognize Russian sovereignty; but if Moscow were prepared to settle for Ukrainian and Western acceptance of de facto Russian rule, then—as in the case of the unrecognized Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus—this would not necessarily be a fatal bar to peace. Neutrality has already in effect been accepted by Western governments, since they have repeatedly stated and demonstrated that while they will support Ukraine, they will not go to war to defend it.
This rules out admitting a Ukraine that remains in a state of war with Russia, even after a cease-fire.
Even de facto acceptance of Russian rule over five Ukrainian provinces would be a most bitter pill for Ukraine and the West to swallow. However, this would still be far less than the maximalist goals of Russian hardliners, whether in terms of the subjugation of the whole of Ukraine, or annexation of all the Russian-speaking areas of the country, including Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and the whole of the Black Sea coast.
If in the months and years to come, the Ukrainian army can manage to hold roughly its existing lines, then the eventual line of division between Ukraine and Russia (whether drawn in a formal peace settlement or accepted as part of an armistice) will also run along these lines. If however Ukraine is defeated and suffers much greater loss of territory, then future generations of Ukrainians may regret that Kyiv did not treat Putin’s proposal at least as a starting point for negotiation and bargaining.
For it should be remembered that while the Russian terms of March 2022 would also have been a bitter pill for Ukraine to swallow at the time, their acceptance would have saved Ukraine much territory that it now seems certain permanently to lose, much damage that may never be restored, and many human beings who can never be brought back to life.
"We voted for this text to give diplomacy a chance," said Algeria's U.N. ambassador. "It is time to halt the killing."
In a move that boosts the three-phase plan announced by President Joe Biden late last month, the United Nations Security Council on Monday voted 14-0—with permanent member Russia abstaining—in favor of a U.S.-sponsored resolution for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Russia chose not to exercise its power to veto the resolution, which urges Israel and Hamas to "fully implement its terms without delay and without condition."
Responding to the vote, Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement that "although the Biden administration should have allowed the U.N. Security Council to pass a permanent cease-fire resolution many months and many slaughtered Palestinians ago, we welcome today's development as a positive and long overdue step toward ending the genocide."
"The Biden administration must now use American leverage to force [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to agree to a permanent cease-fire so that the massacres of Palestinian civilians can end, all hostages and political prisoners can safely go free, international tribunals can begin holding those responsible for war crimes accountable, and the world can finally begin pursuing a credible end to the illegal occupation of Palestine that has fomented decades of injustice and oppression."
As U.N. Newsexplained:
Phase one includes an "immediate, full, and complete cease-fire with the release of hostages including women, the elderly and the wounded, the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed, and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners."
It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from "populated areas" of Gaza, the return of Palestinians to their homes and neighborhoods throughout the enclave, including in the north, as well as the safe and effective distribution of humanitarian assistance at scale.
Phase two would see a permanent end to hostilities "in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza."
In phase three, "a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza" would begin and the remains of any deceased hostages still in the strip would be returned to Israel."
The council also underlined the proposal's provision that if negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the cease-fire will continue as long as negotiations continue.
"The only way to end this cycle of violence and build a durable peace is through a political settlement," U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield—who vetoed several previous Security Council cease-fire resolutions— said following Monday's vote.
The Biden administration has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid, arms and ammunition sales, and diplomatic cover.
In a statement, Hamas—which led the October 7 attack on Israel that left more than 1,100 people dead and over 240 others taken hostage—welcomed the resolution's passage and affirmed its willingness "to enter into indirect negotiations on the implementation of these principles."
However, Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly, Israel's representative at the U.N., said her country's objectives in the war have not changed and vowed to keep fighting "until all of the hostages are returned and Hamas' military capabilities are dismantled."
"Israel will not engage in meaningless and endless negotiations which can be exploited by Hamas as a means to stall for time," she added.
According to Palestinian and international agencies, at least 37,124 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israeli forces during the 248-day Gaza onslaught, which is the subject of an International Criminal Court genocide case brought by South Africa and supported by more than 30 nations and regional blocs. Nearly 85,000 Palestinians have also been injured. At least 11,000 other Palestinians are missing and believed buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out buildings.
International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination.
Algerian Ambassador Amar Bendjama said after Monday's vote that "as a free and dignified people, the Palestinians will never accept living under occupation. They will never abdicate their fight for liberation."
"This text is not perfect, but it offers a glimmer of hope to the Palestinians as the alternative is continued killing and suffering," he added. "We voted for this text to give diplomacy a chance. It is time to halt the killing."
The Security Council resolution's passage follows last month's vote by the U.N. General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood—a move supported by 143 members of the World Body but vehemently opposed by Israel and the U.S. Only nine nations voted against recognizing Palestine as an independent state.