At times, it seems that US ambassadors to the United Nations wield vastly greater powers than the secretary-general himself.
From Madeleine Albright’s combative approach to politics, to John Negroponte’s decision (during the George W. Bush’s first administration) to veto any resolution, however slightly critical of Israel, to John Bolton’s brief but violent crusade against the UN to Susan Rice’s imperturbable, controlling style. For all these politicians, diplomacy did not mean achieving consensus based on compromises, but rather supremacy at any price.
As far as they were all concerned, a ‘good’ UN chief is the one who understood that US-Israeli interests were above else, and worked diligently to meet American expectations.
UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon was no exception.
It would be unfair to pin the blame for the UN’s unmitigated failure to solve world conflicts, to obtain any real global achievements and to challenge US hegemony on a single individual. But Ban was particularly ‘good’ at this job, as far as the US and its allies were concerned.
Indeed, as Ban’s second term as the UN chief comes to a close this December, it will be quite a challenge to produce another with his qualities. He certainly was the most ‘ideal’ man for the job.
The unspoken, but unmistakable rule about UN secretary-generals is that they must come across as affable enough so as not to be the cause of international controversies, but also flexible enough to accommodate the disproportionate influence of the US over the United Nations, particularly the Security Council.
At the end of their terms, the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of these secretaries has been largely determined by their willingness to play by the aforementioned rule, in other words, to be the puppet in the hands of rather devious and opportunistic puppet-masters.
Yet no other international conflict could convincingly highlight Ban’s quisling attitude like that of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. He laboured to achieve ‘balance’, when disproportionality is the most obvious attribute in a ‘conflict’ between a military occupier and an occupied nation.
Israel’s frequent outbursts against any criticism of the occupation, however guarded, voiced by Ban, helped present the man at times as an apparent crusader for Palestinian rights. However, Israel’s hyped sensitivity to any criticism, should not dissuade us from a serious examination of the man’s record.
Ban’s admonishment of Israel can come across as strong-worded and makes for a good media brief, yet his inaction and failure to confront Israel’s illegal violations of numerous resolutions passed by the very UN he headed, is unrivalled.
When Israel carried out its longest and most devastating war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, a large number of international law experts and civil society organisations signed a letter accusing the UN chief of failing to clearly condemn Israel’s unlawful action in the Occupied Territories, its targeting of civilian homes, and even the bombing of UN facilities, which killed and wounded hundreds.
The signatories included former UN Special Rapporteur, Richard Falk, who, along with the others, called on Ban to either stand for justice or resign. He did neither.
The signatories criticised him, specifically, for Israeli shelling of a school managed by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), in which ten civilians were killed.
In his ‘condemnation’ of the Israeli attack, Ban even failed to mention Israel by name, and called on ‘both parties’ to provide protection for Palestinian civilians and UN staff.
“Your statements have been either misleading, because they endorse and further Israeli false versions of facts, or contrary to the provisions established by international law and to the interests of its defenders, or because your words justify Israel’s violations and crimes,” they wrote.
And they were right. This is Ban’s signature policy — his ability to sidestep having to criticise Israel so cleverly (and, of course, the US and others) when that criticism could have, when needed most, at least given a pause to those who violate international law at will.
Considering this, many have perceived Ban’s farewell speech at the 71st session of the UN General Assembly on September 15, as a departure from his old reserved self. It was understood that it was the end of his term, and he was ready to show some backbone, however belatedly. Sadly, this was not the case.
“It pains me that this past decade has been lost to peace. Ten years lost to illegal [colony] expansion. Ten years lost to intra-Palestinian divide, growing polarisation and hopelessness,” he surmised, as if both parties — the occupied and the military occupier — were equally responsible for the bloodshed and that Palestinians are equally blamed for their own military occupation by Israel.
“This is madness,” he exclaimed. “Replacing a two-state solution with a one-state construct would spell doom: denying Palestinians their freedom and rightful future, and pushing Israel further from its vision of a Jewish democracy towards greater global isolation.”
But again, no solid commitment was made either way. Why would a ‘one-state reality’ — which incidentally happened to be the most humane and logical solution to the conflict — ‘spell doom’? And why is Ban so keen on the ethnic status of Israel’s ‘Jewish democracy’ vision, considering that it was Israel’s demographic obsession that pushed Palestinians to live under military occupation or live under perpetual racial discrimination in Israel itself?
More importantly, Ban often spoke without the legal frame of reference, which mandates him, as the UN chief, to urge action against those who brazenly and habitually violate international law.
The fact is that there is more to Ban’s muddled language than a UN chief who is desperately trying to find the balance in his words.
According to the document released by WikiLeaks, Ban collaborated secretly with the US to undermine a report issued by the UN’s own Board of Inquiry’s report on Israeli bombing of UN schools in Gaza during the war of December 2008-January 2009.
‘Collaborated’ is actually a euphemistic reference to that event, where Susan Rice — then the White House National Security Adviser — called on him repeatedly to bury the report, not to bring it to the council for discussion and, eventually, to remove the strongly-phrased recommendations of “deeper” and “impartial” investigations into the bombing of the UN facilities.
When Ban explained to Rice that he was constrained by the fact that the Board of Inquiry is an independent body, she told him to provide a cover letter that practically disowns the recommendations as those that “exceeded the scope of the terms of reference and [that] no further action is needed.”
Ban obliged.
When the UN chief is gone, he will be missed — but certainly not by Palestinians in Gaza or refugees in Syria, or war victims in Afghanistan. But certainly by the likes of Susan Rice.
In his last visit to Palestine in June, Ban told distraught Gazans that the “UN will always be with you.”
As tens of thousands there still stand on the rubble of their own homes, denied freedom to move or rebuild, Ban Ki-Moon’s statement is as unremarkable as the man’s legacy at the United Nations.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com. His books include “Searching Jenin”, “The Second Palestinian Intifada” and his latest “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.
