The Palestinians are happy, but the Israelis are livid; they are kicking and screaming. This is because the General Assembly designated 2014 as the United Nations International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian people.
Just when the Palestine issue was seen as being pushed back in favour of nuclear Iran, the Syrian crisis and the remnants of the Arab Spring, something happened, some would say unbelievable, in terms of international diplomacy. The United Nations today is no longer concerned with superpower and big power politics, but is going back to basics despite the veto wielders in the Security Council. Against all expectations, it is thrusting the Palestinian case back into international limelight. When the vote was cast on November 26, the overwhelming majority in the General Assembly, 108 countries, voted for the resolution, seven opposed it — including the US, Canada and Australia — while 54 abstained. Most of these are European nations that vote as one bloc under the European Union and whose abstention is effectively taken as support for Palestinian solidarity and statehood.
Come January 1, 2014, UN’s Palestinian solidarity year will start in full swing, with continuing activities to educate and lobby, to make people more aware of what happened to the Palestinians in the past and how they were uprooted from their land and made into stateless refugees across the Middle East, and what is happening to them today and their plight under Israeli occupation.
On a broad level, there can be no doubt the year is instituted to sustain a push in the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations for a final peaceful solution that has long been handicapped, hobbling and moving in fits and starts. This despite the fact that the Middle East peace conference, now long forgotten, was held way back in 1991, and the Oslo process in 1993, which paved the way for the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
While not saying it in so many words, Israel has been the prime culprit for this delay, with stalling tactics, dragging its feet, putting obstacles in the path of Palestinian negotiators and/or creating a stumbling set of issues regarding its security that keeps frustrating negotiations. The General Assembly’s move to grant a one-year solidarity, instead of its token November 29 Solidarity Day, which it held since 1977, is an action to shake up Israel from its self-inflicted stupor and false consciousness that the Palestinian issue is not a problem that will simply go away. Part of the creation of the false consciousness is the land theft and demolition of houses in the West Bank and occupied Arab East Jerusalem and other occupied Arab land like the Golan Heights.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) states that since 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, it has demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian homes. Israel has been populating the Occupied Territories with Jewish colonists — a move that has been happening willy-nilly on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, although dismantled in 2005, and in Arab East Jerusalem, despite paying lip service to peace negotiations. And in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel has demolished more than 500 Palestinian houses in 2013. This is just the beginning of demolitions earmarked at 15,000 Palestinian homes.
This is to make way for new Israeli residents. The Israeli government has been approving thousands and thousands of apartments and residential blocks for Israeli colonists. There are plans by the Israeli Jerusalem Municipality to build 200 residential blocks with between 40 and 70 apartments in each. These are going on under the guise of the international community. Many, however, are still keeping a stiff upper lip, hoping the UN Year of Solidarity with the Palestinians will force Israel to desist from such activities in 2014 because the Palestinian case will be under global spotlight. And so, any back-handed action made by Israel will be there for all to see. But will Israel care, many may ask, judging from past experiences. Well, it may not, but all eyes will be on it, constantly tarnishing its image in front of its friends. It is no doubt the next 12 months will be filled with activities that will highlight the plight of Palestinian people, the need to end Israeli occupation and establish a Palestinian state, alongside the Israeli one.
What is also seen as important is that the UN is making it a point to work with governments, organisations and civil society institutions around the world to make the UN Year of Solidarity with the Palestinians a success. This is a first-time development where this international organisation will be working in unison on different governmental and grass roots levels to push the Palestinian issue forward, make people more aware and bring greater pressure to bear on Israel to move forward on the deadlocked peace process.
What is heartening as well is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon taking a personal interest in the UN Year of Solidarity with the Palestinians, emphasising that there has to be a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders, alongside Israel, and that occupied Jerusalem should be the capital of the two states, which is particularly irksome for the Zionist state and that the issue of millions of refugees from the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars would have to be settled. He makes a befitting quote when he says: “We cannot afford to lose the current moment of opportunity ... the goal remains clear — an end to the occupation that started in 1967 and the creation of a sovereign, independent and viable state of Palestine, living side by side in peace with a secure state of Israel.” These are strong words indeed.
What the United Nations is doing this time has to be praised. Former British prime minister Harold Wilson once said: “A week is a long time in politics.” Palestinians, Israelis and diplomats will surely now be contemplating what a whole year will do for the Palestinian issue and how Israel will fare after the end of 2014.
Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a Phd in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.
