[Peace] Mark LeVine | Tikkun: Why UNSC Res 2334 Matters a Lot More Than We Think

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/why-security-council-
resolution-2334-matters-a-lot-more-than-we-think



*[image: Tikkun]
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Editor's note: Few Americans are informed about the degree of distortions
in Israeli life and repression of Palestinian rights inevitably accompany
the Occupation of the West Bank, that are the background for the U.N.
Security Council resolution passed last week which made clear that Israeli
settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law.  Here are
a few headlines for one typical day (December 27, 2016) from the Israeli
newspaper Ha'aretz: "Israel Wrecks 18 Palestinian Structures for Every One
It Licenses in West Bank's Area C"; "Israel Education Minister Yair Lapid *(ed
note: from the 'centrist' Yesh Atid party) *promotes bill that would ban
anti-Occupation group  from Israeli schools  *(ed note: group is called
Break the Silence--a group of former Israeli soldiers who tell stories of
what they had been ordered to do while enforcing the Occupation of the West
Bank and the invasions of Gaza by the IDF); *and an editorial entitled
"Trump and Netanyahu: An Alliance of Bullies"* (referencing in part
Netanyahu's threats to punish countries that voted for the U.N. resolution)*.
Please read Tikkun magazine's contributing editor Mark LeVine whose
analysis (below) of why the U.N. vote last week has greater importance than
the U.S. media has yet to acknowledge should be widely circulated--so
please do so. --Rabbi Michael Lerner  RabbiLerner.Tikkun at gmail.com
Why Security Council Resolution 2334 Matters a Lot More Than We Think

*by Mark LeVine*

*Mark LeVine is professor of history at UC Irvine, distinguished visiting
professor at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, a
contributing editor at *Tikkun*, and author of numerous books, including
the just published *Struggle and Survival in Palestine/Israel*, co-edited
with Gershon Shafir (UC Press).*

Those who long ago succumbed to cynicism and hopelessness when it comes to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can find many reasons to discount the
importance of Security Council Resolution 2334, passed unanimously (14-0
with the U.S. as the only abstention) on December 23. It is certainly true
that Israel will ignore and indeed work actively to undermine the
Resolution just as it has ignored innumerable other resolutions demanding a
halt to settlement construction or expansion. As one activist tweeted
shortly after its passage, in all likelihood Israel will expand the seizure
of Palestinian land and construction of settlements just to thumb its nose
at the UN (and the departing President Obama) and to demonstrate the
irrelevance of the UN when it comes to the Occupation.

Observers looking for historical precedent will find it in the many other
Security Council and General Assembly resolutions that Israel has ignored
over the decades. As many journalists have pointed out, Obama has had the
worst record of any recent President when it comes to Security Council
resolutions criticizing Israel, vetoing every one that was put for a vote
until last week. In contrast, George W. Bush and his father allowed six and
eleven, respectively, to pass.

It is also true — as those who want to end this most horrible year on the
least optimistic note can point to — that the Resolution is grounded in
Chapter VI rather than Chapter VII of the UN Charter, meaning that it has
no enforcement mechanism (from sanctions to the use of force) to compel
Israel to implement it, but rather can only press for negotiations towards
that end.

Nonetheless, I think it is both unfair and inaccurate to consider the
resolution “toothless,” as many critics are labeling it. There are several
reasons why it in fact has some very deep teeth, if they haven’t been that
exposed yet. Some of these teeth are contained in the Resolution itself,
which once and for all puts to the lie any possible Israeli claim that it
has the legal right to indefinitely occupy, never mind build settlements
upon, any square meter of the territory it conquered in 1967. Specifically,
Article 1 of the Resolution’s text (crucially not part of the preamble,
which has less direct legal force) “reaffirms that the establishment by
Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967,
including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant
violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement
of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace.”

This serves two purposes. First, by “reaffirming” the illegality of the
entire settlement enterprise it reminds Israel that it has long been told
that the settlements are illegal; thus its half-century policy of creating
“facts on the ground” as a way to normalize the Occupation and the
settlement enterprise it has always been intended to support, has been for
nothing. This statement will no doubt give impetus to the International
Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation of whether it should take up the
Palestinian call to rule on the settlements. While a Chapter VI-based
resolution doesn’t have enforcement mechanisms, it does have powerful legal
validity, serving essentially as a judgment of international law in the
same way a Supreme Court decision decides on the ultimate constitutionality
of an American law. The settlements have now been unequivocally defined as
illegal by the highest authority on earth when it comes to defining and
making international law.

The settlement enterprise is the heart and raison d’etre of the Occupation,
which exists to perpetuate it. So in judging the entire enterprise to be
illegal the Security Council is, in theory, declaring that the Occupation
built around it is also inherently a violation of international law. This
opens Israel up to further potential prosecution for crimes committed in
the pursuance of the Occupation.

To be sure, no one imagines Israel will simply pull up stakes and uproot
over half a million settlers, especially in East Jerusalem and the main
settlement blocks. But the Resolution does hand a huge amount of
negotiating leverage to Palestinians—more in fact than they have ever
had—if and when final status negotiations begin, and the mandating of
tri-monthly reports by the Security General on Israel’s implementation—or
more likely, lack thereof—of its terms will keep the pressure publicly and
diplomatically on the Israeli government and strengthen calls to bring the
ICC and ICJ into the mix.

More directly, since the entirety of the settlements are illegal (the third
clause continues that the Council “will not recognize any changes to the 4
June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those
agreed by the parties through negotiations”), Israel will have to pay a far
higher price in land swaps or other negotiating positions in order to
expect Palestinians to relinquish what have now been clearly recognized
legally as their territory. Suddenly, shared sovereignty in East Jerusalem
and even a larger number of refugees allowed into Israel proper would seem
to be possible in any plausible peace deal.

In “reiterat[ing] its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease
all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including
East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in
this regard,” the second clause has used the most forceful language
possible. The Security Council could merely have “called upon” or used
similarly less compulsory language. Instead it has demanded an immediate
and complete halt not only in construction, but “activities.” Resolution
2334 might not have built-in mechanisms to enforce it, but it’s clearly far
more than a “recommendation” to Israel, as those who believe Chapter VI
resolutions have no binding authority or enforcement power would have us
believe (as one colleague who specializes in international law put it to
me, “With no enforcement mechanisms it’s largely symbolic. [At best] one
step forwards, two steps back”).

Since Israel has already declared its refusal to comply with UNSCR 2334,
the stage is now set for an ICJ and/or ICC option and decision that would
further place Israel in criminal violation of international law. Moreover,
there is little doubt these two bodies will fail to rule on the systematic
war crimes committed by Israel (and also, quite likely, by Hamas), which in
their routinization and constant repetition have reached the level of
crimes against humanity. It is quite conceivable that the actions of senior
Israeli leaders, and of Hamas as well, could be determined to be war crimes
by the ICJ, and/or various officials indicted for them by the ICC, with
far-reaching and extremely positive ramifications for ordinary Palestinians
and Israelis alike.

Moreover, while the Resolution doesn’t call for immediate sanctions against
Israel, the fifth clause “calls upon all States, bearing in mind paragraph
1 of this resolution, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between
the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since
1967.” This clearly is an invitation for boycotting any Israeli products or
services that in any way are tied to the settlements, which in turn gives
impetus by the slowly implemented EU policies to label, isolate, and
punish, if not prohibit, these products. This is not a full endorsement of
the BDS movement by any means, but it’s a huge step forward for raising
international public opinion and awareness about the settlements and will
have a major impact on their political economy.

Indeed, by “call[ing] upon both parties to act on the basis of
international law, including international humanitarian law” the seventh
clause reminds everyone that international law is still in force in the
Occupied Territories and thus ongoing violations by Israel or Hamas will
ultimately not go unpunished, even if the arc of justice remains long.

It is clear, then, that the Resolution does have teeth, even if they’re not
being immediately bared. But there is also another equally important
consequence of this Resolution, and that concerns U.S. domestic policy.
Specifically, the Resolution has shown precisely the split in the
Democratic Party and the American Jewish Community, between the true
progressives who will be the backbone of any resurgent populist party that
can speak to the concerns of the millions of voters who put Trump into
power, and those of the corporate elite, epitomized by Chuck Schumer and
Hillary Clinton and the entire establishment behind the presidential
election catastrophe, who are the main reason for this present sorry state.

We can expect the “Amen corner” of the Republican Party to go nuclear over
even the slightest criticism of Israel, just as we can expect the Jewish
establishment to do (as the ZOA’s Morton Klein put it, “Obama has made it
clear that he’s a Jew hating, anti-Semite”). What we see with the support
by Bernie Sanders and progressive Democrats for the Resolution, and by the
rising tide of truly progressive Jewish organizations such as Jewish Voice
for Peace, IfNotNow, and even J Street — and of course, *Tikkun* and its
related communities— is that uncritical, over-the-top support for Israeli
colonialism squares quite well with support for neoliberal, ultimately
anti-poor, and racist policies among Democrats.

   - In other words, the growing bonds between progressive Jews and the
   Movement for Black Lives, the Palestine solidarity movement, Native
   Americans as epitomized by Standing Rock, and for other movements grounded
   in the ongoing oppression of people of various colors other than
   (politically and economically) white is clearly going to divide the Jewish
   community—hopefully permanently—between those who support a Judaism based
   on the prophetic principles of righteous anger, justice, and compassion and
   those who support the idolatrous Judaism of money, power, and settlements
   (as Rabbi Michael Lerner has long and presciently described them in the
   pages of *Tikkun* magazine as well as in books such as *Jewish Renewal *
   and *Embracing Israel/Palestine*).


   - What this means is that the emerging generation of progressive Jews no
   longer has to choose between progressive values on the one hand, and the
   Jewish community establishment and Israel on the other. The establishment
   has made the choice for them, and as we’ve seen with the emergence of
   groups like Open Hillel, the new generation will not fall into the
   pro-Occupation line. The coalition of the future, the one that will not
   only heal American Judaism (and ultimately, Israeli Judaism as well), but
   help restore a progressive politics against the chauvinism and fascism of
   Trump and his minions, is now clear and is for once the same on both the
   domestic and foreign policy arenas.
   -
   - Security Council Resolution 2334 makes one final point to the world,
   which has implications far beyond Israel/Palestine: Human rights and
   international law can still matter — if they’re allowed to function as they
   were intended. One of the great tragedies of the postwar era has been the
   architecture of the UN Security Council, which included a veto for the five
   permanent members of the Security Council that has been abused horrifically
   by all of them in order to enable themselves and/or their allies and
   clients to get away with literally mass murder and crimes against humanity
   (whether it’s been the U.S. murdering three million Southeast Asians and
   more recently the disastrous invasion of Iraq or supporting the Israeli
   Occupation, or Russia’s ruinous wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya and now
   direct participation in the slaughter in Syria). Unfortunately, the veto
   power of the P5 can only be ended by a vote by the Security Council, which
   naturally the P5 would have no interest in passing.
   -
   - The only hope would be to apply so much pressure from the General
   Assembly on the major powers that they feel compelled to allow a change to
   the P5 veto (either necessitating more than one “no” vote by a permanent
   member or getting rid of it entirely) as part of the inevitable expansion
   of the permanent membership of the Council to include major emerging powers
   like India, Brazil, Indonesia, and/or South Africa. Such a change in the
   architecture of the Security Council would be the single most important
   event in diplomatic history since the creation of the United Nations, for
   it would finally force every country on earth equally to face the
   consequences of their actions before international law. Israel’s panic at
   this latest Resolution has shown us a glimpse of what a future would be
   like when those who’ve for so long been held unaccountable to international
   law suddenly feel themselves potentially slipping into its grasp. As the
   Putin-Trump era begins to unfold, the countries of the world would be wise
   to consider forcing the UN to give the rest of us a fighting chance before
   it’s too late.
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