It may not ease the daily pain of occupation and blockade or the endless anguish of refugee status and exile or the continual humiliations of discrimination and second class citizenship, but the admission of Palestine to membership in UNESCO is for so many reasons a step forward in the long march of the Palestinian people toward the dignity of sunlight! This notable event in Paris illuminates one path that leads to self-determination, but also brings into the open some of the most formidable obstacles that must be cleared away if further progress is to be made.
The simple arithmetic of the UNESCO vote, 107 in favor, 14 opposed, 52 abstentions, and 21 absent fails to tell the story of how one sidedness of the vote. Toting up the for and against votes obscures the wicked arm twisting, otherwise known as geopolitics, that induced such marginal political entities as Samoa, Solomon Islands, Palau, and Vanuatu to stand against the weight of global opinion and international morality by making a meaningless gesture of opposition to the Palestinian application for admission as member to UNESCO. This is not meant as an insult to such small states, but is intended to lament their vulnerability to powerful American pressures hoping to distort the perception of world public opinion by making the admission issue seem more contested than it is.
Such a distortion makes a minor mockery of the prevailing pretension that governments are able to offer adequate representation to the peoples of the world. It also illustrates the degree to which formal political independence may obscure a condition of de facto dependence as well as makes plain that voting patterns within the United Nations System should never be confused with aspirations to establish at some future time a functioning global democracy in substance as well as procedure. As an aside, geopolitical maneuvers consistently compromise the electoral process within the UN System, especially in the Security Council, and to a lesser extent, in the General Assembly and other UN institutional arenas. This actuality of the UN as a political actor demonstrates the urgency and desirability of establishing a global peoples parliament that would at least provide a second voice whenever a UN policy debate touches on issues of human concern.
What may be the most impressive aspect of the UNESCO vote is that despite a vigorous U.S. diplomacy of threat and intimidation, the Palestinian application for membership easily carried the day. There was enough adherence to principle by enough states to provide the necessary 2/3rds vote even in the face of this craven American diplomatic effort to please Israel, an effort reinforced by punitive action in the form of refusing further financial support for UNESCO, which amounts to some $60 million for the current year, and in the future, 22% of the organization’s annual budget of $643 million in 2010-11 (which is projected as $653 million for 2011-12). Actually this withholding of funds is an American policy embedded in ambiguous legislation that derives from the early 1990s, and so for once a preposterously the pro-Israeli action cannot be blamed on the present Congress, although it seems obvious that Congress would have taken the same steps or worse if given the chance. The leaders of both parties have made no secret of their desire to make the most of this new opportunity to draw fresh UN blood. Indeed rabid pro-Israel members of Congress are already showboating their readiness to do far more than the law requires so as to manifest the extreme character of their devotion to Israel. This unseemly punishment of UNESCO (and indirectly, the peoples of the world) for taking a principled stand expresses a more sinister attitude than merely the pique of being a poor loser. The American defunding move, taken without even a few words of regret, amounts to a totally irresponsible willingness to damage the indispensable work of cultural and societal cooperation on international levels just to make the childish point that there will be a price tag attached whenever the wishes of Israel suffer a setback at the UN, with the United States ready always to serve as the dutiful enforcement agent.
This sorry train of events gives governments of other states an excellent opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to human wellbeing and greater independence in global policy arenas by quickly acting to restore confidence in the UN. One way to do this is to overcome this unanticipated UNESCO budget deficit with a series of voluntary contributions to the UNESCO budget. What would deliver an instructive message to Washington and Tel Aviv would be a special funding campaign on behalf of UNESCO that generated more money than is being withheld. It seems an appropriate time to demonstrate once and for all that such strong arm fiscal tactics are no longer acceptable and often backfire in the post-colonial world. Such an outcome would also confirm that the geopolitical tectonic plates of world order have shifted in such a way as to give increasing prominence to such countries as China, India, Russia, Brazil, and South Africa all of whom voted to admit Palestine to UNESCO. At least for the moment in this limited setting we might get a glimpse of a genuine ‘new world order’! The Security Council has proved unable and unwilling so far to change its two-tier structure to accommodate these shifts in the geopolitical landscape, but these countries still kept on the sidelines of UN activities can reinvent world politics by becoming more active and autonomous players on the global stage. It is not necessary to wait any longer for France and Britain to read the tea leaves of their decline accurately enough to acknowledge that their role on the global stage has permanently diminished, and if these governments want an effective UN it is past time for them to step aside and let the rising non-West states run the show for a while, starting with giving up their claim to permanent seats at the UNSC. Admittedly, I am indulging some wishful thinking. I have no illusion that these ex-colonial powers will act responsibly. International history instructs us that most states would rather see world order collapse than to defuse a governance crisis by giving up entrenched, yet outmoded, privileges.
Perhaps, more enduring than the UNESCO vote itself is the reinforced image of the wildly inappropriate role given to the United States to act as intermediary and peacemaker in seeking to resolve the underlying conflict and ensure the realization of Palestinian rights that have been so cruelly denied for more than six decades. Observers as diverse as Michel Rocard, the former Socialist Party Prime Minister of France, and Mouin Rabbani, a widely respected Palestinian analyst of the conflict, each reach a common conclusion that this discordant American campaign to thwart an elemental Palestinian quest for legal recognition and political participation, establishes beyond all reasonable doubt, although such a reality should long have been apparent to even the most casual serious observer of the conflict, that the time has come to remove the United States from its presiding role with respect to the resolution of this conflict. It has always verged on the absurd to expect justice, or even fairness, to flow from a diplomatic framework in which the avowed and extremely partisan ally of the dominant party puts itself forward as ‘the honest broker’ in negotiations in a setting where the weaker side is subject to military rule, exile, and the continuous violation of its basic rights. To have given credibility to this tripartite charade for so many years is itself a commentary on the weakness of the Palestinian position, and the importance at this stage that Palestinian representative insist henceforth on a balanced international framework as a precondition for any future negotiations. Without such balance there is not the slightest prospect of producing a sustainable and just peace through diplomacy. Regrettably the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have yet to repudiate the Oslo era of phony peace negotiations, and astonishingly seem even now to be ready to resume talks if only Israel announces a temporary and partial freeze on settlement expansion. It is disappointing that the Palestinian Authority/PLO still is willing to endow this negotiating process with potential credibilit.
Yet to find a new framework does not mean following the incredibly Orientalist prescription proposed by Rocard: “The Americans have lost their moral right to leadership in resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict. It is time for Europe to step into the fray.” As if Europe had recently demonstrated its capacity for rendering justice because it carried out the NATO intervention in Libya! As if the colonial heritage had been suddenly rebranded as a positive credential! As if the Americans ever had a ‘moral right’ to resolve this conflict that was only now lost in the UNESCO voting chamber! It is not clear how a new diplomacy for the conflict that is finally responsive to the situation of the parties, the region, and the world should be structured, but it must reflect at the very least the new realities of an emergent multipolarity skewed toward the non-West. To be provocative for once, maybe Turkey, Brazil, Egypt, and India should now constitute themselves as a more legitimate quartet than that horribly discredited quartet composed of the United States, the EU, Russia, and the UN, and assisted by its Special Envoy, the talented Mr. Blair.
Returning to the UNESCO controversy, it is worth noting the words of denunciation used by Victoria Nuland, the designated State Department spokesperson. She described the vote as “regrettable, premature” contending that it “undermines our shared goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East.” Even Orwell might be dazed by such an archly diversionary formulation. Why we may ask was the vote regrettable and premature, and not the reverse: welcome and overdue? After all to work for the preservation of religious and other world heritage sites within the halls of UNESCO or to promote safe sanitation and clean drinking water for the poorest countries is hardly subversive of global stability by any sane reckoning. After enduring occupation for more than 44 years, it qualifies as comedic to insist that Palestine must not yet come in from the cold because such an entry would be ‘premature.’ And how can it be claimed that Palestine participation within the UN System ‘undermines’ the ‘shared goal’ of regional peace in the Middle East? The only answer that makes any sense of the American position is say that whatever Israel says is so is so, and the United States will act accordingly, that is, do whatever Israel wants it to do in the global arena. Such kneejerk geopolitics is not only contrary to elementary considerations of law and justice, it is also monumentally irrational and self-defeating from the perspective of the national wellbeing of the United States and future peace in the region and beyond. It also sets a horrible precedent by the absence of any ‘decent respect for the opinions of mankind.’
What in the end may be most troubling about this incident is the degree that it confirms a growing impression that both the United States and Israel have lost the capacity to serve their own security interests and rationally promote the wellbeing of their own people. This is serious enough with respect to the damage done to their societies by such maladroit behavior, but recognizing that these two military heavyweights who both possess arsenals of nuclear weaponry are well on their way to becoming rogue states is frightening to contemplate. These are two of the few governments in the current world that continue to rest their future security almost exclusively on an outmoded reliance on hard power investments in military capabilities and accompanying aggressive ideas about the effectiveness of military solutions. The implications of this approach are potentially catastrophic for the region and the world. When Israel alienates Turkey, its only surviving friend in the Middle East, and then refuses to take the minimal steps to heal the wounds caused by its recklessly violent behavior, one has to conclude that the Israeli sense of reality has fallen on hard times! And when Israel pushes the United States to lose this much social capital on the global stage by standing up for its defiance of international law as in relation to rejecting the recommendations of the Goldstone Report or refusing to censure the expansion of its unlawful settlements or the collective punishment of Gaza, there is no longer much doubt that Israeli foreign policy is driven by domestic extremism that then successfully solicits Washington for ill-advised implementation. And now, this furious beating of war drums in relation to Iran provides tangible confirmation that these severe indictments of American and Israeli behavior need to be taken seriously before it is too late!
The situation in the United States is parallel. Many excuse, or at least explain, America’s unconditionally irrational support for Israel as produced by the fearsome leverage exerted by AIPAC over electoral politics in the country as associated with the political activities of the Congress and rationalized by conservative think tanks. But what this explanation says is that the United States Government, like Israel, has also lost the capacity to pursue a sensible foreign policy in a crucial region of the world that reflects its own national interests, much less provide leadership based on a wider commitment to a stable and just Middle East. The Arab Spring offered the United States a second chance so to speak to overcome its long embrace of vicious autocratic rule in the region, but this opportunity is being senselessly squandered on the altar of subservience to the vindictive whims, expansionist visions, and paranoid fears of the Netanyahu/Lieberman governing coalition in Israel.
Welcoming Palestine to UNESCO is a day of celebration and vindication for the Palestinian people, and a political victory for PA/PLO leadership, but it is also a day when all of us should reflect upon the wider Palestinian tragedy and struggle, and encourage further steps forward, including membership in such other components of the international system as the World Health Organization, the International Criminal Court, UNICEF and the International Court of Justice. If the U.S. Government were to continue its defunding tactic as Palestine gained admission after admission, its influence and reputation in the region and the global stage would certainly take a nosedive. Yet the United States is likely to be rescued not by intelligently backing off, but by the degree to which the PA/PLO seems ready to settle for UNESCO, and save other initiatives for some future season, apparently unwilling or unable to cope with further defunding as complemented by Israel’s withholding from Ramallah tax revenues needed to pay the salaries of its West Bank bureaucracy.
UNESCO has given a momentary respite to those who were completely disillusioned by what to expect from the UN or the system of states when it comes to Palestinian aspirations (remember all those unimplemented resolutions passed by overwhelming majorities in the General Assembly and then never acted upon), and instead put their hope and efforts into the initiatives of global civil society, especially the growing BDS campaign and efforts to break open the Gaza blockade by continuing to send ships carrying humanitarian goods to the Gazans. Now is certainly not the time to shift attention away from such grassroots initiatives, but it does suggest that there are many symbolic battlefields in the ongoing legitimacy war being waged for Palestinian self-determination, and several of the more promising opportunities are situated within the network of institutions comprising the United Nations. Of course, becoming a member of UNESCO is the beginning, not the end, of making use of these institutional affiliations to advance the struggle of Palestine to realize the rights of all of its people, those under occupation, those in refugee camps in neighboring countries, and those in the Palestinian diaspora. But it is likely to be also the temporary end, given PA/PLO timidity and the financial blackmail to which it is being subjected.
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
An American Awakening?
5 OctThe exciting presence of protestors on Wall Street (and the spread of the #OccupyWallStreet protests across the country) is a welcome respite from years of passivity in America, not only in relation to the scandalous legal and illegal abuses of comprador capitalists, but also to the prolongations of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a shocking disregard of the impinging challenges of climate change, a rising Islamophobic tide at home, and a presidency that seems less willing to confront hedge fund managers than jobless masses. But will this encouraging presence be sustained in a manner that brings some hope of restored democracy and social wellbeing at home and responsible law-oriented leadership abroad?
There is little doubt that this move to the streets expresses a deep disillusionment with ordinary politics based on elections and governing institutions. Obama’s electoral victory in 2008 was the last hope of the young in America who poured unprecedented enthusiasm into his campaign that promised so much and delivered so little. Perhaps worse than Obama’s failure to deliver, was his refusal to fight, or even to bring into his entourage of advisors some voices of empathy and mildly progressive outlook. From his initial appointment of Rahm Emmanuel onwards, it was clear that the Obama presidency would be shaped by the old Washington games waged by special interests, as abetted by a Republican Party leaning ever further to the right, a surging Tea Party that is pushing the opposition to the outer extremes of irrational governance, and a Democratic Party that is trying to survive mainly by mimicking Republicans. If such a portrayal of ordinary politics is more or less correct it is a wonder that a more radical sense of America’s future took so long to materialize, or even to show these present signs of displeasure with what is and engagement with what might be.
For those of us with our eyes on the Middle East two observations follow. The extraordinary falling back from Obama’s speech in Cairo of 2009, which was, contrary to how it was spun by the pro-Israeli media, a very cautious approach to the Israel/Palestine conflict, but at least forward looking in its realization that something more had to be done if negotiations were ever to be more than a charade. The speech contained lots of reassurances for Israel, especially it treated the dispute as essentially territorial (withdrawal to 1967 borders, which deliberately pretends that refugee and exile rights of Palestinians are irrelevant to a just peace), and only seemed to project balance when it insisted on a suspension of settlement expansion as a confidence-building step toward a new cycle of negotiations. It really was a most modest request to insist that Israel temporarily stop expanding settlements that were almost unanimously seen as flagrant violations of Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention and posing a real threat to the viability of an independent Palestinian state. When Israeli leaders and their zealous American backers indicated ‘no go,’ the Obama administration back peddled with accelerating speed, gradually isolating the United States on the global stage by the unconditionality of its support for Israel even in situations where Israel is seen by virtually the entire rest of the world as defiant toward international law. Besides this, a few months ago the leaked Palestine Papers underscored Israel’s disinterest in a negotiated solution to the conflict even in the face of Palestinian of huge Palestinian Authority concessions behind closed doors. Of course, Obama should not take the whole blame as Congress has outdone him when it comes to support for partisan positions that often seem to outdo the Knesset.
The latest phase in American foreign policy in relation to the conflict is associated with the American threat to veto the statehood bid of Palestine in the UN Security Council, coupled with its arm-twisting efforts to induce others to vote with the U.S. against statehood or at least abstain, so that Palestine will not get the nine affirmative votes it needs to receive a positive recommendation and the U.S. will be spared the embarrassment and backlash of casting a veto. The shrillness of the sterile call by Obama in his 2011 speech to the General Assembly to the parties to resume negotiations after almost twenty years of futility, and for the Palestinians the effects were far worse than mere failure (the ordeal of occupation, loss of land to settlements, annexation wall, road infrastructure). It should finally be understood. Time is not neutral. It helps Israel, hurts Palestine.
Disavowing American party and institutional politics and situating hope with the arousal of progressive forces in civil society is different from concluding that the Wall Street protests is more than a tantalizing flash in the pan at this stage. Even this cautionary commentary should make it obvious that the events owe their primary inspiration to Tahrir Square (with a surprising initial push from the Canadian anti-consumerist organization Adbusters, previous mainly known for its irreverent and vaguely anarchistic magazine by the same name), especially the ethos of a nonviolent leaderless, programless spontaneous rising that learns day by day what it is about, who it is, and what is possible. Of course, the stakes for activists are much lower than in Egypt or elsewhere in the Middle East, as there is little risk of death at this point on American streets. At the same time, the monsters of Wall Street are not quite as potent a unifying target for an militant opposition as was the grim personage of Hosni Mubarak, cruel autocrat of more than three decades, and so it may be harder to transform the protests into a sustainable movement.
In the end, we must hope and engage. The beginnings of hope are rooted in the correctness of analysis, and so we can be thankful that this initiative places its focus on financial and corporate structures, and not on the state. Further along these lines, if the struggle will gain momentum it will be totally thanks to politics-from-below. The implicit not so subtle point is that the center of power over the destinies of the American people has shifted its locus from Washington to New York, and from the penthouse to the the basement!! We’ll see!!
Tags: Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel, Middle East, Obama, Palestine, Palestinian people, United States, Wall Street