The UN’s Most Recent Anti-Israel Resolution Does Nothing to Advance Peace

The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Friday pronouncing illegal any Jewish settlement in territory Israel acquired in 1967. Breaking with longstanding policy, the U.S., rather than exercising its customary veto, abstained from voting. As the Israeli ambassador Danny Danon remarked the resolution “sends a message” to Palestinian leaders that they “should continue on the path of terrorism and incitement [and] continue to seek meaningless statements from the international community.” In fact, argue Elliott Abrams and Michael Singh, the Security Council’s action only makes peace more difficult:

[T]he resolution fails to distinguish between construction in the so-called blocs—that is, settlements west of Israel’s security barrier in which about 80 percent of settlers live—and construction east of the barrier. Building in the major blocs is relatively uncontroversial in Israel and rarely the subject of Palestinian protests. . . .

[It also] demands the cessation of all settlement activities everywhere. This is unnecessary and unrealistic—Israelis will not bring life to a halt in towns that no one disputes they will keep—and is more likely to obstruct than facilitate the revival of peace talks. . . .

For the resolution does indeed dictate terms to Israel, not merely condemn settlement activity. It adopts, as noted above, the position that the 1967 lines, rather than today’s realities, should form the basis of talks—despite the fact that many Israeli communities east of those lines are decades old and that Jews have had a near-continuous presence in the West Bank for thousands of years.

It implicitly prejudges the disposition of east Jerusalem—one of the most contentious issues dividing the parties—by characterizing Israeli construction there as settlement activity, a stance Israelis reject. The resolution would demand an absolute halt to construction in east Jerusalem, even in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, something no Israeli government ever would agree to do.

Yet the resolution is conspicuously silent on Israeli concerns. There is no call for other states to recognize Israel’s existence—much less its status as a Jewish state—and end the conflict against it. . . . Peace in the Middle East will not be accomplished through a UN vote. Rather, it will require renewed U.S. leadership in the region and the rebuilding of relationships of trust with all of our partners there.

Read more at Washington Post

More about: Barack Obama, Israel & Zionism, Settlements, U.S. Foreign policy, United Nations

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF