By Marking “Nakba Day,” the UN Makes a Mockery of Its Own Rules and Resolutions

The United Nations held commemorations yesterday of the Nakba, the now-widespread term used by Palestinians to describe the birth of Israel. As Shany Mor explains, this Arabic word, literally meaning “disaster,” was originally employed to denote the catastrophic defeat of seven Arab armies at the hands of the fledgling Jewish state, but came to refer to the displacement of Palestinian refugees:

The transmutation of the Arabs’ failed effort to wipe out the Jewish state into their own cosmic tragedy, together with the adoption of this counter-narrative by intellectuals and self-styled humanitarians in the West, is noteworthy in itself. But for the UN, and the General Assembly specifically, to play along is particularly ironic for a number of reasons.

The Arab war against Israel was a war against a landmark resolution of the UN General Assembly (181) calling for the peaceful partition of British Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state. For the General Assembly itself to be marking this defeat as a “disaster” to be mourned is curious, to say the least. It was also the first major violation of Article 2 of the United Nations Charter, which forbade the “use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” Five of the seven Arab states . . . were UN members at the time.

Accepting partition would have resulted in the first ever Arab state in Palestine 75 years ago. The Arab rejection of partition and subsequent wars against Israel . . . were, for the Palestinians, the real disaster.

Read more at UnHerd

More about: Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Nakba, 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