Last week at the UN General Assembly, the Palestinian Authority further escalated its conflict with Israel by ramming forward a troubling resolution. A piece of overt political theater, it cruelly ignored Israel’s basic right to protect its civilians, and warped reality by erasing the obvious core-conflict issue of Palestinian terrorism. As the world’s top diplomats converge on New York to build a better future, this resolution deserves condemnation by anyone who actually desires Middle East peace.
The document makes a slew of absurd demands: total Israeli withdrawal in six months from the “Palestinian territories” of Judea and Samaria, much of Jerusalem (including the Jewish holy sites of the Temple Mount and Western Wall), and bafflingly, Gaza (from which Israel unilaterally withdrew in 2005). Settlement of millions of people of Palestinian descent, most of whom have lived as citizens of other states for decades, in sovereign Israel. A blacklist of diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. Sanctions against various Israeli officials.
These would be head-scratchers even in a vacuum – logistically, legally and morally – but even more so considering the events of the past year. Generally, the Western world tries not to gift barbaric terror groups their exact war aims after they carry out devastating massacres. Imagine, for example, that the UN handed Al-Qaeda a regional caliphate after its attacks on the World Trade Center.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan holds up a picture of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar during a special session of the UN General Assembly regarding the Palestinian bid for full membership to the UN, at UN headquarters in New York City on May 10.
CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
But by ignoring the last 11 months, the UN’s Palestinian resolution does exactly that.
What it omits is even more telling than what it includes. In the fantasy world of this resolution, Hamas did not invade Israel on October 7th, murder nearly 1,200 civilians and take some 250 hostages. Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) did not spend the next eleven months launching thousands of missiles at Israeli population centers. Neither did Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen or any other proxy of the Ayatollahs in Tehran.
In this make-believe world, Israel did not unilaterally withdraw from Gaza in 2005, hand the territory to the Palestinians and give them a chance to build a society everyone hoped would set the stage for lasting peace.
No: in the resolution’s twisted reality, there is no Hamas or Hezbollah. Israel was never attacked, but even if it was, it has no right to defend itself. Jews have no connection to the ancient Jewish homeland. Also, Israeli Christians, Muslims, Druze and other religious minorities somehow do not exist.
The resolution ignores ancient and modern history, calling for Israel to withdraw unconditionally from areas where it is facing devastating terror attacks at this very moment. “Its adoption would not,” in the words of the US Ambassador to the UN, “save Palestinian lives…or reinvigorate the peace process.”
Centrally, it conveniently forgets about the painstakingly-negotiated agreements – the Oslo Accords – that set very clear (and as-of-yet unmet) benchmarks for Palestinian recognition of Israel and renunciation of violence in order to move toward Palestinian autonomy.
The last time Israel unilaterally withdrew from territory without these assurances was Gaza, 19 years ago. We all know what happened: Hamas took over with Iranian backing and turned the area into a “launching pad for its rampage of killing of Israelis while systematically using Palestinian civilians as human shields,” as per the Czech UN Ambassador.
It led not to peace, but to years and years of war.
Today, Palestinian leadership still cannot bring itself to negotiate or make any meaningful compromise. Instead, it chooses to wage war against Israel militarily and diplomatically, perpetuating the decades-long conflict by aiming to extract concessions from Israel through bad-faith international pressure.
This is the same PA, under President Mahmoud Abbas, who failed to condemn the Hamas massacres, kidnappings and sexual atrocities of October 7th.
It’s been almost a year, and his silence is deafening. On the contrary, Abbas and his cronies justify the attacks on TV, and formally pay lavish salaries to anyone who succeeds in murdering a Jew.
Israel, meanwhile, has repeatedly demonstrated its sincere desire to live in peace with its neighbors, Palestinians included, and has never rejected serious proposals – as evidenced by peace agreements with Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco.
Recall also that Israel made territorial concessions to achieve many of these agreements.
Turning to bullying through international forums does not change the facts.
Endorsing this one-sided Palestinian effort now, less than a year after October 7th, only emboldens terrorists and terror supporters. And it signals to Hamas and the PA that they need not abandon their genocidal ideology or cease terror against Israeli civilians.
Likewise, condemning the resolution’s glaring flaws does not minimize international law, but uphold it. It’s a necessary stance against the politicization and misuse of institutions like the UN, against Palestinian rejectionism and against perpetuating cycles of terror and conflict with global impunity.
It doesn’t matter what libels are circulated in, and by, the United Nations. The best way to bring peace to our region is simply to stop rewarding terror and make clear that all parties must show up to the negotiating table.
A good start would be calling on the Palestinian Authority to distance itself from Hamas and condemn the October 7th atrocities. It must recognize that Israel is here to stay, and join us in our quest to build a more peaceful Middle East.
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Ofir Akunis is Consul General of Israel in New York.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
