Israel’s ‘war’ against the UN

Israel’s attacks on UNIFIL (the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) mark a further deterioration in a relationship that has been difficult since the founding of Israel in 1948.

According to a leaked UNIFIL report, Israel has attacked UN positions 12 times, at times even using white phosphorus against soldiers mandated by the international community to keep the peace.

The use of white phosphorus, a wax-like substance that burns at temperatures high enough to melt metal has been condemned by rights groups.

Israel’s military forcibly entered a clearly marked UN base and is suspected of using the incendiary chemical white phosphorus close enough to injure 15 peacekeepers, according to a confidential report https://t.co/iG33QJDuuL pic.twitter.com/rxjtRfHQM0

— Financial Times (@FT) October 22, 2024

A UNIFIL spokesperson confirmed the attacks, saying: “Since [Israel’s army] began incursions into Lebanon on 1 October, UNIFIL has recorded about 25 incidents resulting in damage to UN property or premises,” referencing the number between 1 and 20 October.

The bulk of those attacks, the spokesperson said, had been Israeli fire or actions. However, others had come from unknown sources, he added.

“Five peacekeepers were hurt in three separate incidents at our headquarters, and 15 peacekeepers suffered symptoms after inhaling an unknown smoke released by the IDF (Israeli army) in Ramyah on 13 October, which caused skin irritation and gastrointestinal symptoms,” he said.

Without testing capabilities, the spokesperson added, UNIFIL has been unable to identify what the smoke was.

Israel has demanded that the UN withdraw its troops from the areas it has invaded, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that Hezbollah uses UNIFIL as “human shields”.

However, UNIFIL have stressed they remain in Lebanon under a UN mandate, which includes enforcing the Blue Line that separates Lebanon from Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

The mandate was established in 2000 and reinforced by UN Resolution 1701 in 2006.

“Our role in monitoring and reporting violations of Resolution 1701 is more important than ever,” the spokesperson said, “Hezbollah [sic] has fired rockets from near our positions, putting peacekeepers in danger.

“IDF tanks have taken shelter inside one of our positions, saying it was to avoid taking fire. We reiterate that … the inviolability of UN premises must be respected.”

Justifying the attacks on UN forces in Lebanon, Israeli Energy Minister Eli Cohen referred to the body as a “failed organisation” and UNIFIL as a “useless force” on Twitter in mid-October.

האו״ם הוא ארגון כושל ויוניפי״ל הוא כוח חסר תועלת שלא הצליח לאכוף את החלטה 1701, לא הצליח למנוע את התבססות חיזבאללה בדרום לבנון ולא נקט אצבע נגד הפגיעה של חיזבאללה באזרחי ישראל במשך כמעט שנה.

מדינת ישראל תעשה הכל להבטיח את ביטחון אזרחיה, ואם האו״ם לא יכול לסייע לפחות שלא יפריע,…

— אלי כהן | Eli Cohen (@elicoh1) October 14, 2024

Translation: “The UN is a failed organisation and UNIFIL is a useless force that failed to enforce Resolution 1701, failed to prevent Hezbollah from establishing itself in southern Lebanon and did not lift a finger against Hezbollah’s harm to Israeli citizens for almost a year.

“The State of Israel will do everything to ensure the safety of its citizens, and if the UN cannot help at least do not interfere, and move its people from the combat zones.”

A history of violence

The current conflict between Israel and the views of the international community does not exist in isolation but is the latest in a string of confrontations Israel has had with the UN.

Israel has attacked UN staff in Gaza, accused staff of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) of allying with armed groups, and repeatedly claimed the UN is anti-Semitic for every comment that is critical of its actions.

A Palestinian child receives a polio vaccination at an UNRWA clinic within the second phase of the polio vaccination campaign in Deir el-Balah on October 10, 2024 [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]

At present, a bill is circulating in the Israeli Knesset (parliament) that will ban UNRWA, the largest humanitarian provider in Gaza at a time of acute crises, from the enclave. Observers are confident the bill will pass.

On Tuesday, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied on its Hebrew X account the historical fact of the UN’s role in Israel’s establishment, claiming that Israel was founded solely through “victory…in the War of Independence”, which is what Israel calls the conflict that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in 1948.

https://x.com/IsraeliPM_heb/status/1846230453931348013

Translation: “Prime Minister’s Office: A reminder to the president of France: It was not the UN resolution that established the State of Israel, but rather the victory achieved in the War of Independence with the blood of heroic fighters, many of whom were Holocaust survivors – including from the Vichy regime in France.”

The English-language account did not carry a similar post.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has been barred from entering Israel over what the government says is his failure to “fully condemn” a missile strike by Iran on Israel in October.

Trying to discredit the UN

“The UN matters to people in Israel. That the country was founded by UN charter [in 1948] is part of the collective memory,” analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Tel Aviv.

“However, we’ve been seeing a gradual process of delegitimisation of the UN throughout the last few decades, when it has been portrayed as a bastion of anti-Israel or even anti-Semitic sentiment by Israel’s leaders.”

Ironically, one of the leading critics of the UN is Netanyahu, himself Israel’s former ambassador to the body from 1984 to 1988.

Israel’s PM Netanyahu addresses the 79th UN General Assembly in New York, US, on September 27, 2024 [Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]

Under his right-wing Likud party – in power since 2009 – and more recently during its alliance with Israeli extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox factions, confrontations have grown with the UN and, with them, the international body’s legitimacy challenged in the eyes of many.

“The UN often makes it easy for its critics,” Flaschenberg cautioned. “Guterres [the former secretary-general of Portugal’s Socialist Party] is a problem for many,” he said, describing the distrust of left-wing and liberal thought among Israel’s growing right wing.

Flaschenberg explained that “the UN Human Rights Council’s ‘obsession’ with Israel/Palestine is undeniable. The fact that a disproportionate amount of time is dedicated to us, makes it easy for Israeli critics of the UN to call it anti-Semitic.”

Contacted by Al Jazeera, a spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said, “The mandate of the high commissioner is to promote – universally and specifically with member states – the respect and protection of human rights in accordance with applicable international law and standards.”

Referring to High Commissioner Volker Turk, the spokesperson continued: “The high commissioner carries out his mandate impartially irrespective of by whom, when or where abuses and violations of international human rights law are committed.

“All actions of the Office are based on facts obtained through a rigorous monitoring and reporting methodology and assessed in accordance with relevant international legal standards (International Human Rights Law and International humanitarian law),” he added.

Gilad Erdan wore a yellow Star of David that reads “Never Again” while addressing the UN Security Council on October 30, 2023 [Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP Photo]

Earlier this year, the international community’s report on Israel’s action in Gaza, Anatomy of a Genocide, which contained numerous documented instances of rights abuses, was dismissed as biased or anti-Semitic by both Israel and its close military and diplomatic ally, the United States.

The US has also led condemnation of the UN’s open-ended Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the frequent accusations against Israel for its breaches of international human rights law in its treatment of the Palestinians under its control.

The same year, UN Watch, an NGO described by the AFP news agency as “a lobby group with strong ties to Israel”, claimed that the UN General Assembly (UNGA) had adopted 15 resolutions against Israel, compared with seven against the rest of the world.

Two of the UN’s 2023 resolutions concerned Israel’s actions in Gaza of that year, where more than 20,000 people had been killed.

Other resolutions reinforced previous rulings, such as those condemning Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank, or the construction of its security barrier, condemned as an apartheid measure by numerous rights groups.

Still others included the environmental damage Israel was charged with carrying out in the Palestinian territory it occupies, as well as in Lebanon.

A man walks along the Israeli separation barrier at the Qalandiya checkpoint on August 24, 2011, in Ramallah, occupied West Bank [Christopher Furlong/Getty Images]

Hardwired conflict

“Israel was both created by and early on was in violation of much of international law,” Paul Salem of the Middle East Institute said. “There’s a built-in conflict.”

Almost immediately after Israel was created by UN mandate came the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 700,000 Palestinians, who to this day are refugees, barred from returning, many living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank or neighbouring countries.

Likewise, the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, which Israel has maintained since 1967, puts it on the wrong side of the fourth Geneva Convention and demonstrates its disregard for UN edicts and international law, seen as inviolable the world over.

Some areas of dispute between the UN and Israel are more recent. Not least are the ongoing attacks on UN forces operating to enforce a resolution that Israel had been party to.

However, as Israel pivots its war northwards towards Lebanon, it has seemed to focus on UNIFIL.

“UNIFIL is in the way. They want them out of the way but this is not a legitimate or legal way to do it,” Salem said, pointing to diplomatic and legal restraints that protect UN peacekeepers.

“Perhaps Israel should withdraw from the UN and no longer claim that it wants to resolve things through diplomacy.

“Diplomacy is frustrating, I get it. It doesn’t always work, but that’s why the UN was created, so that things are not resolved by military force,” he said.

Changing Israel, changing UN

That the UN has changed since Israel’s creation is a fact.

The 51 member states in the UN that gave birth to Israel have grown to a General Assembly (UNGA) of 193 as countries gained their independence from colonisers.

In the UNGA, most of the world’s countries view the Palestinian cause as important.

Likewise, recently Israel has diverged even more dramatically from other members of the GA.

“I am pessimistic about Israel’s future as a liberal democratic state,” Richard Caplan of Oxford University said.

“At the moment, Israel is in survival mode, responding to immediate threats with blatant disregard for international humanitarian law, notwithstanding its repeated assertions that it operates the ‘most moral armed forces’ in the world.”

Even during a relatively optimistic period, with the Israeli economy strong after the COVID pandemic and relations between Israel and some Arab states warming, Caplan noted, Israel chose not to seek a political settlement to its conflict with Palestine and, by extension, help heal the rift with the UN.

“To the contrary, the brutal colonisation of the Occupied Territories continued unabated, with Netanyahu pledging to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state,” Caplan wrote by email.

An activist of the Palestine 194 campaign wearing a branded bib as they campaign for Palestine becoming the 194th state recognised by the UN [Atef Safadi/EPA]

“While there may be broad opposition to Netanyahu among Israelis, by and large Israelis tolerate, if not support, the occupation.

“Who are the members of the Knesset who have been elected on a platform to end the occupation? The only hope may be if Israel’s allies work earnestly towards establishing a Palestinian state and use their leverage … to pressure Israel to alter its behaviour.” he wrote.

“Otherwise I fear the future will bring more deracination, more ethnic cleansing, more violence.”