EVEN after the United States vetoed Friday the much awaited Gaza resolution in the UN Security Council (UNSC) the avenues for the member states of the UN Organization as a whole for a ceasefire and peace work have not gone to a dead end. Member states totaling 193 collectively or any single member state can make a request to the President of the General Assembly (GA) of the UNO to call a meeting of the GA to debate the urgency of the situation arising out of any conflict like that of Israel-Hamas war, a situation whose continuity can be a threat to a wider war or can endanger world peace and security. Then the GA President is obliged to call a meeting of his organization for debate over the critical issue/matter of international dimension.
Majority of the common readers all across the world do not know the actual strength of the UN Security Council membership as it is not the schools level teaching topic in any of the member state: the UN General Assembly consists currently of 193 member states; the UN Security Council comprises 15 members – five permanent among them with veto power and ten non-permanent members enlisted from among the General Assembly;
The veto-powered UNSC members are USA, UK, Russia, China, France. Veto is a form of an uncurtailed extraordinary international power that is beneficial and non-beneficial at the same time; a veto can block the operation of a UNSC mandate/resolution/ruling; to this extent the veto stalls the international justice; it can be helpful in promotion of an international lobby for any specific member state having integrally deeper ties with the veto power UNSC member.
Common observation is that the veto is an anti-justice, anti-fairness form of delegated power; if a veto cannot prevent an ongoing war or warring situation that would mean either a license to continue the embattled situation or an outright casus belli disrupting the smoothness of international relations and inter-dependent understanding which is a must need for international fair-play, justice, equity, security and peace. A Veto sacrifices these international essentials.
In the ongoing Israel-Hamas war (to the many it is not a war but bullets bouts of rival destructive armed clashes) the extra criticality of the ground and demographic situation is that Palestinian refugees camps are bombed, assaulted, structurally devastated by formal Israeli military; the overall aftermath being witnessed by the human eyes via floods of videos is that the civilian populations living in refugee camps stand targeted; kids, teens, women, disabled lot, hospitals, markets, commercial malls are destroyed or demolished by bombs, also sniped human bodies one can see, watch in the videos; this physical deteriorating human catastrophic scenarios have sent serial shock waves across the world; it is confirmed by the global reactions to the warred losses, bombs burnt sites are also alarming; open public condemnations, demonstrations, protests have become hourly common sight for everyone from all across the 191 world countries with the exception, of course, of India and Israel; but within Israel an ideological factionalism between the Jewry and the Torah Judaism has also openly surfaced before international public eyes; however governments of the international protesting populations seem mostly unmoved, they seem lukewarm to the war devastation; independent observers have commented that such governments stand ‘exposed’ in the context of sanctity of vocalized human rights and tragic human catastrophic conditions in warred or warring zones/regions/camps in the Middle East;
Actually a no-conflict lull between Israel and the Palestinians was critically fragile from day first in the absence of any permanent settlement of the UN-listed Palestine dispute; a 2-state solution with secure borders, Israel and Palestine living side by side is thus far a verbalized form, not formally a concrete outcome; had the UN General Assembly back in 1947 via its resolution number 181 demarcated the state of Palestine simultaneously with the birth of state of Israel a permanent peace for ever could have blessed the region; but under which expediency the UNGA neglected this vital geographic necessity is shockingly, not understandable at all. Was it an oblivious judgement or a mistake or a deliberate neglect gamble, a machination or an erasure of a people from the demographic map of the Middle East – it is beyond surface comprehension to any one today. But the lasting fact remains that Israel-Palestine conflict is resolvable only via 2-state settlement; for any one, for any nation to stand favorable for one state and deny the same status favor to the other one looks a minus value mentality.
—The writer, a retired Secretary in AJK Govt, is a senior columnist, based in Rawalpindi.
Email: shaheenalvi52@gmail.com,
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views expressed are writer’s own.
