clear

Creating new perspectives since 2009

UN provides a platform to manipulate Israeli violence into a legitimate necessity

June 24, 2014 at 4:15 pm

As the settler-colonial state intensified its outburst of violence under the guise of Operation Brother’s Keeper, the Palestinian leadership issued a statement urging the UN Security Council to address the ongoing collective punishment inflicted upon Palestinians in the West Bank.

According to the Palestine news and information agency WAFA, Israeli aggression, which has also resulted in murder and re-arrest of former prisoners, indicates that the settler-colonial state “is pushing towards more tension and towards an outburst”.

The move is reminiscent of duplicitous dealings in which the Palestinian leadership attempts to conjure an image of an entity at the service of the people while collaborating with Israeli forces, thus rendering itself fully complicit in the repercussions upon the Palestinian population.

In a statement issued on Saturday by the Executive Committee of the PLO, it was declared that the leadership “will not allow Israel to escape punishment for its premeditated aggression”.

As Palestinians express their indignation through protests against security coordination with Israel, the fuss created by illusions about the UN and the international community continues to unfold. In the past weeks, as scrutiny of the unity government dominated the media, scant attention was given to the resonance of statements purportedly supporting the decision which, above all, emphasised the continuity of compromise in order to safeguard the settler-colonial state.

Instead of clamouring for a cessation of Israeli violations allegedly carried out to discover the identity of the “kidnappers”, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has continued to endear himself to Israeli leaders through perpetual compliance, thus ensuring the swift deterioration of Palestine within the international arena.

Propaganda regarding the missing settlers has created a fabled narrative which the international community deems worthy of dissemination. Apart from the fact that any statement to the UN is already diluted due to the continued security coordination with Israel to the detriment of Palestinian civilians, the Palestinian leadership keeps committing the same error of resorting to the imperialist organisation that persists in protecting the settler-colonial state.

According to the Times of Israel, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power declared any criticism of Israel with regard to the brutal repression carried out in the West Bank “a red line”. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon failed to depart from his usual simultaneous deploring and commiserative stance, emphasising the return of the missing settlers in terms that diminished Israel’s inflicted “collateral damage”. To complete the scenario, Israeli settlers and mothers of the missing teenagers, one of whom described the happenings as “every mother’s nightmare”, further undermined the necessity to acknowledge the colonial violence suffered by Palestinians.

Abbas has achieved a lot in terms of depleting the Palestinian narrative at the international level. Rather than insisting upon the continuation of security-coordination, the international community, through the UN should have been challenged to alter their belief in the perverse fable that Israel is perpetrating.

The issue is no longer the missing settlers – it is about justifying colonial violence against Palestinians. If Abbas and the international community are serious about peace, let the mothers of all Palestinian detainees, disappeared, tortured and murdered assemble at the UN to express decades of lament, bereavement, displacement and death through colonial violence. The reverberation might possibly induce the dissolution of the decadent, imperialist organisation that needs perpetrators such as Israel and its international allies to safeguard its pathetic existence.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.