Charting dependency through the PA's draft resolution to the UNSC

“The Palestinians made sure to remove any mention of Israel’s status as a Jewish state from the draft, which means this is not a peace process, it’s a declaration of war.” The comment by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s minister of intelligence, international relations and strategic affairs, was a prelude to further attacks upon the Palestinian Authority’s resolution submission to the UN Security Council, for Palestinian statehood based upon the 1967 borders.

Israeli responses to the draft resolution were predictable. Steinitz declared the resolution a form of incitement “against our existence”, necessitating an Israeli response within Palestine and the international community. Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman declared the resolution a “Palestinian gimmicks” and urged the UNSC to divert its focus elsewhere to deal “with issues of true importance in the world”, while Housing Minister Uri Ariel advocated for retaliation in the form of further settlement expansion in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Constructing an alleged “declaration of war” out of a draft resolution hampered by international impositions and resolutions interpreting history from the dominant narrative is ludicrous. The resolution fails to address decolonisation, affirms the fragmentation of Palestinian territory, subjugates itself to economic dependence and entrenches the colonisation process by agreeing to “a third party presence” that would supervise Israel’s military occupation – all of which presumably lead to the “vision of a region where two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace within secure and recognised borders”.

The fallacy of recognised borders – the alleged desired outcome – should give enough indication of both Israel’s insistence upon finalising the colonisation process, as well as the PA’s commitment to ensuring its completion. The discrepancy between “borders” and “democratic states” is an issue that resurfaces constantly and remains unchallenged, due to the Palestinian leadership’s attempts to legitimise Palestinian rights through a colonial framework that fragments history. Israel’s establishment and subsequent recognition following the Nakba was achieved through force and terror, yet the resolution eliminates the foundations of the settler-colonial state to restrict “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force” to 1967.

Any validity which the resolution might have is diffused by the mechanisms that continue to cement the colonisation process. The lack of a congruent ideology that would strengthen Palestinian resistance is evident through the insistence of utilising international law and institutions for partial land reclamation, despite proof of these structures providing impediments to Palestinian liberation.

Symbolism, commencing with the so-called international year of solidarity with the Palestinians and culminating in recent efforts to garner a veneer of recognition at international level, have characterised Palestine’s on-going deterioration during this year. The US, meanwhile, is attempting to foment further oppression by scrutiny and opposition to “language” used in the draft resolution, despite the framework’s consistency with precedents that consolidate colonisation. What the PA has achieved through the draft resolution is the fragmentation of history in order to persist with futile diplomatic efforts, effectively expressing leniency for Israel’s state-sanctioned violence and negating, despite the historical enshrining in resistance charters, the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

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