Instead of commemorating the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People as designated by the UN decades after the organisation bolstered Israel’s colonialism in Palestine, a better alternative is to revisit Cuba’s reasons for opposing and voting against the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
Cuban opposition to the Plan was articulated by the country’s delegate to the UN, Dr Ernesto Dihigo. Unlike rhetoric emanating from the international organisation, Dihigo started by dispelling the Zionist narrative and exposing the UN’s early involvement in sabotaging the concept of human rights, from a legal and humanitarian perspective.
Several issues were identified by Dihigo, starting with the absence of legal value in the Balfour Declaration and the Partition Plan’s refusal to safeguard the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. He argued that the Partition Plan “goes against the free determination of the peoples,” reminding the UN of its departure from alleged democratic values by pointing out the inconsistencies of the organisation in describing partition as a recommendation. Dihigo insisted upon clearly defined terms: “…neither does it seem possible to us to uphold that the project is a mere recommendation, since any recommendation implies the possibility of not being accepted, and the approved plan undoubtedly has coercive character.” Dihigo refuted the arguments of Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine: “It is not a title for them to receive what does not belong to them, much less if in order to do it, others with better right have to be dispossessed by force.”
Rebuking the UN, the Cuban delegate stressed, “We have solemnly proclaimed the principle of free determination of the peoples, but with great concern we see that when the time has come to enforce it we forget it.”
Read: On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, their plight is painful to see
In 1977, the UN came up with the decision to mangle history even further by proclaiming the anniversary of the Partition Plan to be the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, thus attempting to displace, in terms of priority, a resolution that approved colonialism by what remains purely symbolic remembrance.
On its website, the UN’s brief description of the origins of the futile “solidarity” compounds its original error by reaffirming adherence to the two-state compromise, another derivative of the Partition Plan. It also encourages member states “to continue to give the widest support and publicity to the observance of the Day of Solidarity.” To emphasise support for a conjecture that attempts to conceal the international community’s human rights violations against Palestinians is a clear indication of the betrayal and isolation inflicted upon the land and its people in order to uphold colonial expansion. The statement is a reflection of how the UN requires member states to support its anti-human rights agenda.
Likewise, Abbas’s address to a UN meeting in New York yesterday, as reported by Wafa news agency, validated the international organisation’s methods. Reminders of Israel’s violations of UN resolutions, including Resolution 181, are also a reflection of UN collusion with Israel. The result is constant grovelling that is making a spectacle out of Palestinian dispossession within the same entity that approved Zionism’s colonial plunder in the first place.
There is no chance of the Palestinian Authority seeking to construct a narrative that is in line with the historical process. Instead, it has opted for acquiescing to demands orchestrated by the international community, including the yearly charade of purported remembrance. An alternative to accommodating the UN’s insistence on complacency would be to remember Cuba’s principled stance against both the Partition Plan and Zionist colonisation, thus overturning the oblivion which the UN is always seeking to accomplish in favour of Israel.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.