Sugath Kulatunga

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres again called for a ceasefire in fighting between Israel and Hamas during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters on Tuesday, October 24. He said that It is important to also recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation,” But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”UNSG must be commended for that unequivocal statement on the events in Gaza and the background to it. He has demonstrated that he is no henchman of the US as the former holder of the esteemed post.

A few days back the UN General Assembly voted 120 for and only 14 against for a resolution calling for an immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza.”

The Palestine dilemma has an ugly history and is a direct result of colonial power play. The machinations of Britain and France against the Arabs of Palestine commenced in 1916 with a deal secretly signed between Sykes and Picot (two British and French Diplomats and approved by the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov. The Sykes-Picot agreement split up the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire after World War I.

Leon Trotsky called it The great powers’ plans to inherit the Ottoman Empire” and Lenin called the treaty the agreement of the colonial thieves”.

Britain, during its negotiations had taken up the responsibility of establishing a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. This was confirmed in a letter in November 1917 by the then British foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, to Baron Walter Rothschild, a close friend of Zionist movement leader Chaim Weizmann.

The British commitment was endorsed in 1920. Herbert Samuel, a British Jewish Zionist, arrived in Palestine as Britain’s first high commissioner to the country. In that year, the British mandate of Palestine was formalised by the League of Nations in a special article in its legislations.

By the end of World War I the United Kingdom had agreed in the McMahon–Hussein Correspondence that it would honour Arab independence if the Arabs revolted against the Ottoman Turks, but in the end, the United Kingdom and France divided the area under the Sykes–Picot Agreement—an act of betrayal in the eyes of the Arabs.

The Sykes-Picot agreement was replaced by the San Remo agreement and the mandate policies that applied to the newly created Arab countries in Al Mashriq (Levant).

The 1922 Palestine Order in Council[24] established a Legislative Council, which was to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, and the High Commissioner.[25] Of the 12 elected members, eight were to be Muslim Arabs, two Christian Arabs, and two Jews.[26] Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was unfair.[26] Elections took place in February and March 1923, but due to an Arab boycott, the results were annulled and a 12-member Advisory Council was established.

The 1922 Palestine Order in Council[24] established a Legislative Council, which was to consist of 23 members: 12 elected, 10 appointed, and the High Commissioner.[25] Of the 12 elected members, eight were to be Muslim Arabs, two Christian Arabs, and two Jews.[26] Arabs protested against the distribution of the seats, arguing that as they constituted 88% of the population, having only 43% of the seats was unfair. Elections took place in February and March 1923, but due to an Arab boycott, the results were annulled and a 12-member Advisory Council was established.

Demographic Change 1922-1945 Year	Total	Muslim	Jewish	Christian	Other
1922	752,048	589,177 (78%)	83,790 (11%)	71,464 (10%)	7,617 (1%)
1931	1,036,339	761,922 (74%)	175,138 (17%)	89,134 (9%)	10,145 (1%)
1945	1,764,520	1,061,270 (60%)	553,600 (31%)	135,550 (8%)	14,100 (1%)
Average compounded population growth rate per annum, 1922–1945	3.8%	2.6%	8.6%	2.8%	2.7%

In 1947 a UN Special Committee on Palestine recommended the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states, with Jerusalem to be placed under international administration.

A historian Eugene Rogan, in ‘The Arabs: A History’, commented on this arrangement as It is not hard to understand the Palestinian Arab position. By 1947 the Arabs of Palestine constituted a two-thirds majority with over 1.2 million people, compared to 600,000 Jews in Palestine. Many towns and cities with Palestinian Arab majorities, like Haifa, were allotted to the Jewish state. Jaffa, though nominally part of the Arab state, was an isolated enclave surrounded by the Jewish state. Moreover, Arabs owned 94 percent of the total land area of Palestine and some 80 percent of the arable farmland of the country. Based on these facts, Palestinian Arabs refused to confer on the United Nations the authority to split their country and give half away.”

in November 1947, the UN General Assembly, adopted a resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan of Partition with Economic Union as Resolution 181 (II),[67][68] while making some adjustments to the boundaries between the two states proposed by it. The division was to take effect on the date of British withdrawal.

The Jewish Agency, which was the Jewish state-in-formation, accepted the plan, and nearly all the Jews in Palestine rejoiced at the news.

The partition plan was rejected by Palestinian Arab leadership and by most of the Arab population.At a meeting in Cairo on November and December 1947, the Arab League then adopted a series of resolutions endorsing a military solution to the conflict.

Menachem Begin announced, “The partition of the Homeland is illegal. It will never be recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will forever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And for ever.”

At midnight on 14/15 May 1948, the Mandate for Palestine expired and on the same day the Jewish leadership, led by future Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, declared the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel and was immediately recognized by the US as the de facto authority.

Wikipedia on Palestine quotes some private correspondence of Israel leadership which discloses their true aspiration for a Jewish Nation.

A collection of private correspondence published by David Ben Gurion contained a letter written in 1937 which explained that he was in favour of partition because he did not envision a partial Jewish state as the end of the process. Ben Gurion wrote “What we want is not that the country be united and whole, but that the united and whole country be Jewish.” He explained that a first-class Jewish army would permit Zionists to settle in the rest of the country with or without the consent of the Arabs. Benny Morris said that both Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion saw partition as a stepping stone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine. Former Israeli Foreign Minister and historian Schlomo Ben Ami writes that 1937 was the same year that the “Field Battalions” under Yitzhak Sadeh wrote the “Avner Plan”, which anticipated and laid the groundwork for what would become in 1948, Plan D. It envisioned going far beyond any boundaries contained in the existing partition proposals and planned the conquest of the Galilee, the West Bank, and Jerusalem.”

The discrimination of Palestine Arabs was legalized with the adoption of a Resolution presented to the UNGA by the British government (A/HRC/40/CRP.2 40) which was adopted with 33 votes in favour, 13 against (including Arab States) and 10 abstentions. The resolution was accepted by the Jewish community which received 57 per cent of the land and 84 per cent of the agricultural land while comprising 33 per cent of the population but rejected by the Palestinians.

The armistice agreement of 1949 between Israel and Arab Countries resulted in Israel seizing considerably more of Palestine than was envisaged by Resolution 181 – amounting to in total 78 per cent of Mandate Palestine. The remainder was subjected to military occupation. From April to August 1948, it is estimated that around 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their previous homes in today’s Israel. Although the Gaza Strip represented only a little more than a hundredth of the area of Mandate Palestine, it by 1949 provided the home for a quarter of Palestine’s Arab population.

Following the 1967 hostilities, in November 1974, the UN General Assembly went further, reaffirming an inalienable right” of return of Palestinians from both the 1947-1948 and 1967 hostilities in its resolution.Since then, this issue has remained one of the most contentious issues in negotiations to find a durable solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine, despite United Nations bodies having repeatedly reiterated the right to repatriation or compensation for Palestinian refugees, in countless resolutions adopted annually. By way of example, in its most recent iteration, the General Assembly

overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on 7 December 2018 (with only Israel and the US voting against) in which it again:

Notes with regret that repatriation or compensation of the refugees, as provided for in paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III), has not yet been effected, and that, therefore, the situation of the Palestine refugees continues to be a matter of grave concern and the Palestine refugees continue to require assistance to meet basic health, education and living needs”.

Many Palestinian refugees believe that they would one day return to the village or town from which their parents or grandparents fled in 1948 and accordingly urge the implementation of General Assembly resolutions 194 and 3236.

 Israel opposes their return, arguing that the influx of millions of Palestinians into the State of Israel would threaten the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, obliterating its basic identity as the homeland of the Jewish people and a refuge for persecuted Jews worldwide.”

For some in Israel, speaking of refugees returning”, even if peacefully, is deemed a near existential threat. In a 2001 article on the right to return posted on the website of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Ruth Lapidoth concludes that neither under the international conventions, nor under the major UN resolutions, nor under the relevant agreements between the parties, do the Palestinian refugees have a right to return to Israel…

If Israel were to allow all of them to return to her territory, this would be an act of suicide on her part, and no state can be expected to destroy itself.”

Despite the Security Council’s demands in resolutions 242 and 338, Israel continued occupying the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip,and embarked on a policy of establishing Jewish settlements in these areas. According to UNSCO, these settlements are today considered the major stumbling block in the way of a peaceful resolution to the conflict. UNSCO Reaffirmed the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return”, https://unsco.unmissions.org/security-council-briefing-situation-middle-east- (A/HRC/40/CRP.2).

Among many Palestinians, violent responses to the occupation and forced exile

intensified in the 1970s and 1980s, largely under the auspices of the PLO and its long-standing (1969 to 2004) Chairman Yasser Arafat. From 1987 to 1993, a first Palestinian uprising against the occupation occurred, known as the First Intifada, or the intifada of stones.

This is also when Hamas (the Arabic acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement) was founded, with roots in the Muslim Brotherhood movement, to pursue an armed struggle against Israel with the aim of liberating historic Palestine, while also providing a wide range of social welfare programmes in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

This first uprising ceased when a series of secret peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO in Oslo resulted in adoption of the Oslo Accords in 1993. A Declaration of Principles was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Arafat at the White House which provided for the establishment of a Palestinian interim self-government authority for a period not exceeding five years, leading to a permanent settlement based on SC resolutions 242 and 338”. The Oslo Accords treat the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, as does the UN (called the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT) or Palestine). The PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist in peace and renounced the use of violence, while Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people – to the dismay of both right-wing Israeli and militant Palestinian groups.

Most recent events in the 56 years of suffocating occupation,” is on record in the report A/HRC/40/CRP.2 18 March 2019 on the Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories and the detailed findings of the independent international Commission of inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The Commission found reasonable grounds to believe that during the weekly demonstrations, the Israeli Security Forces (ISF) killed and gravely injured civilians who were neither participating directly in hostilities nor posing an imminent threat to life. Among those shot were children, paramedics, journalists, and persons with disabilities. 183 people were shot dead and another 6,106 were wounded with live ammunition.

The demonstrations were organized by a ‘Higher National Committee,’ whose members came from all sectors of Palestinian society, including civil society, cultural and social organizations, students unions, women’s groups, eminent persons, members of clans and representatives of several political parties.

The Commission found, that the use of lethal force in response was rarely necessary or proportionate. For lethal force to be permissible, the victim must pose an imminent threat to life or limb. The ISF violated international human rights law in most instances the Commission investigated.

ISF conduct also violated international humanitarian law, which permits civilians to be targeted only when they ‘directly participate in hostilities.’ This purposefully high threshold was not met. The Commission found that the content and the application of the Israeli forces’ rules of engagement contributed to the unlawful approach. The rules permitted status-based targeting of the legs of individuals deemed to be key inciters/key rioters”, defined by conduct such as burning tyres, cutting or breaching the fence, or exhorting/leading the crowd. Under these rules, 4,903 persons were shot in the lower limbs – many while standing hundreds of meters away from the snipers, unarmed.

The Commission stated that unless undertaken lawfully in self-defense, intentionally killing a civilian not directly participating in hostilities is a war crime. Serious human rights violations were committed which may amount to crimes against humanity.

Hamas terrorism is a direct outcome of the state terrorism of Israel which has driven the Palestinians away from their homeland and are determined to prevent their return. Palestinians are frustrated and exasperated at the inability of the United Nations to implement the Resolution on Two Nations. They are desponded at the continuing support given to Israel by the United States. (It is noted that in spite of Netanyahu rejecting the US and international community appeal for at least a pause in the hostilities, US is extending financial and military aid to Israel. As Secretary Blinken stated the United Statet has Israel’s back”. US has always ignored the human rights abuses of Israel and even withdrew from the UNHRC citing the world body is biased against Israel. As US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley blasted UNHRC for a disproportionate focus and unending hostility toward Israel,” citing a series of resolutions highlighting alleged abuses by the Israeli government of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Hillary Clinton when she was US Secretary of State warned the UNHRC that it must abandon its bias against Israel, which undermines its work.

The liaison between Jews and US is described by Goldberg in his book on the Power of The Jews which is quoted in the Washington Post. He says The clout that Jewish Americans exercise in American politics is far incommensurate with their population. Their power derives primarily from an active interest in public affairs and a willingness to work hard for causes in which they believe. It derives also from their flair for understanding the electoral process, their gift for efficient organization, and, most of all, from their dedication to philanthropy, reinforced by supersensitive peer pressure among members of a group forced together by a discrimination still apparent in far too many sectors -Amer. Goldberg Washington Post”.

It is the despicable situation of the Palestinians which created Hamas and forced them to take to terrorism in the absence of peaceful means. The continuing discrimination and victimization of the Palestinians is described in the report of the (Human Rights Watch April 2021) which is summed up in the paragraph below.

Israeli authorities methodically privilege Jewish Israelis and discriminate against Palestinians. Laws, policies, and statements by leading Israeli officials make plain that the objective of maintaining Jewish Israeli control over demographics, political power, and land has long guided government policy. In pursuit of this goal, authorities have dispossessed, confined, forcibly separated, and subjugated Palestinians by virtue of their identity to varying degrees of intensity. In certain areas, as described in this report, these deprivations are so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

Benjamin Netanyahu has not deviated from the sordid aspiration of Chaim Weizmann and David Ben Gurion who saw partition as a steppingstone to further expansion and the eventual takeover of the whole of Palestine. He not only lust after territory but is bent on the total annihilation of every Palestinian man, woman and child.  Hamas has given him an excuse with a atrocious terrorist act against civilians. Netanyahu is confident that with US at his back he will not be liable to be charged for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity which he continues to commit with impunity. His evil strategy to get rid of Palestinians from Gaza appears to be to push them to the South and drive them into Egypt. Even a rabbit when cornered is known to fight back. Hamas in sheer desperation has opted to fight which is not yet over. The question is who will come to their aid and how this horrendous episode will end.

(This note is sourced mainly from several UNGA and UNHRC documents and a few media reports)

Sugath Kulatunga