THE unfortunate people of Palestine belong to a nation without a country. Palestine has a population of over five millions with about 1.8 million Palestinians living in Israel and millions more scattered all over the world especially in Egypt, Syria, Jordan Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. The borders of this state are still undefined and the form of governance not known, an economy totally dependent on foreign aid and at the mercy of Israel. It has no official armed forces or a central bank or diplomatic service.
As of today about 155 countries of the world have officially recognized the state of Palestine and yet it is not a member of the United Nations or recognized as a sovereign free state. Britain was the official trustee of the Palestinian lands under the trusteeship council of the League of Nations until 1949 and after the creation of Israel the Palestinian leaders refused to accept the UN resolution creating two states one Jewish and one Palestinian. Today the Palestinians are crowded into Ghetto like living conditions with the Ghaza strip controlled by Hamas and the West Bank under the rule of Hezbollah.
As of June 2024, the State of Palestine is recognized as a sovereign state by 146 of the 193 member states of the United Nations, or just over 75% of all UN members. It has been a non-member observer state of the United Nations General Assembly since November 2012.While the State of Israel was established on 15 May 1948 and admitted to the United Nations.
The remaining territories of pre-1948 Palestine, the West Bank – including East Jerusalem- and Gaza Strip, were administered from 1948 till 1967 by Jordan and Egypt, respectively. After the Arab Israel war of 1967 that resulted in a humiliating defeat for Egypt, Jordan and Syria the UN has repeatedly called for the implementation of SC resolutions 242 and 338 that call for withdrawal of Israeli forces from all the occupied territories. Peace accords between PLO representing Palestine and the Govt. of Israel since 1993 aimed at ending the state of no war no peace by the implementation of the two state solution.
In the period after 1993 Israel withdrew form some of the occupied areas and the Palestine National Authority was established by the PLO in 1994 to assume the charge of governance in the Ghaza Strip and the West Bank.The international community was quick to support Palestinian State-building and development efforts, with financial resources and technical assistance to public and private sector institutions.
In spite of great support shown by the international community the dream of an independent Palestine state is yet to see the light of the day. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of Palestinian statehood, long upheld by the United Nations General Assembly, was given additional support by Security Council Resolution 1397 of 2002, which affirmed the international community´s vision of two States, Israel and Palestine, living side by side within secure and recognized borders. The increasing tensions and conflict and the deepening mistrust has muddied the political horizon since the year 2000. The blockade of Ghaza since June 2007 and the tightened Israeli Govt. restrictions in the occupied areas have nullified any economic progress with tragic consequences for the Palestinians. Furthermore, the expansion of the Israeli settlements in the occupied areas, which has been declared as a “flagrant violation of international law” by Security Council resolution 2334 (23 December 2016), disrupts the peace process and threatens the Palestinian State formation process.
The legitimacy of a Palestinian country was has been upheld by the general assembly of the UN and was given further support by the SC resolution 1397 of 2002 which stressed the will of the international community of two independent states coexisting side by side and in harmonious and peaceful conditions within mutually recognized secure borders. The consensus of the global community has now become a major goal of initiatives to achieve a permanent peace agreement in this volatile region of the world but the dream of a Palestinian state is still a dream. On October 7 2023 militants of Hamas led a cross border raid into Israel killing some Israelis and taking some hostage.
Israel replied with a savage and brutal response resulting in the death of over 50000 Palestinians and more than double that number severely injured. After a year of savage attacks the Ghaza Strip has been bombed back to the stone ages with destroyed infrastructure, primitive living conditions and famine like conditions for the poor people of Ghaza.
Israel has the only excuse, the old lame excuse of the right to defend itself. The Israeli stance on its brutal response has left the international community, the United Nations and all human rights watch dogs totally helpless and turned all of them into silent spectators of the brutal carnage going on in the land of Palestine. The conflict in Palestine today has all the blessings and support of the western democracies.
The USA, European Union, Canada and Australia stand firmly behind Israel, send weapons, provide diplomatic support and give a fig about domestic dissent in their own countries The modern era of international humanitarian law that the West proclaimed, as well as the institutions the West championed to uphold it, are going up in flames. In 1929, in the dark, chaotic period between the First and Second World Wars, the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously wrote: “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”The old world is dying once again. It thinks it is in charge of the birth of the new; the remaking of the Middle East. But it is wrong. It is not fighting monsters. It is the monster.
And the new stands no chance of being born until these monsters are slain.
—The writer is Professor of History, based in Islamabad.
