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Yves right here. Nicolas Davies explains why UN members mustn’t sit on their fingers as the newest Israel-Palestine peace charade performs out. He delineates concrete steps the UN can take to extend strain on Israel and the US and enhance Palestine’s place.
By Nicolas J. S. Davies, an unbiased journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the writer of Blood on Our Palms: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq. He’s additionally the co-author, with Medea Benjamin, of Conflict In Ukraine: Making Sense of a Mindless Battle, which simply got here out in a brand new revised, up to date 2nd version.
As U.S. President Donald Trump absolutely supposed, his “20-point Gaza plan” succeeded in upstaging calls by many different world leaders on the UN Normal Meeting for concrete, coordinated UN-led measures to pressure Israel to finish its prison genocide in Gaza and the unlawful occupation of Palestine.
Trump’s White Home assembly with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyah on September twenty ninth coincided with the final day of the annual assembly of the UN Normal Meeting in New York, the place Trump had met with eight Arab and Muslim leaders on the UN and gained their help for a proposed plan for Gaza. In a textbook bait-and-switch, Trump then allowed the Israelis to considerably alter his plan earlier than he unveiled it to the world at his assembly with Netanyahu, however pretended it was the identical plan that the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and different nations had endorsed.
Trump’s plan relies on cornering Hamas right into a sequence of steps it hasn’t agreed to: liberating all of the Israeli prisoners in Gaza with no full Israeli withdrawal; surrendering its weapons and its function in Palestinian politics; and handing Gaza over to a brand new part of Israeli occupation. Gaza could be ruled by a “board” headed by Trump and former U.Okay. prime minister Tony Blair, who not solely invaded Iraq alongside the U.S. in 2003, however on the similar time masterminded a soiled conflict in opposition to Hamas that led to the isolation and blockade of Gaza, and in the end to the present disaster.
Underneath Trump’s plan, Israel would agree to finish its genocidal assault on Gaza and partially withdraw its forces, however nothing in his plan would stop it relaunching the genocide as soon as the Israeli prisoners in Gaza had been safely again in Israel. It will additionally retain management of Gaza’s borders with Israel and Egypt, permitting it to maintain proscribing the entry of meals, medication and rebuilding supplies.
In response to Trump’s proposal, Hamas agreed to launch all its Israeli prisoners in return for an Israeli launch of Palestinian prisoners, however solely after a everlasting Israeli ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza. Prime minister Netanyahu mentioned publicly that Israel won’t withdraw its forces from Gaza till Hamas and different Palestinian forces have been faraway from energy and disarmed, whereas Hamas insists it won’t disarm till the occupation of Palestine ends and its fighters can hand over their weapons to the brand new armed forces of the sovereign nation of Palestine.
Hamas additionally responded that it has no authority to behave as the only negotiator in talks on the way forward for Palestine. It mentioned Palestine should be ruled by Palestinians, not Trump or Blair, and that its future should be negotiated between representatives of all Palestinian factions.
So Trump’s plan is rife with circumstances that one aspect or the opposite gained’t conform to, and it appears unlikely to finish the genocide. However in any case, it’s clearly designed to perpetuate, to not finish, Israel’s unlawful occupation of Palestine. Because the Progressive Worldwide mentioned in a assertion on October seventh:
Removed from paving a path to peace, it affords a blueprint for the additional colonisation and subjugation of the Palestinian individuals — the fruits of a long time of dispossession and destruction that reached its darkish zenith within the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The present negotiations could collapse rapidly or drag on for weeks or months, however the UN and the world’s governments mustn’t sit idly by as passive observers. The UN ought to urgently put together to take the concrete steps that leaders from all over the world known as for on the Normal Meeting in September, to offer pressure to UN Normal Meeting resolutions calling for an instantaneous and everlasting ceasefire in Gaza, the unrestricted restoration of life-saving humanitarian support, and a closing finish to the brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine.
In July 2025, the UN Normal Meeting organized a “Excessive-level Worldwide Convention for the Peaceable Settlement of the Query of Palestine and the Implementation of the Two-State Answer.” The convention was chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, and its aim was “not solely to reaffirm worldwide consensus on the peaceable settlement of the query of Palestine however to catalyze concrete, timebound and coordinated worldwide motion towards the implementation of the two-State resolution.”
The convention produced a prolonged “New York Declaration,” which was endorsed by the Normal Meeting in a decision on September twelfth, by a vote of 142 to 10, with 12 abstentions.
However this was a plan for the “day after,” which, by itself, did not carry that day any nearer, as a result of it intentionally averted taking the “concrete, timebound and coordinated worldwide motion” that the convention’s mandate had explicitly known as for.
The declaration was based mostly on the deliberations of 8 working teams, co-chaired by representatives of 15 completely different nations, the Arab League and the European Union, which every drew up plans for the aftermath of a hypothetical everlasting ceasefire in Gaza, with subjects like “Humanitarian Motion and Reconstruction” and “Safety for Israelis and Palestinians.”
Three roundtables on the July convention, chaired by former Irish president Mary Robinson, former Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos and former UN Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid bin Ra’advert of Jordan, agreed that the Normal Meeting’s first step must be the worldwide recognition of the state of Palestine.
UN recognition requires the approval of each the Normal Meeting and the UN Safety Council. Nonetheless, with such a big majority of nations supporting recognition, and the US abusing its veto to sideline the Safety Council, the Normal Meeting can name an Emergency Particular Session (ESS) to behave alone underneath the “Uniting for Peace” precept, to formally acknowledge Palestine and welcome it as a full UN member.
As an alternative, whereas a number of Western nations lastly acknowledged Palestine, bringing the entire quantity who’ve acknowledged its unbiased statehood to 157, the declaration was endorsed in an everyday session of the Normal Meeting that lacked the ability to grant formal UN recognition.
However probably the most critical omission from the July 2025 convention and the September twelfth decision was that they did not take concrete, coordinated UN motion to impose a ceasefire in Gaza, the important first step to get to the “day after” that the working teams on the convention had been tasked with planning for. Trump took benefit of that omission to suggest an finish to the genocide in Gaza on phrases that may perpetuate the Israeli occupation as an alternative of ending it.
It was solely predictable that Israel would reject and ignore the New York Declaration, and prime minister Netanyahu did simply that in his Normal Meeting speech on September twenty sixth. However after many of the delegates walked out and left Netanyahu ranting to a virtually empty corridor, the Hague Group of nations led by Colombia and South Africa hosted a assembly with representatives of 34 nations to plan the coordinated, concrete motion the UN should now take to finish the genocide and the occupation.
As Cuban international minister Bruno Rodriguez Parilla informed the Normal Meeting in his speech the following day, it ought to convene an Emergency Particular Session “with out additional delay” to take concrete measures for Palestine, together with a binding decision on full UN membership.
If the Normal Meeting is critical about ending the genocide and the occupation, the Emergency Particular Session should additionally debate and vote on a UN-led arms embargo, financial boycott and different concrete measures designed to pressure Israel to adjust to worldwide regulation, worldwide court docket rulings and UN resolutions on Palestine.
The UN Human Rights Workplace in Geneva already has a database of 158 Israeli and multinational companies which might be complicit in Israel’s unlawful occupation, so a global boycott of these corporations may take impact instantly.
Israel is a small nation, depending on commerce and financial relations with nations everywhere in the world. If the massive majority of nations that voted for the New York Declaration are able to again their phrases and their votes with coordinated motion, a UN-led commerce boycott, divestment marketing campaign and arms embargo can put huge strain on Israel to finish its genocide in Gaza and its unlawful occupation of Palestine. With full participation by sufficient nations, these steps may rapidly make Israel’s place untenable.
Many audio system on the 2025 Normal Meeting known as passionately for this sort of decisive motion to carry a couple of ceasefire in Gaza and finish the occupation. King Abdullah of Jordan requested, “How lengthy will we be glad with condemnation after condemnation with out concrete motion?”
President Lula mentioned that Brazil already has an arms embargo in opposition to Israel and has lower off all commerce with its unlawful settlements; Turkiye severed all commerce hyperlinks with Israel in August; Dutch prime minister Dick Schoof known as for an arms embargo and the suspension of the EU’s commerce settlement with Israel; and Chadian prime minister Allah-Maye Halina declared, “Our obligation from this second on is to rework this sturdy declaration into concrete acts and make the Palestinian individuals’s hope a actuality.”
The Hague Group of nations was fashioned by the Progressive Worldwide to help South Africa’s genocide case on the Worldwide Court docket of Justice and conflict crimes circumstances in opposition to Israeli officers on the Worldwide Prison Court docket. In a assembly at Bogota in Colombia in July, twelve of these nations dedicated to an arms embargo and different concrete measures in opposition to the Israeli occupation. In his speech to the Normal Meeting on September twenty third, Colombian president Gustavo Petro known as for an Emergency Particular Session on Palestine and for a UN peacekeeping pressure to “defend Palestine.”
A earlier Emergency Particular Session in September 2024 demanded that Israel should finish its post-1967 occupation of Palestine inside a yr. Israel’s refusal to even start to take action, and its defiant escalation of its genocide in Gaza, growing repression within the different occupied territories and assaults on different nations present all of the grounds the Normal Meeting ought to have to take the concrete, coordinated measures that many nations are calling for.
Tragically, as an alternative of making use of the diplomatic and financial strain it should take to safe a ceasefire and finish the occupation, France, Saudi Arabia and their companions as an alternative relied on dangling carrots in entrance of Israel, equivalent to regional financial integration and recognition by Arab and Muslim nations, to attempt to seduce or bribe Israel into complying with worldwide regulation and UN resolutions.
This was by no means going to work. The toothless New York Declaration, and now Trump’s new occupation plan for Gaza, have wasted irreplaceable, valuable misplaced time for the besieged, starved, bombed individuals of Gaza, as extra of them are killed, maimed and starved to loss of life day-after-day. The UN Normal Meeting should comply with up on these flawed initiatives with decisive UN-led motion to really finish the genocide and the occupation, by imposing financial sanctions, an arms embargo and different measures to diplomatically and economically isolate Israel.
There may be nothing to forestall the UN Normal Meeting from rapidly convening a brand new assembly of its Emergency Particular Session on Palestine. The ESS can lastly take the “concrete, time-bound, coordinated worldwide motion” that the French- and Saudi-led initiative promised however did not ship – what Malaysian international minister Mohamad Hasan described to the Normal Meeting as “concrete motion in opposition to the occupying pressure.”
The world over, atypical individuals are rising as much as demand that their governments take motion, whereas flotillas of activists set sail to breach the blockade of Gaza that their governments have did not problem.
The Emergency Particular Session of the UN Normal Meeting, assembly underneath the Uniting for Peace precept, can debate and go binding resolutions on UN recognition of Palestine, a UN-led worldwide arms embargo, financial boycott and disinvestment marketing campaign, conflict crimes prosecutions, and different measures to diplomatically isolate Israel.
By responding to calls of conscience from their very own individuals, voting for these measures on the UN and performing rapidly to implement them, the governments of the world have the collective energy to finish this genocide and the brutal, unlawful occupation of Palestine that it’s a part of. Now they need to use it.
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