UN
Secretary-General has toed
Alvaro
The report is best known for its
revelation (paragraph 56) that, at a meeting of Quartet envoys in early 2007, a
But the report is far more significant
than that, because it shines a bright light on the role of the UN
Secretary-General in the Middle East and shows that the office has become a mere
servant of the US in Middle East affairs.
This was true when the office was filled by Kofi Annan, as it was until
December 2006, and no less true now that Ban Ki-moon has succeeded him. This subservience to the
The UN Secretary-General’s subservience
to the
“Whatever the Quartet was
at the inception, let us be frank with ourselves: today, as a practical matter,
the Quartet is pretty much a group of friends of the
The Quartet is an instrument for
providing a veneer of international legitimacy to
Multifaceted
role
Alvaro
In the latter capacity, as well as
being, in theory at least, a political intermediary between
Banned from
As regards the so-called Middle East
Peace Process, Alvaro
Furthermore, after Ismail Haniyeh of
Hamas became Prime Minister in early 2006, he wasn’t allowed to talk to the
Palestinian Authority, except by telephone and then only with the specific
permission of the UN Secretary-General.
Here is his account of this from
paragraph 4 of his report:
“I travelled frequently
to
“I went to
“Notwithstanding my
strenuous efforts, of which there is plenty of evidence in the DPA cables file,
I was never authorized to go to
“In the past two years I
have therefore confined my work to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and my
related duties as the Secretary-General’s Envoy to the Quartet, to the extent
that it is possible to so compartmentalize developments in this region. My
capacity to carry out these duties fittingly has been immeasurably hampered
firstly by not going to
“At best I have been the
‘UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process’ in name only, and
since the election of Hamas, I have been ‘The Secretary General’s Personal
Representative to the Palestinian Authority’ for about ten or fifteen minutes
in two phone calls and one handshake. But more on these handicaps later.”
It is hardly a coincidence that the
UN Secretary-General chose to forbid
US behind
decision?
Later in his report,
“Let me be more precise
and concrete: the Secretary-General’s so-called ‘Special Coordinator for the
Middle East Peace Process’ is prevented from even talking to the Palestinian
Authority government leadership (to which he is the ‘Personal Representative of
the Secretary-General’). Since the UN traditionally talks to every player to
whom it needs to talk (examples abound), and there is no Quartet policy barring
contacts by its members, since the Secretary-General has a personal
representative accredited to the Palestinian Authority, and since only one
member of the Quartet [the US] actively discourages contact with it, the
leadership of the Palestinian Authority government might justifiably wonder
whether that member isn’t behind the decision of the Secretary-General to
ostracize that government.” (paragraph 111)
Earlier, he wrote:
“Contrast what we do in
Lebanon – talking to Hezbollah, which is not the elected government (as Hamas
was) or the majority party (as Hamas still is), and which started an
international war last summer (unlike Hamas, whose restraint over the last two
years is undeniable). If we really tied our diplomatic boycotts to behaviour,
we’d talk to Hamas and boycott Hezbollah. But we talk to Hezbollah, and rightly
so, because they are important and no solution to
“As best I can fathom, at
almost every policy juncture, a premium is put on good relations with the
Of the UN’s boycott of
“Similarly, there is no
Security Council resolution prohibiting contact with the Government of Syria.
Quite so.
As this is written, Ban Ki-moon’s Special
Advisor, Ibrahim Gambari, is in
Nobody has objected, because Ibrahim
Gambari is performing the traditional UN role of talking to “every player to
whom it needs to talk” in attempting to resolve a political problem, including
players that are beyond the pale for UN member states.
But in the Middle East, the UN Secretary-General
has refused to allow his special representative to talk to every player –
because
Charter
breached
The UN Secretary-General and the UN
Secretariat as a whole is supposed to act independently of UN member
states. This is laid down in Article 100
of the UN Charter, the first paragraph of which states:
“In the performance of
their duties the Secretary-General and the staff shall not seek or receive
instructions from any government or from any other authority external to the
Organization. They shall refrain from any action which might reflect on their
position as international officials responsible only to the Organization.”
UN staff
endangered?
Citing the example of
“I have one further point
of a starkly practical nature, which I raise at the risk of sounding like an
alarmist. Like anyone from the UN who works in the Middle East – or perhaps
anywhere – the
“My point is not that we
should withdraw our assistance on the ground to the Palestinians in the oPt
[occupied Palestinian territory] on security grounds – I will let the security
experts opine and rule on that. My point is that our association in the public
eye with policies that have harsh consequences for the Palestinian people –
traced, rightly or not, to the Quartet – might well place our personnel in
jeopardy over time.” (paragraph 114)
He notes that
“long before current
Quartet policies were put in place personnel from the agencies and programmes
operating in the oPt [UNRWA, OCHA, UNDP etc] harboured the gravest of doubts
about Quartet positions and our involvement in them.” (paragraph 114)
It must be galling for UN personnel engaged
in providing humanitarian aid to Palestinians to see another arm of the UN being
a party to action by the Quartet which makes Palestinian lives even more
miserable.
“by the US Security
Coordinator [General Keith Dayton] to provide technical assistance for his
projects, which are seen locally as supporting one side (Fatah and its
affiliates) against the other (Hamas)” (paragraph 114).
In words, the UN has been giving
assistance to the
Security
Council resolutions ignored
The 2002 decision by Kofi Annan to
associate his office with the
But, from the outset, the Quartet simply
ignored all the UN resolutions that require
Israeli
obligations
Resolution 252 [8] (passed
on 21 May 1968) on the annexation of
2. [The Security Council]
Considers that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by
Israel, including expropriation of land and properties thereon, which tend to
change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status;
3. [The Security
Council] Urgently calls upon Israel to
rescind all such measures already taken and to desist forthwith from taking any
further action which tends to change the status of Jerusalem;
Resolution 446 [9] (22
March 1979) on the establishment of Jewish settlements, which says:
[The Security Council]
Calls once more upon Israel, as the occupying Power, to abide scrupulously by
the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, to rescind its previous measures and to
desist from taking any action which would result in changing the legal status
and geographical nature and materially affecting the demographic composition of
the Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and, in
particular, not to transfer parts of its own civilian population into the
occupied Arab territories;
Resolution 497 [10] (17
December 1981) on the annexation of the
1. [The Security Council]
Decides that the Israeli decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and
administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and
without international legal effect;
2. [The Security Council]
Demands that
These resolutions place obligations
on
These resolutions are in line with
generally accepted principles of how states should behave in the modern world. The forcible capture and annexation of the
territory of neighbouring states, as
“The Occupying Power
shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the
territory it occupies.” [11]
These resolutions express the will
of “the international community” with regard to
The Quartet has been entirely silent
about the necessity for
Palestinian
obligations
Instead, the Quartet has made up
obligations that Palestinians must fulfil, obligations that are not based on
Security Council resolutions and, disgracefully, the UN Secretary-General put
the weight of his office behind them as part of the Quartet, while remaining
silent about Israel’s obligations under Security Council resolutions. These so-called Quartet “principles” were
articulated in a Quartet statement on the 30 January 2006, five days after Hamas
won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections:
“It is the view of the
Quartet that all members of a future Palestinian government must be committed
to nonviolence, recognition of
These
“principles” were designed to undo the outcome of the elections and to isolate
any Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government formed as a result of it. The prime mover in this was the
UN supports
regime change
This has ended up with the extraordinary
spectacle of the UN Secretary-General refusing to deal with either of the
Palestinian Authority governments that were the legitimate product of the Hamas
victory – and the even more extraordinary spectacle of the UN Secretary-General
supporting the overthrow in June 2007 of the second of these governments – the
Hamas/Fatah National Unity Government.
In its stead, the UN
Secretary-General now recognises the entity, led by Salam Fayyad, as the
legitimate government of Palestine even though it has never been endorsed by
the Palestinian Legislative Council, as required by Article 79(4) of the Palestinian
constitution (the Basic Law), which states:
“The Prime Minister and
any of the Ministers shall not assume the duties of their positions until they
obtain the confidence of the Palestinian Legislative Council.” [13]
The UN Secretary-General had no authority
whatsoever from the Security Council for supporting the boycott of the two
Hamas-led governments, nor for supporting the overthrow of the last one, nor
for the recognition of the Fayyad-led entity as a legitimate government, when
it plainly isn’t.
Since the Hamas victory in January
2006, Palestinians have been collectively punished by the
On
recognising Israel
The obligations that the Security
Council imposed on Israel in resolutions 252, 446 and 497 – unannexing of East
Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and the removal of the Jewish colonies from the
territories it occupied in 1967 – are, as we have seen, in line with generally
accepted international rules. The
obligations that the Quartet has sought to impose on Palestinian governments are
not.
On the question of “recognising”
In 1967, the rest of
Are Palestinians supposed to
recognise the 55% entity? Or is it the
78% entity? Or it is a future entity of
as yet undetermined size, but certainly greater than 78%, in which the large
settlement blocks on the West Bank are included, with Palestinians having to be
content with perhaps 10% of historic
On being
committed to non-violence
As for being committed to
non-violence, there is a generally recognised right of resistance to
occupation, by whatever means, including by armed force. Or is the armed resistance to German
occupation in
Another point: the conflict in
On
accepting past agreements
As for accepting past agreements,
why should anybody stick to past agreements when the entity with which the
agreements were made has failed to stick to them? The Oslo Agreement [15]
signed in October 1993 aimed
“to establish a
Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority … for the Palestinian people in
the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, for a transitional period not exceeding five
years, leading to a permanent settlement based on Security Council resolutions
242 (1967) and 338 (1973).” (Article 1)
14 years later, the Palestinian
Authority has not been established in the
The Oslo Agreement accepted the
principle that the occupier had a right to negotiate with the occupied about
ending its occupation, instead of being forced to withdraw forthwith. When
Speaking of theft,
PLC
elections
Alvaro
“The three parts [of the
Cairo Agreement] were (a) a ‘hudna’ or ‘tandiyah’ – a lull, or informal
ceasefire – on attacks against Israel, (b) legislative elections, the first
since 1996, in which Hamas would participate, and (c) reform of the outdated
PLO structures (in which Hamas does not participate). The electoral component
of the deal included an agreement on a mixed electoral system, 50% national
list, 50% district representation. By entering into such a deal, Abu Mazen
clearly opted for the approach of co-opting Hamas rather than attempting to
control or suppress it.” (paragraph 30)
In February 2005, Hamas had
announced a hudna, which was maintained up to and beyond the elections a year
later. The Palestinian Legislative
Council elections were originally scheduled for July 2005, but were
unilaterally postponed by Abbas until January 2006. (The reform of the Fatah-dominated PLO has
never been carried out).
Hamas
participation
Despite Israel’s opposition to the
participation of Hamas in the elections (and threats to prevent them taking
place if Hamas was a participant), the Quartet seemed fairly laid back about it
initially, perhaps because they didn’t expect Hamas to do well, let alone win. A Quartet meeting of 20 September 2005 agreed
a statement saying:
“The Quartet … welcomes
the announcement of Palestinian Legislative Council elections and upcoming
municipal elections.” [16]
And, at the post-meeting press
conference, Condoleezza Rice for the
“… we understand that the
Palestinian political system is in transition, that it is in transition towards
a democratic system, and that that has to be a Palestinian process. We would hope that the elections can go
forward and that everyone will cooperate to make those elections go forward,
because elections are fundamental to the continued evolution and development of
the Palestinian process.” [17]
This seemed like positive
encouragement for Hamas to take part in the elections – and an order to
“That said, again, we
have noted that, ultimately, it is the case that there is a fundamental
contradiction between armed activities and the political process.”
But, since Hamas was on ceasefire,
this didn’t seem to be a major qualification.
However, a Quartet statement on 28
December 2005, a month before the elections, was of a different stamp. In it, the Quartet expressed its view that
“a future Palestinian
Authority Cabinet should include no member who has not committed to the
principles of
This must have been a misguided
attempt to shore up Fatah by threatening to boycott any government with Hamas
ministers. If it was, it didn’t work: a
month later, Hamas won 76 seats to Fatah’s 45, and the Quartet principles
emerged in full bloom in a statement on 30 January 2006:
“It is the view of the
Quartet that all members of a future Palestinian government must be committed
to nonviolence, recognition of
And, ominously, the statement also
contained the following:
“… the Quartet concluded
that it was inevitable that future assistance to any new government would be
reviewed by donors against that government’s commitment.”
which was the trigger for the
collective punishment of Palestinians because Hamas had won the election.
US
threatens
The UN Secretary-General went along
with all this. In fact, if the
“including ominous
innuendo to the effect that if the Secretary-General didn’t encourage a review
of projects of UN agencies and programmes it could have repercussions when UN
budget deliberations took place on Capitol Hill” (paragraph 49)
(One of the
It is generally thought that he has
been the driving force behind the
It has been a longstanding practice
of the
Eventually, the US stepped back from
insisting on a Quartet decision that all assistance (including UN assistance)
to the Palestinian Authority government be reviewed, and the formula quoted
above was agreed that “the Quartet concluded that it was inevitable that future
assistance to any new government would be reviewed by donors” (paragraph 49).
In his report,
“… I pleaded with the
Envoys for an approach that would be more compatible with the UN playing the
role which comes naturally to us [that is, being free to talk to all parties] …
. I was weakened by the willingness expressed by both my EU and Russian
colleague, at the outset, to accept the language proposed by the
It’s a pity he didn’t resign at that
point and make his reservations public.
The UN Secretary-General should
never have yoked his office to the other members of the Quartet in the first
place. Despite his experiences, Alvaro
“This in itself is
awkward since the Secretary-General participates in the Quartet not by
delegation or mandate from any UN body, leave alone the Security Council, but
in his semi-stand-alone capacity. There are large segments of the international
community not represented in the self-appointed Quartet, including the Arab
shareholders. Nevertheless, I could live with the arrangements until the point
came when the Quartet started taking positions which are not likely to gather a
majority in UN bodies, and which in any case are at odds with UN Security
Council resolutions and/or international law or, when they aren’t expressly so,
fall short of the minimum of even-handedness that must be the lifeblood of the
diplomatic action of the Secretary-General.”
Unfortunately, he lived with the
arrangements until May 2007.
David
Morrison
Labour
& Trade Union Review
1
October 2007
References:
[1] image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2007/06/12/DeSotoReport.pdf
[2] www.david-morrison.org.uk/other-documents/DeSotoReport-2007may.htm
[3] www.un.org/unsco/
[4] www.un.org/unrwa/
[5] www.ochaopt.org/
[6] www.unicef.org/oPt/
[7] www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0210unres.html
[8] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/1968-0252.htm
[9] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/1979-0446.htm
[10] www.david-morrison.org.uk/scrs/1981-0497.htm
[11] www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/0/6756482d86146898c125641e004aa3c5
[12] www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2006/60068.htm
[13] www.usaid.gov/wbg/misc/Amended_Basic_Law.pdf
[14] news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6215769.stm
[15] www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/mideast/isrplo.htm
[16] www.state.gov/p/nea/rls/53569.htm
[17] http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2005/53612.htm
[18] www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2005/58532.htm
[19] www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IA09Ak03.html