Is Israel humiliating the UN?
The United Nations is often portrayed in textbooks as a powerful coalition of states backed by global superpowers and a forum for peaceful conflict resolution, upholding its charter to maintain peace and security. But in reality, It’s not!! It’s neither powerful nor an effective forum. From its inception, its limitations have been evident: the UN struggles to influence superpowers and is often relegated to dealing with smaller states, those with restricted influence. Today, as we face heightened global tensions after the Gulf War, the UN’s failures are increasingly visible—in Libya, Syria, Ukraine, the Middle East, and many other regions.
This tough phase of the UN is taken as an opportunity by the countries who want to humiliate the Institute. Israel, backed by the United States and right-wing allies, and Palestine, supported by the left and the global Muslim community, including over 57 Muslim-majority countries, are entrenched in a high-stakes standoff that the UN appears powerless to mediate effectively. Unlike the 1940s and 1950s, when Israel abided by certain UN resolutions while Muslim countries were largely disengaged, Israel now disregards UN resolutions and breaches charter principles with apparent impunity, escalating tensions and challenging the UN’s authority. The ongoing Israel-UN tensions underscore a profound humiliation for the UN, as it struggles to assert influence in this protracted conflict, and even UN-affiliated people get targeted.
UN peacekeepers and UN-affiliated UNRWA workers in Gaza and Lebanon who are refusing to evacuate despite official orders are increasingly under attack, and sustaining injuries. The Guardian, the British left media reported recently that the Israel Defense Forces forced entry into a UN base and repeatedly targeted their positions, wounding five personnel. In Gaza, nearly 230 UNRWA aid workers, who are also part of different Palestinian organizations, have been killed. The UN is confused in this matter while Israel looks assertive. Earlier this month, Israel declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata, and in May, its outgoing ambassador to the UN publicly shredded a copy of the UN Charter.
The UNRWA, short for “United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East,” is committed to delivering assistance and promoting the human development of Palestinian refugees. UNRWA’s mandate covers Palestinians who fled or were displaced during the 1948 Nakba and subsequent conflicts, along with their descendants, including legally adopted children. As one of the few non-Islamic organizations dedicated to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA registers over 5 million Palestinians. Amid rising Israel-UN tensions, the agency has drawn particular attention with its action on the battlefield. Israel has long opposed UNRWA’s recognition of Palestinian refugees’ right of return, recently going as far as attempting to classify it as a terrorist organization, despite the agency’s lack of advocacy for violence besides the alleged affiliations with groups like Hamas. However, it does not formally endorse such organizations. But the UN has previously acknowledged that nine of the agency’s 13,000 employees in Gaza might have been involved in Hamas’s October 7 attack—findings that have damaged the agency’s reputation, and that’s enough for Israel to take revenge on the UNRWA.
Israel is concerned with UNRWA’s great influence and their effort to keep alive Palestinian dreams, and often become a shelter for the terrorists. They also worrying increasing the voice of Muslim states in the UN general assembly and they are concerned about the UN bodies supporting the Palestinian version over even a neutral one. And a country like Israel surrounded by threats can’t neglect the Palestanization of the UN. So they started to target the UN and its agencies, and humiliating them is the way Israel found out.
The UN is now a beleaguered institution. Its structure, its operation, its works, its opinions everything is getting questioned. The Security Council is questioned now by almost everyone including the countries within it. And has repeatedly been deadlocked, with the US, the UK, and France on one side and Russia and China on the other. And it’s easy now for Israel to undermine the intuition. While social media and the internet are now well circulating the Israeli version of the conflict, the UN’s attempt to push the Palestinian version will further collapse belief in the UN.
The UN, several European countries, and the Islamic world condemn the actions of Israel against UN peacekeepers. They believe because a few people from UNRWA participated in the October 7th attack, and the frequent rising of voices for Palestine, Israel is finding revenge on the UN. But it must be said that the UN can’t do anything; everything will remain on paper. This old man is expecting a death he has long wished for, and Israel enjoys the complaints from him.
