Where is the international community’s accountability for Israel’s latest annexation phase? |
The international community does not want to be held accountable to history or its role in Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. With each violation, the UN and world leaders issue statements as if Israel is for the first time acting in violation of international law.
“The moves could lead to settlement expansion by removing bureaucratic barriers and easing land purchases and building permits,” UN Under Secretary General Rosemary di Carlo stated in response to Israel’s land registration process of the occupied West Bank. The approved proposal, put forth by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Justice Minister Yariv Levin and Defence Minister Israel Katz, will de-facto annex Area C of the occupied West Bank, making the Palestinian land property of Israel’s colonial enterprise. Without proving land ownership, Palestinians will not be able to make any claims to 60 percent of their territory.
EU Foreign Affairs Spokesman Anouar El Anouni stated, “This constitutes a new escalation after recent measures already aimed at extending Israeli control.” But why not specify ongoing escalations? Colonialism necessitates land grab to survive; this is what Zionists have been doing since prior to the 1948 Nakba. Instead of halting colonialism, the UN accepted Israel as a members state, which is a tacit acceptance of ethnic cleansing, settlement expansion and land usurpation.
READ: Israeli government approves proposal to register West Bank lands as ‘state property’ for 1st time since 1967
If the international community thought long enough, what part of Israel cannot be condemned for international law violations? Has the international community forgotten that its legitimisation of Israel includes the same trajectory of violations that Israel is now condemned for? Upon what grounds does the international community decide when a violation is a violation? Eighty-five UN member states condemned the new legislation allowing Israel to annex Area C. How many of these member states condemn – indeed state themselves categorically against – Israel’s establishment on ethnically cleansed Palestinian land? What excuse would these member states give if they had to differentiate between land appropriation in 1948 and its immediate aftermath, and now – in the context of genocide and increased Israeli and Palestinian Authority violence in the occupied West Bank?
In 1968, Israel issued a military order that halted the land registration process under Jordanian rule. Under the Oslo Accords, Area C of the occupied West Bank was supposed to be transferred to the PA’s control.
Addressing the UN Security Council, Palestinian Permanent Observer to the UN Riyad Mansour warned that “the two-state solution must not become the two-state illusion.” The statement is outdated going as far back as the 1947 Partition Plan, upon which the two-state paradigm was formulated. Only the two-state was not an illusion but a colonial tool to promote and preserve Zionist colonialism. Mansour would do better to call out the entire colonisation process and associated complicity, but the PA of course cannot and will not stray from the international impositions that safeguard its existence at the expense of the Palestinian people.
If the international community had to take its own actions regarding Israel’s colonisation into account, it would crumble under the weight of its own intentional omissions and complicity.
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