No More Anti-Semitism:
UN State-building and the Trusteeship Council
[Working Draft 4june02]
Roger Dittmann, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, California State University, Fullerton
UN Representative of the World Federation of Scientific Workers
“Jew shall not dominate Arab and
Arab shall not dominate Jew in Palestine.”
[Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Report to the League of Nations, London, (4july1922)].
Abstract
A plan and some “brainstorming” to bring human rights, peace, security, and justice to Palestine is proposed. The plan would circumvent the Security Council, strengthen the General Assembly and the Trusteeship Council, strengthen UN state-building capability in accordance with basic principles of jurisprudence and governance, and implement UN human rights treaties, conventions, conventions, and declarations with the participation and involvement of human rights NGO’s.
The Palestine Problem as a Focus:
1) Israel’s reinvasion of Palestine has regrettably and inexcusably, but predictably induced a wave of anti-Semitism. Some Zionists[i] have advocated the founding of a “Palestinian state” for the good of Israel in order to ameliorate the conflict between Zionists on one hand, and Christians and other Gentiles on the other.
2) Jews and Gentiles alike suffer from a deepening cycle of insecurity and violence. Israel in particular has a “tiger by the tail”---It fears the establishment of a Gentile state, but deepens its insecurity and increases its international isolation by its mistreatment of Gentiles.
[A concise historical summary is provided in the Appendix.[ii]]
“Palestine shall be neither a Jewish state nor an Arab state.”
[Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry Report to the League of Nations, London, (24july1922)].
“Those Muslims and those Jews should settle
their differences in a Christian manner”
—words from the Texas Governor in
The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas
The Plan:
1) The General Assembly affirms the ratification of the Rome Treaty for the International Criminal Court by the Palestinian authority.
2) The General Assembly declares the remnants of partitioned Palestine [the 1948 borders] to be a UN Trusteeship Territory with responsibility assigned to the Trusteeship Council for developing a secular “human rights” state based upon UN human rights treaties, conventions, declarations, and covenants.
3) The General Assembly elects a number of members to the Trusteeship equal to the number of unelected members.
4) The General Assembly requests the UNDP and other UN agencies to offer economic development funds.
5) The General Assembly requests the Security Council to guarantee military security.
6) The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights offers its good offices to monitor the process and to make recommendations to all parties involved.
7) The General Assembly requests the Human Rights Court of the EU to accept jurisdiction.
8) The Trusteeship Council supervises elections for residents in the remainder of Palestine [including Palestinian Jews!] to elect a non-racist Constituent Assembly charged with drafting a Constitution incorporating UN human rights principles and basic principles of government under the auspices of the UN with the consultation of NGO’s.
9) The Trusteeship Council invites the Constituent Assembly to ratify the ICC Treaty and to incorporate it into the Constitution.
10) A plebiscite is held to approve the Constitution and to establish the state of Palestine.
Contingency Plans:
A. The General Assembly passes a resolution similar to that for the ICC calling for a conference of plenipotentiaries [perhaps regional] to address the problems of Palestine in solicitation of a host country.
B. A resolution is introduced in the Security Council to establish a secular, contiguous, human rights state [in the manner of East Timor].
The Purposes of the Plan:
To further develop the capability and involvement of the UN in state-building based upon UN human rights covenants, treaties, and conventions and upon basic principles of governance[1].
v To find a route around the immobilization of the Security Council and to functionally enhance the role of the General Assembly, the Trusteeship Council, and UN agencies.
v To promote human rights, peace, security, and justice by implementing the expressions of human conscience that have already been agreed by consensus by the governments of the world.
v To provide freedom, security, opportunity, and justice for oppressed peoples.
v To promote basic consensus principles not only their own right, but in order to diffuse the vehemency of conflicting opponents.
v To convert adversity into opportunity, recapturing lost opportunities.
Obstacles and Objections--and Responses:
v According to the UN Charter, the General Assembly can only make non-binding recommendations to the Security Council.
Ø The Security Council never acted on the General Assembly recommendation to partition Palestine along ethnic lines. Just as the “veto” was invented to legitimate war, this precedent of allowing the General Assembly recommendation to take force should now be converted into an interpretation to legitimate human rights, justice, security, and peace.
v According to the UN Charter, the General Assembly can no longer elect any members to the Trusteeship Council.
Ø Some reasonable reinterpretation of the literal wording of the Charter is required to meet intentions and to address situations that differ markedly from those foreseen at the time of founding the UN[2].
v A half-century of maltreatment and conflict has inflamed hostility and has fanned the flames of so many religious fanatics that such a plan would be rejected.
Ø The UN and its agencies can offer peace, justice, security, and economic development. It will appeal to most people. Some fanatics will undoubtedly persist, but they will be isolated and outcast over time.
Ø Zionist fanatics can be isolated by the guarantee of military security.
Ø Hamas[3] and other Muslim fanatics who object to Israel’s security may be placated somewhat by the argument that the worst one could do to Israel is to embarrass it by exposing its racism by contrasting it with a human rights state in Palestine where Jews have full human rights along with everyone else.
v The U.S. government would prevent the Security Council from acting.
Ø Proposing and adopting a principled, viable plan, and developing support for it, is part of the political process to overcome the influence that the Zionist lobby has over the U.S. government and to generate international pressure. Given the attention that the Zionist reinvasion of the partitioned part of Palestine has provided, this is an opportune time to promote a human rights remedy.
Ø The Security Council would only be responsible for security. The political process would function under the auspices of the Trusteeship Council, which operates by majority rule even though its current members are the non-elected members of the Security Council.
v The Zionist army could attack and defeat any UN military force that attempted to provide security.
Ø The Security Council would provide security for both the human rights state and the racist state. The racism will be more exposed and obvious and can be better addressed through other than military means, as the experience with Apartheid attests[4]. This would be another important step in the process of making weapons irrelevant—useless, even counterproductive for aggression, unnecessary for defense—a step toward rule of law.
Ø Even if the plan is blocked, either diplomatically or militarily, it helps expose the opposition and helps develop solidarity and strength among supporters of human rights, peace, security, and justice.
v Theocratic monarchies in the region, not only Israel, would feel threatened by such an example
Ø Probably true, however, on the other hand, they are threatened by their own populations in this crisis situation. Their opposition should intensify our support. A democratic, secular, human rights state in their midst would serve the cause of human rights in the entire region.
v It would be considered to be a cultural imperialist western intrusion into the Middle East.
Ø The basic principles have already been agreed by the governments of the world. The fundamental task of composing the Constitution would be assigned to elected representatives of the Constituent Assembly.
Ø If the General Assembly is allowed to elect some members of the Trusteeship Council, that perception could be ameliorated.
Ø If the Trusteeship Council operates well and wisely, participation and consultation with representative of the affected peoples, governments, and cultures would be invited.
Opportunity:
In adversity often lies opportunity. The crisis in Palestine offers a renewed[5] opportunity to provide an example to provide a sense of direction to elevate humanity to a higher lever of civilization. It is, of course, not the only opportunity that has presented itself.
Conflict is a great dichotomizer, but in each of these situations, it is imperative that one support principles, rather than take sides. [Principled people can be found among all ethnicities and religions, essentially on all sides.] Principles are more easily agreed; they can lift civilization to higher levels, and can rise above the fray of partisan debate.
Palestine represents just another in a long list of opportunities [mostly lost] for the UN to engage in state-building. The most recent such exercise has been in East Timor[iii], which hitherto has been quite ad hoc, timorous, and ineffective, rather than systematic. This, of course, is largely attributable to the way the UN was founded, as a “WWII Victors’ Club”. It remains, however, to paraphrase Feyerabend, ‘The best lousy institution we have”—let’s use it and improve it[6].
Each circumstance is somewhat unique, but UN human rights principles are universal. Rather than a “bucket brigade” responding to each emergency, an emergency and “fire department” is required. The “fire code” (UN human rights principles) is already established, but requires further development, including basic principles of jurisprudence and governance that enjoy a high degree of consensus, a consensus that would be elevated in the process of formulating them. Palestine could be considered to be an example from which much could be learned in establishing such a process, or the process could be approached quite generically [my preference, although it lacks the urgency of a specific focus].
In either case, it is the Trusteeship Council that should be the responsible institution. Its mandate is consonant with a human rights agenda[iv]. Its elected members would elected by two-thirds majorities in the General Assembly, were there to be any elected[7][v]. It is proposed that the General Assembly elect five additional members [to join the five unelected member of the Security Council].
Another structural problem is that the General Assembly can only make non-binding recommendations to the Security Council. It was the Security Council that recently engaged in state-building for East Timor. The Constitution for East Timor provides a basic model with lofty principles for newly established states. The Trusteeship Council was ignored.
A common misconception is that the UN established the state of Israel. The General Assembly recommended partition along ethnic lines to the Security Council[vi], which failed to act. The 14 May 1948 unilateral declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel was immediately followed the same day by both the end of the British mandate, and by hurried de facto recognition by the U.S. government [which had been equivocating between a UN Trusteeship guaranteeing human rights and partition along ethnic lines].
Just as liberties have been taken with the interpretation of the UN Charter to provide legitimation for war [absence and abstaining are now interpreted as concurrence], a liberal interpretation of the role of the General Assembly and of the Trusteeship Council may be used to legitimate peace, justice, security, and human rights. It is worth the effort. Since it is a popular misconception that the UN created Israel; since it is the General Assembly [divided] resolution in support of partition that is the foundation of that misconception; since the General Assembly has some responsibility for the consequences of its action; allow that misconception to legitimate human rights in Palestine, at least in what remains of Palestine. Let it exercise that responsibility through a resolution that assigns the task of human rights state-building to the Trusteeship Council. As the main obstacle to peace and human rights in the region, for whatever reasons[8], the U.S. government should be recused.
Some linguistic clarification: Jews[9] living in Palestine used to be called Palestinians—no longer—that term is now exclusively reserved to Christians and other Gentiles. The current implication of a “Palestinian state” then is that it would exclude Jews—more anti-Semitism.
Although it is no longer feasible to place the part of Palestine now constituting the UN-recognized state of Israel into UN Trusteeship in order to convert it into a human rights state, there is an opportunity to accomplish original intentions in what remains of Palestine. Rather than a “Palestinian state”, or a “Christian state”, or a “Gentile state”, or a “Muslim state”, or an Arab state”, there is another [albeit reduced] opportunity for the Trusteeship Council of the UN to offer to establish a secular, democratic, contiguous “Human Rights State” founded upon UN human rights declarations, conventions, and covenants[vii], upon UN-sponsored multilateral human rights treaties, and upon widely accepted principles of governance and jurisprudence, with economic incentives from the World Bank, and with international security guarantees of its borders, as originally intended[viii].
Membership in the Trusteeship Council is somewhat problematic--The current website[ix] of the UN declares simply that the unelected “permanent” members of the Security Council are the only remaining members of the Trusteeship council.[x] However, there is a crucial difference between the Trusteeship Council and the Security Council. In the Trusteeship Council majority rules,[10] while the Security Council requires unanimous concurrence” of the five non-elected members.[11]
“…Jews must now display tolerance and consideration for the other people in
Palestine with whom they will necessarily have to be neighbors."
President Truman in a letter to the Jewish former Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr.,
2 December 1947
What Went Wrong? The national-ethnic [“binational”] dichotomy and ideology of “self-determination” that accompanies the concept of separate “Jewish” and “Arab” states is not conducive to human rights, but would not be completely antithetical to them were adequate monitoring and enforcement provisions provided. The basic goal should be that one should be able to feel “at home” regardless of where one lives, regardless of ethnicity or religion.