The United Nations Organisation (U.N.O.) was founded on October 24, 1945 in order to meet challenges of offences against peace and to work also for the security of mankind. The assurance for peace as given in the preamble of its aims and objects was overflowing and attractive. Some of its objectives in the essence of its preamble for restoring peace and global stability are as follows:
“We the people of United Nations determined to save succeeding generation from the scourge of war, which twice in our life time has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and to reaffirm the faith in the fundamental human person in the equal rights of small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect of the obligation arising from the treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained and to promote social progress and better standard of life in large freedom, and for these ends to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours and to make our strength to maintain international peace and security and to ensure that armed forces shall not be used, save in the common interest and to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all people, have resolved to combine our efforts to accomplish these aims”.
In view of the preamble to its aims and objects it seems that the U.N. did pledge to maintain international peace and security and to promote social progress and better standard of life. But when we analyse the history of the U.N., we find its failure in achieving its goals and objects due to its dual policies devised in the interest of the U.S.A. and its friendly countries or under their pressure. The conflict of Palestine vis-à-vis U.N. is a very clear evidence of the latter’s dual policies. The issue of Palestine started in 1897, when World Zionist organisation was founded by Theodore Herzl at the first Zionist Congress held at Basle in order to establish a Jewish State. Since its formation “it spread its doctrine to the whole nation, purchased the best land in Palestine, gave the Jews a united voice and opened banks to finance the farmers.” It even succeeded in persuading the British government to establish a Jewish state in Palestine. With the efforts made by the leadership of this organisation, on November 2, 1917 Lord Balfour, the then British foreign minister, declared British commitment to establish Jewish homeland in Palestine.
After the Balfour declaration, the gap between the Palestinian Arab and Jewish communities began widening, and gradually this gap changed into hostility and hatred and when the hostility and hatred reached its peak, it appeared in the form of several communal violence and massacres. When Britain found itself incapable of checking these carnages and of solving these conflicts, it “presented the issue to the U.N. which formed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) comprising 11 members who had no experience in the Middle East or any knowledge of the Palestine issue, to decide the fate of Palestine.”
On August 31, 1947, this committee presented its recommendations as follow:
(A)Ending of British mandate from Palestine;
(B) Partition of Palestine into two: Jewish and Arab Nations; and
(C) And to put Jerusalem under the international mandate.
On November 29, 1947 U.N. General Assembly passed its 181 inauspicious resolution to divide Palestine into two Jewish and Arab Nations respectively under the pretext of peace which could never be restored. In fact it was the shrewdness and intrigue of the U.S. and Britain to increase their influence to dominate the region for their oil interests and imperial policy backed by the U.N.
However the hostilities increased among Arabs and Israel to such an extent that Israel founded terrorist organisations to carry out suicide attacks against Arab and to eliminate the Palestinian population. The first terrorist organisation, Hagana was founded in 1920 as the defence force of Yishu (collective name of Jewish community during the British mandate), which worked till 1948. This organisation worked underground. The members of this organisation constituted the Jewish military group in mid 1940s and were trained by the British army. About 26,000 members of this Jewish military group participated in World War II along the British army. And when the state of Israel came into being it was Hagana’s army and flag which became the IDF (Israeli defence Force) and national flag of Israel.
In 1948 Arab-Israel war, Hagana committed massacres of Palestinians by mercilessly killing peasants and innocent people in coordination with Irgun Zevai Leumi, another Israeli terrorist organisation founded in 1935 with the aim of establishing a Jewish state all over Palestine including trans-Jordan. Menachem Begin, who was named its head in 1941, blew up King David Hotel at Jerusalem in 1946 and was heavily involved in terrorist attacks against the Palestinian population. In the 1948 Arab-Israel war, he committed Dir Yassin massacre.
After the establishment of state of Israel, the planted state resorted to the state sponsored terrors against Arabs especially against the Palestinians. In retaliation to these state terrors, the Palestinians and Arabs founded several resistance organisations such as Al-Fateh in 1957, Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) in 1964, al-Hamas in 1987 and Hezbollah in 1988. All these organisations have been fighting for the liberation of Palestine and self determination of the Palestinian nation.
As far as the Intifada al-mubaraka is concerned, the sparks of uprising against the Israeli occupation started on December 9, 1987 in the form of an organisation and continued till the Oslo Agreement inked between Al-Fateh and its alliance PLO and Israel in 1993. And second time it started, when Arial Sharon visited Jerusalem in 2000. “During six years of the first Intifada from 1987 to 1993, 1540 Palestinians were killed, 130000 injured and 116000 were arrested.”
There have been four full-scale wars between the Arabs and the Israelis. “The first war broke out in 1948 when the Jewish state came into being and the Palestinian Arabs refused to accept this partition because of impartial division. Palestine comprised some 10,000 square miles. Of this Arabs were to retain 4.300 square miles while the Jews who represented one third of population and owned some 6 per cent of the land, were allotted 5,700 square miles. The Jews also got the better land; they were to have the fertile coastal belt while the Arabs were to make to do, for the most part, with the hills. But Arabs were defeated by the Israeli army who were advanced and well equipped with the modern U.S. supplied weapons for the bombardment, and they occupied 77 per cent of the land in place of 57 per cent land allotted under the partition Plan. Of the total 1,300,000 Arab inhabitants, about 900,000 were displaced. They (Israeli army) destroyed about 478 villages of the total 585 villages and committed 34 massacres,” in which thousand of innocent people including children and women were butchered. They came into possession of entire cities, or entire quarters of them, and hundreds of villages.
The second war took place in 1956 between the Arabs and Israelis. On October 29 with secret backing of Anglo-French complicity, Israeli army invaded Sinai and captured whole of it, including the island of Tiran in the Gulf of Aqaba in four days.
The third war broke out on June 5, 1967 when Egypt announced to block strait of Tiran in the Gulf of Aqaba for the Israeli ship. “Israel invaded and destroyed the warplanes and other military forces as well as citadel, etc. of Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Israeli forces advanced and captured the whole of Sinai Peninsula, Syrian Golan Heights and the part of the Jerusalem in spite of great resistance.” At this time when Israel was busy to fortify its strategies, the U.N. did not utter any word but soon after when the Israeli forces encamped on sound footing in the heart of the Arab territories and made its position strong there, the U.N. announced ceasefire. This is beyond my perception why it announced ceasefire when Israeli army had occupied most of the Arabs territories. Why did it not take any action while Israel was occupying the Palestinian territories?
In this war “about ten thousand Egyptian forces, and 6094 Jordanian forces and one thousand Syrian forces were killed, and about 330 thousands Palestinians were driven away from their homes.”
The fourth Arab-Israel war broke out in 1973, in which most of the Arab countries joined Egyptian forces to face Israeli challenges. This time the Arab army was much more advanced than the Israeli army and when the U.N. realised this fact, it announced ceasefire soon after the war broke out. However it was the moral duty of the U.N. to force Israel to withdraw from the Arab territories occupied by Israel in 1948 and1967 wars and in case of denial it should have imposed harsh economic sanctions on it. But it did not take any action against Israel perhaps under the U.S. pressure or in view of its interest, and thus gave Israel free lease to commit heinous crimes and barbarous acts against innocent Palestinians.
Apart from these four full scale wars, the fifth Arab-Israel war broke out in June 1982 between PLO backed by the Lebanese National Movement and IDF supported by Lebanese Christian community “Phalangists”, when Israel invaded southern Lebanon to eradicate the PLO in retaliation of the increase of its resistance operation from the southern Lebanon and to eliminate the Palestine question. There seemed no end to the phosphorous and napalm bombs that relentlessly poured down on the starving, parched west section of the city. Apart from 6000 PLO guerrillas in the besieged city, there were some half a million Lebanese and Palestinian civilians who faced daily bombardment, in which about 200-300 of them were killed.
In spite of the defeat admitted by the PLO on August 30, 1982, Israeli troops along its Phalangists ally massacred at least 2000 children, women and elderly men in refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila on September 16 and 17, 1982. In this war, Israel succeeded in occupation of southern Lebanon which was withdrawn in May 2000 when Hezbollah resistance fighters hastened the retreat of Israeli army, which by then had suffered heavy casualties and brought about the collapse of Israel’s local ally, the south Lebanon army.
The consequence of this Israel and Lebanese war is the birth of Hezbollah, a Shia militia that gained valuable experience in guerrilla war, during the 1990s and compelled Israel to withdraw Southern Lebanon in May 2000. And in 2006, Israel waged a war against Hezbollah that lasted 34 days, when Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers, who infiltrated to the Lebanon territory to execute the Israeli conspiracy in order to wage a war against Hezbollah to eliminate it.
As Israeli sources have generally conceded that preparation for the war began in late 2005, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert himself said in testimony before the inquiry commission headed by Judge Vinograd that he began such preparation immediately after taking over in January 2006, a full six months before Hezbollah’s capture of two soldiers gave him the pretext. In this war, Israel destroyed villages, towns and Lebanese infrastructure and killed hundred of civilians. Despite these state sponsored terrors, the U.N. continued to keep silence and watched these barbarous Israeli acts against Arabs as mere spectators.
In July 2007, the Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas dissolved the elected government of Hamas, as a part of conspiracy hatched by U.S and Israel to purge Hamas of the power of government by resorting to strong-arm methods. According to a German Magazine Bongafield, an U.S. diplomat to Israel has received 59 million Euro from American Congress since 1996 to train the Fateh forces in the territories of Egypt and Jordan in order to effect ethnic cleansing of Hamas, which is more concerned about solving the Palestinian refugee problem and creating an Independent State of Palestine in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 – the concerns much against the interest of Israel and U.S.
Today Palestine has almost lost its existence because of wrong and biased decisions of the U.N., which were taken in the interest of the U.S. to maintain its influence in the region and to give legal sanctity to its imperialist polices, and to protect Israel and its interests. Today about five million Palestinian Arabs are living as refugees in other Arab countries and camps which are more vulnerable to Israeli barbarism, and whenever any Palestinian leader raises his voice against the Israeli barbarism and demands freedom of Palestine, Israel kills him and commits massacre in the camps under the pretext of Arab Islamic terrorism, and the U.N. and the world watch this naked dance of death and destruction as mere spectators.
These are the dual policies of the U.N. which encouraged Israeli barbarism and legitimised the U.S. imperialist policies and provided the opportunity for the U.S. to exploit the Arab natural resources by bleeding the innocent Arab. These are the dual policies of the U.N. which are main factors of terrorism in the Middle East, which became a common phenomenon and is posing a threat to the security of mankind.