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diplomacy
In the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, the US Has Not Been a Force for Peace
The polar opposite of the needed diplomatic effort is what has been the dominant strategy of Israel and to a large degree also of the United States: the application of ever more military force.
Dec 12, 2024
The retiring United Nations envoy for the Middle East peace process has insightfully identified a major reason the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians continues to boil and to entail widespread death and destruction.
In a recent interview with The New York Times, Norwegian diplomat Tor Wennesland criticized the international community for relying on short-term fixes such as improving quality of life in occupied territory or diversions such as seeking peace deals between Israel and other Arab states. The crescendo of bloodshed during the past year underscores the ineffectiveness of such approaches.
Needed but not employed was a concerted and sustained diplomatic effort to end the occupation and create a Palestinian state. “What we have seen,” said Wennesland, “is the failure of dealing with the real conflict, the failure of politics and diplomacy.”
It is important to understand what diplomacy in this context does and does not mean. It does not mean routinely giving lip service to a “two-state solution” while doing little or nothing to bring about such a solution.
Much of Wennesland’s criticism was directed at the international community as a whole, but his points would apply especially to the United States, the patron of the party to the conflict that controls the land in question and resists Palestinian sovereignty.
The polar opposite of the needed diplomatic effort is what has been the dominant strategy of Israel and to a large degree also of the United States: the application of ever more military force. This was true with the 1973 war between Egypt and Israel, the first full-scale Arab-Israeli war after Israel conquered in 1967 what is now the occupied territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights.
The central feature of former U.S. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s policy was a huge airlift of military supplies to Israel. Nixon and Kissinger, viewing the conflict in Cold War terms, considered their policy a success by enabling Israel to turn the tide of battle while shutting the Soviet Union out of a meaningful regional role.
Fast forward to today, and the emphasis is still on military escalation. Israel, in its vain effort to “destroy Hamas” and strike down adversaries on its northern border, is more committed than ever to increasing death and destruction as its default approach toward any security problem. The United States has abetted this approach by gifting $18 billion in munitions to Israel since October 2023.
The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria does nothing to discourage these tendencies and may instead encourage them. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to the events in Syria with celebration and self-congratulations, claiming that Assad’s fall was due to earlier Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah and Iran. The change of regime was an occasion for Israel increasing rather than decreasing its offensive military activity in Syria, including seizure of a previously demilitarized buffer zone along the Golan frontier and airstrikes in and around Damascus on the very weekend that rebels were entering the capital.
During the intervening years since the 1973 war, a couple of U.S. presidents did make genuine efforts to advance an Israeli-Palestinian peace. But the necessary follow-up—largely the responsibility of subsequent administrations—did not occur.
After former President Jimmy Carter brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin pocketed the resulting peace treaty with Egypt while ignoring the part of the accords dealing with the Palestinians. After former President Bill Clinton in 2000 laid on the table his "parameters" for a deal, the two sides came closer than ever to a peace agreement, but an Israeli election ended the negotiations and the new Israeli government did not return to the table.
The current impending change in U.S. administrations offers little or no hope for positive change on this subject. After social media posts by President-elect Donald Trump that said nothing about diplomacy and instead talked about “all hell to pay” if Israeli hostages were not released by his inauguration on January 20, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Trump for his “strong statement.”
Ignoring that Israel has both the power and the land and is inflicting many times more suffering on innocent civilians than anything Hamas has done, Netanyahu said that Trump’s statement “clarifies that there is one party responsible for this situation and that is Hamas.”
Echoes of a 1973-style Cold War mentality can be heard today in much discussion of U.S. policy toward the Middle East and overwhelmingly in Israeli rhetoric. The main bête noire this time is Iran, reducing the influence of which is a constantly invoked rationale for hawkish and military-heavy policies.
The Middle East is not the only region that has demonstrated the fallacy of the notion of deescalating a conflict through military escalation. As Wennesland puts it, “Politics is what ends war, and diplomacy is what ends war.”
It is important to understand what diplomacy in this context does and does not mean. It does not mean routinely giving lip service to a “two-state solution” while doing little or nothing to bring about such a solution.
Nor does it mean seeking agreements for the sake of agreements, motivated in large part by a desire to wave supposed accomplishments before a domestic constituency. This was true of the so-called "Abraham Accords," which were not peace agreements at all but instead were largely about Israel not having to make peace to enjoy formal relations with other regional states, with which Israel was not at war anyway.
It was true as well of the enormous priority that the Biden administration put on seeking a similar agreement with Saudi Arabia, which, even if it had materialized in the form the administration envisioned, would not have served either U.S. interests or the cause of Middle East peace. The administration’s effort along this line was counterproductive not only in further reducing any Israeli incentive to make peace with the Palestinians but also, as President Joe Biden himself admitted, in probably being an additional motivation for Hamas to attack Israel last October.
As for what diplomacy does mean, it includes the concerted and sustained use of diplomatic energy, policymaking bandwidth, and political capital to address directly the core issues underlying a conflict and bring about a result that makes a difference. In the Middle East context, that result needs to include Palestinian self-determination and an end to occupation.
Correct understanding of diplomacy also speaks to what a foreign policy of restraint means. It does not mean isolationism. In areas such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it can mean an increase in diplomatic involvement and in the priority that policymakers give to the goal being sought. As the restraint-minded Quincy Institute puts it in its statement of principles, the United States “should engage with the world” and pursue peace “through the vigorous practice of diplomacy.”
Much damage from the policies that Wennesland laments has been done and cannot easily be reversed. The Israeli settlement enterprise in the occupied territories, which tsk-tsks from the United States have done nothing to stop, have led many observers—though not Wennesland—to believe that a two-state solution is no longer possible.
But even if the requirement of Palestinian self-determination could be achieved only through a one-state solution that provides equal rights for all, the same principle—that peace can be achieved only through vigorous diplomacy and not military escalation—applies.
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A Call for Peaceful Multilateralism
The paralysis of the United Nations Security Council in the face of the ongoing carnage worldwide is proof that we must rethink the existing structures of global governance.
May 30, 2024
The world is in turmoil, and there is a stark absence of strategic and moral leadership on the global stage. Indeed, there are three types of wars going on simultaneously in the world today.
The first is the proxy war between Russia and the countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), with Ukraine as the battlefield. The second is the trade war between the United States of America and China—with punitive tariffs, unilateral trade restrictions, covert operations in the Taiwan Straits, and protectionist maneuvers used as the tools of war.
The third, of course, is the hot war in the Middle East between Israel, Palestine, Iran, and other regional actors.
In Africa, beneath the gloss of "liberal democracy," we have seen the resurgence of totalitarian regimes and tribal demagogues, riding to political power on the coat tails of identity politics and electoral fraud.
In Sudan, to take one example, the tussle for illicit power between the country’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has displaced millions of people.
A world where “might is right,” and diplomacy is seen as a flag of surrender, results in a chaotic, barbarous, and an incredibly unhappy place to live in—for everyone.
The question asked around the world is: for how long will the United Nations—the global body formed to foster diplomacy between nations and prevent war—watch in helpless horror as cluster bombs and other deadly munitions rain down on innocent men, women, and children in these theaters of war?
The paralysis of the United Nations Security Council in the face of the ongoing carnage worldwide is proof that we must rethink the existing structures of global governance.
Everywhere in the world—in university classrooms, foreign policy think-tank sessions, media editorials and podcasts, even on the floor of the UN General Assembly—there are animated conversations about the need for a new paradigm in international relations, and what the features of the new epoch might be.
The ongoing protests in college campuses in the United States against the carnage in the Gaza Strip, in Palestine, are part of a growing global argument for a new global order. I joined this debate at Harvard Kennedy School in the fall of 2022, during our Senior Executive Fellows dinner sessions on the state of global governance in the 21st Century. The conversations were led by Secretary Ash Carter, former Defence Secretary of the United States, and Joseph Nye, a Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Joseph Nye is often rated as the most influential scholar in American foreign policy. My suggestions on the re-framing of international relations are along the lines of what I might call "Peaceful multilateralism.”
Simply put, peaceful multilateralism refers to the ability and willingness of sovereign nations to work together to solve the toughest challenges facing humanity, such as global hunger, pandemics, nuclear non-proliferation, global child trafficking and war.
Rather than the vicious zero-sum rivalry between nations, peaceful multilateralism challenges countries of the world to collaborate and work towards extending the frontiers of peace, security, and the creation of a more just world.
The notion of collaboration or cooperation between nations of the world is hardly new. After the first and second world wars, the nations of the world came together to form the United Nations Organization in 1945.
Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations upholds the need for collaboration between nations. The Article states that one of the founding principles of the United Nations was “To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion...”
However, 79 years after its founding, the United Nations appears to be at a crossroads, with nuclear-armed countries locked in a proxy war in the heart of Europe.
Below are three ways to achieve peaceful multilateralism through structural reform of the United Nations and respect for international law by all nations of the world.
1. Democratize Decision-Making at the United Nations:
For decades, questions have been raised about the ‘tyranny’ of the United Nations Security Council, where five permanent members—namely, the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and China—wield veto powers that override the views of the rest of the 185 member states of the global body.
This arrangement is not only seen to be undemocratic, but it is believed to be a major impediment to multilateral consensus building for global problem solving by the United Nations.
The latest iteration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine have shown how the conflicting interests of veto-wielding security council members in regional wars could paralyze the Security Council and impede the conflict resolution efforts by the members of the United Nations General Assembly.
Therefore, in reforming the decision-making mechanism of the United Nations, it may be critical to roll back the veto powers of the Security Council and vest the final decision-making authority on the United Nations General Assembly. The UN General Assembly should be the bastion of peaceful multilateralism and the center of decision-making on global affairs.
2. Respect for International Law: Relations between nations may be fraught with disagreements or a clash of interests. But a resort to war or unilateral actions may degrade relations further and create a climate of lawlessness and impunity on the global scene. Peaceful multilateralism can only thrive when nations engage in dialogue, diplomacy, and respect the adjudicatory supremacy of international law.
3. Commitment to Diplomacy: Finally, in an era dominated by the rhetoric of war and a “show of force” in international relations, it may seem naive to restate the importance of diplomacy in resolving conflicts between nations.
But it is the ability to disagree, engage, re-engage, and resolve conflicts diplomatically that sets us apart as humans.
A world where “might is right,” and diplomacy is seen as a flag of surrender, results in a chaotic, barbarous, and an incredibly unhappy place to live in—for everyone.
Nations that prioritize diplomacy in their relations with other nations are more likely to collaborate to solve the most pressing problems that confront humanity.
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Two Years After Russian Invasion, UN Experts Demand Renewed Push to End Ukraine War
"We want peace to be established without delay. War and aggression violate the basic principles of coexistence between peoples and nations, human rights, and the U.N. Charter."
Feb 23, 2024
A group of United Nations experts joined anti-war campaigners on Friday—the eve of the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine—in urging the international community to ramp up diplomatic efforts to end the war and achieve lasting peace.
A day after United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk lamented that there is "no end in sight" to a war that continues to exact a "horrific human cost" on Ukrainian noncombatants, several dozen U.N. special rapporteurs and other experts issued a statement asserting that "the lives of millions of civilians continue to be at stake."
"They are children, women, and men who must always be treated with humanity and respect for their dignity," the experts said. "For them, peace is neither an empty word nor an abstract concept. It is the essential precondition for restoring normality to everyday life."
The statement continued:
There is no normality when people are killed, tortured, forcibly disappeared, sexually assaulted, displaced, deported, arbitrarily detained, or exposed to toxic or radiological substances. There is no normality when people are in fear of constant shelling and when air raid sirens sound every day, day and night, forcing people to escape to shelters. Life is disrupted when people cannot live in their homes, use hospitals, schools, and roads, or enjoy cultural heritage, because these places are under attack or destroyed. Survival is at stake when farmers are not able to work their lands because they are contaminated by landmines and explosives.
"As time passes without any prospect of peace, the trauma of war entrenches and will lead to even more suffering and devastation," the experts stressed. "We want peace to be established without delay. War and aggression violate the basic principles of coexistence between peoples and nations, human rights, and the U.N. Charter."
According to the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, more than 30,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed or wounded since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of his neighbor two years ago. Millions more Ukrainians have been displaced, many thousands have had their homes damaged or destroyed, and critical infrastructure including schools and hospitals lay in ruins.
"Some 18 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance—almost 40% of Ukraine's population," the U.N. experts noted on Friday. "This includes over 3 million people living in frontline communities who face severe shortages of resources and constant bombardment."
"While millions of people remain internally displaced in Ukraine, some 6 million Ukrainians, mostly women and children, have sought refuge abroad, which was one of the fastest and largest refugee exoduses in history and they currently make up the third-largest refugee population in the world," the statement said.
Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the peace group CodePink echoed some of the U.N. experts' concerns in an opinion piece published Friday by Common Dreams in which they also acknowledged the staggering toll the war has taken on those fighting it on both sides while blaming Ukraine's Western backers for impeding peace.
"While it is the Ukrainians and Russians fighting and dying in this war of attrition with over half a million casualties, it is the United States, with some of its Western allies, that has stood in the way of peace talks," Benjamin and Davies argued. "This was true of talks between Russia and Ukraine that took place in March 2022, one month after the Russian invasion, and it is true of talks that Russia tried to initiate with the United States as recently as January 2024."
The authors wryly noted that "U.S. and NATO leaders have repeated ad nauseam that they are arming Ukraine to put it in a stronger position at the 'negotiating table,' even as they keep rejecting negotiations."
"And so the war grinds on," they wrote, prolonging not only the death and suffering of civilians and troops alike, but also continuing the risk of miscalculations and escalations that pose an existential threat to humanity in the form of nuclear war.
This "will not change unless and until our leaders take a radically different approach," Benjamin and Davies concluded. "That would involve serious diplomacy to end the war on terms on which Russia and Ukraine can agree."
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