Where is the UN in this Iraeli-Palestinian mess? What I mean is, when there was hell going on in that globally insignificant place, Bosnia-Hercegovina, the UN (and NATO?) was all over that and set up a government represents the three main factions and more-or-less has them cooperating with each other. But in Israel and Palestine, where are the “Boys in Blue”? And if the answer is, “Israel doesn’t want them”, tough shit. I bet the Serb warlords didn’t want them either.
Perhaps the best answer to the situation is to remove both heads of state from power, but the only body that can do it peacefully is the UN. Why doesn’t this happen?
Because no one not even the “MIGHTY U. N.” can see any solution to this problem. There is no show of force that will do anything but make the problem worse. You cannot stop suicide bombers with tanks, and if you try you will just be seen as supporting Israel. And if you try to restrain Israel Hamas will take advantige of the situation and step up the bombings to add pressure. The only thing that the U.N. would accomplish is to get peacekeepers killed.
Where was the UN in 1948 when Israel was fighting for its life? Where was the UN in 1967 when Israel was told it would be destroyed? (They were running away, actually.) Where was the UN when Israel was fighting for its life in 1973? (The UN at the time was run by a former Nazi. Gosh, why would Israel not trust them?)
Let me ask you this; where is the UN when Hezbollah guerrillas attack Israel every single week from positions in Lebanon? Imagine for a moment, Fandago, that your country was subject to endless rocket attacks from one of your neighbours. Not in response to a military attack; they just do it because they hate your people. I’ll guess you’re from the US. Imagine if Communist guerrillas operating in Mexico fired rockets every night on San Diego and other Arizona, Texas, and California border towns, killing your citizens. Now imagine the U.N. says “We won’t do anything about it, and by the way, you’re not allowed to, either.”
I want you to imagine if, in addition to these endless rocket attacks, your country, a very small country, was surrounded by countries who on several previous occasions had attacked your country and had quite openly stated that it was their intention to destroy your country and either murder or drive out all your people. I want you to imagine that it is quite routine for their neighbouring countries to allow their state-operated media to report things like how your people kidnap their children and use their blood to make bread, or that your people are all engaged in a secret conspiracy to run the world. And I want you to imagine that those countries will not even recognize you’re countries’ existence and openly pay money to guerrillas to attack and murder your citizens. Imagine that these countries teach their schoolchildren that your people do not deserve to even live and that God commands them to murder you. Now imagine the UN refuses to do anything about it because their member states are afraid their oil prices might go up. How would you feel about the UN now?
The UN has left Israel to die again, and again, and again. They did nothing in 1948. They did nothing in 1967, and actually retreated from the area. They did nothing in 1973. They have refused to do anything about Lebanon. The UN simply doesn’t give a shit about Israel’s survival and has stood by and watched while its entire population was threatened with genocide and three separate occasions. Now you explain to me what moral standing the UN has in any of this. I don’t blame Israel one iota for not trusting the UN, because the UN has completely abandoned its responsibilty to Israel.
“Abandoned their responsibility to Israel”? Don’t be silly–why, they just had a nice big vote, all about Israel, and they’re e-mailing Israel the results right now, along with a lovely Blue Mountain greeting card.
Hi i am Very new to this board and I hardly came here much because I hated to see all the opinions that people had about Israel. I am in Tel Aviv and this past Saturday night, I with my sister and our boyfriends were walking on our way to walk by the beach when the building across the street there had blown up. Glass was everywhere, in our clothes and eyes and we had some cuts too. Up untill this had happened we were afraid to go places because the bombings were happening almost everyday. Now we are afraid to go anywhere because these suicide bombers can be anywhere. Now just like you say we have to worry about the missiles coming from across the border for no other reason than to kill. When I heard that The US President Bush gave the speech to TELL my country to withdraw out Army from the West Bank areas, I cried. See for the past 4 days there has been no suicide bombers here, I was feeling a little better that maybe we could go buy food at the store or CD’s or go see my friends and not worry that we wouldn’t be coming back. Now I have no doubt that the bomibings will begin again and innocent people will again die for no good reasons. None of the Israeli people here want a war, we don’t care about giving up some land to the Arabs because they do have rights to it. We just want to live and be able to do all the things we always did before, and be able to sleep the whole night without waking up so scared in the night that I am sick from all this fear. How will President Bush feel when he sees people covered up in sheets soaked with blood again because all they were doing was eating somewhere after the Sabbath. How can we give the Arabs the land when they won’t accept it?
Do all of you understand we just want to live?
Kim 18 Tel Aviv
In Bosnia a large modern force was trying to wipe out a minority. So haveing anouther modern force come in to even the balance made sense. Wareas in Isreal it is the small underarmed gurilla force that is trying to wipe out a large modern force. Tanks are real good at stoping other tanks but are almost useless aganst sucide bombers, and Isreal already has tanks to do what they can to stop them. Puting U.N. Troops in to try and stop Israel from defending itself will not stop the sucide bombers. The radical Palestinian’s don’t want peace they want to exterminate the Jewish state and do everything in there power to derail the peace process.
Before '48 the palestinian people didnot have there own home land they where part of the Ottoman Empire. And when the U.N. tasked the british to relocate Europe’s unwanted Jews the Jews who relocated bought the land they setteled,from the Arab princes and Turks who then kicked out there tennets for the new owners.
Lots of things make me angry. There is lots of injustice in the world. That doesn’t entitle me to blow up teenagers in a pizzeria. You can’t tell me a fight over land merits that, can you?
Besides, you deliberately avoided most of my point, which is de rigeur in this topic, unfortunately. Explain to me, please, why Israel should trust the UN when the UN won’t do anything about its security WITH RESPECT TO OTHER COUNTRIES. When did Israel tell Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, et al to get out of their countries? But those countries all announced they were going to wipe Israel off the map and kill all the Jews, even before Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 1967, when JORDAN occupied most of what is now the disputed territories, those nations openly stated their intent of wiping out the Israelis. I don’t think this can be stressed enough; this was before Israel took over the land Yassir Arafat is now claiming he wants as a Palestinian homeland. Jordan was occupying it. Did Yassir and the buys attack Jordan? Did the Arab states attack Jordan? No, they attacked Israel.
Syrian military units bombarded Jewish farms and villages from the Golan Heights thoughout 1965 and 1966. Try to imagine Belgian military units just randomly firing at Dutch towns for two years; do you think the UN would do nothing about it? Actually, imagine if Belgium was randomly shelling Dutch towns plus they, Germany, France and Switzerland all announced their intent to invade the Netherlands and annihilate its people. Does that strike you as being the sort of thing the UN would just walk away from? Of course not.
I’m not saying Israel has treated the Palestinians as well as they should have. I would never say that because it’s bullshit. But Israel certainly has a right for its citizens to LIVE. The United States didn’t deserve to be invaded and have its people slaughtered in 1935 with black Americans were treated like shit, did they? I’d say blacks were treated just as badly as Palestinians, probably worse. Would it have been okay for all the world’s powers to announce that the USA didn’t deserve to exist and should be wiped out? What do you think?
That’s the position Israel is in. Yes, they’ve done some stupid and nasty things, and a lot of Israelis will be the first ones to admit it. That does not entitled Syria, Egypt and the rest of them to invade Israel and murder all the Jews, and it doesn’t absolve the UN from the fact that one of its member states is being constantly attacked without provocation and the UN not on ly won’t do anything about it, but criticized Israel for trying to do something about it.
The Mideast crisis is, in my opinion, partially the fault of the United Nations. The UN has absolutely and completely failed to meet is purpose and mandate in this matter. They had a good, fair plan in 1948 for partitioning Israel, and when the Arab states decided to start murdering Jews the UN did nothing. Had the United Nations used force in 1948, just as they did in Korea, to enforce their mandate as the globe’s protector of peace, I honestly believe this could have been settled years ago. Had they enforced Israel’s borders and enforced the creation of a Palestinian homeland (instead of letting Jordan take it over) we wouldn’t have this mess today. Israel wouldn’t feel so paranoid about their neighbours; the Palestinians would have a place to call home; the Arab states wouldn’t feel they could attack Israel at will. When it comes to the Middle East the UN has been AWOL. They simply have no moral right to say anything about this.
If you’re going to be mad at the UN you’re wasting your time. For the UN to do anything involving peacekeepers it needs the approval of the Security Council. That requires US approval, the US won’t do that because it could piss off its Arab allies. This is why the UN is damned near broken. You have to have the agreement of Russia, France, Britain, United States, and China to accomplish anything.
Most of the examples used were from the Cold War. Of course the UN did nothing during the Cold War. The West supported Israel and the Soviets supported the Arabs. Security Council was deadlocked and so nothing could get approved. The only major U.N. action was the Korean War and that was approved only because Taiwan was voting instead of mainland China and the USSR was boycotting the UN.
Finally if you want to know why the UN is stepping lightly in Israel its about the nuclear weapons. IIRC its accepted that Israel has had them for awhile and rumored that they even had them during the '73 war. While the Israeli government hasn’t publicly announced that they have nuclear weapons, they have stated that they won’t initiate the use of nuclear weapons in the area.
Well, it’s hard to know where to start given the tide of ill-informed and just plain ignorant observations here.
Perhaps the UN, yes that’s probably the most egregious. I’ll simply note that it is depressing that extreme right propaganda has been so effective in shaping people’s (mis) understanding of the UN.
So it should be fairly clear to the informed and literate observer that whinging on about why hasn’t the “UN” taken action is a fairly poorly informed question to begin with, and that mistakenly embodying the UN with some executive power that the organization itself lacks is staggeringly ignorant. Common, but staggeringly ignorant.
In regards to the comment the UN is damned near broken, I rather disagree. It works like it was designed. It is not a government, it is a talking shop and umbrella for collective action for *** sovereign *** governments. Sovereignty is not going away in the near term, the UN provides a valuable function for coordinating and helping to work out many tensions fairly peacefully. Some things, however, are not so amenable to such working out.
Israel’s nuclear weapons, by the way, are utterly irrelevant to the question of peacekeepers. If the Big 5 decide peacekeepers go in – and that includes Israel’s major backer, the US—then the Israelis are just going to have to lump it, certainly they can’t threaten the US, France and GB with nuclear weapons, and in fact such a threat would rebound on them.
In regards to the Israel-Palestine issue, I suggest that readers ignore the comments here and take themselves to say the Israel-Palestine Primer thread where at least there has been some more historically accurate comments on the conflict – although I note there has been recent messages which I haven’t read so I’m not characterizing the entire thread.
Give me a break. No, I am not the victim of right wing propaganda. Yes, I do understand that the UN’s actions with respect to military force are subject to Security Council approval. Yes, I know the UN doesn’t have an armed forces. I know how the UN works, thanks.
Those are structural problems with the United Nations, though. Whether the failure is structural or not, it’s still a failure. I realize the UN Charter was written the way it was for a reason, but like or it, not, the UN has dropped the ball here. We can argue all day whether or not it’s U Thant’s fault or whether it’s merely the way the UN is structured, but either way the UN is not accomplishing what it was created to accomplish.
Of course, we can transfer all the blame to its member states, inasmuch as they comprise the UN. However, you cannot deny that Thant unilaterally caved in to Egypt’s demand they run away in 1967, nor can you deny that the UN in 1948, 1967 and 1973 did not demonstrate the moral leadership you’d at least hope for. It’s unfortunate that its member states have long decided they don’t want to empower the UN to act effectively, but there it is.
The issue I was attempting to address is why ISRAEL doesn’t trust the UN. You can cite the Charter from now until the bovine mammals return to their domicile; the Israeli perception is “Who are these UN guys to pass resolutions demanding we pull out? Where the hell were they when we needed help?” And frankly, that’s a very understandable position. Israel’s mistrust of the UN is not based on the UN’s structure or purpose, but simply on its inaction. The reason for that inaction doesn’t change the fact that it’s been of no use to Israel and hasn’t been an effective tool in solving the crisis.
Sorry, but I and many people don’t see how slings, thrown rocks and even nail bombs can even begin to ultimate destroy one of the most efficient armed forces in the history of the world, unless that superior force suffers from the Goliath complex.
Oh for sure, suicide bombs and such actions are highly counterproductive, much less effective so than civil disobedience to address grievances. After forty years of worldwide guerilla and terror activity, the Palestinians have not made much ground, other than potential recognition of a state . And unless they stop, or Israel forces a stop, there won’t be much to make a state.
Sorry, but I and many people don’t see how slings, thrown rocks and even nail bombs can even begin to ultimate destroy the second most efficient armed force in the history of the world, unless that superior force suffers from the Goliath complex.
Oh for sure, suicide bombs and such actions are highly counterproductive, much less effective so than civil disobedience to address grievances. After forty years of worldwide guerilla and terror activity, the Palestinians have not made much ground, other than potential recognition of a state . And unless they stop, or Israel forces a stop, there won’t be much to make a state.