Ban and UN must recognize the Palestinians’ right to resist

At last, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon seems to be doing what he is expected to do. After more than one thousand Palestinians have died, one third of them children, Ban is taking some measures, which he should have taken the very first day Israel launched its barbaric attack on the defenceless Palestinian people in Gaza. His delayed action raises more suspicion regarding his impartiality.

Ban should have been more prompt and aggressive in his diplomacy. After all, he comes from a country which was, like Palestine, under occupation. Ban was born in Eumseong, a small farming village in Korea, while the country was forcibly being occupied by Imperial Japan. But after the Japanese left Korea in 1945 following its defeat in World War II, little Ban grew up in South Korea, which embraced American imperialism.

When the Korean War broke out in 1950, the six-year-old Ban came into contact with the Americans. There is little evidence in his biography to show that he had any liking for the socialist ideology of Kim Il-Sung, the North Korean visionary leader whom the West fought, hated and labelled as a Commie.

At the height of the Korean War, little Ban had a fascination for America and the English language. In 1962, he was sent to the United States after he won a Red Cross essay contest. He stayed with a US family for several months and was taken to meet the then US president John F. Kennedy. Years later, he earned a Master’s degree from the JFK School of Government at Harvard University.

His American links and the pro-US policies of his country, which he represented, first as a diplomat in various world capitals and then as its UN envoy, gave little hope to the peace-starved world when he became the 8th Secretary General of the United Nations in 2007. His appointment as UN chief came at the height of US campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places — campaigns which his country whole-heartedly supported and even took part in, despite their illegality and unpopularity.

The UN Secretary General is not the president of the world. He is technically the UN’s CEO appointed by and answerable to the member states. In reality he has little power to defy the world powers. He can comment on world issues, but his office is virtually powerless to prevent a member-state from doing wrong. If he dares to speak out against the interest of a powerful state like the United States, he will have to pay a big price. He may even lose his job.

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the then UN Chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Egyptian lawyer-turned-diplomat, tried to create a new world order based on equality and justice and bring reforms to the world body — reforms which the United States did not like. The Americans worked for his defeat when he sought a second term. Kofi Annan, Boutros-Ghali’s successor, was more realistic. He was critical of the United States policies, but his criticism was not vocal enough in his first term. Towards the twilight of his second term, he became somewhat outspoken and said the US war on Iraq was illegal. The result: he paid a big price. The Americans were in the forefront of a campaign against Annan over alleged corruption in the UN-sponsored oil-for-food programme in Iraq.

Unlike Boutros-Ghali and Annan, Ban was America’s favourite. He does not have to be persuaded to be nice to America. When the Israelis launched their Operation Cast Lead to bleed the Palestinians, he knew the operation had US blessing. What came from his office were mere statements that called on both sides to end hostilities, made Hamas equally responsible for the crisis and, more or less echoed US sentiments.

There was condemnation in these statements but it made little impact. But what is more disturbing is that none of the UN statements recognised the Palestinians’ right to resist occupation.

The Secretary General must refer to the UN charter once again to see whether the Palestinian people have a right to resist foreign occupation. Or he may ask international law experts. Most international law experts are of the view that the right of a people to resist outside aggression is found in Article 51 of the UN charter. They say resistance is the inherent and inalienable right of a people who live under subjugation and colonial or alien domination.

The US anti-war group ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism), says:

“The right to resist occupation is a concept enshrined in international law. . . . This is not a matter of political or ideological affinity. Nor is it an issue of the tactics of war — all of which are ugly. It boils down to this simple equation: On the one side are all the forces fighting a war against colonialism and occupation, and on the other side are the colonialists, neo-colonialist…”

It is sad to note that neither Ban nor any leader representing the so-called civilized West has recognized the Palestinian people’s right to resist Israeli occupation, which is essentially colonialism. Hamas may be a banned terrorist organisation to the United States, but it is no different from the African National Congress which the much-respected Nelson Mandela headed to lead his people to freedom. How many Indians will label Subash Chandrabose who took up arms against the British a terrorist? Is the Vietnamese hero Ho Chi Minh a terrorist? If they are not, then why should Hamas carry this ugly label for exercising the Palestinian people’s right to resist?

Will anyone call the Jews of Warsaw ghettos terrorists because they formed a resistance group to fight the Germans who were sending them to extermination camps? If they are not, then why Hamas, a group that took up arms to win freedom for Palestinians from Israeli occupation?

If what the Geramans did to the Jews during the Second World War was a holocaust, what is happening in Gaza is also a holocaust. Did not Israeli Deputy Defence Minister Matan Vilnai in February 2008 warn the Palestinians of a “bigger shoah”? The Hebrew word shoah means holocaust.

In Israel’s shoah in Gaza, 90 percent of the victims are civilians. One third of the dead are children. Part of this shoah is the two-year-old blockade of Gaza — a blockade that has denied the Palestinians essentials such as food and medicine and basic utilities like water, electricity, gas and fuel. During World War II, Hitler sent Jews to extermination camps. Israel has already got some 1.5 million Palestinians in a prison called Gaza Strip, which is also Israel’s gas chamber for the Palestinian people. The Nazis used poison gas to kill Jews; the Israelis are using white phosphorous to kill Palestinians, especially children and women.

The highly disproportionate use of force by Israel raises fears about Israeli moves to annex the Gaza Strip by forcing the people to leave this 350 sq. km area. Israel could then cite Exodus 23:23, 31 which says, “”For My messenger will go before you and bring you in to the land of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites and the Jebusites; and I will completely destroy them…. And I will fix your boundary from the Red Sea to the sea of the Philistines, and from the wilderness to the River Euphrates; for I will deliver the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you will drive them out before you.”

The Western world which believes that the Israelis are the chosen people of God, will see nothing wrong if Gaza is annexed or even if Israel uses weapons of mass destruction to kill all the Palestinians. Many in the West see the destruction wreaked upon the Palestinians as God acting through the Israelis.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Islamic leaders, as expected, will turn a blind eye to the Israeli crime, paying obeisance to Israel’s patron, the United States of America.

Abandoned by the Arab leaders and the West, the Palestinians are virtually fighting a lone battle. However, it is encouraging to note the moral support the Palestinians get from peace-loving and fair-minded people around the world, though they are a small minority. The Palestinian people are with Hamas. They reject what Israel, the United States, Egypt and other US lackeys say — that Hamas is using civilians as human shields. It is not because they are scared of the poorly-armed Hamas, but because they trust the group which won the January 2006 election to the Palestinian assembly.

When the Gaza onslaught began on December 26, Egypt opened its border with Gaza — not to allow the Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip to flee to safety, but to allow hundreds of Palestinian pilgrims returning from Haj via Cairo to go back to Gaza. When al-Jazeera television asked them why they were going to Gaza when they could stay on in the safety of Egypt, the people said they wanted to live and die with the heroes of Gaza.