Symbolic gestures help, but the Palestine crisis needs concrete steps
As the world tries to process the continued horrors and injustices facing the Palestinians, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Friday voted overwhelmingly to grant them additional rights in the global body and backed their drive for full membership. We commend UNGA members for their effort. However, it's important to remember that this is only a symbolic gesture as the UNGA cannot enforce membership decisions. Therefore, it has suggested that the UN Security Council (UNSC), which has the authority in this regard, considers the matter "favourably".
Unfortunately, this is where the celebration ends. For as long as the United States—one of five veto-holding members on the Security Council and Israel's closest ally—resists Palestine's admittance as a state, any resolution will remain incomplete. On Friday, 143 UNGA members voted in favour of the resolution, but they remain powerless against the US, which recently vetoed another Palestinian bid for full membership. This is nothing new. The US has always turned down pro-Palestine proposals at UNSC, and this "diplomatic doom loop," as stated by an analyst, has been going on for a long time.
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Against this backdrop, the latest UNGA vote should be seen more as a gesture of support for the Palestinians' quest for peace and self-determination amid a devastating war by Israel. The global outpouring of support and mass protests in favour of Palestine all point to the fact that nations are no longer buying Israel's narrative. "We want peace, we want freedom," Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour told the General Assembly before the vote. Under the founding UN Charter, membership is open to "peace-loving states." It's ironic that a number of full members are facilitating wars, with Israel committing war crimes and genocide, and yet little is being done to make them accountable.
More than 34,000 have been killed during Israel's brutal seven-month-long war on Gaza. It has recently started its ground invasion in Rafah, in another potentially bloody campaign. Unless the US government acknowledges that it is actively facilitating this genocide, changes its stance, and stops vetoing pro-Palestine resolutions, Palestinians may see no peace. We hope that the increasing support across the globe—with several European countries planning to recognise a Palestinian state—forces the superpower to do just that, before Israel wipes out any semblance of this long-persecuted community.
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