South African Jews For a Free Palestine (SAJFP) notes that the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has passed a resolution drafted by the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s “peace plan”. We reject the resolution, which seeks to place the people of Gaza under modern-day colonial rule. We also reaffirm our position that the real obstacle to peace remains the policy of Zionism. So long as the Palestinians are denied the right to self-determination in their indigenous homeland, there will be no peace.
Resolution 2803, approved by the UNSC following a vote of 13-0 with two abstentions, mandates a ”transitional authority” and “International Stabilisation Force” in Gaza and states that “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”. This passing reference to Palestinian statehood is not only insufficient but also duplicitous. Haaretz reports that these words were not in the initial resolution, but were added in order to ensure the support of Arab nations, raising concerns regarding whether the resolution offers any sincere path towards making Palestinian self-determination a reality. According to British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim: “This is a classic colonial scheme which totally disregards the rights and aspirations of the indigenous people.” British-Israeli analyst and former peace negotiator Daniel Levy says the resolution “is putting conditioning on something that is a right: the right to self-determination. It’s turned the upholder of international law, the UN, into a body that undermines that.”
Not only is the UNSC resolution an abrogation of the Palestinian right to self determination, it is a return to twentieth century forms of colonial trusteeship. As South Africans, we know what this means, recalling the horror for Namibians when South Africa was handed control by the League of Nations over its territories and people, occupying Namibia and introducing apartheid laws there.
It is also clear that Trump is not an honest broker in this deal. We recall that the current US President has been described by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – to whom the International Criminal Court served an arrest warrant for war crimes – as “the greatest friend Israel has ever had”. Not long ago, Trump was calling for Gaza’s population to be ethnically cleansed and to make way for a “Riviera of the Middle East”. Trump’s current plan sees the creation of a “Board of Peace” in Gaza which will be chaired by himself, a disturbing prospect reminiscent of the US’s disastrous Provisional Authority in Iraq.
The current peace plan was developed with involvement from Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, a close ally of Netanyahu, who has referred to the coastal ruins of Gaza as potential “beachfront property” that he considers “very valuable”. We also note with concern the involvement of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in the plan. This is deeply troubling considering Blair’s role in the disastrous US-led invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians. His involvement indicates that Western powers continue to tread the same failed path of imperialism and interventionism that has created so much instability, both in the Middle East and globally.
Taking all factors into account, the UNSC resolution seems specifically tailored to allow the continued denial of the fundamental rights of Palestinians. As South African Jews, painfully aware of our own history of apartheid, and of the colonial history of our neighbours in Namibia, we will continue to fight for the complete liberation of the Palestinian people. We condemn the way the UN is being used to try to legitimise military rule in Gaza – a deeply colonial form of ‘governance’.
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