This was illustrated on Wednesday when the UN General Assembly approved five pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli resolutions, part of a package of close to 20 such texts that the UNGA passes annually. In case you were wondering, no other country has so many resolutions leveled against it.
The votes were on obscure issues like affirmation of the “UN Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights for the Palestinian People” or a resolution called “Special Information Program on the Question of Palestine.”
What remains unclear is what exactly these resolutions achieve. On the one hand, they show an obsession with Israel, which receives attention at the UN unmatched by any other country but on the other hand, do absolutely nothing to advance peace.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan was right in his response to the votes. “Countries that supported Israel today have understood that this package of resolutions does nothing to forward peace, but serves instead to entrench the Palestinian’s rejectionist position and deepen the conflict,” said the ambassador.
Is peace any closer since these votes were held? Are the Palestinians incentivized to come to the negotiating table now that the UN General Assembly has decided to support a resolution affirming the work of the “Division for Palestinian Rights of the Secretariat”?
Of course not. These votes and resolutions achieve only one thing – continued Palestinian intransigence and refusal to come to the table and negotiate with Israel.
It is true that Israel can do more to advance peace – for years we have questioned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s commitment to a two-state solution – but the UN needs to understand that it does not help. On the contrary, it makes the situation worse.
This is important for the incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden to keep in mind as it takes office on January 20. It will be easy to go back to the positions of previous administrations and to re-embrace the path of condemning and blaming Israel for the impasse in peace but – as has been seen over the last three decades – that will not work.
We will never know what would have happened had President Donald Trump won another term and continued to pressure the Palestinians into accepting the peace plan he rolled out last January. After eight years of getting their way in Washington, the Palestinians suddenly did not get everything they wanted under Trump and remained at odds with him, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other top members of the administration.
It is likely that the Palestinians would not have been able to hold out for another four years and would have eventually returned to the negotiating table with Israel, although this time with an understanding that compromises would be necessary.
The question now is what will the Biden administration do if it even finds the time to try and restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. What happened at the UN last week should serve as a reminder of what is not needed. Israelis and the Palestinians don’t need plans, resolutions and proposals that look good on paper and at academic conferences, but have nothing to do with reality.
The countries that voted in favor of the five anti-Israel resolutions at the UN showed that they are detached from reality and from what is happening in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Moreover, anti-Israel resolutions and meetings of the Security Council are not going to bring the sides together.
What can work? An understanding by the Palestinians that they will not simply get what they want and that they will need to compromise to achieve independence, statehood and peace.
For them to understand that, Biden will need to make it clear that the US is not going back to the days of president Barack Obama and the refusal to veto anti-Israel resolutions like 2334 that passed at the end of his presidency.
Now is the time to make that clear.