There’s a role for the United Nations to play in Gaza. It could bring about peace | Opinion
Albert Einstein is said to have remarked “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” The war in Gaza offers a salient case in point. It seems we have been doing the same thing for over 50 years. How do we end the insanity? Is there a role for the United Nations?
How did we get here? Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza during the Six-Day War in 1967. Since then, neither side has been able to break the stalemate. The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem as their capital, but Israel sees Jerusalem as a non-negotiable part of the Jewish state. Palestinian refugees also want the return of land lost during the war that is now settled by Israelis. Jewish settlements have expanded exponentially throughout the occupied territories.
Palestinian resistance to Israel saw the rise of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to prominence. The PLO was committed to the destruction of Israel; but in the Oslo Accords with its leader, Yasir Arafat, brokered by the United States in 1993, the PLO agreed to recognize Israel’s right to exist. In return, Israel agreed that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would be established and assume governing responsibilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel dismantled Jewish settlements in Gaza as part of the subsequent Cairo Agreement in 1994. Unfortunately, there was no agreement to divide Jerusalem between the two states and Israeli settlements continued to grow.
The failure of the Palestinian Authority to deliver on its promise of a free and independent state and the poor living conditions in Palestinian refugee camps throughout the region led to the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2006. Unlike the PLO, Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel because it believes negotiations with the Jewish state did not end the complete occupation of Palestinian land. Sadly, there have been tit-for-tat attacks as each side jockeys for sympathy and support in the court of world opinion.
Hamas rightly was declared a terrorist group because it targets Israeli civilians to achieve its political objectives. Israel exercises its right to defend itself by attacking Hamas strongholds in densely populated areas in Gaza; but whether deliberate or collateral damage, this is a distinction without a difference if you are a Palestinian civilian caught in the crossfire of Israeli retaliation. As each side plots revenge for what it sees as collective punishment, the vicious cycle of violence continues unabated, demonstrating that the only thing necessary for the triumph of extremism is when moderates do nothing.
How do we end the violence? The one organization that seems conspicuously absent from the equation is the United Nations. The purpose of the U.N. is to end conflicts like this and prevent them from happening again. The U.N. already has the framework for a peace agreement on the table. In November 1967, Security Council Resolution 242 unanimously called for Israel to withdraw from the territories occupied during the Six-Day War. This may be the long-term solution to the conflict, but the immediate problem is the war in Gaza.
The U.N. secretary general already has called for a ceasefire to end the suffering. It would be in Israel’s long-term interest for the U.N. to also mediate the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and deploy a peacekeeping force in the region made up of stakeholders, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. If Hamas refuses to cooperate, Israel could call on the U.N. Security Council to authorize a regional security force with lethal capability to remove Hamas and organize a war crimes tribunal to bring to justice the perpetrators of the heinous Oct. 7 attacks.
After humanitarian assistance is provided to stabilize the country, U.N. monitors can then oversee free and fair elections in Gaza disqualifying Hamas by requiring that all participants renounce violence.
This multilateral approach might yield a different outcome for the simple reason that it has never been done before. The alternative is for Israel to go it alone and repeat the same mistakes of the past by unleashing yet another round of violence with the same results.
Ricardo Richards Ph.D. holds a doctorate in international relations from Cambridge University. He teaches sociology, American government and international relations at Miami Dade College.
