We Arabs: Who Are We, and Where Are We Going?
Part Twenty-Six
(This is a translation from the original Arabic, offered so that my grandchildren, and others of their generation, may understand something of their history— a history they were denied when they were uprooted without choice.)
Where To? What Have We to Do with the United Nations? — II
It appears that the world has indeed changed. My most recent inquiry into our need for the United Nations did not provoke the familiar reactions of surprise to which I had long grown accustomed. On the contrary, it prompted a series of thoughtful questions from people whose opinions matter deeply to me—encouragement enough to continue pursuing this line of inquiry.
Since my earlier observations regarding the negative nature of the United Nations Charter—crafted by the victors of the Second World War to ensure their dominance over the organization—were met with interest, I must add two further remarks concerning the Charter itself.
The first concerns the amendment of the Charter. The founding great powers deliberately ensured that amending it would be so difficult as to verge on impossibility. Article 108 of the Charter stipulates:
“Amendments to the present Charter shall come into force for all Members of the United Nations when they have been adopted by a vote of two-thirds of the members of the General Assembly and ratified in accordance with their respective constitutional processes by two-thirds of the Members of the United Nations, including all the permanent members of the Security Council.”
Thus, each of the five permanent members was granted the power to block any amendment to the Charter. Should a group of states seek to reform the Charter to correct structural imbalance or injustice within the organization, such an effort would inevitably fail if it threatened the hegemony of the great powers—or even that of a single one among them. This same logic of preemptively obstructing future reform was applied when Zionist forces drafted Iraq’s constitution in 2005 following its invasion and occupation: it was written in a manner that renders amendment nearly impossible, ensuring Iraq’s continued entrapment within the constraints imposed by the occupier.
The second observation concerns the provisions defining the International Court of Justice and its authority. One might assume, from its name alone, that this court is a powerful judicial body with wide-ranging authority. Yet anyone who examines the Charter’s provisions relating to it is quickly disillusioned. A reader would reasonably expect that a court associated with the Security Council would safeguard the legality of Council decisions, ensure their conformity with international law, and possess the authority to invalidate decisions issued by a political body such as the Security Council. One might also expect it to adjudicate disputes and enforce its rulings. None of this exists.
The International Court of Justice has no authority to rule on the legality of Security Council decisions. Indeed, it refrains from hearing any dispute once the Security Council has seized jurisdiction over the matter. Moreover, the Court has no compulsory jurisdiction: if a party to a dispute refuses to recognize its authority, the Court is powerless. Even when jurisdiction exists, any party may later reject the Court’s ruling. In such cases, the matter is referred back to the Security Council for decision. Thus, the Court is not the guardian of justice but merely one of the instruments at the disposal of the Security Council.
These are further examples of the Charter’s structural defects and of its systematic abuse in practice. Since Arabs are among those who have suffered most from this system—for a variety of political reasons beyond the scope of this essay—we must inevitably ask whether we are party to a contract that serves us in any meaningful way.
Several interlocutors have asked how Arabs could exist outside the United Nations and still engage with the rest of the world. In my view, this question is improperly framed. The United Nations is a contractual arrangement among states, not an inescapable fate. The proper question is one of balance: what do we gain and what do we lose in each case? What would we forfeit by leaving, and what do we truly gain by remaining? This is not a theoretical exercise. We have more than seventy years of experience within the United Nations. The question, therefore, is simple: What have we gained from membership, and what have we lost?
Five Arab states—Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia—were among the fifty-one founding signatories of the UN Charter. North Africa was largely colonized at the time, and the political entities of the Arabian Peninsula had yet to take shape. What, then, did one-tenth of the founding membership manage to accomplish?
The first true test of the United Nations came with the creation of the State of Israel. Without delving into the details of Britain’s abdication of its mandate responsibilities in Palestine or the convergence—albeit from differing perspectives—of Soviet and European interests in establishing Israel, I will focus on the outcome and the lesson Arabs should have learned.
On 29 November 1947, the United Nations adopted Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine. Under this resolution, the indigenous people were allotted less than half the land, while European settlers were granted more than half—the better part of it. The poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab captured this injustice succinctly:
A voice proclaims: this is for ALL the refugees,
And ALL of this is for the Jews.
Despite everything that followed in Arab lands—events that were, at their core, consequences of the creation of Israel or directly related to it—the lesson of Palestine remains the clearest indicator of the United Nations’ bias against Arab existence. Although the partition resolution was overtaken by events, not a single UN resolution on Palestine has ever been implemented. By contrast, every Security Council resolution directed against Iraq was enforced.
The disparity is even clearer when one considers that all resolutions against Iraq were issued under Chapter VII of the Charter, making them enforceable through sanctions or military action. Not a single resolution against Israel—despite its repeated invasions of Arab lands—was issued under Chapter VII. Instead, resolutions concerning Israel were exercises in political theatre, unenforceable by design. As Israel created new facts on the ground, the United Nations responded with further paper resolutions, mocking Arab grievances with empty gestures.
What would have happened had Arab states withdrawn from the United Nations after it endorsed the creation of Israel—bringing Europeans to settle Palestine and turning its people into refugees in neighbouring states that had themselves signed the Charter of an organization purportedly founded to uphold peace and security? What more would Arabs have lost by withdrawing from an organization that violated its own contract from the very first day?
In 1956, Zionist forces—Israel, Britain, and France—invaded Egypt and occupied the Suez Canal. The United Nations rewarded the aggressor by granting new navigation rights. Did Egypt consider withdrawing from the UN in response? What would it have lost had it done so?
In 1967, Israel invaded all its neighbours, defeated Arab armies, and occupied Palestine in its entirety along with territories belonging to other Arab states—territories it retains to this day. The United Nations rewarded the aggressor with the feeble Resolution 242, adopted under Chapter VI, non-enforceable and deliberately drafted in ambiguous European languages to permit conflicting interpretations. Arabs lost everything in 1967: land, armies, and dignity. There was nothing left to lose. Had they threatened withdrawal from the UN and halted oil exports, the world might have calculated differently. Instead, Arabs clung to Resolution 242 and quietly abandoned Resolution 181. They neither withdrew from the UN nor even threatened to do so. Would they truly have lost more had they taken that step? Might history itself have changed?
Then came the 1973 war, followed by Security Council Resolution 338. Arabs forgot Resolution 242 and began demanding implementation of the new one. This was a moment of unprecedented leverage: oil and UN withdrawal could have been used together, as Europe faced a genuine energy crisis. What would Europe have done had Arabs withdrawn from the UN and halted oil production until Israel withdrew from Arab lands?
In 1982, when Israel occupied Beirut, the Security Council did not convene immediately. When it finally did, it issued no resolution demanding immediate withdrawal, as it had when Iraqi forces entered Kuwait—territory carved from Iraq by Zionist design, despite the doctrine of persistent objection in international law. Even then, the Council did not condemn Israel’s occupation but treated it as a dispute between two parties.
The genocidal sanctions imposed on Iraq in 1990—unprecedented in history and impossible to justify—alone suffice to reveal the depth of European hostility toward Arabs. What more could Iraq have lost by withdrawing from an organization that rejected, isolated, starved, and humiliated it?
In 2003, Zionist forces invaded and occupied Iraq without even a pretext convincing to their allies. The Security Council did not convene to address the invasion of a founding UN member. When it later met, it did so at the request of the occupier to legitimize the occupation and hand Iraq over to thieves—an authority the Security Council does not possess under international law.
When the opportunity arose for further abuse, the Security Council sanctioned the destruction of Libya, transforming a once-secure country into a battleground of militias and rival mini-states.
These examples demonstrate that, over seventy years, Arabs have received nothing from the United Nations but harm, humiliation, and aggression. In any honest accounting of profit and loss, can it truly be said that remaining within the United Nations after the Nakba benefited Arabs more than it harmed them?
Nor does the damage end with the resolutions imposed upon us. There is another, deeper injury inflicted by our continued membership—one that I shall address in the next part.
To be continued…