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Does Palestine pass the state test?
Did Hamas score a big win at the United Nations, or was it actually a win for the much-maligned idea of the two-state solution?
Forgive yourself if you ignored the critical UN vote last week. Like the blaring horns on the streets of New York, many folks tune out the UN as meaningless background noise to the real action in global politics: sound and fury signifying bias. That is a mistake. The controversial May 9 vote on granting Palestine full membership to the UN bears real scrutiny. After all, in plain terms, the vote effectively means recognizing a Palestinian state.
The vote was supported by 143 of the 193 countries that make up the General Assembly – that’s more countries supporting this idea in 2024 than the last time something like this was voted on, back in 2012. Just seven months after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, Palestine has won more support, not less. And Israel is more isolated, not less. Nine countries, including the US and Israel, voted no, but this next bit is telling: 25 countries, including Canada, abstained. This signals a major shift in Canadian policy, as it has historically voted “no” alongside the US.
What changed, and what exactly was the vote saying about who would represent the Palestine state if it was granted full status– the Palestinian Authority or Hamas? Can there be a Palestinian state with Hamas playing a role? Is the current Israeli government trying to kill the idea of a viable two-state solution?
To find out, I spoke with Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations Bob Rae.
Evan Solomon: Ambassador, 143 countries at the UN General Assembly just voted to grant Palestine full member status — essentially recognizing a Palestinian state. Canada was among the 25 countries that abstained, which is a change in policy from a hard “no.” Why the shift in policy?
Ambassador Bob Rae: Largely because we think the situation on the ground is changing so fast. We wanted to make it clear that we still favor a two-state solution, but that we also recognize that it’s going to take a lot of work for that to happen. There’s going to have to be significant changes, frankly, on both sides to get there. Most dramatically on the side of Hamas, which continues to wage war after its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and is not, by any means, defeated. We have to be clear that there can’t be a terrorist group in charge of a state. Israel will never accept the notion of a terrorist state being granted a status in international law, and we would never do it. The only way we can proceed is if that changes.
The other thing that needs to change is the policies that are currently being pursued by the Israelis in political terms, which is refusing to countenance the idea of two states coexisting.
The argument that we’ve always made in the past with this kind of resolution is to say, “No, we can’t support that, but we want to ensure that the parties will get back to the table, and that’s where things will get resolved.” But it's clear that at the moment, the current Israeli government has no intention of negotiating anything approaching sovereignty for Palestinians. So we don’t see how we can simply vote “no” anymore. We also don’t see how we can simply say “yes” either. We don’t think we can responsibly do that either. So that’s why we’ve taken the position we’ve taken.
Solomon: Was this a position that was true before Oct. 7, or has it changed because of the attack and the aftermath?
Rae: The feeling was that you had more of a discussion going on within Israel about the possibilities of two states. However, we know that Mr. Netanyahu has never been enthusiastic and never really admitted to the possibility of a Palestinian state, and now it’d become even clearer that’s not on the table.
On the other side, I do think that there has been, in the last 20 years, a strong endorsement of the two-state position by the Palestinian Authority leadership on the political side in the West Bank, but that has not been matched by Hamas. So that’s why we changed the position from 2012.
Solomon: Back in 2012, only 138 countries voted for the resolution that upgraded the status of Palestine to a non-member observer state within the UN, but Canada voted against it. What does the increase of support tell you? Is this, essentially, a vote for the Hamas cause? Does this show that their horrifying terror attack was a strategic success?
Rae: I don’t think so. I think that this whole “reward theory” is wrongheaded. The support in the General Assembly for two states is overwhelming. If you actually read the speeches of the countries that voted no, and the countries that voted to abstain, and the countries that voted yes, the support for two states was unanimous going from the United States and Hungary and other countries that voted no to the countries that abstained like us.
Solomon: But you had countries voting yes, like Denmark, the Aussies, and New Zealanders. What does that say?
Rae: I think it is a question of asking if a Palestinian state is prepared for membership in the United Nations. Canada looked at that question and we decided it doesn’t meet the test of what it means to be a state. The state is a place that has control over a territory, and the Palestinian Authority doesn't. Now, the Palestinians say, “Yeah, we haven’t been able to exercise control over the territory because of Israel.” And that's partly true. But it's also true to say now that they don't have control over the territory because of Hamas terrorism, which they have not been able to deal with effectively or to the extent that you can say, “This is a state that's ready to go.” The point is that there's real work to be done in the creation of two states, and we've still got to get there.
Solomon: Did the vote at the UN signal that most countries are ready to recognize a Palestinian state, even if Hamas is part of the governing body?
Rae: No, I don’t think that’s the case. I really don’t. What has to be very clear is that there's no room for a Hamas state at the UN. That’s something where there’s a very strong consensus.
Solomon: But the vote doesn’t make that distinction.
Rae: That’s why I say the decision on who gets admitted to the UN is not based on high hopes. It is based on what are the realities on the ground. We have to get real about it. That's where I think Canada is not alone. Many other countries feel the same way. The real work starts now with saying: How do you get to a cease-fire? How do you get to where you want to go, which is a two-state solution?
Solomon: Is a two-state solution effectively dead?
Rae: The trouble with that argument, Evan, is that you’ve got to then say, ok, if the two-state solution is dead, then what? When you look at the other alternatives, they don’t work either. For example, if you take a “river to the sea” approach, whether it's from a terrorist position or an Israeli perspective, that doesn't work. So it's really important for people to come to grips with the fact that the most fact-based, realistic solution has got to be based on the notion of two sovereign states living side by side in security and in peace. And, one hopes, eventually in partnership. It takes a long time to get there. But if you drop the idea of any possibility of sovereignty to realize Palestinian aspirations, then you've really abandoned all hope.
Solomon: From the Netanyahu government point of view, the argument is that Hamas doesn’t even recognize Israel’s right to exist, and neither do many other countries in the region. So a two-state solution is, at best, a naive hope. At worst, a serious security risk.
Rae: All that is part of the solution. That’s all part of what needs to happen. These things can change. We've seen things can change. It's all about building the basis for change. To rule it out entirely is a mistake.
Solomon: Does Hamas, a listed terror group in Canada and the US, need to be destroyed, as Netanyahu argues, or can they evolve out of that status, and transition toward governance?
Rae: No terrorist entity can become part of a state. That’s not possible. Can terrorist groups change? History points to some examples of that. The IRA, the African National Union, which was listed in many countries as a terrorist organization. It transformed itself. It changed. But the problem with Hamas — and it is in their charter — is that it is based on the obliteration of the state of Israel. That's not something that anybody can accept. It isn't good enough to say if this and if that. We can't get into too many hypotheticals. Right now Hamas' official policy is to obliterate the state of Israel. Israel is a sovereign state and a member of the United Nations, so while Canada has strong disagreements with the current policies of the current government, that's very different from saying that we are going to pretend that Hamas is not Hamas. I mean, that would be wrong.
Solomon: Neither Joe Biden nor Justin Trudeau gets on well with Benjamin Netanyahu. How isolated is this Israeli government right now?
Rae: That’s a very important question. My own view is it’s not simply about Prime Minister Netanyahu or the state of Israel. Anybody with any degree of empathy would understand that the activities of Hamas – the sexual and gender atrocities, the atrocities on children and families, and the sheer brutality of the attacks on civilians – are unprecedented. It's been deeply traumatic for the Israeli people. So if you ask them, “How do you feel about two states?,” you can understand them saying, “For God's sake, don't talk to me about that until you've dealt with what we're dealing with.” You have to understand that the current disagreement that we have with Israel is not irreparable. It's not like we're stopping talking or engaging.
It’s important for everybody to be clearheaded about how we need to go forward and the work that’s involved. But any tactic or strategy that doesn't recognize the democratic rights of either the Israeli people or the Palestinian people is doomed to fail.
South Sudan customs dispute taxes a long-suffering population
Even as three-quarters of South Sudan’s people face starvation, a squabble between the government and the UN over import taxes is leaving vital aid trucks stuck at the border.
The background: South Sudan’s trade ministry ordered this week that all goods trucks entering the East African country must pay a $300 tax. The measure was meant to ensure that the government got its share of revenue from imports that are often underbilled or misrepresented. There was supposed to be a carveout for UN aid vehicles, but if so, officials at the Ugandan border didn’t get the memo – at least not yet.
The bigger background: South Sudan is one of the world’s newest countries – and one of its poorest. After coming into existence in 2011 following years of war with the Sudanese government, it fell into its own civil war, which killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The legacy of that conflict – along with frequent natural disasters – persists: Seven million of the country’s 12 million people are facing hunger in the coming months. The harrowing civil war in Sudan, which just entered its second year, has exacerbated things, driving an estimated 500,000 people across the border into South Sudan, straining the country’s resources further.
Why the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals are not on track to be financed soon
The world faces a sustainable development crisis, and while most countries have strategies in place, they don’t have the cash to back them up. How far off track are we with the financing needed to support the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals, ranging from quality education and health care to climate action and clean water?
Shari Spiegel, who runs the UN’s Financing for Sustainable Development Office, sat down with GZERO’s Tony Maciulis at a Global Stage event for the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings this week. She explains that the SDGs were off track even before the pandemic and that now, owing to global crises, many poorer countries have slipped backwards.
“We actually started backtracking on many of these goals as countries were under enormous stress, and particularly the poorest countries,” she said, noting that the global output of many of the poorest nations has fallen by 30% — and some, such as the Small Island Developing States, by 40%. This has led to an enormous finance divide — raising SDG financing and investment gaps from $2 trillion a few years ago to around $4 trillion today.
So how can the UN restrengthen multilateralism and, in turn, help narrow this gap? Watch here.
For more of our 2024 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings coverage, visit Global Stage.
China and Russia veto US cease-fire resolution for Gaza
Yet another Gaza cease-fire resolution failed in the UN Security Council today – though the US was not responsible for blocking it this time. China and Russia vetoed a US-sponsored resolution urging for “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war in connection with a hostage deal.
Beijing and Moscow’s ambassadors seemingly took issue with the language of the resolution, contending it didn’t go far enough to demand a cease-fire. The US resolution “sets up conditions for a ceasefire, which is no different from giving a green light to continued killings, which is unacceptable,” said Zhang Jun, China’s ambassador to the UN.
Russia's ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said Moscow supported a cease-fire but decried the US resolution as a “hypocritical spectacle.” Nebenzia said it was “exceedingly politicized … to help to play to the voters, to throw them a bone in the form of some kind of a mention of a cease-fire in Gaza.”
The US, Israel’s top ally, previously vetoed three cease-fire resolutions. The latest resolution signaled a shift in Washington’s stance on the war, as the Biden administration faces domestic pressure over its support for Israel and butts heads with Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over plans to invade Rafah – a city filled with displaced Palestinians.
Playing politics? The US accused Russia and China, two of its top adversaries, of tanking the resolution for political reasons. "Russia and China simply did not want to vote for a resolution that was penned by the United States,” said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
What’s next? Elected members of the UNSC have penned an alternative resolution that demands an immediate cease-fire, which could be brought to a vote on Friday afternoon. The US has signaled it will block the measure.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Israel on Friday as part of ongoing efforts to secure a new truce. Netanyahu remained defiant during the visit, telling Blinken that Israel can't defeat Hamas without going into Rafah and that it will move forward with the operation without US support if necessary.
As Gazans face starvation, aid organizations struggle to help
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war is dire, and it’s being exacerbated by the convoluted array of logistical and political obstacles that aid organizations are facing.
With nearly two million people displaced from their homes and the specters of starvation and disease looming, here’s a look at the challenges aid organizations face to save lives.
Who’s on the ground in Gaza? Even before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the economically-devastating Israeli blockade on Gaza, which is backed by Egypt, left 80% of people in the enclave dependent on international aid, according to the UN.
Between 2014 and 2020, the United Nations spent close to $4.5 billion in Gaza, largely through its agency for Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA. Qatar also provided well over $1 billion in aid to the territory before the war, with Israel’s approval.
The Red Cross, World Food Program (WFP), World Health Organization (WHO), Doctors Without Borders, and the Red Crescent have all also remained active in Gaza during the war in various capacities, but with significant limitations. The WFP, for example, recently announced it is suspending deliveries to north Gaza — where one-in-six children are estimated to be malnourished — due to security concerns such as gunfire and people attempting to break into trucks carrying aid.
A dire situation. As the reported death toll from the fighting in Gaza creeps toward 30,000, an estimated 1.9 million people — over 80% of the territory’s population — have been displaced by the war, more than half of whom are sheltering in the enclave’s south. The UN says the entire population is at risk of famine, while preventable diseases are killing people as the health system collapses.
Israel has placed severe restrictions on the flow of aid into Gaza since the war began, and the military has faced allegations of targeting aid delivery trucks. Prior to the war, roughly 500 trucks entered Gaza per day. From February 1 to 23, an average of 93 trucks per day entered Gaza, and there were seven days when 20 or fewer trucks made it in, according to UNRWA.
“This situation in Gaza is extremely dire because there is no safe place for Gazans to move from — no ‘escape valve,’” says Paul Spiegel, Director of Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health. “Furthermore, the severe restrictions of basic lifesaving goods into Gaza — fuel, water, food and medicines, combined with the attacks on health facilities — make it very difficult for people to survive.”
Meanwhile, over a dozen countries — including the US — have frozen funding to UNRWA after Israel alleged that 12 of its employees participated in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA fired the employees implicated and has launched an inquiry.
Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner general, on Thursday warned that the agency has reached a “breaking point… at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza.”
If the war in Gaza escalates, more than 85,000 people could die over the next six months on top of the death toll so far, according to projections in a new report from Spiegel and a group of fellow epidemiologists. The report projected that thousands will still die even if a cease-fire is reached.
“UNRWA remains the organization with the biggest footprint and capability to deliver aid in Gaza, by far. If UNRWA reduces its services substantially, many more people will die,” says Spiegel.
The UN takes on AI
Last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced the creation of a new advisory body to tackle AI. The group has 38 members, including government officials and industry executives, and will be co-chaired by Google’s James Manyika and Carme Artigas, Spain’s official in charge of AI.
In a speech at the UK summit, Guterres said the group’s first task will be “to examine models of technology governance that have worked in the past, with a view to identifying forms that could work for AI governance now and in the future.”
Those findings will be released in a preliminary report by the end of this year — with a final report expected next year. With nearly every major international body, it seems, recognizing the need for AI regulation, the UN doesn’t want to get left behind. That said, the UN has plenty of experience reining in the use of dangerous technology, such as nuclear and chemical weapons, but much less authority on the threats posed by powerful or rogue software.
Russia leaves nuclear test ban treaty in show of public posturing
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm.
What can be done by Europe or others to help the 1.7 million Afghan refugees that are now being expelled from Pakistan back into Afghanistan?
Well, sorry to say the answer is not very much can be done. We are delivering humanitarian aid to some extent, and the UN is there to Afghanistan, but to take care of or to help substantially 1.7 million people that are expelled from Pakistan is going to be very difficult. Relationship with the Taliban regime is virtually non-existent, so it's one of these tragedies that are happening at the same time as we have the Gaza War and the Ukraine War.
Does Europe feel less secure now that Russia has revoked its ratification of the test ban treaty?
Well, not really changing very much. What the Russians are doing is that they're doing, to the same situation as the Americans have, because the US hasn't ratified the CTBT either, but they adhere to it, and that is just as well. So, the Russians decided, and I think it's a signaling effect to some extent, that nuclear weapons are there and that they, at some point in time, might presume nuclear testing. But until they do that, and I hope they don't, it doesn't mean very much, but it shows that they are sort of playing around with nuclear weapons and with public posturing with nuclear weapons, which of course is less than good.
What’s on deck at the UN for Tuesday, September 19?
Our intrepid Senior Writer Gabrielle Debinski is on the ground with our colleagues from GZERO World for the latest updates. Also, if you missed our rundown of the major items on the agenda on Friday, catch up here.
Please note, leaders are listed in the order in which they are expected to speak, but the schedule sometimes runs ragged. You can find a complete schedule here.
Major Speakers on Tuesday
- Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva: By tradition, the Brazilian president opens every General Assembly debate. Lula has complained about too much focus on Ukraine at the expense of other global issues, watch for his rhetoric here.
- U.S. President Joe Biden: The only leader from a permanent member of the Security Council who is attending the summit in person, expect lots on Ukraine and appeals for development aid and climate action..
- Colombian President Gustavo Petro: The left-wing leader called for an end to the war on drugs in his first UNGA speech last year — and now cocaine exports are booming.
- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Often the belle of the geopolitical ball the past two years, Turkey has played a crucial role in the Black Sea grain deal and is the only NATO member with good ties to Moscow. This one is worth your time.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: With his counteroffensive making slow progress and whispers of “Ukraine fatigue” spreading across Europe and the US, the actor-turned-president is looking to make a command performance to shore up support.
Major Conferences
- Day 2 of the High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development Goals