The UN summit 2024 and the war in the Middle East

 From Sunday, 22. September 2024, on this year’s UN General Assembly in New York has been the stage for heads of state from all over the world. At a “summit for the future”, soapbox speeches will be given about what the United Nations must do to meet the commitments it has made with regard to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the UN Charter by 2030.   

Germany and Namibia have developed a pact for the future, which was adopted by the plenum already on Sunday. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for “building a future for our grandchildren”.
    In fact, the “global community” is far from being able to even come close to realising the 17 sustainability goals.
    “No poverty, no hunger, good health and well-being, as well as quality education” are the goals at the top of the list. For war and crisis zones in the world, the opposite is the case. This applies to the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. It applies to the population of Lebanon and to millions of refugees in camps. It applies to the people who have been trying to resist the endless US-led “wars on terror” and “Israel’s many types of war” in the Middle East for more than 20 years.
    Last Sunday, 22 September 2024, the number of Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip exceeded 41,421, according to the Palestinian health authority (Gaza). More than 16,000 of the dead are children. At least 10,000 people are missing buried under the rubble. Most of the dead are women and children, said UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk in August. Since then, the number of dead has risen daily.

Decisions without consequences

On 10 June 2024, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2735, which ordered a ceasefire in Gaza.
    The text of the resolution was based on a draft submitted by the United States, which is why the United States agreed. Until then, they had vetoed every ceasefire resolution. The resolution provided for a three-phase plan, as proposed by Hamas through intermediaries at the beginning of the year. So, Hamas agreed but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kept giving the Israeli negotiators new preconditions. Eventually it became clear to everyone that he was not interested in a ceasefire and in the Israeli army withdrawing from the Palestinian Gaza Strip. He told the hostages’ relatives that he would not end the war against Gaza to free the hostages.
    On 18 July, the Israeli parliament (Knesset) passed a resolution rejecting the two-state solution.
    On July 19, the International Court of Justice in The Hague announced the result of its years of deliberation, according to which the occupation of Palestinian territories is unlawful and violates international law. Israel must “end the occupation as soon as possible”.
    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by stating that “Israeli settlements in all areas of our homeland [...] are lawful. The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own country.”
    On 18 September 2024, the UN General Assembly considered a resolution to strengthen the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice of 19 July 2024. It was demanded that Israel must “end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories” within twelve months and without any delays. Israel must withdraw its army, cease all new settlement activities, remove all settlers from the occupied land and dismantle parts of the wall built within the West Bank. Land and other immovable property must be returned (to the Palestinians), as must cultural property. The displaced Palestinians must be enabled to return or be compensated. The statement explicitly referred to the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice. The General Assembly adopted the resolution by 124 votes to 14, with 43 abstentions, including Germany.

No one is safe anymore

Almost simultaneously, thousands of pagers exploded in the hands or pockets of their users in Lebanon and Syria. In Syria, the number of injuries was low, but in Lebanon, 12 people were killed and 2,800 were injured, some of them critically.
    The following day a second wave of explosions simultaneously detonated hundreds of walkie-talkies and radio devices. 20 people were killed and more than 600 people injured, some of them critically. The devices exploded on balconies, kitchen tables and in cars, causing fires. The number of deaths from both attacks rose to 39, and more than 3,000 people were injured, some of them critically.
    Since the devices are used in day-to-day life by emergency services, in hotels, at airports and in large companies, but also by the Lebanese Hezbollah to avoid Israel’s eavesdropping and surveillance of cell phones, people were holding the devices in their hands or carrying them in pockets and bags. There were injuries to the face, eyes, hands, fingers and stomach. Doctors reported that they had never seen such gruesome injuries.
    In Lebanon, the Israeli secret service Mossad was blamed. The US administration stated that it had known nothing. The New York Times provided a story that went around the world – behind a paywall.
    According to the story, Mossad had set up an entire production chain. With its own company as a subcontractor of the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo, the Mossad had handled the entire order. Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, so it was obvious that the Mossad had planned, prepared and carried out the attack. The New York Times story is now circulating internationally, and with variations also in German media.
    Lebanon called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, which was convened at the request of Algeria, a non-permanent member of the Security Council, for Friday, 20 September (New York, local time).
    The UN Human Rights Commissioner, Volker Türk, called the attacks a “new development in warfare. Communication devices are becoming weapons.” Attacking thousands of people at the same time using manipulated devices, without knowing who is using the respective device, is a violation of international humanitarian law. This “tragic situation” should not be seen in isolation, as it was directly linked to the war in Gaza and the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.

‘Terrorist attack’

The Lebanese Foreign Minister, Abdallah Bou Habib, said that after “these abysmal” electronic attacks, “nobody is safe in this world anymore”. He said that if the Security Council does not designate this “terrorist attack” as such and condemn the perpetrator, the credibility of the council was at stake. “If you accept such an approach, you open Pandora’s box,” said Bou Habib. States and extremist groups will follow suit and attack civilians around the world with deadly technology. Since 1948, Israel had not complied with any UN Security Council resolution, so it had become a “rogue state” that would engulf the entire Middle East in war. He called on the Security Council to condemn Israel for violating Lebanon’s sovereignty. The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations emphasised that the states supporting Israel bore full responsibility for its aggression. The brutal Israeli attacks were not new to the Arab countries. What was new, however, was the manipulation of modern technical devices, that are supposed to benefit people, into ticking time bombs.
    The Israeli ambassador to the UN called on the UN Security Council to declare Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards “terrorist organisations”. He accused the Lebanese foreign minister of “allowing a terrorist organisation to found a state within Lebanon”. Israel would defend itself and not allow “Hezbollah to use Lebanese territory as a launching pad for violence.” The US representative backed Israel, which, he said, had to defend itself against daily attacks. Malta called for an investigation. Switzerland recalled negotiations. Russia suggested an international law against the use of everyday objects as weapons. China and Iran called for the condemnation of Israel. (Source: press.un.org)
    There was no decision. On the evening of the same day (20 September 2024, Beirut local time), the Israeli Air Force dropped four missiles on a residential building in the densely populated south of Beirut, causing the house to collapse. Dozens of people were buried. Fifteen members of Hezbollah were recovered dead, including two high-ranking commanders. The number of dead rose to 51, including women and children, during the course of the recovery work. Ten people are still missing. Over the weekend, Israeli fighter jets flew attacks on southern Lebanon, sometimes every minute, and, according to their own statements, fired on hundreds of alleged Hezbollah rocket launchpads.
    On Saturday, Hezbollah responded with eleven attacks, hitting military positions in northern Israel and on the occupied and annexed Golan Heights. Early Sunday morning, heavy missiles were used by Hezbollah for the first time. The target of two attacks was the Israeli air force base Ramat David near Haifa.
    A third attack was on the Rafael company’s military armaments complex, which specialises in the production of electronic devices and equipment. The company is located in the north of Haifa (Zebulon) and was hit by dozens of Fadi 1, Fadi 2 and Katjusha missiles, according to a corresponding Hezbollah statement. They said it was a “preliminary response to the brutal massacre carried out by the enemy, Israel, in various areas of Lebanon on Tuesday and Wednesday (the massacre involving pagers and radios)”.

Warnings and threats

In the middle of the week, Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary General of Hezbollah¹, had threatened Israel with retaliation after the Israeli mass attacks on Lebanese via manipulated communication devices. The cowardly attacks had hit Hezbollah and its supporters in their everyday lives, not on the front line and with weapons in their hands. Hezbollah had been weakened, but would emerge stronger from the attack. Israel would have to expect stronger reactions. Nasrallah addressed Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the Israeli Defence Minister, directly and said: “The front in Lebanon will not quiet down until the aggression against Gaza stops.” 
    Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari has now told journalists that, in addition to the massive air strikes on southern Lebanon, a troop invasion cannot be ruled out. The Israeli army announced air strikes on buildings in which Hezbollah is said to have hidden weapons. The L ebanese civilian population was called upon to leave the pertinent areas immediately. Observers described Hagari’s statements as a “classic example of psychological warfare”. Israel is using the same approach in the Gaza Strip and in the occupied West Bank, wrote journalist Zein Basravi (Amman). The aim is to unsettle the population and point out to foreign countries that the political and military leaders (Hezbollah) are using the population as “human shields”. According to Basravi, the Israeli army was thus “disguising its own aggression” against the population.
    At the start of the official UN summit on Monday (23 September 2024), numerous politicians once again warned of a regional war that could be triggered by an Israeli war against Lebanon. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty called for a ceasefire in Gaza that would calm all fronts.

International law must be activated

Lebanese acting Prime Minister Najib Mikati cancelled his trip to the UN summit in New York and declared at an emergency meeting of the government in Beirut that the international community and human conscience have to “take a clear position on the horrific massacres” that have been committed in Lebanon. International law must be activated to protect civilian technology from being used as a weapon. Everything must be done “to stop the many kinds of wars that the enemy Israel is waging”, Mikati said.
    Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has postponed his trip to the UN summit. He was currently scheduled to travel to New York on Wednesday instead of Tuesday. However, the media reported, citing his staff, that he would probably not address the UN assembly in New York until Friday. Observers expected that many state representatives would then leave the plenary hall in protest against Israel’s wars².         •

¹   Hassan Nasrallah was assassinated a few days later, on 27 September, being targeted in a heavy Israeli bombing raid on Beirut. (Editor’s note)
²   as they did; editor’s note

First published: www.nachdenkseiten.de on
25 September 2024; reprinted with kind permission of the author and NachDenkSeiten

(Translation Current Concerns)