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Israel Complied with UN Resolutions; Peace Never Came
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
With demands that Israel leave Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor and limit its operations in the West Bank, UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called on the Jewish State “to comply with its relevant obligations,” adding that “only an end to the occupation… will bring an end to the violence.”
Yet since 1993, Israel has complied with all its obligations.
Israel repeatedly conceded territory, but the only result was more terrorism and more attacks on its citizens — a fact that seems to have escaped the UN chief.
A decade after withdrawing from the Sinai Peninsula and dismantling settlements — which bought Israel durable peace with Egypt — the Jewish State tried, in 1993, to repeat the exercise with Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Throughout the 1990s, however, Arafat upheld the Oslo Agreement only to force further concessions on Israel — all the while, plotting terrorism against it, and trying to destroy modern-day Israel.
Whenever Jerusalem balked, Arafat let Hamas’ violence obstruct peace, until he wrecked the whole process in 2000 by launching the Second Intifada.
Because negotiating peace with Arafat, Syria and Lebanon all failed, Israel opted to unilaterally concede territory, even without prior agreement.
In May 2000, Israel left Lebanon. In June of that year, the UN certified that Israel had met the requirements of Resolution 425, and expressed hope that this implementation “would be seen by all people of the region, especially Syrians, Palestinians and Israelis, as well as Lebanese, as an encouragement to quickly move ahead in negotiating peace treaties.”
But not so fast. Hezbollah thrashed the UN.
“We [liberated the land] not because of the UN that failed, over 22 years, in implementing Resolution 425,” said Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, in May 2000. Nasrallah called on the Palestinians to forget about the UN and its resolutions, and instead emulate his model.
“You can reclaim your land … and force the Zionist invaders to return from where they came from,” Nasrallah said. “The choice is yours and the model is before your eyes — serious resistance.”
Quiet on the Lebanese border with Israel did not last long. In July 2006, Hezbollah launched a major cross-border attack. A 33-day war ensued, and ended with Resolution 1701, which forced the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and the 1978 UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to do what Israel had requested in 2000 but never did: Deploy south of the River Litani to enforce UNSC 1701, including disbanding Hezbollah.
Yet with the LAF’s complicity and UNIFIL’s toothlessness, Hezbollah redeployed and rearmed all the way to the Lebanese border with Israel. Like Resolution 425 and Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, Resolution1701 did not make northern Israel safe.
Starting in 2022, Hezbollah intensified its harassment, this time demanding that Israel agree to allow Lebanon to explore the maritime border’s seabed for gas. In October, the Biden administration gave itself a pat on the back for helping reach “a historic” maritime border demarcation that would “advance security, stability, and prosperity for the region,” and that demonstrated “the transformative power of American diplomacy.”
A year later, on October 8, 2023, Hezbollah launched its war on Israel in support of Hamas, which had just murdered 1,200 people in southern Israel the day before. American diplomacy was not so transformative after all.
“Today, hope is greater than ever before that the liberation of Palestine, from the sea to the river,” will happen, Nasrallah said months before his October 8 war on Israel.
This time Nasrallah did not present his “armed resistance” as a model to the Palestinians, but declared his militia as a partner in the Iran-led “Axis of Resistance” that was fighting to “liberate Palestine,” a clear violation of Resolution 1701 and the Lebanese constitution.
In 2000, Israel did not foresee Nasrallah transforming his militia from defensive to offensive. Perhaps that was why, in 2005, Israel replicated its unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon by conceding Palestinian territories, even without prior agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) under Mahmud Abbas.
Israel dismantled settlements, pulled out 10,000 Israelis, and withdrew its forces from the Gaza Strip entirely and the northern part of the West Bank, around Jenin and Tulkarem.
Withdrawal was expected to boost the popularity of the PA, but its corruption and incompetence cost it the legislative election that Hamas won in 2006. By June 2007, Hamas had violently ejected the PA from Gaza. Palestinians now had two governments.
In the West Bank, under PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, the economy grew and security improved. Fayyad’s competence, however, deprived Abbas and his cronies of their public money spoils.
In 2013, Abbas ejected Fayyad, causing a backslide in the economy and security. Hamas started recruiting in Jenin, from where the terrorist group organized attacks — such as shootings, ramming cars, and knifings — against Israelis. The Israeli military was forced to operate in the West Bank, thus compounding Palestinian misery. When Abbas visited Jenin in July 2023, Palestinians chased him away.
Since October 2023, Israel has had to go into most of Gaza and intensified its incursions into the West Bank. Israel has also had to fight against Hezbollah to restore normalcy to its north.
Thirty-one years after Israel started experimenting with coordinated withdrawals with Palestinian leaders, 24 years after Israel unilaterally withdrew from Lebanon, 19 years after it left Gaza and Jenin, and only one year after Jerusalem signed on to a US-sponsored maritime border demarcation deal with Beirut, none of the deals or unilateral withdrawals brought Israel peace.
For its concessions, Israel got a Hamas massacre of 1,200 of its citizens on October 7, the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust. Then, on October 8, Israel found itself facing Hezbollah attacks that have depopulated its north.
And despite all of this, UN Secretary-General Guterres believes the end of Palestinian and Lebanese violence against Israel will only result from more Israeli withdrawals, as if three decades of Israeli concessions have not proven the futility of compromising — and that Jews, Israelis, and foreign citizens will die as a result.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy (FDD). Follow him on X @hahussain.
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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
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