The Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim, has called for expelling Israel from the UN General Assembly, citing Israel’s brutal treatment of Palestinians. Israel’s UN membership is a unique phenomenon because Israel is the only major UN member state that has come into existence through UN and League of Nations’ actions. This is a very significant and sensitive issue because most powerful countries treat Israel as an exception to usual norms.
Israel’s exceptionalism lies in its birth: it was born through some UN resolutions, and the UN had inherited this legacy from its predecessor, the League of Nations, based on some ancient legends and some European political realities. With the rise of nationalism in Europe in the 19th century, ethnic Jews became victims of discrimination almost all over Europe. It is from this guilty conscience that European colonial powers decided to settle European refugee Jews in historical Palestine by dividing it between indigenous Palestinians and immigrant Jews by creating the state of Israel.
The process of Israel’s UN membership, however, was not smooth. Indigenous Palestinians were opposed to indiscriminate refugee settlements in their ancestral homeland, but dominant world powers imposed their will to create space for refugees in the territory. Moreover, immigrant Jews adopted violent methods to evict the locals from their lands, occasionally with the support of the Mandate authority. Victimization of the local population further increased under the UN system. It adopted Resolution (181-1947) to divide Palestine between Palestinians and Jewish refugees. In 1946, it adopted another resolution recognizing the “urgency of the refugee problem and the principle that no refugees or displaced persons who have valid objections to returning to their countries of origin should be compelled to return.” It also formed the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) to deliberate on the issue. This was necessary because the British Mandate authority was allowing Jews from various parts of the world to migrate to Palestine against the desire of the local population. The UNSCOP recommended the territory be divided, awarding the Jews 56 percent and the Palestinians 43 percent and 1 percent – the city of Jerusalem – as an international city under the UN administration. Due to this close connection of Israel’s foundation with the world body, the question of Israel’s UN membership was contentious from the very existence of Israel.
On 14 May 1948, the British withdrew from Palestine, and immediately Israel declared its “independence.” One should note that at this point in history, many countries were gaining independence from European colonial powers; settler colonialists populated no other newly independent nation. The next day, Israel applied for UN membership, but Israel needed three attempts to enter into the world body on the condition that it would allow all refugees to return to their ancestral homes and that both the Jewish and Palestinian parts form an economic union. Israel was a unique candidate for the UN system because it came into existence as a Jewish state with close to 32 percent of Jews in the territory, most of whom had migrated to Palestine under the League of Nations Mandate system. Because of its controversial foundation, Israel needed three attempts to become a regular member of the world body.
Supporters of Israel conducted a hefty campaign to achieve their objective. The American author Kermit Roosevelt, in an article entitled “The Partition of Palestine: A Lesson in Pressure Politics,” described Zionist activities in this regard as:
Rallying a group of influential Americans and selecting their targets with care, they exerted all possible influence—personal suasion, floods of telegrams and letters, political and economic pressure… Many of the telegrams, particularly, were from Congressmen, and others invoked the name and prestige of the United States government. An ex-Governor, a prominent Democrat with White House and other connections, personally telephoned Haiti urging that its delegation be instructed to change its vote.
On the same issue, an Arab lawyer, in his book The Palestine Question, has noted quoting an American government report that:
The US and USSR played leading roles in bringing about a vote favorable to partition. Without US leadership and the pressures that developed during UN consideration of the question, the necessary two-thirds majority in the General Assembly could not have been obtained… It has been shown that various unauthorized US nationals and organizations, including members of Congress, notably in the closing days of the Assembly, brought pressure bear on various foreign delegates and their home governments to induce them to support the US attitude on the Palestine Question.
Meanwhile, the UN continued with its effort to end the violence, and on 20 May 1948, the Security Council appointed Count Folke Bernadotte, the president of the Swedish Red Cross, who enjoyed the reputation of negotiating with the Nazis to save many Jewish lives, as the UN mediator for Palestine. The UN also established the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) to help mediate between the conflicting parties in Palestine. The world body instructed Bernadotte to “promote a peaceful adjustment of the future situation in Palestine.” Bernadotte recommended certain modifications to the Plan by slightly reducing the size of the Jewish-occupied territories. The next day, on 17 September 1948, a Jewish terrorist group assassinated him in Jerusalem.
Since then, the UN Security Council has adopted about one hundred resolutions, and the General Assembly has more than seven hundred resolutions related to the Israel-Palestinian crisis, but Israel has ignored almost all of them. Israel is at odds with almost all UN agencies, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, including the UN Secretary-General. In light of the Malaysian Prime Minister’s call, one may legitimately as to why Israel shouldn’t be expelled from the world body. One may also ask what the world body has achieved over the last more than seven decades by engaging with Israel. The world body had established the country on humanitarian grounds to take care of refugees, but it has created more refugees than any other conflict in the world. Its ethnic cleansing is still on. However, under the current international system, it wouldn’t be possible to expel Israel from the UN because of the Security Council’s special power, but the General Assembly can definitely suspend Israel from the world forum.