Recently the U.N. was used as a cover to launch the U.S.-British war on Iraq in 2003 and to prolong the Israeli war on Lebanon in July.
The Arab League seems intent on not being frustrated by the chronic inability of the United Nations Security Council to act, a fact that over 58 years has sent "the wrong message" to the Israeli "occupying Power and fuelled the culture of impunity that had allowed Israel not to be held accountable for its actions," according to the Permanent Observer of Palestine, Riyad H. Mansour.
The U.N. could not be accused of being short on pro-Arab resolutions. More than 70 resolutions were adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council during the past 58 years. Thirty more could have been adopted were they not vetoed by the United States.
The crux of the Arab problem with the U.N. was and still is the U.S. diplomatic shield protecting Israel, which condemned more than 100 pro-Arab resolutions as either vetoed or non-applicable.
The new Arab League move towards the U.N. promises neither to neutralize the U.S. veto nor to support any possible pro-Arab resolution with chapter VII of the U.N. Charter to make it applicable. It only promises more of an old practice that would similarly be null and void both in form and content.
Why then the Arab League is going to the U.N.?
How can any observer explain such a move except as a manoeuvring to appease an ever-growing popular disillusion with the status quo of "no peace and no war" by testing what has already been repeatedly tested as a non-starter for peace in the Middle East.
Under the pressures of the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, the U.S-led war on Iraq and the 58-year old U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Palestinian people, the Arab League governments are trying to contain the ensuing possible internal threats and regional turbulence by resorting to the old tactic of creating a "peace process" as an alternative to an overdue real peace-making, to create an illusion of moving away from a desperate status quo instead of changing it.
The old-new manoeuvre would only play in the hands of the U.S. and Israeli initiators and beneficiaries of the status quo.
Fishing again in a dead sea would only create a vacuum that is increasingly being filled by "resistance movements" wherever the state is absent, as is the cases of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, or would threaten the role of the state wherever this role is being eroded by inaction on the ground to change the no more bearable status quo.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
The Arab League seems intent on not being frustrated by the chronic inability of the United Nations Security Council to act, a fact that over 58 years has sent "the wrong message" to the Israeli "occupying Power and fuelled the culture of impunity that had allowed Israel not to be held accountable for its actions," according to the Permanent Observer of Palestine, Riyad H. Mansour.
The U.N. could not be accused of being short on pro-Arab resolutions. More than 70 resolutions were adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council during the past 58 years. Thirty more could have been adopted were they not vetoed by the United States.
The crux of the Arab problem with the U.N. was and still is the U.S. diplomatic shield protecting Israel, which condemned more than 100 pro-Arab resolutions as either vetoed or non-applicable.
Why then the Arab League is going to the U.N.?
How can any observer explain such a move except as a manoeuvring to appease an ever-growing popular disillusion with the status quo of "no peace and no war" by testing what has already been repeatedly tested as a non-starter for peace in the Middle East.
Under the pressures of the latest Israeli war on Lebanon, the U.S-led war on Iraq and the 58-year old U.S.-backed Israeli war on the Palestinian people, the Arab League governments are trying to contain the ensuing possible internal threats and regional turbulence by resorting to the old tactic of creating a "peace process" as an alternative to an overdue real peace-making, to create an illusion of moving away from a desperate status quo instead of changing it.
The old-new manoeuvre would only play in the hands of the U.S. and Israeli initiators and beneficiaries of the status quo.
Fishing again in a dead sea would only create a vacuum that is increasingly being filled by "resistance movements" wherever the state is absent, as is the cases of Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine, or would threaten the role of the state wherever this role is being eroded by inaction on the ground to change the no more bearable status quo.
*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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