Tensions in Palestine started in the month of Ramazan when Israel started displacing Palestinians from East Jerusalem and its forces stormed into Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel blames Hamas for initiating the aggression by launching rocket attacks while the Gaza-based Hamas says its actions were a retaliation to Israeli atrocities.

The United Nations’ (UN) inability to come up with a concrete step and the unclear policy of the US to stop Palestine-Israel escalation have not only increased the fear of a large-scale war but also changed the definitions of militancy, aggression and peace. Israeli strikes have killed at least 238 Palestinians in Gaza including over 40 children and dozens of women and wounded more than 1,000 Palestinian. As a result of Hamas’s rocket attacks, at least 12 Israelis, including two children, have been killed.

The UN played a major role in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The world leaders, philanthropists and religious leaders have called upon the UN to play its role to address the conflict. The UN’s helplessness is taking the world back to the times of ‘might is right’ and ‘all is fair in love and war’. Norway submitted a statement to the Security Council (SC) of the UN for a de-escalation. The SC held a public meeting for discussion and speeches and conducted three private sessions and wanted to issue a joint statement. However, the US used its veto to stop the joint statement. “The United States has been working tirelessly through diplomatic channels in trying to bring an end to this conflict,” US Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the Council.

Historically, the UN has remained ineffective on the Palestine-Israel dispute though it played a key role in the partition of Palestine in 1947 and the creation of Israel in 1948. In later years, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 194, supporting the right of Palestinian refugees of the 1947-48 war to return to their homes and to receive compensation for their losses. But the Resolution has not be implemented. The UN has been largely kept away from the Palestine-Israel politics. Instead, the US, France, the UK and the former USSR were calling the shots in Israel and Palestine till 1989.

In 1966, the US started selling weapons to Israel. It was a bid to create a close ally in the Middle East as the Cold War reached there. Then, the UN was completely out of the game. The UN data shows that the US has vetoed 53 UNSC resolutions critical of Israel. Amid the on-going conflict, President Joe Biden’s administration approved the potential sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel. At the same time, President Biden urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a “de-escalation” on Wednesday in the 10-day-old conflict.

Keeping tension and the international laws and policies aside, what must perturb the thinkers and heavily funded think tanks is the changing definitions and perceptions about militancy, aggression, racism and human rights. Now aggression is described as self-defence, militancy as retaliation and human rights are being replaced with national interests. This is reflected in a statement of Arundhati Roy, a leading Indian novelist, human rights activist and progressive intellectual. She has condemned the Israeli bombing of Gaza citizens and supported Hamas’s rocket attacks on Israel. Some intellectuals now say the rocket launch is part of the resistance and is supported by international law. Previously, some of the same intellectuals used to call Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups or terror networks.

On the same note, the UAE and Bahrain which had established formal ties with Israel last year with the consent of Saudi Arabia, have called for a ceasefire. Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei have issued a separate statement that was tweeted by Malaysia’s premier, seeking an emergency UN General Assembly meeting.

The author is a senior journalist, teacher of

journalism, writer and

researcher. He tweets at @BukhariMubasher