Tenth Emergency Special Session: Procedural Abuse?

It is Thursday evening at 6:17 PM Eastern and I have just finished watching General Assembly: 60th Plenary Meeting, Tenth Emergency Special Session | UN Web TV. Let me first say to the President of the General Assembly that I am not sure on a broad conceptual and procedural level whether it was best to convene this debate under the heading of Tenth Emergency Special Session. A strong case can be made that it should have been convened under an agenda item entitled “Strengthening of the United Nations System” per A/RES/76/262, if not under a Twelfth Emergency Special Session. I say this because the issue at hand does not seem to be "Illegal Israeli actions in occupied East Jerusalem and the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territory." It is certainly not about an Israeli decision to build a housing project in East Jerusalem, though this may have seemed to be an emergency to Qatar in 1997. The issue at hand is the genocidal 7 October 2023 mass atrocity carried out by Hamas and the abject failure of the UN Security Council to respond in a fair, timely and unanimous fashion with both an unequivocal condemnation of the attack and basic instructions for restoring the peace. Annalena Baerbock, the incoming PGA, should be aware that she may be inheriting an abuse of the Emergency Special Session function, due either to administrative incompetence or expert anti-Israel manipulation by some of her predecessors (cf. The Seventh Emergency Special Session of the UN General Assembly: An Exercise in Procedural Abuse by Yehuda Blum). Of course, I could be wrong on this point, perhaps owing to an American bias. For now, I encourage Baerbock's team to audit UN General Assembly | Emergency Special Sessions with this question in mind: why wasn't the inability of the UN Security Council to issue a timely condemnation of the 7 October Hamas attack the basis for an independent Twelfth Emergency Special Session titled "Genocidal Palestinian Terrorism"?

Now I will limit myself to two points regarding the substance of this 60th UN General Assembly plenary meeting, i.e., A/ES-10/L.34/Rev.1. My first point is that there is no recapitulation whatsoever in the sixteen preambular paragraphs of this resolution concerning the US rationale for the exercise of its veto during the 9929th meeting of the UN Security Council. This is deplorable, in my view. 

What was the subject of that UN Security Council meeting? According to this summary by Security Council Report: 

The draft text in blue demands an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza; the immediate, dignified, and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups; and the immediate and unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into the territory.

This should have been included in one of the first preambular paragraphs of the UNGA resolution. 

What was the American basis for a veto? Beyond the failure of the draft text in blue to condemn Hamas for 7 October, it failed to condition the immediacy and permanence of an Israeli ceasefire on Hamas surrender of the hostages, on the one hand, and it failed to condition the delivery of aid into Gaza on non-diversion by Hamas, on the other. These and other major reasons for the US veto should have been included in another preambular paragraph of the resolution. 

My second point relates to a curious turn of language in the second operative paragraph of A/ES-10/L.34/Rev.1. Here are the first three operative paragraphs, for context:

1. Demands an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire, to be respected by all parties;  
2. Recalls its demand for the immediate, dignified and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups;  
3. Demands that the parties fully, unconditionally and without delay implement all the provisions of Security Council resolution 2735 (2024) of 10 June 2024, including an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages, the return of the remains of hostages who have been killed, the exchange of Palestinian prisoners, the return of Palestinian civilians to their homes and neighborhoods in all areas of the Gaza Strip and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip...

Why did the drafters of this resolution NOT demand "the immediate, dignified and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups"? It looks to me like they dropped this demand down to a "recall" because they recognized its incompatibility with the "exchange" of the Palestinian prisoners they later include in operative paragraph 3. In other words, this UN General Assembly resolution clearly tells Hamas to continue holding hostages until they get Palestinian prisoners (and by implication the rest of their objectives) in exchange. This couldn't be more obvious. And it's completely contrary to justice. At no time should the UN General Assembly demand the "exchange" of Palestinian prisoners duly detained in Israel for hostages held by Hamas.

What should Israel do? For the most part, I stand behind my recommendation in Netanyahu Should Respond to Abbas Letter with Unilateral Ceasefire, but now I think Netanyahu needs to put the matter somewhat differently. He might, for example, say something along the following lines: "Alright, UN General Assembly, I hear you loud and clear. I think you're wrong, and I think you're biased against Israel, but I don't want it ever to be said about our nation that we were found guilty of genocide. Not by a fair world court. Here is what Israel will do, to help set the record straight. We will implement an immediate ceasefire until Monday, 30 June 2025 at noon Gaza time. We will also resume all of the Gaza aid mechanisms we have presently suspended. But we will not exchange any Palestinian prisoners for the release of our hostages. Especially not Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences. Nor will we withdraw from Gaza. Not yet. We reserve the right to resume military action and aid restriction on 30 June 2025 at noon. Now, UN General Assembly, the ball is in your court, and I wonder what you will do. Will you remain silent while Hamas rebuilds? Will you condemn Hamas for 7 October 2023, call for its disarmament, and demand the immediate, dignified, and unconditional release of all the remaining hostages? Or will you demand that Israel make further concessions in order to obtain the release of our hostages?"

The grim fact as I see it is that 14 members of the UN Security Council and a supermajority of the UN General Assembly have sided with Hamas in a heinous 7 October hostage negotiation. However, this does not mean that Israel is necessarily going down in the history books for genocide. It doesn't look good, but there is still hope for Israel. Netanyahu needs to choose his course very carefully.

In this light, I will conclude by saying that I support the decision of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and Norway to sanction Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. I may or may not agree with the sanctions, but I support these American allies in doing what they believe is right. With deep respect and empathy for the position staked out by Melanie Phillips, I don't think this signals the end of these alliances with Israel (cf. Allies no longer - another note from the resistance).