UN Security Council Meeting 9959: The Palestinian Question
It's Wednesday at 10:59 PM as I begin to write. While eating lunch earlier today, I watched a few minutes of President Trump's bilateral meeting with the Crown Prince of Bahrain on YouTube because it was at the top of my screen when I opened the application on my smartphone. After lunch, I searched YouTube specifically for the FDD Morning Brief and watched Jonathan Schanzer interview the Reverend Johnnie Moore, Chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Then I napped until 2 PM. Upon waking from my nap, I checked the Times of Israel, then listened on YouTube to 40 minutes of Dan Senor's interview with Ron Dermer on Call Me Back. At 3 PM I switched over to UN Web TV on my desktop computer and watched the 9959th Meeting of the UN Security Council, which lasted 3 hours and 15 minutes. After this, I reverted to YouTube on my smartphone and listened to The Gaza Paradox by Haviv Rettig Gur. Then I fell asleep from 7:30 PM to 10:30 PM, got up, brushed my teeth, made a cup of herbal tea, resolved to blog my daily YouTube and Google Gemini activity, and here I am.
While watching the 9959th UN Meeting of the UN Security Council, I opened 30 tabs and entered in search phrases based on my gut reactions to statements by briefers and Council members. It was an inept way to take notes. I won't publish all my search phrases here, but I will see if I can review and summarize them into a general impression.
Okay, there are three layers in my current response to the Council on this file. First, I tend to disagree with all Council members - and with the ICJ majority - on the basic legal history of the Palestinian Question. I think all of Palestine was intended to be a Jewish state under international law, but the Arabs wouldn't agree to a Jewish state in even a part of the Mandate. The British mangled the narrative in 1939. The UN picked up that mangled narrative in 1946 and carried it through to the present.
Second, I tend to agree with the USA that the Council is consistently playing into the hands of Hamas terrorists. But it clearly takes strategic overview to see this.
Third, I tend to agree with majority of the Council that the GHF is a non-starter under IHL. We may be looking at the illegal use of starvation as a weapon war since 2 March 2025 by both sides, Hamas and Israel. But that doesn't mean that the ICC is the most appropriate tribunal to handle the matter. It might be up to the UN Security Council to convene something separate, or specifically refer the matter to the ICC, effectively granting it jurisdiction (cf. The ICC and the UN Security Council | The Global Campaign for the Prevention of Aggression). I particularly appreciate the backbone behind Slovenia's implication that President Trump is illegally obstructing the ICC. The fate of the ICC is one of the great questions of our moment. The debate needs strong champions on both sides. Is the ICC overreaching on jurisdiction? What does China think? Should the Council debate whether jurisdictional overreach and double standards at the ICC are a threat to international peace and security? A balanced pair of briefers could set the stage for a nuanced inquiry.
And I have run out of time. It is turning to a new day here in Albany and I want to keep this entry firmly pegged to Wednesday.
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