Afrasianet - The speeches of the leaders at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly revealed a new level of candor in describing the crises that are fracturing the world and pressuring all of humanity, but at the same time, they have exposed a major problem with the ability of the world organization to resolve these crises.
In his last speech before the end of his term as Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres best expressed this crisis when he warned of a world in which force takes precedence over law, calling for the defense of the UN Charter without applying double standards.
This was evident in the fact that Palestine has become the most visible test of this predicament. Guterres spoke of the scale of killing and destruction in the Gaza Strip reaching a level not seen in all his years as Secretary-General, and warned of the increasing prospects of ethnic cleansing as Israel's policies of violence, displacement and settlements escalate.
The platform itself witnessed more direct speeches on the subject, most notably from European leaders as well as Arabs. The Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, went to the heart of the issue when he said, "It is not right to talk about a just international order as long as Palestine is a blind spot in it," describing what happened in Gaza as "Genocide in every sense of the word," he said, linking this to the absence of a regional system of collective security, and questioning the value of the law when it is not applied equally to the strong and the weak.
In his reading of the issue, Jordan's King Abdullah II chose very direct language, saying that Gaza and the West Bank are not separate stories, but "two fronts of the same Israeli strategy," arguing that what is happening in the West Bank is not a collection of isolated incidents but a policy to push Palestinians to leave their land. The political outcome of the two tracks, he said, is one: to make the establishment of a viable Palestinian state impossible.
French President Emmanuel Macron attacked the gap between the declaration of peace and its reality, questioning the credibility of the world if it continues to stand helpless in the face of the Gaza event, describing what is happening as "a scene that should shame us all."
This explicit language reveals that Palestine is no longer just a humanitarian issue or a regional conflict, but a test of the legitimacy of the international system itself: the relevance of the Security Council, the meaning of international law, and the ability of international judicial institutions to act when their decisions conflict with the interests of major powers. The Palestinian question, in this context, has been at the heart of calls for Security Council reform, an end to Africa's absence from its permanent membership, and the defense of international judicial institutions.
In his desperate effort to defend Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by calling on the member states of the International Criminal Court to withdraw from it, US President Donald Trump appeared to be in a frank confrontation with the rest of the world, which was evident as the majority of other leaders' speeches were directed towards defending the law, institutions and international pluralism.
The confrontation with Israel was clearly reflected in the speeches issued by Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Brazil, and France, regardless of their owners, orientations, and alliances, and revealed the growing distance against Netanyahu's policies.
Palestine is no longer a file of the international organization, but a mirror that sees The world is in a state of crisis at the United Nations, the imbalance in the status of the Security Council, the fragility of international justice, and the large gap between the law and its ability to be enforced.
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Source: Al-Quds Al-Arabi
