The aftermath of an Israeli bombardment on the Jabalia refugee camp near Gaza City, Oct. 9, 2023. In an interview with Pakistan’s envoy to the UN, he said that steps to suspend Israel from the General Assembly should be considered only after efforts to find a two-state solution are exhausted. Yet, some civil-society groups continue to push for Israel’s expulsion. BASHAR TALEB/APA IMAGES/CREATIVE COMMONSAs calls to suspend or even expel Israel from the United Nations General Assembly over its treatment of Palestinians grow more strident, Pakistan has made clear it views such steps as a last resort to be considered only after attempts to achieve a two-state solution prove fruitless.
Munir Akram, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, told PassBlue in an interview in mid-December that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the League of Arab States were still coordinating their approach on how to make Israel comply with the series of General Assembly resolutions that it has so far ignored or rejected.
One of the most significant resolutions was adopted by the General Assembly on Sept. 13, which ordered the Jewish state among other things to bring “to an end without delay its unlawful presence” in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The resolution, although nonbinding, was adopted after the advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July, pronouncing the occupation as unlawful.
More recently, the General Assembly approved a Norwegian-led resolution, with 137 votes in favor, requesting an ICJ advisory opinion regarding Israel’s “obligations to facilitate humanitarian assistance and other kinds of aid to Palestinians delivered by the UN. . . .” The text is in response to Israel’s continued siege of Gaza and few, if any goods, getting into the north.
“The issue of suspending Israel is one of the components of the strategy of exerting diplomatic pressure in order to secure Israeli compliance,” Akram said in the interview. “But we have to see how we can evolve the common strategy on all these issues.”
Before attempts were launched to suspend Israel — like how apartheid South Africa was unseated in 1974 in the General Assembly — “we have to take a strategic decision on what is the comprehensive strategy that is to be followed,” Akram added.
“Is it possible for the diplomacy which is taking place to convince the Israelis to accept an unconditional ceasefire [in Gaza] and a two-state solution?” he said. “If that is possible, that would be the preferred way to find a solution, rather than resort to the coercive measures that have been contemplated.”
Member states, Akram added, “need to focus on taking bold political measures [that] could lead to an agreement on a two-state solution.” The steps have included trying to win over the countries that still support Israel despite its rejection of UN resolutions. (Pakistan joins the Security Council as an elected member as of Jan. 1, 2025, for a two-year term.)
“There are powerful countries, besides the United States, there are powerful European countries also, who could be mobilized to press the Israelis,” Akram said. “International diplomacy must be pursued to mobilize the widest possible support for the position that has been expressed by the UNGA, the Security Council and the ICJ, so we have to pursue all avenues to reach the end, which is peace and a two-state solution.” (UNGA refers to the UN General Asembly.)
The ambassador’s comments reflect a far more cautious approach than that taken by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, who twice in November issued an unambiguous call for Israel’s suspension or even expulsion from the General Assembly.
“Strong measures, including Israel’s removal from the UN following [its] human rights violations and genocidal crimes, must be enforced as soon as possible,” the Turkish news agency Anadolu quoted Ibrahim as saying on Nov. 4.
A week later, he told a joint summit of the OIC and Arab League much the same: “Israel no longer belongs within the civilised community of nations. . . . For the sake of not only the Palestinians but of humanity itself, we must punish and deter Israel’s repeated violations of international law and norms. We should, therefore, build a consensus towards suspending or even expelling Israel from the United Nations itself.” (Numerous attempts by PassBlue to seek a comment from the Malaysian mission to the UN went unanswered.)
The summit in Riyadh issued a resolution declaring, inter alia, that the two bodies would start working to build such a consensus. But the Arab League has a reputation as a talking shop that seldom delivers its promises, and even after Israel’s widely condemned actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and Lebanon this year — low points include being accused of genocide in Gaza, declaring UN Secretary-General António Guterres persona non grata, voting to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and attacking UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon — there is no guarantee that the League will translate its words on the Jewish state into deeds. (Repeated attempts to seek a comment from the Israeli mission to the UN and the government itself went unanswered.)
“There’s a lot of hypocrisy from some within the Arab League,” Saleh Hijazi, the Apartheid-Free Policy Coordinator at the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) National Committee, told PassBlue in a call.
“Some Arab states maintain normalization agreements and a very high level of complicity, such as Morocco and Egypt, that transit weapons to Israel while repressing peaceful protest against such complicity,” he said. “There’s no meaningful action from many members of the Arab League when it comes to Israel’s genocide, apartheid and illegal occupation. Actually, quite the opposite.”
In October, BDS began an online campaign asking supporters of the Palestinian cause to email the UN General Assembly President Philemon Yang “to respectfully demand the immediate suspension of apartheid Israel from the United Nations, just as apartheid South Africa was once suspended.”
Another nongovernmental group, Law4Palestine, which has offices in Sweden and Britain, has posted an online petition addressed to the General Assembly calling for Israel to be “unseated,” which by Dec. 24 had been signed by 599 professors, lecturers, lawyers and others.
Henriette Willberg, a researcher at Law4Palestine, told PassBlue in a call that the ICJ advisory opinion and the follow-up General Assembly resolution were “really momentous moments in the last six months.”
“The resolution outlines very specifically the obligations it creates for Israel, for member states and for the UN itself as an international organization. . . .The question now is how to put those obligations into effect to ensure those rights,” she said. “An important way to see this is as something that’s necessary to hold together the international legal system . . . in light of the fact that Israel has systematically violated [the UN’s] foundations.”
Most important of those foundations, Willberg said, was the right to self-determination, which the Jewish state has denied to Palestinians.
A Dec. 17, 2024, General Assembly resolution was approved by 172 votes affirming the right of Palestinians to self-determination. (Israel and the US voted no with five other countries.) Yet the very principle of self-determination could be a factor that muddies the waters when UN members may be asked to decide on unseating Israel through the credentials process.
Akram demonstrated the point in a reference to his country’s own conflict with neighboring India over Jammu and Kashmir.
“For Pakistan, obviously, the Palestinian cause is a fundamental issue for us, because it is based on our commitment to right of peoples to self-determination, that is the principle on which Pakistan gained independence,” he said in the interview.
“That is the principle which we support for the right of self-determination for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, which are which are also being occupied and suppressed. . . .This principle must be applied universally, and we seek to apply that for Palestine, for Kashmir and for other countries where peoples are being occupied and oppressed by foreigners.”
The aftermath of an Israeli bombardment on the Jabalia refugee camp near Gaza City, Oct. 9, 2023. In an interview with Pakistan’s envoy to the UN, he said that steps to suspend Israel from the General Assembly should be considered only after efforts to find a two-state solution are exhausted. Yet, some civil-society groups continue to push for Israel’s expulsion. BASHAR TALEB/APA IMAGES/CREATIVE COMMONS
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