The most important agenda item for the United Nations General Assembly this month will be the future of Palestine. But Palestinian leaders will be unable to discuss it, because they will be absent.

The US has refused to issue entry visas for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and dozens of senior Palestinian officials. The US State Department has cited “national security” as the excuse, without explaining whose security is threatened or by whom. It has not, of course, rejected Israel’s delegation, despite Israel being accused of breaching the Geneva, Genocide, and Apartheid Conventions. Israel’s multiple alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity extend beyond Palestine and include recent assassinations and attacks in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and now Qatar.

Hamas negotiators in Qatar had just agreed to terms for a ceasefire in Gaza when Israeli forces killed five of them. Benjamin Netanyahu asserted full responsibility for the Israel Defence Force attack, close to the Al Udeid Air Base, the headquarters of  US Central Command near Doha. It’s unclear if President Trump knew of it in advance and what if anything he did to prevent it. Instead, he claimed it was an “ opportunity for peace”.

The 1947 UN Headquarters Agreement obliges a host country to facilitate access for all accredited delegations. But the US and Israel have demonstrated that they couldn’t care less about the UN or majority world opinion. Trump has released grotesque plans to build a Gaza Trump Riviera and Islands on land from which the Palestinians have been evacuated, or under which they are buried. Another proposal is for Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zones.

The UN, set up to eliminate the “scourge of war”, has little to celebrate at its 80th General Assembly. Though the organisation is widely criticised for its failings, those of its member states are often overlooked. The UN’s efforts to solve “The Question of Palestine” (EW Said, 1979, 1992) have repeatedly been prevented from achieving peace by the US veto in the Security Council.

Of all the world’s people, Palestinians are the most lacking in security and peace. Yet, the US has accused the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation of “undermining peace efforts” for having urged the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice formally to charge Israel with genocide and apartheid. Under both Trump administrations, the international courts and their staff have been criticised and now are sanctioned and impeded from entry to the US, while Americans and their allies invoke an “international rules-based order” not based on the UN Charter, but invented by them.

Prime Minister Albanese is expected to go to New York for the mid-September meeting, together with Foreign Minister Penny Wong, to join the delegations of at least 147 member states which recognise Palestine as a full member of the UN. The UK, Canada, New Zealand and France are expected to bow to pressure from public opinion, joining Spain, Ireland, and Norway as Western members that have done so.

The UNGA has three options to consider. The first, that has circulated in recent weeks, is for the General Assembly to move away from the influence of the US and Israel in New York, perhaps permanently. It did this in 1988, when it relocated to Geneva after the US refused a visa for Yasser Arafat, then head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Arafat’s sudden death in a hospital in France in November 2004 was, some suspect, the work of Israel’s Mossad operatives. The PLO was soon eclipsed by the Palestinian Authority, which proved to be ineffective in advancing the rights of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and has for long been accused of corruption. It lacks effective leadership, yet the two bodies are all the UNGA has to work with, and the UNGA is all they have too.

This is nothing new. The US has run a “peace process” charade since the mid-1970s, including the 1978 Camp David Accords,  1991 Madrid Conference,  1993-1995 Oslo Accords,  2000 Camp David Summit,  2003 Quartet Roadmap for Peace, and  2007 Annapolis Conference. Always, as Jewish American Jeffrey Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, has shown, the Israelis have blocked a Palestinian state while US “mediators” have repeatedly blamed the Palestinians for being intransigent ( The UN can end the Middle East conflict by welcoming Palestine as a member – Jeffrey D. Sachs).

The second option for the General Assembly is a “Uniting For Peace” resolution. Under the Charter, that enables the GA to recommend collective measures when the Security Council lacks consensus or is politically obstructed by a member state. Most member states want an end to Israel’s occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank, and support a two-state solution. They have been frustrated for years by the US veto in the Security Council on recognition of Palestine.

Under Uniting For Peace, the UNGA may be able to send an international protective force to Gaza. This will not consist of “peacekeepers”, because Israel continues to ensure there is no peace to keep. Its members may be armed military, police, international civilians and volunteers, but their effectiveness — indeed their survival — will depend on them being allowed by Israel to enter the Palestinian territory without being attacked by the IDF.

International law and war criminality clearly no longer count for anything with Netanyahu and his Likud aggressor colleagues. The risk of a UN force being attacked, and the dangerous and difficult conditions facing it, make it as unlikely to succeed as the international interventions in Rwanda and Haiti were. Humiliation of the UN would suit the US and Israel very well, but the consequences for the wider world could be disastrous.

A third option for UNGA is to suspend Israel’s privileges as a UN member state. This was done in the case of South Africa under apartheid in 1974. What Israel is doing in Gaza and the West Bank has been described as apartheid by many, and as war crimes and potential genocide. Israel has defied those accusations, and Netanyahu is unlikely to reverse his campaign, with or without UN membership.

As Professor Sachs has argued, the only path to peace between Israel and its neighbours is a comprehensive agreement for Palestine’s statehood, Israel’s security, Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and the economic recovery of the region ( The time has arrived for a comprehensive Middle East peace). That can only be achieved by co-ordinated international action. The time has indeed come for the US (and Australia) to take that path to peace, observe international court rulings, and cut off weapons and intelligence to Israel. Happy 80th birthday to the United Nations.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.