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What is wrong with ambiguity? By: Until Madrid conference, the debate on the Palestinian- Israeli conflict was mainly open inside the UN platforms. While, interrupted by many initiatives, the UN continued to be the only platform open and accepted by all to continue diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict. Due to the American blind support for Israel, this platform appeared as incapable of turning open debates into real negotiations between the parties involved. Yet, resolutions 242,338 of the Security Council and 194 of the general assembly survived as acceptable bases for a practical solution to this long-standing crisis. The ambiguity embedded in resolution 242, especially in relation to the Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, helped both parties to keep their radically different interpretations of what it meant, and stopped any further UN efforts to rephrase or modify it. The stalemate reached in the UN platform, and its apparent impotence drove the region towards two major wars and two major cycles of violent conflicts and opened the road for bilateral negotiations sponsored by a superpower to replace. The new method succeeded in bringing to live two peace treaties that involved Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. This apparent success encouraged other parties to follow the same track. But, in both the case of Egypt and Jordan there were no ambiguities in relation to territorial claims and national and individual rights of people. So what appeared to be a UN failure and a success for bilateral track was based on reaching a bilateral definition that replaced ambiguity with a clear definition of the territorial claims for both. Unfortunately, the success in this direction added to the difficulties and expanded the ambiguity in the framework of solving the Palestinian problem. On the Palestinian track, the ambiguity in the UN resolution 242 was supposed to be clarified bilaterally. In other words, International definition of territorial and individual rights should become a subject defined regionally with the intervention of a superpower that is allied with one party. What was wrong with this approach is: firstly it linked the definition of the Basic rights of both parties to the regional power balance. So instead of making an international effort to remove the ambiguity in the UN resolution and leave the practical arrangements of implementations to the parties directly involved, the procedure was twisted. Parties will define the legal bases of their claims according to the existing power balance and the UN will take part in the implementation process. This represents a dangerous precedence that will as well effect peace between nations. Secondly it allowed both parties to stick to their claims without the existence of any international reference. This will pave the way for Israel, the most powerful, to maximize its claims and for Palestinians, the less powerful, to escalate their resistance in order to gain more power before heading towards negotiations that will dictate the rights of both. An International definition of rights is irreplaceable. The UN has to provide clear answers to many of the still standing questions. Are Palestinians an occupied nation? Are the west bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza Palestinian territories occupied by force? How should the rights of Palestinian refugees be defined in the context of the existence of two states in Mandate Palestine? Failing to address those issues and answer the above questions will set this region in a course of self-destruction that will not stop at the borders of the Middle East. | ||||||||||||||||
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