Daniel Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, addressed the UN Security Council on the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.
A video of the session from UN TV can be can viewed below.
Daniel’s statement is from minute 22.00 to minute 34.40.
Text of statement
Thank you to the Council and Chinese Presidency. Thank you, Ambassador Fu, and good luck to Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Sigrid Kaag, in your new-ish position.
I would like to offer some thoughts on the immediate challenges and the broader scaffolding possibly required for a better future.
Israelis deserve security. Palestinians deserve security. Zero-sum outcomes can never deliver that.
One inescapable anchor of this reality must be an acknowledgement of the power asymmetry between an occupying, colonising state and an occupied, colonised, stateless people.
But most important right now is to start by expressing how good it is to see Ms Argamani here, it is humbling and heartwarming. Images of you at other times many of us are familiar with. And then after with Prime Minister Netanyahu at his speech in the US Congress, on the stage at the Trump inauguration.
Now here, thankfully safe. It was so important to hear from Ms Argamani. Your testimony of an awful experience to which no human being should ever be subjected. It reminds us that at the end of the day, this is about people.
Of course, each story is deeply personal – your strength in the face of adversity, your partner still there.
The thousands upon thousands of stories of individual hardship, Israelis both fallen and still held captive. The tens of thousands of Palestinians killed and many more maimed, starved, lives devastated, schools, hospitals, shelters, entire neighbourhoods destroyed and yet, the remarkable resilience. Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, still mistreated and held in Israeli detention.
One must not forget the names of the Bibas children, Ariel and Kfir, and the circumstances of their death. Nor too the name of Laila al-Khatib, a two-year-old Palestinian killed in her home in the occupied West Bank just days ago while eating dinner with her family. Or five-year-old Hind Rajab, bombed and denied medical attention, dead with her family. And those lost in the incubators at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital.
A minute of silence for each of the Bibas children would be appropriate, as would a minute silence for each of the more than 18,000 Palestinian children murdered in Israel’s devastation of Gaza, many more under the rubble. That silence would extend to over 300 hours.
And our task is to prevent the conflict and human suffering resulting from political conflict, preventable tragedies and the many more that await if the necessary steps are not taken.
If we peel back the layers, we are all people, and we are all born equal. We can sometimes use strong emotive language, why not. But what we have is rules, laws, charters, conventions, rights. Not what is seen in the eye of one beholder, not subjective, not supposed to be applied for some, ignored for others – intended to be universal.
This body is architect, author, arbiter, of those rules and statutes and conventions. And whether it’s a non-state actor, a partisan resistance or a state, the question is, are you acting in accordance with the law, within those conventions and charters.
When Hamas is culpable, it is held accountable, sanctioned, heavily.
When the ambassador of a state stands at a UN podium with a little shredding machine and shreds the UN Charter, that’s just a gimmick.
But when the state, Israel, conduct conducts itself in ways which render that charter meaningless, which assaults those conventions, including on genocide, laws, rights and norms that this body holds dear, then that is a challenge that cannot be allowed to pass. It’s the kind of affront which led to apartheid South Africa being suspended from active participation at the UN.
The prevention of humanitarian assistance, the targeting of aid workers and even of the workers of this institution, the attacks on the bodies that uphold the law, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. All while claiming the moral high ground and making specious accusations that somehow to be held to the law is motivated by antisemitism, it cheapens that very real and dangerous phenomenon of antisemitism.
As I have suggested here before, that absence of accountability, that absolute impunity of Israel, is a guarantor of perpetual conflict, and ultimately it does the people of Israel no favours either.
Let me now offer a brief checklist of what an immediate and more medium-term scaffolding might look like one on which peace could be constructed.
1. The imperative of maintaining and completing this ceasefire, the release of all Israelis and exchange of prisoners, the full Israeli military withdrawal, the surging of humanitarian assistance which should never have been prevented in the first place, Resolution 2735 being implemented.
That requires the parties to implement their commitments.
Uncomfortable for some to hear, but Israel is in greater violation, notably the continued egregious prevention of access of materials promised, and the withholding of the latest Palestinian prisoner release. That is a role also for the guarantors.
There is good reason to fear a resumption of Israeli actions, and in particular, renewed attempts to permanently depopulate the north of Gaza.
A number of families of those Israelis being held, and some who have been released, fearful of this being the intention of their own government, have chosen to take their protest to the town squares of Israel.
2. The premise for a full ceasefire must learn from history and be based on reality – Hamas non-governance in Gaza is achievable, the movement has said so. But no party to a conflict will negotiate its own dissolution unless destroyed on the battlefield, or unless the root causes of the conflict are addressed. Hamas has not been defeated, and there will be resistance as long as there is the structural violence of occupation and apartheid , it is that simple.
3. A familiar pattern of displacing Palestinians from refugee camps, 40,000 so far, of destroying infrastructure, is being enacted by Israel in the occupied West Bank with Israeli Government ministers threatening to annex the territory and make life for Palestinians untenable.
This after the ICJ designated the entirety of the occupation illegal.
As we enter the month of Ramadan, there are reasons to be concerned that provocations will intensify in Jerusalem and at Al Aqsa. In an environment where ethnic cleansing is openly discussed, we should not be surprised if there are moves to expel Palestinians from the West Bank also.
4. Attempts to terminate the functioning of UNRWA are an integral part of this pattern, sometimes with the support of states represented here. This body should be in no doubt that an abruptly imploding UNRWA will contribute to insecurity, greater despair, a greater vacuum and an escalating social and political crisis, including in neighbouring countries. One thing it will not do is change the status of refugees or negate their rights.
5. One of the most dangerous developments this body must be seized of is the lurch towards a zero-sum thinking, it might be called the “apartheid is not enough” camp, whereby the very continued physical presence of Palestinians is something parts of the Israeli polity cannot abide.
The unlawful forced displacement of Palestinians must not be endorsed or encouraged by any state, let alone a P5 state. Nothing can be more dangerous than the notion that one people will be removed from the land. We know the circumstances under which many Jews came to this area. We know attempts have been made to remove Palestinians before. Neither people will be ethnically cleansed nor submit to genocidal violence.
That both people will have a permanent home in this land should be a foundational principle.
6. Given the above, if a commitment to two states is to be meaningful, then the urgency of generating a radically revised incentive structure cannot be exaggerated. Quite simply, it would have to be imposed on the occupying power.
That is the stiff challenge facing the newly formed “Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two State Solution” and the “International Conference for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution” due this summer.
Partition was the solution bequeathed by this body when it had fewer than 60 members, supported by only 33 states, while much of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean remained under Western colonial rule.
In the absence of partition, there is a single dominion under an apartheid regime. All in a place where Christians, Jews and Muslims have lived together in the past.
How much longer can we ignore that in a single dominion, the legitimate alternative is the full enfranchisement, equal and democratic rights of all of those within this space.
Let me close by saying that we seem to have a surrounding region increasingly keen to assist in resolving this – not to normalise with occupation, but to integrate under peace and equality.
In the global majority Global South, we have seen new waves of solidarity and something of the spirit of Bandung of 70 years ago.
The launching of the Hague group three weeks ago takes this solidarity to a new level. Those states committed to something that should be so self-evident – to uphold the rulings of the ICJ and ICC, of UN resolutions. I urge all law-respecting states to consider joining this group.
And globally, we live in an era of multipolarity, in which, as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at Munich some days ago: equal rights, equal opportunities and equal rules must be the basic principles to avoid the Pandora’s Box of the law of the jungle and to avoid zero-sum games and exceptionalism. End quote.
Applied to Israelis and Palestinians, it means both peoples are part of the future of this land, not at the expense of each other, equally deserving the right to live in peace, security and dignity.
United Nations UN WEB TV, January 25, 2025