Washgington, DC, January 1 – The visionary behind the global peacemaking organization the League of Nations is urging Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to join the League in the aftermath of a failed bid to have the United Nations Security Council endorse a full Palestinian State.
Woodrow Wilson, who saw the US through the First World War and spearheaded the international effort to organize a League that would prevent future wars, invited Abbas to include the League of Nations in the roster of international organizations to which the Palestinian leader has begun applying. While most of the world’s attention focuses on Palestinian membership in the International Criminal Court, Wilson recommends joining the League, which has proved exactly as effective as the UN and its Security Council in preventing armed conflict.
Joining, says Wilson, would require nothing more than signing a statement upholding the principles that gave rise to and govern the League, and a commitment to upholding its decisions.
Wilson has been trying to shore up international support for the League ever since the US Senate failed to ratify American membership in the organization, thus depriving it of much-needed muscle and legitimacy. Analysts agree that the former president is attempting to replace the legitimacy that American membership – and leadership – would confer on the League with only a slightly diminished gravitas born of as many member nations as possible. Scoring Palestinian membership in the League of Nations would provide a much-needed boost for the organization, which has been plagued by inaction, by bringing to it a nation almost constantly in the international consciousness.
While Wilson and his confidantes express optimism over Palestinian membership in the League, analysts remain skeptical of both Abbas’s willingness to accept the organization’s terms and the body’s ability to serve Palestinian interests. The latter point may be academic, given the raft of organizations Abbas has begun to join, such as agreements governing biodiversity and many other issues of seemingly marginal importance to the conflict with Israel. However, in the aggregate, say experts, the memberships reflect international standing that the Palestinians can leverage to extract concessions from Israel, and in that sense joining the League of Nations can certainly offer the same.
But it remains uncertain that Abbas will want to join the League, given that the same organization specifically endorsed the British Mandate over the territory of Palestine in 1922 for the explicit purpose of establishing a national home for the Jewish people. Abbas and his allies have fiercely opposed acceptance of any Jewish state. “I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the leader of an organization dedicated to the removal of Jewish sovereignty from its neighborhood to endorse the League of Nations mandate’s terms,” says International Relations Institute researcher Anna Kronistt.
Other analysts disagree. “The truth is there isn’t a single agreement the PLO ever made that it hasn’t violated,” says Rhea Liticzek of the Mideast Research Center. “So whether or not signing the necessary treaties obligates them to uphold its terms is a completely academic question.”
(h/t /Irene)
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