Thread by @helenacobban

THREAD: The role of the 'monitoring mechanism' in the UN Security Council's #GazaCeasefire negotiations >

Back on Monday, the UNSC started discussions on another UAE-provided draft for a #GazaCeasefire resolution. It has still not gone to a vote. News rpts indicate the hold-up is the desire to find wording that does not "force" the US to cast another veto >

And also that one key issue of dissension between the US and the rest is the mention in the current version of a UN-organized *monitoring mechanism* to speed up delivery of aid into Gaza >

That screengrab of the draft resn was from this UN web-page that gives live(-ish) updates of the discussions on this resolution. But it's significant the page hasn't been updated since Tuesday afternoon: news.un.org/en/story/2023/…

So the key aspect of that monitoring mechanism language is that the resolution's supporters want this mechanism to be "independent of all parties". Yes, that includes Israel, which since 1967 has controlled all movements of goods & people into and out of the Strip. >

It does that because, under international law, it is classified as the "military occupying power" in #Gaza. Has been, continuously since 1967. It's used its control of all Gaza's borders to exert massive pressure on the strip's 2.3 million people. >

You can find a lot of solid info on how Israel has used that power at this page on the website of the Israeli human-rights orgn Gisha: . >features.gisha.org/kerem-shalom-c…

I'll come back with more takes from the Gisha site soon. But I want to note here that in several of the essays I wrote at last month on good (or less-bad) ways to exit the carnage in #Gaza, >Globalities.org

I stressed the need for the UN to seize control of the freight-traffic monitoring mechanism from Israel. This serves two good goals. #1 it should end the abusive cruelty that Israel has operated thru the freight monitoring system. >

#2, it could (should!) serve as a wedge through which the UN *ends Israel's occupation of Gaza once and for all.* See, e.g. this essay I published Nov 17: > globalities.org/2023/11/elemen…

(I certainly hope that significant parties to the UNSC discussion see this issue in the same way...) >

Another strong argument for Israel's control of the monitoring mechanism to be ended is that, really, it did not work prior to Oct 7 in terms of preventing the resistance's ability to build large-scale military systems, offensive & defensive. Though it did inflict huge pain on Gaza's civilians >

So before I dive into the info on Gisha's website, it's also key to note that the leaders in both Washington and Israel continue to assume that it is they, and only they, who will decide the future of of Gaza on the 'Day After' this carnage ends. >

See e.g. this piece today by the WaPo's CIA-adjacent David Ignatius: >washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/…

Here's an excerpt that illustrates their thinking:

I won't even go into the many glaring contradictions, inconsistencies, & gross misjudgments that little this piece... though it is interesting to see the "magical thinking" in which David's well-placed sources like to engage. >

Or, there is this from Haaretz's smart, well-connected columnist Amos Harel yesterday: >haaretz.com/israel-news/20…

Here's a little excerpt from that one:

Two fascinating tidbits there: One, that Washington is giving strong "recommendations" to the Israeli leadership on how to wage this war. Making it, I would say, deeply complicit in the whole war campaign. >

And two, Harel repeating something he and others have written about quite a lot recently, namely that Netanyahu fears his government may collapse when he ends the war. >

But anyway, the key thing I want to underline is the degree to which officials (& most commentators) in both Israel and DC seem to simply *assume* that they will be the only 2 parties determining when & how the war ends. >

But now, the other 14 members of the UNSC are starting (I think) to tell Washington that they want the UN to have a direct role in that matter. >

I wrote a lot on , back in October & November, about the fact that the global balance of power has shifted significantly since the 1990s, an era when a hegemonic US could almost effortlessly usurp the role of sole arbiter on matters of war and peace in the Arab-Israeli theater >Globalities.org

Indeed, how in 2004-05, Washington was even able to enlist the UN as a *junior partner* in that hideous, DC-led body the "Quartet". So now >

Will it be possible for the multipolar networks that will very soon be replacing the US-dominated unipolar world system to find a way for the UNSC to grab back control of the whole Arab-Israeli dossier? I sure hope so-- for the sake of all humanity! >

But meantime, here are few more bits of information about how the freight-crossing monitoring mechanism has been working (or, by Israel's deliberate intention, NOT working) in recent times >

So, the times I have gone as a person into the Gaza Concentration Camp in recent years, to do research or reporting, I have done so either through the ghastly big Erez checkpoint system between Gaza and Israel, located at Gaza's northern end >

Or, a couple of times through the Rafah Crossing, which links southern Gaza to the extreme NE of Egypt. Key to note: even to cross either way through Rafah, you need permission from the Israeli military through their ghastly "tanseeq" mechanism. ("Coordination".) >

Freight, however, gets monitored and transferred nearly wholly through an Israeli-controlled transit facility near the southern end of the Gaza-Israel border. (Actually, not a border but an Armistice Line). This, from Gisha > features.gisha.org/kerem-shalom-c…

The Tarqumiyeh Crossing noted there is the main point at which the Israeli military monitors freight going into or out of the *southern West Bank*. Did I mention that both the WB and Gaza are captive markets under Israel's tight control. Have been, for *56 years* now.

> Ah, so getting back to this. Here's the Gisha graphic showing the monthly average of trucks entering #Gaza through Kerem Shalom since 2007, the year when Hamas in Gaza foiled the US-Israeli-Fateh coup attempt against them:

To note there: the catastrophic decline in monthly ## of trucks in mid-2007, after the coup attempt was foiled. Prior to coup: 10,575 trucks/mth. Then it was kept v. low till 2014, after which it rose until 2016, then declined again. >

And let's remember that Gaza is not *just* a totally aid-dependent basket case. It has also often had a vibrant manufacturing & agricultural economy of its own, with exports, tho of course 56 years of Israeli occupation de-developed that a LOT >

So here's the Gisha graph on freight exiting Gaza. Before the coup attempt it was 1,064 trucks monthly average. Almost nothing since then. >

(I really wanted to note that.) But here, for contrast, are the UN-OCHA figures for truck deliveries into Gaza every DAY since November 30: >

That comes, on a monthly basis, to around 3,000 trucks/month-- compared with that figure of 7,982/month in 2019... and at a time when the urgent needs of Gaza's people for a wide variety of basic necessities is *extremely high*. >

A couple of final thought on this matter here. This Reuters report tell us that on 12/17, the Israelis allowed trucks to travel through the Kerem Shalom crossing *directly into Gaza* for the first time since Oct. 6 >reuters.com/world/middle-e…

Before 12/17, the only mechanism the Israelis would allow was that all aid trucks coming from Egypt had to traverse the border with Israel and undergo inspection in Kerem Shalom, and then be trucked back to the Rafah crossing to enter Gaza from there. >

Extremely persnickety & time-consuming! But even with trucks now able to transit directly to Gaza from Kerem Shalom the inspecting, the unloading & reloading are all super-time-consuming (and all done by Israeli sub-contractors with doubtless lovely profit margins.) >

The other is that actually *rebuilding* Gaza (as opposed to just sending in much-needed emergency relief supplies) will be a truly gargantuan project. Each time previously that Israel has "mowed the lawn" by unleashing ghastly violence against Gaza, >

its control of all borders meant that Israeli companies got to make super profits from supplying the goods, shipping services, etc. It was a truly grisly Keynesian scheme. This time >

the reconstruction project absolutely needs to be under the control of the UN, not of Israel. And Gaza has a lovely long coastline. So Job 1 should be for the UN to rehab its long-battered port and then bring in, through that port and thru Egypt, all the supplies the reconstruction will need. >

No more Israeli control of that! No more Israeli middlemen skimming off their share. I'll leave you with a thought from David Ignatius's piece today:

(Actually, if you read his whole piece, as inked to above, you'll see that his view of the nature of this "rebuilding" is very very different from mine.) THE END