Disarming settlers barely scratches the surface of Israel’s colonial violence

At the UN Security Council on Tuesday this week, Palestinian Permanent Observer Riyad Mansour called for “a strong international response before it is too late” with regard to settler violence in the occupied West Bank. However, it is already too late. It has been too late for decades now, and the rhetoric used by diplomats doesn’t help Palestinians achieve a semblance of dignity, let alone autonomy and liberation.

Israeli state and settler violence increases in relation to the government’s requirements for colonial expansion. Rhetoric, however, has stayed several steps behind. It is not until it is too late that statements are issued about how the international community needs to step in to protect Palestinians. However, in 1947, the international community decided on collusion with Zionist colonialism. Decades ago, the UN had already determined it would not protect Palestinians from the violence it helped to create.

Instead, the UN opted for meaningless symbolic commemorations that even distorted the reality of settler-colonialism. The repeated result has been ongoing state and settler colonial violence.

“Israeli settlers must be disarmed … And Israeli settlers and occupation forces have to leave our land and leave us alone,” Mansour told the UN Security Council, while noting that Palestinians are entitled to international protection due to Israel abdicating its responsibilities as an occupying power. Israel is first and foremost a colonial entity, protected by an international organisation that has no intention of providing protection to the colonised Palestinian people. It is no surprise that the two-state politics continue to shape not only diplomacy, but also the outcome of Israeli state and settler violence.

The international community will not intervene to disarm Israeli settlers. Neither will it intervene to return colonised territory to the Palestinian people. The two-state paradigm provides protection against both of Mansour’s requests to the UNSC. Ending military occupation – a hypothetical scenario given the strong impunity Israel still benefits from – would not necessarily remove settlers from Palestinian land, or disarm them.

Israel heavily depends on settlers to maintain its presence and colonial expansion; the impunity provides protection not only for colonialism but also for the settler society that maintains it.

Mansour is right that there is ample evidence of state and settler violence. The international community, however, is not seeking proof to intervene. It merely collects information as a passive means to refuse any form of intervention against the colonialism it helped to create in Palestine. Far too often Palestinians find themselves trying to convince the UN with evidence. The UN collects its own evidence and publishes detailed statistics of colonial violence, but it simply refuses to act. Resolutions may be “unequivocal in opposing annexation and forcible displacement” but the UN has created enough loopholes for Israel to maintain its colonial existence. Therefore no amount of UN resolutions, and non-binding ones at that, can achieve what the UN made sure to prevent in the first place – the liberation of Palestinian lands through international law and mediation.

Settler violence goes decades back. The UN, however, differentiates between settlers by using present violence and statistics instead of a historical trajectory. Palestinian diplomats should not fall into the same trap.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.