CMV: The UN resolution calling for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories in 12 months shows the UN has no real interest in peace
Just to preface: I'm an Israeli, I fully believe that a two state solution is the only way for peace and that eventually Israel will have to withdraw from the west bank.
Last month the UN general assembly passed a resolution calling for the complete withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories in 12 months, among other things. This is obviously completely impossible for 2 main reasons -
Currently there are around 700K Israelis living in the west bank and transfering all of them out of there in a year is simply not doable. It's not like Israel has cities, houses and jobs ready to accommodate these people. The toll such a massive transfer of civilians would take on the economy and probably military is just too high for such a move to be realistic.
Israel cannot withdraw from the west bank before it is stable enough to not be threat to Israeli security. Pulling the army out of the west bank would leave Israel's heartland completely exposed to attacks from militants within the territory, something Israel simply can't allow to happen as it would majorly compromise the country's security. This is obviously the main reason why such a hasty, one sided withdrawal is impossible.
This makes this resolution, in my opinion, detrimental to peace and not the opposite.
This is because it's a resolution that Israel simply cannot accept. The consequences of this will be that many around the world and in Palestine will have the idea that Israel continuously ignores UN resolutions reinforced and Israel will garner even more hate for it. And in Israel it feeds straight into the "UN and everyone is anti - semitic and can't be trusted" narrative, which only strengths and emboldens the nationalists and drives people away from peace. I also thinks this leads the the UN becoming less credible as what's it's point if it is pushing out unrealistic resolutions?
In my opinion if the UN truely cared about achieving peace they would adopt a resolution calling for Israel and the PA to restart earnest talks about adopting a 2 state solution, and the fact they instead adopted this one shows their interest isn't peace, but rather virtue signaling and optics.
Now I know some might say that the UN general assembly resolutions are non binding and it's more about sending a message and reinforcing international law, but I would still say that sending an unrealistic message is useless and causes more harm than good.