The withdrawal last week of a UN agency report accusing Israel of being an apartheid state will not change the stark findings and harsh conclusions reached by two distinguished researchers. The report, entitled “Israeli Practices Toward the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid,” was solicited by the UN’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA). While dominated by Arab states, it has been critical of human rights abuses in Arab countries as well.

The report was immediately denounced by Israel and the US, as expected. The latter pressured UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw the report, while US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley described it as “false and defamatory.”

The head of ESCWA, Rima Khalaf, resigned in protest. She told Guterres that “in the space of two months you have instructed me to withdraw two reports produced by ESCWA, not due to any fault found in the reports and probably not because you disagreed with their content, but due to political pressure by member states who gravely violate the rights of the people of the region.”

The report triggered accusations by Israeli and US officials that the UN was once again being used in a propaganda war against the Zionist state. But not one Israeli official had the courage to discuss the report’s damning findings.

The attack against the UN and its agencies is not new. Whenever a report or resolution is released or adopted by a UN body that criticizes Israeli practices against Palestinians, as in the case of the Human Rights Council, it is immediately attacked as biased against Israel and part of a campaign to shame it. Pressure is immediately applied on UN officials and heads of enquiry commissions in order to discredit findings that incriminate Israel.

Almost 70 years since the UN body first got involved in the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, Israel remains in defiance of UN resolutions. As an occupation force, it continues to violate international charters and conventions, while accusations and warnings that it is fast becoming an apartheid state are being leveled by distinguished international figures, including Jews and Israelis.

The barrier that segregates Arabs and Jews, Israeli insistence on the Jewish character of the state, and the adoption of discriminatory laws and practices against Palestinians all fall within the parameters of the crime of apartheid.

Any objective legal argument against Israel’s occupation and its unlawful practices against Palestinians will reach the conclusions of the now-suspended ESCWA report. But that was never the issue. The UN’s credibility has always been in question when addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Almost 70 years since the UN body first got involved in the Arab-Israeli and Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, Israel remains in defiance of UN resolutions. As an occupation force, it continues to violate international charters and conventions.

Osama Al-Sharif

Palestinians have always known that their continued suffering has little to do with the integrity of their legal standing, and more with Israel’s unique immunity from prosecution or accountability as a protege of the world’s dominant superpower.

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• Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.