Diplo-plexy

It might seem rather heartless to proffer a theory of creative diplomacy that takes advantage of a series of political vacuums while people die.

It also might be even more heartless to find humorous historical analogues between the current Gaza crisis and the international response to it, and complete diplomatic fiascoes of the past.

Yet, since I’ve left no doubt whose side I’m on, and that, despite (or maybe because of) my unabashed Judeocentrism, I’ve also left no doubt about that Israel and her supporters occupy the moral high ground here, my conscience is clear. Even if the propriety of finding humor in carnage is, at best questionable, sensitivity toward an enemy that desires nothing short of my complete disappearance is even less so.

So, aside from my usual attitudes towards the UN, its utility and moral standing, I found it rather funny as to how the most recent machinations of the Security Council’s resolutions were hashed out.

Specifically, two items:

One, that the United States abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote Thursday night urging an immediate cease-fire in Gaza despite the fact that the text of the resolution was hammered out by the United States. This is somewhat reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson’s authorship of the League of Nations being soundly rejected in Washington. Israeli and their supporters should find Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’ statement the United States "fully supports" the resolution, but abstained because it "thought it important to see the outcomes of the Egyptian mediation"-- referring to an Egyptian-French initiative aimed at achieving a cease-fire—especially delicious. If the Israelis were smart they’d leave her and her State Department twisting slowly in the wind for the next week and a half of her tenure.

Two, not only are Israel and Hamas not parties to the vote, but despite the fact that the Resolution is clearly aimed at Israel, their antagonistic counterparts are never identified. This should create a diplomatic conundrum that the Israelis should exploit to the fullest—again, if they are smart enough. They can approach this one of two ways: Israel can insist that until the counterpart to the conflict is properly identified, the resolution is ipso facto null and void; or, they can either declare that Hamas is an illegitimate entity and this war is doing the work the West and Fatah couldn’t—or wouldn’t—do.

Either way, since the resolution was not drafted under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which is militarily enforceable, if the Israelis are serious about this series of battles being a microcosm of their wider existential struggle, they will stubbornly persist in the face of what might amount to nothing more than an attack of diplo-plexy suffered by those who were never truly favorably disposed to them in the first place.