Editorial | Road to redemption?

There were no hitches. No urgent bathroom calls. No apparent geopolitical diversions.

The communication lines between the foreign ministry in downtown Kingston and the UN headquarters at 405 E 45th Street, Manhattan, New York, seemed to work. This time, there was no dissonance on the line.

Against that backdrop, Jamaica on Tuesday voted in favour of the UN General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. In so doing, it may have begun the job of repairing the rents that have developed in its reputation for conducting a principled foreign policy, which gave the country global prestige.

We were among 153 countries who voted yes. When the General Assembly previously voted on a similar resolution on October 27, which called for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce” between Israel and Hamas, Jamaica did not vote. It did not vote yes. It did not vote no. Neither did it abstain. It just did not vote. Which the foreign minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, explained as the result of communications not being completed in time between the headquarters in Kingston and the diplomats at the UN.

Yet, Jamaica, the minister reported, had drafted CARICOM’s statement on the conflict, which essentially backed such a truce. The statement was delivered to the General Assembly by Jamaica’s envoy; and less than five minutes before the vote, Jamaica had formally abstained in a vote on a Canadian-sponsored amendment to the resolution.

CREDIBLE SOLUTION

By October 27 – 20 days after Hamas’ terrorist incursion into Israel, when its fighters murdered an estimated 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 taken hostage – much of Gaza was in ruins; over 7,000 Palestinians killed, most of them women and children. Israel had turned off water and electricity to the narrow strip of land of 2.2 million people. It had blockaded humanitarian aid to the territory. Its bombing and ground campaign, Israel says, is to crush Hamas as a political and military organisation.

At the time of Tuesday’s vote, nearly 20,000 Gazans had died in the conflict, over 70 per cent of whom were women and children under 18 years old. Over 50,000 have been injured. Thousands more are missing. The World Health Organization has warned of a rampant spread of infectious diseases.

While the United States, Israel’s closest ally and previously undeterred cheerleader, was among the 10 countries that voted against Tuesday’s resolution, the American president, Joe Biden, is growing skittish about Israel’s tactics in Gaza, with its seeming absence of due care for civilians. Just ahead of the vote, Biden warned the Israelis that their indiscriminate bombing campaign was losing them global support, even among European governments that previously gave Israel almost uncritical backing.

Indeed, on Tuesday, 33, or 28 per cent more countries (153 against 120), voted in favour of a far more forthright resolution than the one of October 27. The number of ‘no’ votes fell from 14 to 10. Abstentions nearly halved (49 per cent), from 45 to 23.

Both Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Foreign Minister Johnson Smith have sought to assure Jamaicans that there was no shift in the island’s Israeli-Palestinian policy. The country, despite suggestions of Holness’ embrace of Israel’s hawking prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, remained in support of a two-state solution in accordance with Security Council Resolution 242, including the borders that existed prior to the 1967 war.

That, at this time, is the only path to a credible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the meantime, Israel must respect international humanitarian law.