ECOFIN II: Resources in the Palestinian Territory

George Tang

YMUN Taiwan
@ymuntaiwan

Letter from the Dais

Dear Delegates,

My name is George (Shao-chi) Tang, and welcome to the Economic and Financial Committee! In the Second Committee of the General Assembly, delegates will deal with issues relating to economic growth and development such as macroeconomic policy questions, sustainable development, operational activities for development, and so on. In the end, ECOFIN strives towards the common goal of global partnerships. In short, you will figure out how economics, politics, and international relations intertwine, and craft resolutions that will have a huge impact on all these aforementioned fields!

Let me first introduce myself. I am George, and I am a first-year from Branford College. I am so excited return to my hometown, Taipei, to serve as Under-Secretary General and director for YMUN Taiwan! I started participating in Model UN when I was a freshman in Jianguo High School and I was also once a delegate at Yale MUN Taiwan! Now, actually taking part in organizing YMUNT as a Yale student, I get to examine MUN from a completely different angle, which really motivates me to bring the best experience possible for each and every one of you. Outside of Model UN, I perform magic, make films, play poker, and swim at Yale. I also play the piano, erhu, and ukulele, so please feel free to reach out to me if you have similar interests--it would be the best thing ever to share our passions. As I have mentioned before, this is my first time studying abroad. Sometimes, I really miss the people, culture, and (especially) food from Taiwan. But in the end, we will find that the excitement and satisfaction of exploring new things always outweighs the anxiety we feel when we first step out of our comfort zones. Hence, I invite you to challenge yourselves in this committee. In ECOFIN, I believe that we could bring our discourse to a whole new level!

We're looking forward to spending this weekend engaging in a thought-provoking and meaningful discussion with you – the world's future leaders. See you in committee, and please write to us if you’ve got any questions beforehand!

Yours truly,

George Tang

george.tang@yale.edu

Committee History

The Economic and Financial Committee is the Second Committee of the General Assembly. In this committee, countries deal with economic and financial issues in the global community. This committee was officially created in 1945 and first met in San Francisco on April 25th, 1945. ECOFIN is open to all UN member states and follows the same parliamentary procedures as any other main organ; hence, a total of 193 nations are represented in ECOFIN.

Role of the Committee

The resolutions in this committee provide ideas for the redesign of policies to strengthen the impact on poverty and employment as well as to promote structural changes for a more sustainable future for all. ECOFIN's mandate includes discussions relating to economic growth and development (including international trade, international financial system, external debt sustainability and commodities), financing for development, sustainable development, human settlements, poverty eradication, globalisation and interdependence, operational activities for development, and information and communication technologies for development. With that being said, resolutions passed in ECOFIN hold immerse importance in the international community, though they are non-binding in nature. 

Recently, ECOFIN has been putting a lot of focus on economies in the Middle East. Such topics of interest include Israeli exploitation in the Palestinian area and oil slicks on Lebanese shores that are caused by the Israeli air force. ECOFIN also tackles broader issues, like discouraging unilateral economic measures as a means of political coercion against developing countries, strengthening the links between all modes of transport to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, and so on. 

In the intersection of economics, international relations, and politics, delegates have to find the balance between all of these aspects if they wish to achieve their goals.

Topic History

The dispute over the Palestinian region is an old and unresolved one. Although for thousands of years, Jews and Arab Muslims have fought over the control of the land, some more recent disputes start around the early 20th century.

During World War I, Britain and the Ottoman Empire fought for control over the Palestinian region. To gain support from the Jews, Britain issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917, declaring the creation of an “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” After the war, British government successfully gained control over the region, implementing a religious segregation policy that caused tension to gradually build up between the Palestinians and the Jews. During this period, the Jewish population in the area grew by over 30%, and their eviction practices towards Palestinian residents not only contributed to their growing sense of nationalism, but also created numerous problems stemming from these displaced civilians.

As tension and violence rose, the British government could no longer control the situation. Hence in 1947, the United Nation voted to split the land into two separate states: the Arab state and the Jewish state, followed by Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. As a result, the Jews went on to occupy the Blue territory, while the Arabs, constituting approximately two times the population of the Jews flock to the Orange. Surrounding Arab nations viewed this as a Western agenda of eviction, leading the Arab states of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, and Syria to eventually declare war on Israel. As the winner of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Israel went on to annex 77% of the British Palestine, which was essentially everything except the West Bank, the eastern quarter of Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

This war led more than 7 million Palestinians and their descendants to essentially become refugees, and their "Right to Return" remains a core point of contention in ongoing peace talks. War raged on again in 1967, a “six-day war” between the Israeli and the Arab coalition. Arab leaders had reached a consensus that there should be no recognition, no peace, and no negotiations with the State of Israel--the so-called "three no's". In just six days, Israel defeated the Arabs; as spoils of war, they took the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan. This further complicated the territorial conflicts between the Jews and the Arabs, since the West Bank holds a significant amount of cultural significance in Jewish history, including the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and other holy sites. 

Since then, the Jews have gradually been moving into Jerusalem, which they called their undivided capital. Though Jerusalem is not formally recognized by most UN member states, these “settlers” now consist of two-thirds the population of the city.

In 1987, the Palestinian Islamist group, Hamas, a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization that believes the "establishment of 'Israel' is entirely illegal", was founded. Hamas conducts attacks against Israel in forms of suicide bombing, rockets, mortars, etc. It then went on to win a majority of the Palestinian Authority Legislative seats election in 2006. Hamas’ firm policy of refusing to admit any peace negotiations made by the government not only severely damaged Palestine’s fragile relationship with Israel, but also caused an internal conflict within the Palestinian Liberation Organization, an armed organization with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" focussing its violence on Israeli citizens. PLO then became Fatah, and this internal split led to Palestine having two separate and autonomous governments: Hamas in the Gaza strip, and Fatah in the West Bank. While both parties strive to create a Palestinian state on the borders of 1967, their approaches are different: while Fatah believes in negotiating peace talks instead of armed attacks against Islam, Hamas puts his faith in the latter.

Although there are ongoing peace talks, Hamas’s control over Gaza and Palestine’s split-government situation makes things even more complicated. The potential instability of the Hamas government in Palestine undoubtedly creates more uncertainty in negotiations.

Current Situation

Resources in the Palestinian territory have always been essential factors in the conflicts between Palestine and Israel. Although there are many different categories in which the argument of unjust distribution could be made, this topic guide will focus on fishing, quarry, and water as examples.

The naval blockades imposed by the Israeli government serve as severe impediments to the fishing rights of the Palestinian residents. Because of the blockade, if Palestinian fishermen travel over 6 nautical miles from the coastline, they run the risk of being attacked by the Israeli army. Another result of the blockade is that fishing resources near the coast have already been exhausted, as the confined marine boundaries for Palestinian residents have led to over-fishing in the area. Converted into numbers as estimated by the Palestinian Ministry of National Economy, a total amount of 1.9 billion USD (about 2% of Palestine’s Gross Domestic Product) has been lost as a result of the blockade.

Since the 1967 Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Israel immediately started developing its mining industry in said area. The Israeli High Court of Justice ruled on December 26th 2011 that the quarrying operations of Israeli companies in Palestinian territories were legalized. According to researchers at the World Bank, these quarrying operations could potentially increase Palestine’s gross domestic product (GDP) by about 3.4 billion dollars per year. If the current situation continues on, the natural resources of the West Bank will be completely exhausted under three decades. In other words, the area is headed towards an economic loss that the Palestinians could never be able to recover.

After the war in 1967, the distribution of water also became severely disproportional. Especially in the Middle East, one of the driest regions on earth, the limited water supply must be stretched to support not only Palestinian farmers and indigenous residents, but also the huge influx of Jewish immigrants. With this huge demand and limited supply, the fight over the control of water plays a crucial role in the development of these regimes.

The Israeli government obtained complete water control over the West Bank and the Sea of Galilee, although not the Litani. These resources, counting the ones that were obtained from the 1967 war alone, contribute to more than 60% of Israel’s current total water resources, which is about a billion cubic metres per year.

The water from these sources was distributed extremely disproportionately by the Israeli government: an Israeli resident receives three to five times more water than a Palestinian resident. This asymmetrical distribution even includes the cases of Israeli settlements on the West Bank, which is considered illegal by international law.

This allocation, on a per capita basis, is thirty seven liters, which is significantly lower than the one hundred liters benchmark that the World Health Organization consider as a minimum basic need standard for any human being. In the long term, the lack of water drastically impedes the agricultural development of Palestine and creates insurmountable obstacles to its economy.

In light of the unjust exploitations of said resources in the Palestinian territory, the Second Committee (ECOFIN) of the United Nations’ General Assembly addressed these issues in its in it’s seventy-second session. Raising a resolution to cease the exploitation of natural resources in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Syrian Golan obtained a recorded vote of 163 in favour to 6 against (Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, United States) with 11 abstentions. This shows that the majority of the international community has reached a general consensus of disapproval regarding Israel's actions in the Palestinian territory.

According to ECOFIN’s news release, this resolution also “called on Israel to stop harming the environment, cease destruction of vital infrastructure, remove obstacles to the implementation of critical environmental projects, and cease efforts impeding Palestinian development.”

Bloc Positions

Northern America has always voted in favour of Israel. Even after the ECOFIN resolution on ceasing exploitation of the Palestinian territory, United State of America's President Trump still announced their relocation of their embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Albeit this relocation has been promised by a lot of President Trump's predecessors, Jerusalem’s contested nature is often too controversial for such a bold move. At the same time, he also "acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital," making clear that the alliance between US and Israel is stronger than ever.

The European Union has also spoken out against US’s recent actions, seeing it as an impediment to the peace between Israel and Palestine. They have voted in favour of resolutions that support Palestinians’ right to their resources and sovereignty. Nations like the United Kingdom, France and Germany have also spoken out in support of Palestine’s cause towards establishing a viable and sovereign state.

Arab countries, such as Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, do not recognize Israel, and are the most avid supporters to the state of Palestine. Through constant voting in favor of Palestine, the Arab nations fully believe that Israel does not have any legitimate claim on the land that they currently govern. Hence, Palestine holds a full membership in the Arab League, which recently started boycotting Israel.

Questions to Consider

1. How should the distribution of the natural resources in the Palestinian territory be decided?

2. How could the international community ensure the execution of a fair allocation of these resources?

3. How could Palestine and Israel seek the optimal cooperation, and what kind of cooperation would that be?

4. While the attempts of reallocations ensues, how could ECOFIN decrease the detrimental effects that the current economic losses bring to the long-term development of Palestine’s economy?

Resources