Letter from the Chairperson

Dear Delegates,
I am both honoured, and delighted to serve as your chair for the esteemed Security
Council in this years SISMUN. Having started MUNing in the 6th grade I have had
the opportunity to participate in nearly two-dozen MUNs since then. I have also had
the pleasure of chairing SISMUN thrice before, and like the previous years, I hope this
year too will be just as enjoyable for all delegates.
At the very outset of our SISMUN journey together, I would like to state
unequivocally that the Security Council is one such committee that requires complete
and undivided focus. Therefore, unlike other committees, we have chosen to address
only a single topic this year. I strongly believe that instead of dividing our attention
between multiple agendas, we must concentrate our thoughts and efforts toward
solving one issue at a time so that we may achieve more effective results.
A noteworthy fact to take into account is that the Security Council demands even the
most experienced MUNers to push the envelope further and research their agendas
extensively, far beyond the boundaries of the background guide. The background guide
will certainly provide you with a basic guideline of the agenda, but it is still merely a
starting point for your research, and you must investigate the agenda in far more detail
than is provided.
Granting Palestine a permanent observer status to the Security Council is an issue
that is rooted in the age-old question of the international recognition of Palestine. While
the agenda may sound deceptively simple, I assure you that the conflicting foreign
policies of the involved nations will certainly result in impassioned debate. Given the
fact that we have only one agenda, I expect thorough research on the topic and hope to
see exceptionally comprehensive resolutions at the end of the conference.
I sincerely hope you have an enjoyable experience this SISMUN and take back with
you an extraordinary debating experience, as well as plenty of fun moments and
memories to cherish. I wish all of you the best of luck, and look forward to seeing you
in February.
Sincerely,
Ayushmaan Sethi
Chair of Security Council
SISMUN Conclave 2016
undersecgensismun2016@gmail.com

Agenda:
GrantIng Palestine a permanent
observer status in the Security
Council

Introduction to the Security Council

Under the Charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for the
maintenance of international peace and security. It has 15 Members, and
each Member has one vote. Under the Charter, all Member States are
obligated to comply with Council decisions.
The Security Council takes the lead in determining the existence of a
threat to the peace or act of aggression. It calls upon the parties to a
dispute to settle it by peaceful means and recommends methods of
adjustment or terms of settlement. In some cases, the Security Council can
resort to imposing sanctions or even authorize the use of force to maintain
or restore international peace and security.
The Security Council also recommends to the General Assembly the
appointment of the Secretary-General and the admission of new Members
to the United Nations. Together with the General Assembly, it even elects
the judges of the International Court of Justice.

Overview of Agenda
The struggle between the Israelis and the Palestinians is one of the most
enduring and explosive of all the worlds conflicts. It has its roots in the
historic claim to the land which lies between the eastern shores of the
Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan river. For the Palestinians the last 100
years have brought colonisation, expulsion and military occupation,
followed by a long and difficult search for self-determination and for
coexistence with the nation they hold responsible for their suffering and

loss. For the Jewish people of Israel, the return to the land of their
forefathers after centuries of persecution around the world has not
brought peace or security either. They have faced many crises as their
Arab neighbours have sought to wipe their country off the map. It is this
very Israel-Palestine conflict that has made Palestines universal
acceptance into the UN unattainable for decades. Nevertheless, taking a
step toward giving Palestine more global acknowledgement, our agenda
discusses granting Palestine a permanent observer status in the Security
Council.

Background

The Balfour Declaration

Palestine is a state whose legitimacy has been debated for generations,

mainly due to the formation of the zionist state of Israel. While Palestine
has existed for generations, Israel was only recently established. Israel
was, to an extent, established due to the Balfour Declaration: a formal
letter written on November 2nd 1917 by Arthur James Balfour, the
British Foreign Secretary of the time, to Lord Rothschild. The
Rothschilds were considered by many Jews to be one the most influential
of all Jewish families they were certainly one of the wealthiest. Their
influence in America was considered to be very important to the British
government.
Balfour declared his support for the establishment of a Jewish homeland
in the area known as Palestine though there had to be safeguards for the
rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine. This communication was
accepted by the Jewish community as Great Britains support for a
Jewish homeland. Other nations that fought for the Allies offered their
support for the declaration. This declaration led the Jewish community in
Britain and America into believing that Great Britain would support the
creation of a Jewish state in the Middle East.
However, from a Palestinian Arab point of view, the same area had been
promised to them for siding with the Allies in World War One and
fighting against the Turks who were fighting on the side of the Germans.
Therefore, when Britain was given Palestine to govern as a League of

Nations mandate at the end of the war, both the Jews and the Arabs
believed that they had been betrayed as both believed that they had been
promised the same piece of land. After 1918, politics in the Middle East
was to become a lot more complicated as many Jews took the Balfour
Declaration as read and emigrated to Palestine. The Arabs there saw the
increasing number of Jews moving to the region as a threat to their way of
life and problems quickly aggravated.

The Israel-Palestine Conflict

In order to understand why there are so many nations against the

recognition of Palestine, you must understand the conflict between Israelis
and Palestinians. For proper debate, it is also important to understand the
exact difference between these groups. The term Israeli refers to a citizen
of Israel which was formed under a United Nations decision in 1947,
whereas the term Palestinian refers to the descendants of the families
living in the historic Palestine. The PLO (Palestinian Liberation
Organisation) defines Palestinians in its constitution as anyone who has
been living in Palestine normally till 1947 regardless of whether they were
evicted or remained there, and any child born of a Palestinian father.
While Israelis are citizens of a developed country, the Palestinians are
stateless and lack the citizenship official of any country.
The ethnic population of Palestine consists mostly of Sunni Muslims with
a small Christian minority. The population is estimated to be
approximately 9.6 million, with over half of them being stateless refugees
in various countries in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. The rest are
living in Palestine. (The Palestinian figures are as declared by the
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.) All of the Israelis are either
immigrants or descendants of immigrants who have moved to the region
over the last 2 centuries whereas the Palestinians are actually descendants
of people who have been living in Palestine, comprising mostly of the
West Bank.
Although the same United Nations resolution created 2 States, one Jewish
and one Arab, the Palestinians have never really been able to exercise
sovereignty over their land. The Israelis, on the other hand, have through
their grit and determination (and also the support of the western countries
that played a crucial part in the formation of Israel) made it into a
developed state and a formidable military force in the region. Palestinians

have, however, felt oppressed by the Israeli occupation of their lands and
continue to fight politically and sometimes militarily with the same
determination.

Formation of the PLO

Since 1948 there had been fierce competition between neighbouring states
to lead an Arab response to the creation of Israel. That left the
Palestinians as passive onlookers. In January 1964, Arab governments
wanting to create a Palestinian organisation that would remain essentially
under their control voted to create a body called the Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO). But the Palestinians wanted a genuinely
independent body, and that was the goal of Yasser Arafat who took over
the chairmanship of the PLO in 1969. His Fatah organisation (founded in
secret five years earlier) was gaining notoriety with its armed operations
against Israel.
Mounting tensions between Palestine and its zionist neighbours had also
at one point culminated in six days of hostilities starting on 5 June 1967
and ending on 11 June - six days which changed the face of the Middle
East conflict. According to the UN, the Six-Day War of 1967 displaced
another 500,000 Palestinians who fled to Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and
Jordan. Voiceless in the UN at the time, Palestine could do little to appeal
to the world community, thereby underlining the pressing need for
Palestinian recognition.

Shifting Lines
Israels progress in seizing control of the disputed promised land is as
follows:

The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal developed
by the United Nations, which recommended a partition with Economic
Union of Mandatory Palestine to follow the termination of the British
Mandate. On 29 November 1947, the U.N. General Assembly adopted a
resolution recommending the adoption and implementation of the Plan as
Resolution 181(II).
The resolution recommended the creation of independent Arab and
Jewish States and the Special International Regime for the City of
Jerusalem. The Partition Plan, a four-part document attached to the
resolution, provided for the termination of the Mandate, the progressive
withdrawal of British armed forces and the delineation of boundaries
between the two States and Jerusalem. Part I of the Plan stipulated that
the Mandate would be terminated as soon as possible and the United
Kingdom would withdraw no later than 1 August 1948. The new states
would come into existence two months after the withdrawal, but no later
than 1 October 1948. The Plan sought to address the conflicting objectives

and claims of two competing movements: Arab nationalism in Palestine

and Jewish nationalism, known as Zionism. The Plan also called for
Economic Union between the proposed states, and for the protection of
religious and minority rights.
The Plan was accepted by the Jewish public, except for its fringes, and by
the Jewish Agency despite its perceived limitations.
Arab leaders and governments rejected the plan of partition in the
resolution and indicated an unwillingness to accept any form of territorial
division. Their reason was that it violated the principles of national selfdetermination in the UN charter which granted people the right to decide
their own destiny.
Immediately after adoption of the Resolution by the General Assembly,
the civil war broke out. The partition plan was not implemented.

The 1-State Solution

The one-state solution refers to a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict through the creation of a unitary, federal or confederate IsraeliPalestinian state, which would encompass all of the present territory of
Israel, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and possibly the Gaza
Strip.
Depending on various points of view, a one-state solution to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict is presented as a situation in which Israel would
ostensibly lose its character as a Jewish state and the Palestinians would
fail to achieve their national independence within a two-state solution or,
alternatively, as the best, most just, and only way to resolve the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.
Although the terms one-state solution and bi-national solution are
often used synonymously, they do not necessarily mean the same thing. In
debates about a one-state solution in Israel-Palestine, bi-nationalism refers
to a political system in which the two groups, Jews and Palestinians,
would retain their legal and political character as separate nations or
nationalities, perhaps similar to the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
and Czechoslovakia. In most bi-national arguments for a one-state

solution, such an arrangement is deemed necessary both to ensure the

protection of minorities (whichever group that is) and to reassure both
groups that their collective interests would be protected. Counterarguments are that bi-nationalism would entrench the two identities
politically in ways that would foster their continuing rivalry and social
divides; these arguments favour a unitary democratic state, or one-personone-vote arrangement.
Support for a one-state solution is increasing as Palestinians, frustrated by
lack of progress in negotiations aiming to establish the two-state solution,
increasingly see the one-state solution as an alternative way forward.

The 2-State Solution

Israelis and Palestinians have recognised, and often agreed on, the details
for a two state solution. Israel will remain a Jewish, democratic state that
will live in peace and security alongside an independent Palestinian state.
Borders will be based on pre-1967 lines with agreed land swaps allowing
for each state to incorporate large population centres on the other side.
There will be robust security arrangements, an agreed resolution for
Palestinian refugees, compromises over Jerusalem, and mutual access to
all holy sites.
There have been many diplomatic efforts to realise a two state solution,
starting from the 1991 Madrid Conference. There followed the 1993 Oslo
accords and the failed 2000 Camp David summit followed by the Taba
negotiations in early 2001. In 2002, the Arab League proposed the Arab
Peace Initiative. The latest initiative, which also failed, was the 201314
peace talks.

1 Versus 2

There must be equal rights for all people living in this land, between the
Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Theoretically this can happen as
part of a two-state solution, a single-state solution and in various hybrids
of the two. All these solutions could just the same preserve a situation
where there are no equal rights and Jews continue to rule over the
Palestinians but through different measures, much like what happened in
Gaza following the withdrawal of Israel Defence Forces and 9,000 settlers

in 2005. A person can state that he or she is in favour of the two-state

solution or that he or she supports applying Israeli civilian law instead of
a military regime in the West Bank, but such making such statements
guarantees nothing.
Therefore, the viability of the 1-state solution versus the 2-state solution
can only be determined by discourse, discussions and negotiations
between the involved parties discourse, discussions and negotiations that
are possible only with the help of diplomatic frameworks such as the UN.
Hence, even in order for existing solutions to be perfected or take some
effect, it is essential for Palestine to be given the opportunity for fair
representation. Whether this fair representation goes as far as to granting
Palestine a right to hold a permanent observer status is still very much
debatable.

Opposition to Palestine
Israeli opposition to Palestine is decades old. The generation-long struggle
between the two nations for a right over the promised land has created a
deep-seated hatred on both sides. They both feel that they have full
authority over both, Israel and Palestine. Given that only Israel is
recognised by the UN, Israel has had the advantage of voting against the
administering of Palestine in the UN, along with the support of it
supporters.
The Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, obviously against Palestine,
denigrated the Palestinians as obsessively hostile towards Israel during a
UN general assembly speech in 2012. Although he claimed that he would
like there to be unconditional peace, Palestinians claim that this
statement is merely a ruse for Israel to continue to expand settlements in
the West Bank and effectively annex land under the cover of talks.
Other nations that oppose Palestines demand for UN representation
consist primarily of USA and some of its allies, including Canada and
Panama. The United States is the principal nation that opposes any
Palestinian endeavors toward statehood, especially those that go outside
of, or subvert the U.S.-driven Israel-Palestine peace process. USA claims
it would prefer to see Israel and Palestine putting all of their efforts
through the diplomatic peace process. The reasoning is that a durable
peace can only be achieved by direct agreement between Israelis and

Palestinians. The United States, in backing Israel, also ensures that it will
retain leverage and credibility with the Israeli government, which it needs
to retain its ability to bring the Israelis to the negotiating table. The US
President Mr. Obama stated in a UN address that the international
community should keep pushing Israelis and Palestinians toward talks on
the four intractable issues that have vexed peace negotiations since 1979:
borders of a Palestinian state, security for Israel, the status of Palestinian
refugees and the fate of Jerusalem, which both sides claim for their
capital. It is clear, however, that when it comes to the Israel-Palestine
conflict, USA offers no support to Palestine.

Current Situation in Palestine

Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip live in an odd and
oppressive limbo. They have no nation, no citizenship, and no ultimate
power over their own lives.
Since 1967, when Israel conquered these areas (the final 22 percent of
mandatory Palestine), Palestinians have been living under Israeli military
occupation. While in some parts Israel has allowed a Palestinian
autonomous entity to take on such municipal functions as education,
health care, infrastructure and policing, Israel retains overall power.
According to international law, an occupying force is responsible for the
protection of the civilian population living under its control. Israel,
however, ignores this requirement, routinely committing violations of the
Geneva Conventions, a set of principles instituted after World War II to
ensure that civilians would never again suffer as they had under Nazi
occupation. Israel is one of the leading violators of these conventions
today.
Israeli forces regularly confiscate private land; imprison individuals
without process including children and physically abuse them under
incarceration; demolish family homes; bulldoze orchards and crops; place
entire towns under curfew; destroy shops and businesses; shoot, maim,
and kill civilians. However, Palestinians are without power to stop any of
it.

UN Resolution 67/19
United Nations General Assembly resolution 67/19 is a resolution upgrading
Palestine to non-member observer state status in the United Nations. It was
adopted by the sixty-seventh session of the United Nations General
Assembly on 29 November 2012, the date of the International Day of
Solidarity with the Palestinian People and the 65th anniversary of the
adoption by the General Assembly of resolution 181(II) on the Future
Government of Palestine. The draft resolution was proposed by Palestine's
representative at the United Nations. It, however, maintains the status of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization as the representative of the Palestinian
people within the United Nations system. Though strongly contested by the
United States and the government of Israel, former Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Olmert expressed support for the measure. The motion was seen as
largely symbolic, though it could allow Palestine to start proceedings at the
International Criminal Court against Israel. Its timing, following a year in
which Palestine obtained membership of UNESCO and the UN Security
Council was unable to make a unanimous recommendation on their
application for full UN membership, and coming several days after the
completion of Operation Pillar of Defence, was also noted. The new status
equates Palestine with that of the Holy See within the United Nations
system and implicitly recognises Palestinian sovereignty.

What is a Permanent Observer?

The United Nations officially defines Permanent Observers as follows:
Non-Member States of the United Nations, which are members of one or
more specialized agencies, can apply for the status of Permanent
Observer. The status of a Permanent Observer is based purely on
practice, and there are no provisions for it in the United Nations Charter.
The practice dates from 1946, when the Secretary-General accepted the
designation of the Swiss Government as a Permanent Observer to the
United Nations. Observers were subsequently put forward by certain
States that later became United Nations Members, including Austria,
Finland, Italy, and Japan. Switzerland became a UN Member on 10
September 2002.
Permanent Observers have free access to most meetings and relevant

documentation. Many regional and international organisations are also

observers in the work and annual sessions of the General Assembly.
Therefore, when discussing this agenda, bear in mind the definition of a
permanent observer, and consider the implications of this in specifically
the Security Council. Also take into consideration that the system of the
Security Council demands the replacement of ten members every five-year
term, and therefore the feasibility of this admission is rather questionable.
Hence, before coming to conclusions on this agenda, ponder over the
practicalities of this situation and certainly consider the technicalities of
the permanence of this observer status.
Since permanent observers are merely the result of practice, it is also a
noteworthy concern as to whether the admission of Palestine into the
UNSC as a permanent observer would indeed be followed through;
perhaps a mechanism would have to be enforced to prevent negligence of
this decision.

Questions to Address
To what extent does Palestine have a right to UN representation, given
that it has now been primarily annexed by Israel?
How can the Permanent Observer status within the Security Council be
defined?
Is granting the Permanent Observer status to Palestine feasible
considering the five-year term system of the Security Council?
What systems need to be put in place to ensure that Palestines
Permanent Observer status (if granted) is not neglected in the Security
Council?
If not the UN, which other channels can Palestine take to conduct
diplomatic discourse?
What concerns of the nations who oppose Palestinian representation in
the UN need to be addressed?
Can the Security Council succeed in simply giving Palestine a
Permanent Observer status or can it also succeed in granting it full
membership?
Should this Permanent Observer status be granted only within the
Security Council, or also to other committees of the UN?
***Please note: This background guide is by no means exhaustive. Your
own research is what will allow you to debate engagingly in committee.
Do not rely wholly on this document for information. Much of it
simplified for your overall understanding and does not provide a very
detailed picture of the situation at hand. Prior to our committee session,
you are required to research thoroughly on your own countrys stance as
well as that of other nations that will be present. You can also be asked to
provide evidence to back statements that you make in committee, which is
why you must keep a good account of all your resource material.***

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