Joginder Singh Toor writes from Toronto

AFTER days of Israeli shelling, the city and life no longer exit. Gaza City, with some 400,000 people, stopped supplying water when fuel ran out for the power station driving the pumps. People listen to battery-run radios for news; apartment buildings are shaken by bombs aimed at a nearby Hamas run government compound. All the landmark buildings have vanished. Of the presidential office over looking the sea only a few walls remain. For many Gazans it was a symbol of statehood and across the city, the Parliament House is half destroyed. Israeli helicopters fly overhead. The roads have been ripped apart by explosives.

Suspending emergency food delivery in the war-torn Palestinian territory after two of its aid workers were shot and killed, allegedly by Israeli troops. Badly injured by bombardment, they found four young children huddled around the body of their dead mother in a room littered with 12 other corpses. They had to be taken to the hospitals in donkey carts, because protective berms constructed by Israeli army engineers made it impossible for ambulances to reach the area. Israel’s behavior likely constituted a violation of international humanitarian law. The world health organization said 21 Palestinian medical workers have been killed since Israel began its offensive Dec.27. The UN Security Council passed a resolution last night calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel’s full withdrawal after a 13 day offensive but with no effect.

After the end of the world war one, the world was horrified by the slaughter that took place. Woodroe Wilson the then president of the U.S.A thought that the only way to avoid repetition was to create an international body to maintain world peace. There was wide support to the idea except in America. As a result after the treaty of VERSAILLES an international body, the League of Nations came into being with head quarters at Geneva (Switzerland) a country which remained neutral during the war and had already got head quarters of the Red cross.

As a measure to maintain peace, it could call on the states in disputes to sit down and settle, leagues assembly, after hearing could decide on who was offender, impose verbal sanctions if necessary, ask the offending country to leave the territory of the other or face consequences, such as military interventions by the league and also the economic sanctions.

The organization failed, the league virtually collapsed because U.S.A did not join it. Germany was not invited being the villain of the war, Russia was not allowed to join because revolution had taken place in 1917, Britain and France could not afford military or economic sanctions having already been broken by the war. The League of Nations was as such not effective in any international pressure or dispute except the settlement of minor disputes as who owned the Aaland Islands Finland or Sweden. The government of Upper Silesia by Germany or Poland, the control to Memel port in Lithuania border dispute between Greece and Bulgaria.

In major issues like bombardment in Italy on the port of FLUMB, dispute between Checzslovakia and Poland on coal mines, invasion by Poland over Russia in 1921, compelling Russia to sign treaty of Riga ceding 80,000 square kilometer of territory to Poland, which doubled the size of the Poland. The league did not intervene because they did not like Russian Revolution and rather wanted to curtail it. The invasion of France and Belgium on Ruhr (Germany) to recover by force the war damages imposed upon Germany and the Ethiopian Invasion, all defied the existence of the coveted body.

Failure of the League of Nations to prevent 2nd world war, giving rise to devastating consequences, mass scale deaths, wiping out cities with nuclear weapons and complete disregard of human rights, compelled the world powers once again to think of some sort of measures to prevent the repetition. The world war three, as some philosophers conceive, would render the world in a state, where if needs be the fourth war would be fought by stones.

On October 24, 1945 the declaration which 51 nations signed in San Francisco USA describing themselves as “We the people of United Nations” instead of “High contracting parties” used in the charter of League of Nations, signed a charter, which embraced rather more objects than the League of Nations but laced itself with the frame work which contained inbuilt drawbacks rendering it in effective against the wishes of nations, which in times as suited to them, wanted to play rogue in world affairs.

The hedge money and political dominance of some countries, does not allow the nations as a whole, vying to exercise their general will, either in the general assembly or in the security council against the will and wish of nations having veto power and political dominance in the world affairs.

The successes of the United Nations in the fields covered by its various organs, by way of mutual and international treaties remains in effective and in operative where, countries refuse to sign or abstain. There being no mechanism to compel them, the highly cherished goals go in oblivion.

What happened in Iraq, Lebanon and recently in Gaza, destroying entire infra structure, ripping off roads, demolishing state head quarters, the presidential house, the parliament building, the power and water supplies, the food and medicine stores and even killing the U.N reps instead of asserting itself like on earlier occasions, and in more than one situations, the UN choose to abandon relief work. It leaves one to conclude that this organization was destined to doom, may be obliged for some time to live.

[Joginder Singh Toor, Advocate, Punjab and Haryana High Court, jogindersingh_toor@yahoo.com Mobile 91-98151-33530]

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