By the Gazette Editorial Board Soon, the world leaders will travel to New York city to attend the UN General Assembly meeting. Each one of them will try to convey his/her people's hopes for peace and an end to the conflicts and wars that have struck our world and undermined the security and prosperity of many peoples. However, these hopes will most probably be dashed because of the outdated system that continues to govern the Security Council, the main UN body responsible for preserving security and peace in our world. On turning over the reins to former Ecuadorian foreign minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the outgoing UN General Assembly President Miroslav Lajcak called for the Security Council to be reformed. Lajack, the head of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly noted that the current composition of the UN Security Council did not reflect today's reality. "It cannot be denied that the current composition of the UN Security Council is not representative because it does not reflect the realities of the 21st century. It copies the realities of 1945," Lajcak said. He noted that calls for council reform were "just". So, can the new president of the UN General Assembly achieve this goal or even approach the file of reforming the Security Council and amending its voting system which has failed to preserve world peace and security? Before the top-level General Debate on September 25, the UNGA will organise a top-level plenary meeting on global peace. The session will mark the centenary of the birth of the South African leader Nelson Mandela. The plenary that will be launched on September 24 under the name of the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit will make a political declaration in support of world peace. So, how can the Arabs, especially the Palestinians, make best use of this occasion? How can they push the UN member states into adopting a unified stand in support of the Palestinians, at a time the US, the biggest power in our world, is working under the Trump Administration to liquidate this cause for the benefit of Israel, the occupying state? President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority is expected once again to demand that the UN members recognise the state of Palestine on the territories occupied in the 1967 war, with East Jerusalem as its capital. In November 2012, the UN voted to upgrade the status of the Palestinians to that of a "non-member observer state". This followed a failed bid to join the international body as a full member state in 2011 because of lack of support in the UN Security Council. However, the image of the world has changed much today with the apparent global disdain of Trump's unfair decisions against the Palestinians. The result was the increase to 137 out of the 197 UN member states, of the number of countries announcing their recognition of the State of Palestine. Even those who are still hesitant over this step do recognise the PLO as representative of the Palestinian people and adopt the two-state solution to the conflict. With the innumerable procedures taken by the US' Trump to liquidate the Palestinian cause, the least the world leaders could do is to recognise the State of Palestine and to exert real pressure on Israel to force it to end its occupation of the Palestinian territories. A similar move was the direct reason why Pretoria was forced to end the Apartheid system in South Africa in the 90s of the 20th Century. However, the move would not be effective if it were not coupled with collective pressure to introduce reforms to the Security Council, to include more members and amend the voting system so that a single state would not be able to challenge the international will and force its opinion on the entire world.
